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God damn it... As I'm gathering loads of HP addresses and fighting Tiamat in Dimensional Corridor, I also investigated whether I could acquire the Magatama Jewel of not again. My first idea was to use the Lamp of Time in hope it could stop the damage shield from spawning, but to no success. I then thought I could retry my claim that you can't use the corner glitch on bottom right corners... somehow it actually DOES work! And with this I managed to acquire the Magatama Jewel without the Mulana Talisman! Now I have methods to skip the Talisman altogether, which will save loads of time.
Why I didn't discover this earlier is that you require even MORE precision for it to succeed compared to other corners. While you could have a few frames and few pixels to glitch bottom left corners, you basically only have one frame and one pixel for this to succeed. I think you must have the Grapple Claw for this to be possible, since you really need to be as close to the bottom as possible to reach the required pixel.
Link to video
I'll dump my memory addresses when I've tidied them up a bit for anyone who might be interested in them.
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FractalFusion wrote:
For me, both the MP4 Compatibility archive.org link and the Youtube video seem to have a little audio/video desync near the end. It is more obvious during the "Arctic Thunder" phase of the final boss, and the ending cutscene.
Edit: 40.018fps video seems to give a better sync than 40.00fps.
About the encoding, is the sound encoded in 48000 Hz or in 44100 Hz? I forgot to mention I've been playing the game with the default 44100 Hz sound format, so encoding it in 48000 Hz will eventually cause the sound to desynch (if this really is the problem that is). I've done that mistake as well earlier and all those encodes had their audio desynch near the end.
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Nice to hear they've managed to find a way to skip the Dragon Skull in real time. The Twin Statues however actually can be skipped. The game only considers if you've cleared the mist in order to reveal the entrance to the Dimensional Corridor, and ignores whether you have the Statues or not. This can be achieved by reaching the Grail point by glitching up along the wall in the Katana room (with the help of the uncooperative skeletons, or any other means if it can be discovered) and along the wall in the room above. You then jump up to the top and go right through the wall and thus reach the Grail point. Then you just go right to place the first weight, warp back to the Grail point and then go left to place the second weight.
Despite taking this route, the game still keeps the first weight in memory since you're still in the Twin Labyrinth, though you must be able to activate the elevator at the Grail point first or else you'll be stuck in there. This room can be reached by glitching up the wall in Peryton's (left bird) room after you defeat him. The green witch in there is quite cooperative since she always shoot fireballs straight at you, though you'd have to time it right to get into the right spot since the fireballs aren't the fastest projectiles. Granted, I don't know whether this would save time compared to getting the Twin Statues and finishing the puzzle normally, but at least it's possible.
Currently I'm searching for memory addresses which should help me with the run. The HP of various bosses/mini-bosses, my current vitality and how long my invulnerability has lasted (which seems to randomize between 36-66 frames) and some other things I'm checking to see if they might be of use. I'll post what I've found in my next post after I've looked some more.
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So I've been thinking of looking into this game again now that I finished Hyper Princess Pitch, but before I begin I can mention I did try to run the La-Mulana Remake on Hourglass, using version 1.3.3.1 from GOG.com. With "Multithreading and Wait Sync" set to 'Wrap,' I managed to start the game and navigate the menus. I even managed to start the Time Attack and run it... but that's as far as I got before the issues appeared.
First off, the frame rate isn't consistent as it's a bit slower than what it should be and unfortunately I can't start a new normal game either as the game crashes the moment the map cutscene ends. Savestates are also unstable as they might work the first few times, but freezes up quickly afterwards. Frame advance works better, but even this freezes after using it for a while, except it always seem to count several empty frames for each frame that passes. I haven't gotten it to sync either as I think Hourglass counts a bunch of extra frames before the game has started, which it doesn't when I try to playback my file.
So for now there seems to be more than one issue that needs to be resolved before La-Mulana Remake can be reliably run on Hourglass.
That said, I've also been looking into a few memory addresses for the La-Mulana original and actually found the RNG as well as the x and y positions of Lemeza.
RNG - Type float, 007A62D8
X position - Type 4 Bytes, 007A95B8
Y position - Type 4 Bytes, 007A95BC
I'm fairly sure that's the RNG since it changes every time I expect it to change, and freezing the value results in the same drops/actions from the enemies. The only problem I have with this right now is figuring out how to make use of the values it gives me, how to find out which values will help me.
What I do know thanks to this address is that every enemy changes the RNG differently. The birds change it as often as I expected them to do, with every new action they make. Bats change it both just as they move away from their resting spot and after they've travelled a distance. The ant lions change it after you've been in their room every ~9.5 seconds. Any room with a ghost seem to change it every 20 or so frame, no matter if they're visible or not (not counting other enemies in the room), while the cats that are balancing on balls change it every frame. Interestingly certain screen transitions changes it four times as well, and most but not every time you kill an enemy.
These are just some examples as every enemy seem to change it in their own way, so I need to figure out how to make use of it. Does anyone happen to know a way how to do this? If I should try to disassemble or reverse engineer it or something? Or if there's an even more efficient way of doing it? Any guidance on this or suggestions for what other addresses I should search for would be appreciated.
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Nach wrote:
Patashu wrote:
I tweeted the TAS to Daniel Remar (maker of this game, Iji, etc) and he approved
Let's hope his next game includes Tseralith difficulty mode.
Oh god, hahahaha, that would be awesome! Nice to hear Daniel approved of my run. :D
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Nach wrote:
My point wasn't flexing your muscles. My point was seeing the items tallied, I want to see which fabulous prizes you collected. Did you get a year's supply of meat? Big money big prizes, I love it.
You can actually see them in the background as I fly through the air. The explosion from me blowing them up that is. Shame you can't see how many year's supply of meat I get, but I promise you those were many.
Nach wrote:
There's a whole bunch of codes listed when you beat the game. Although, did you even beat the game? Until the MC himself is dead, the game ain't over.
If you in fact did not beat MC Mutoid Man, can we even consider this run as beating the game? Runs have to complete the game to be eligible for acceptance.
Oh, those codes are just the everyday Doom cheatcodes. None will allow access to Daisy.
It's true I didn't beat MC himself, but that wasn't he goal of this run. You see, this is the hidden side quest where you can destroy MC's manufacturing facility instead, which is cleverly disguised as Mecha Santa's workshop. How did you think MC managed to mass produce all those luggages, weapons, toaster, mines, cars and whatnot for his show?
As seen in the run I did manage to destroy the facility and thus is eligible for acceptance.
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Truncated wrote:
One thing which perhaps should be mentioned in the submission text is that the Ice weapon blocks enemy shots, which is how you manage to beat the UFO without taking damage.
Oh, whoops. Always is there something you forget to mention.
And yep, touching any enemy would hurt me had I not activated my piledrive just in time. What also makes this harder in one way compared to the Touhou games is that you have to do frame perfect piledrives and find spots where you won't get hit for one frame. Of course Pitch's hitbox and the irregular fire from the enemy doesn't make it easier, since enemies don't always shoot straight towards you.
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Nach wrote:
I didn't see that, I guess there's too many enemies on the screen. Also, you seemed to skip the item tallies at the end of each level where you get to flex your arm muscles.
What? You mean flying through the air propelled by the explosion you just caused behind you isn't good enough? I can go as far as flexing my legs as I soar through the air if that'll make you satisfied.
Nach wrote:
That makes sense for the first quest, but you really should TAS the second quest with Daisy (or is it Dizzy in this universe?) unlocked.
Well... considering I just blew up that part of the universe, I'm unsure whether Daisy is available at all for the second quest. Maybe you have to enter a secret code to access her? I don't know that code though.
Anyhow I'm glad everyone enjoyed the run!
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I can say it'll certainly be hard to accomplish. Especially considering the rooms where enemies spawn faster than you can kill them... the last room before the second boss comes in mind. How many was it? Four enemies every five frames for 25 seconds? I could say it's impossible, but that word has been proven wrong so many times it's almost getting silly. Instead I'll just say it's really hard to accomplish and I would love to see a run that could pull it off.
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Nach wrote:
Thank for the info.
Anyways, after I watched this run, best choice is to vote no, for the following reasons:
Should've played with Daisy at the same time.
You did not acquire the travel luggage.
You did not acquire the 2600 inch television.
You did not acquire the exciting home game.
Of course I acquired those three! I got the travel luggage at 2:48, the television at 7:30 and the home game at 9:35. I couldn't manage to play with Daisy at the same time however since she was busy waiting for the gifts SHE would've gotten for christmas.
I admit I forgot to mention that the piledrive/counter moves are the same thing. Thanks for clarifying it in my place.
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Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
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Heh, I guess I'm just overthinking about this.
How much I have to write depends on how much I feel is relevant to mention. So this will take the time it needs, though I think it should be sometime soon.
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Hmm. The closest one would be the present in the fourth room on the last stage. That shouldn't waste any time at all to get, although they give you 1000 points so I would have 250578 in the end. I could skip two of the triple shot sleighs as well since they give you 250 points each, but that would probably look sloppy if I did.
Alternatively there's the third room on Stage 2 where about 16 marbles (that's what I'd like to call those bouncy) dissapear since they exit the screen at the bottom. Each one gives you 33 points so I'd need 13 of them to get 429... this will be harder to pull off since they dissapear faster than I can piledrive them. Although I could combine it with the fourth room in Stage 3, the one with the Ufo. I could try to throw an enemy on one of the triple shot sleighs and hope I'll be able to destroy 6 marbles from the earlier stage, or just destroy two of the sleighs instead.
In the first room on Stage x, I could maybe piledrive a couple of the triple shot sleighs and hope I'll be able to catch up with the other sleighs without losing time, but that won't be easy.
The last possibility I can think of which I basically wouldn't lose any time at all, but would be really hard to implement is if I could get enough black elf robots to spawn instead of the normal robot elves. Then I'd earn 99 points instead of 12 and I could theoretically acquire the points I need.
But... normally you'd expect the TASer to get top score so I personally thought it was a funny change that I didn't in this game. Though this is just my personal opinion and I don't know what the audience in general think about this.
To be fair score wasn't one of my goals in the beginning.
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The score actually did catch up during the fight, just that it started increasing again since I received 5000 from defeating Mecha Santa and an additional 10000 from finishing the stage. Right before I enter the room my score should be 234578... which takes 1 minute and 25 seconds to count up. My final score is thus 249578, just short of reaching first place. Sigh...
An interesting thing I discovered earlier today, or rather finally figured out why it happened is that after you fire with your first shot, the second shot will appear one frame sooner. Then every other shot will appear after the normal delay. This means if I shoot with Bricks, the second shot will appear after three frames while every other shot appears after four frames.
Same thing happens with Rainbow... which I accidentally miscalculated earlier. I thought it fires every nine frames, but then I happened to include this one frame faster rate of fire... so Rainbow actually fires every ten frames which means it ties Ice in damage.
Damage wise this means:
-Brick 0.25 damage/frame (~0.286 damage/frame for the first two shots since you do 2 damage in 7 frames)
-Ice 0.3 damage/frame (Appears to not be affected by this single frame since it already has such a high rate of fire)
-Rainbow 0.3 damage/frame; 3 damage per 10 frames. Miscalculation from earlier as I mentioned. (~0.316 damage/frame for the first two shots since you do 6 damage in 19 frames)
This one frame faster rate of fire only happens every time you begin firing and unfortunately can't be exploited by firing twice, stop firing and start firing again. The game seems to keep track of the cooldown so this can only be exploited again after the cooldown has ended, that is after four frames has passed and you begin firing again on the fifth frame.
I'll look into what I'll need to include when I post my submission, so it'll be up when I've finished writing it.
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FatRatKnight wrote:
You can submit one movie, and have that one get straight to the very end as fast as possible.
So you are allowed to submit two movie files then, one which skips straight to the end and one which keeps the ending cinematics. If I understand it correctly, you link the fastest movie when you make the submission and link the cinematics one in the text for encoders to encode? I'd certainly prefer to watch the one with the endings which also lets you see the final stats as well.
Technically the final input is the moment I enter my name for the scoreboard. Before that I have to manually skip the stage ending, the ending cinematic, the Galactic Princess Buster, stats screen and the hidden tips. I don't think the game will skip a few of them for you unfortunately.
About those counters, they're not as helpful as a normal piledrive unfortunately. The very frame it ends on you're vulnerable again, and you have to wait one frame before you can begin another counter. Since the last input makes you invincible again, this means there's four vulnerable frames between each counter when you don't grab anything.
You can barely keep up with Mecha Santa's Arctic Thunder since each wave gets a bit closer to you. In fact I had to walk down as much as I could in between each counter, or else the last wave would've reached me. If I had tried to shoot between the counters, I'd be locked from initiating it for one frame. One frame which I couldn't spare since the second series of Arctic Thunder did actually reach me the same frame I activated my last counter.
Also, counters can block ANYTHING in the game except for the bosses themselves. Shots? No big deal. Blasts? Didn't feel anything. Lasers? Fancy light show. Arctic Thunder? Nothing special. Aurora Force Blast? Just some fireworks.
The Goddess can't be summoned on this difficulty unfortunately, but I managed to do well enough without her help anyway. ;)
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Aaaand here it is! The conclusion of Hyper Princess Pitch and the fight with the "impossible" Mecha Santa, on the "impossible" difficulty Reallyjoel's Mom.
Link to video
Before you ask, yes you can skip the cutscenes. I just wished to keep them in for this particular video, though the one I'll submit will skip them all.
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Daaaaang. Mecha Santa. Is. NASTY.
...posting the movie as soon as it's encoded/uploaded to youtube. No sneak peeking the .WTF file just yet.
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I'm currently testing out a couple of different routes in order to pick the most optimal one and I've gotten about halfway through the stage so far. There's a couple of rooms in the stage which has the slow spawning trains, so I could limit the possible paths to just two, both which ends up at the same room halfway through the stage. Just for comparison a "normal" room takes about 13-20 seconds for the last enemy to spawn while one of the train rooms takes 55 seconds.
I believe I should finish this later on this week, maybe before the weekend depending on how much time my studies will demand of me.
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It's a good thing I can activate them in just four frames then. Even better I can begin reactivating it the very frame I land on, and that the two first frames are invincibility frames with the fourth one instantly blocking anything that "should've" hit me that frame. This gives me a one frame window to not get hit before I wait for the next victim. Believe me, it's not as easy to avoid shots as it might sound as... those elves certainly aren't making it easy for me.
Speaking about Hero Core by the way, Reallyjoel's Dad mode is said to have actually BEEN beated by none less than... Reallyjoel's dad! The real dad that is according to this video, no joke intended. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfM3vtVlCTw
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Erm, no. I guess I picked the wrong words to describe it. It's surely impossible to finish it outside of TAS, though I just didn't want to underestimate a normal player's skills.
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Stage X's finished now. The most noticable thing on this stage are the introduction of the eyes on legs and my "excessive" use of Ice. An interesting thing about those enemies is that your shots can penetrate them. Ice is an exception though as it only does 0.5 damage, but Bricks can kill two enemies per shot (both two eyes or one eye and a spinner) while Rainbow can kill six of them, so I have to make sure not to waste any shots. This also gives an interesting challenge timewise due to how many enemies you can kill with Ice/Brick compared to if I piledrived them instead. A piledrive takes about 36 frames from execution to landing, frames where I can kill 21 eyes/Spinners with Ice or 18 eyes with Brick. So I have to decide when to stop piledriving everything and just shoot them normally, hence my excessive use of Ice (which I only have one shot left of).
Apart from that everything went smoothly. Piledriving as many eyes as I did kinda lagged the game for a moment though, all those itty bitty pieces flying everywhere. Also the Goddess of Destruction doesn't need to hear my wish to know what I want. :)
One stage left!
The .WTF file for those who wish to watch it:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/11941637978266462
Encode here for the rest:
Link to video
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Stage x is progressing nicely. I know which paths will take the shortest time, though I haven't had much time during this week since my studies started again. But I should finish the stage this weekend, so expect it sometime tomorrow.
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The bottom path is much slower (and wayyyy more boring) compared to the upper path by about by about half a minute or so, mostly due to the train in the fourth room which takes little more than one minute just to spawn the last part... So it seems it's always preferable to avoid rooms which has such trains in them. Unfortunately I won't be able to avoid them for stage x, so I'll have to choose the lesser of the two evils and hope it won't get too boring.
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Stage 3 finished! And off to Stage X I go.
At this stage I actually meet the most dangerous enemy so far into the run. That UFO is so nasty I have to use the Ice gun just to get rid of his projectiles, but at least I got rid of him quite quickly despite his 30 hp. Since he more or less tries to fly away from me, I can just twitch around on the same spot to make him indecisive where to go... until his friends arrive that is.
I must say I'm also quite surprised I managed to get as many hits on the boss as I did, since his larger shots really like to block my attacks. Thankfully TAS precision lets me narrowly dodge at the same time as I get those trick shots. For anyone who's curious, countering the big laser does 30 damage to the boss and it's technically possible to counter it a second time during the second phase. Not that he'd ever use it then, but if you time your last shot just before you counter the laser, he'll go into the second stage as you throw the laser back at him. Right now it'd take longer to wait for his second charge compared to just blasting him normally though.
The .WTF file for anyone who's interested in it:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/11806529067455334
Encode here:
Link to video
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Truncated asked the same question a few posts earlier and I'm unsure whether it'd make any difference since enemies will continually spawn for 25 seconds in that room. So I'm afraid the few enemies I could kill with the barrels might do nothing in the long run, and thus I destroyed the barrels for some entertainment instead. And to make all of them group up around me much faster.
Glad you liked the run so far!
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Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
