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The game looks fun and the run blasts through it really quick. You did a really entertaining job handling the beat-em-up stages quickly and in style. I was confused about the game being in Italian at first, and then more when I saw the explanation why, but the run's really really good so I didn't care I got disney plus i'll go watch the movie later
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Okay these are some good ideas and I had a spare evening so I thought I'd whip a couple tests together to see what they looked like.
Link to videoThe Dreadnaught Factor
Shooting down all the cannons is fun to watch but it's slow and unnecessary, just weaving back and forth and bombing the key targets is all a TAS would need to do. Still looks cool. Curious if the second dreadnaught would be faster if I just wove back and forth faster instead of what I did in this video--do one side, die, do the other side.
What would make this game a pain in the butt to optimize is the super laggy movement. Each directional press takes up to several frames to have an effect on your momentum, so it's not easy to be where you want to be when you want to be there without inertia sliding you away from the next target in line. Also, the manual kinda makes it seem like difficulty 7 has exactly 100 ships to destroy, so would the Infinite Loop clause not apply making this TAS like an hour long?
Link to videoHappy Trails
Trivial puzzle game for a TAS, optimizing the route would be the main work to do. When I rewatched this at full speed, though, I kinda liked how it looked. I wonder how a Locomotion TAS would compare?
Shark! Shark! would probably have to have more of a goal, because growing to max level would just take a few seconds I'm sure. Diner would be fun to try, I don't think I've played it in 20 years and I've still got the music stuck in my head
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I kinda wish some more time was wasted before starting the loop. Time it so that the counter wraparound gets exactly to 1 when the time runs out, so that the one death in the "Maximum Lives" run actually leads to a game over
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oh hell yes five whole minutes hot damn
That new usage of that Guo Ji killer glitch surprises me, I wonder what causes it. Love all of the other improvements. Awesome to see this!
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can you believe I used to play this at my cousin's house, for fun
Nice work updating this! The new tricks and routes surprised me, I may be biased (thx for the s/o) but I enjoyed the watch.
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not sure why but there's something blowing my mind about a Sega Genesis game advertising a web address in its opening scenes
This was a good run! I liked the action, it was clearly well optimized, and I was surprised it was over so soon! Good stuff.
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I hadn't looked up what the other versions were like, and it turns out that yes this is actually an NES-exclusive oversight. Other versions of Ultima V are more like earlier Ultimas, where battles take place on a separate screen from the world or dungeon. The NES port messed this up by trying to become more like Ultima VI, where battles are real-time on the map. Oops!
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Awesome! I'm curious to read about how that glitch works. Even without that glitch this run definitely deserved a huge update, so thanks for picking it up!
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sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Yeah there are some ways to mess with the RNG. With the windows functioning as framerules, there's room to alter your location on screen, collect/not collect the heart, destroy/not destroy barrels or pests, waiting a couple frames for a framerule to pass can change the windows and the timing for the next screen I think.
For difficulty loop, I did some testing and it looks like it stops increasing after climbing the building for a third time. But if the rule is to end the loops after new content, though, it might be best to climb the building five times before ending the movie: There is a congratulatory GREAT that appears above the building number from then on. Between that and the difficulty plateauing I think five times is best.
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To show off what pain in the ass the RNG is in this game, here's a run that I did a couple years ago for my own entertainment when Intellivision in Bizhawk was released. It beats this one by 202 frames, even though it looks slower at first: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/52675738424819386
The difficulty loops question is legit, though--After the first loop, barrels can break into two after they fall a level, and things do move faster. I'm preeeetty sure that every loop after the second is the same, though I can't back that up right now. The gameplay really doesn't change all that much.
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what in the world is this game? Just oozing personality out of everything it is made out of! It's almost like everything is a reference or a parody to other fighter games, or just a joke in itself. Incredible music, too. The run itself looked really good, everything moved fast and there was decent variety. Absolutely never slowed down or got even the slightest bit boring. Good stuff.
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ahh yes, a game called Puss in Boots, starring "Dog in spanish" shooting a gun what even is this terrible game
Decent run, though, I can tell you pushed the game to what it's capable of. There is a spot a bit over halfway through where you have to stop to avoid death--I wonder if there was a way to manipulate damage better, like a couple screens earlier when all those british soldiers run into you from behind?
edit- oh
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oh, i didn't realize some of Eversion's awesome music was from an NES game I'd never heard of. Customizeable characters is cool, otherwise this seems like just a decent quality platformer, and a solid looking run through it. Not bad!
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I believe it's only "invisible" in that it's entirely the same color as the background. There are very brief places in the encode where you can see little bits of its sprite, and it's the same as the previous robot but in the dark blue of the background. So yes: The robot can be killed after three shots, it'll explode, and then respawn, forever repeating without change. ...unless there's some killscreen caused by score overflow or something
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oh MAN I put *hours* into this game when I was a child, and you get to the final robot in 3 minutes? Damn, I shouldn't have questioned how cool a TAS of this would be when I was looking at the INTV library.
The constantly exploding robot parts made this entertaining to me, especially with how it was so nonstop that the "music" can't even play at all after the first few seconds. I gave this a Yes vote, with noted nostalgia bias. Good vid!
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Thanks for the encode (and the "sorry for the meme" warning)
The game is good, and the run seems like a great start. I'm not sure if that was quite enough rerecords, though, because the whole run felt slightly inefficient throughout. I'm not familiar at all with the game, though, and only watched the encode.
Ostrich boss fight: you only took the left block to hurt it with, would it be faster to just use the right block?
Pirate boss: the first time, you'd usually wait for your hammer to recharge some before hitting him again. The second time, you hit him a lot more repeatedly. Which is the faster play?
Octopus boss: when he's swimming in from the right side, you were letting most of its body in the screen before swinging the hammer. Is that the earliest it was vulnerable?
And just general movements going through levels were sometimes iffy.
These are nitpicks though. The run is mostly alright, and the game is colorful.
Now, the real question is: Is there a 2P mode? Faster, longer, better movie potential there?
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okay cool, I wasn't the only one that thought to work on this too
I don't have a lot to add beyond what Meshuggah said.
- Trolls randomly fly backwards or don't depending on when you shoot them, often like every other frame. If you're at a precise distance from them when you shoot, you can make it through the no-damage period if they don't get pushed backwards.
- Shots stopping your momentum is actually a blessing for when you want to get passed a corner at the highest speed if you couldn't otherwise fall passed it/jump over it without bumping into it.
Here's a demo movie I threw together in an hour the beats the whole thing in 1:28 and is still improvable: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/45839714382497456
This isn't the best programmed game, which makes me wonder about the engine it's showing off, but shrug!
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I used to place this game a lot when I was SUPER young, so I'm really impressed with the final result here. The game has a ton of complexity and variety for such an early game system. A hardest difficulty run would be worth something, though. If the Minotaur can't be one-shot at the higher level, more pickups would have to be spawned on the path. The run would mostly be just more ladder descents and rng manipulation otherwise.
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Co-Op Qix? Fascinating.
The run is definitely repetitive, though--if only the game had meaningful bosses where you had to draw over them or something. Still, a sub-10 minute time helps.
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There are definitely frames to be saved throughout this whole run. Attacking fewer enemies and possibly using more potions, while attacking specific enemies that cause lag with bullets (I'm looking at you, wizard-looking jerks!) Also, the potion use right before the final boss seemed unnecessary--since you have to use one later during the boss anyway you could probably have just swapped characters first instead and saved one trip into the menu. Using a full health potion or two in the Knight fight to keep yourself near or inside his hitbox could possibly make that one faster, too, but this is just me spitballing ideas after only viewing the encode.
I'd like to see more in the submission text, too, like I don't know this game at all, I don't know what you're doing much of the time. It seems like the RTA path has you pick up a bunch of MaxHP Ups...do those affect anything else, like your damage? If it's just HP/MP, maybe a couple could be skipped to save time.
I mean, I'm kinda nitpicking. The run's good! If I paid enough attention to watch the whole way through and notice little things as possible improvements, the game and the run had to be entertaining enough. If the core choice issue doesn't kill the run's chances, I could see it being publishable, but I feel also that there's enough room for someone to take another fine-tooth comb to it later.
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Link to videoDownload .bk2 file here.
Hi! I was looking for something new to play on the Game Boy and found this action adventure. Early in the original GB's existence, this Lolo-Zelda makes a simple fetch quest of Ultima 4's runes, buried at the bottom of caves. Not a very complex adventure, but it being fast-paced and flexible enough for TAS strategies made me think it would be a fun run to gun down.
So, here's a test TAS that completes the game in 30:21. A final time will be easily sub-30, as the usual mid-run discoveries taught me faster techs and provided a need to rethink dungeon order.
Fun Facts:
* There are three difficulty options, but their effects are very limited: They only decide what happens to the player upon death. Easy mode means you restart the room. Medium mode means you leave the dungeon, inventory and cash intact. Hard mode means you leave the dungeon and lose your money and consumables. Since this is a no-deaths run, the difficulty selection makes zero difference, however I picked Hard just for precedent's sake.
* You can select one of four characters. Shamino is balanced, Mariah has high MP, Dupre has high HP/low speed, and Iolo has high speed and a Bow. With Iolo being about a frame per tile faster from the start of the game, he's the best TAS choice.
* The only equipment I pick up are the Magic Rope, which can cross one tile of water at a time, the Wand of Fireballs, which costs 1/8th of an MP to burn special webs and does double Iolo's starting Bow's damage, and the Rod of Lightning, which costs the same to kill the Black Knight and does triple damage to everything else.
* The items I use are Food (a carryable full health refill,) Potions (same for MP,) Jars of Oil (A single use explosive), Magic Boots (allow you to walk over all tiles for one room.), and the Ankh (immediate warp to Lord British, all characters start with this and it never runs out.)
* Runes increase your stats on pickup based on their associated Principles: Compassion raises Speed, Honesty raises MP, and Valor raises HP. Dungeons can be completed in any order, provided you have any necessary equipment. So, I selected an order that gave me all 4 speed increases as soon as possible. So:
--2. Hatred. Speed.
--3. Cowardice. Magic Rope crosses water tiles, and HP.
--4. Injustice. Speed and MP.
--1. Deceit. Wand of Fireballs melts special webs. Needs two trips, skips rune for now.
--5. Selfishness. Rod of Lightning kills the Black Knight. HP and Speed.
--7. Pride. HP, MP, and (supposedly) Speed.
--8. The Stygian Abyss. No benefits from the rune--game doesn't end until all 8 are picked up.
--1. Deceit. At full speed, the trip for the rune is faster. MP.
--6. Dishonor. HP and MP, but the game ends immediately on rune pickup.
* Partway in, I figured out that enemies can be hurt while flashing--it's not actually invincibility. I also learned that you cannot pick up another pair of Boots if you're currently using one. For clarity sake, you also can not carry two of the same kind of key at once.
* One major source of skips is that the game only saves the state of one previous room at a time. What that means is that when you leave a room, then leave that room and go into a third room, the room you originally left is returned to its default, untouched state. This trick can be used to pick up keys or items that the level designers originally intended to only ever be picked up once.
Planned Changes:
* At one point, I go into a couple towns to buy Food, Potions, or pick up hidden Jars of Oil. Those events would disappear in the final run--I was skipping these useful pieces of gear at first assuming I wouldn't need them, and um I do
* The final dungeon order will need to change. It turns out that Iolo reaches a speed cap after three upgrades. The rune at the bottom of Pride is supposed to give a Speed boost, but he gets none. That means that it's not actually faster to save the runes in Deceit and Dishonor until after the Abyss. The bonuses to HP and MP that they give will instead be picked up earlier to make me stronger for the Pride/Abyss gauntlet.
* Deceit is split into two runs because the cave splits very early on, and each path reaches a different goal. In the same room as the rune, though, there is a transport square that sends the player back to the very start of the dungeon, meaning it's possible to get the rune and the Wand of Fireballs in one run. I will have to test my doubts whether this is faster than coming back later, since this way Iolo would barely not yet be at max speed.
* Technically, Medium difficulty (or even Hard) could be used to allow for deathwarps, perhaps. I really can't think of anywhere that it would save time, though. The Ankh does the job perfectly fine, and you're refilled to full HP and MP whenever you pick up a rune, so it wouldn't even be convenient.
Anyone familiar with the game, check it out and tell me what you think! Any ideas and suggestions are welcome. I'm honestly surprised this game hasn't been TASed yet.
*Oh also!*
Thanks to Bizhawk's neat Dual GB feature, there's also the ability to TAS the game's two-player mode! Team-based dungeon delving in a completely separate set of caves from the 1P game could also make for a really interesting run. I haven't looked into it too deeply (or even found any maps online!) It's really cool that it exists, though, maybe I'll whip up a test.
