This is mostly to get the opinion of various people, since they're different games... somewhat:
B&W:
+ Text skipping with SSAB (though this might work in DX too, haven't checked)
+ Text skipping with B
+ L2 boss throws flames faster
+ Faster start menu popup/popdown [1]
+ Ability to use select-warp [2]
+ Lots of other small gitches
+ Warp sequences are probably shorter
DX:
+ COLOR! weeeee
+ Color dungeon [3]
+ Warp sequences are probably longer, due to the game's horrible, horrible lag when manipulating a color screen that way
[1] Start menu popup times:
B/W: 28fr
DX: 52fr
(time was measured from first frame of pushing start to first frame "[ ]" cursor was onscreen)
[2] This would be used twice in the run (or, at least a test run), mostly just to keep Marin through the whole game as a purely asthetic effect. The only problem would be a minor route adjustment (getting the orcarina, talking to her right after) and probably cost more time (from her "I'll wait outside..." message) but would at least add in some variety
[3] Even though it would prove useless, unless it's a 100% run (and even then, blue would be useless and red knocks enemies away...)
So, personally, I'm torn. B/W has better speed potential, but DX has ... uh, color.
Yeah, summon animations can be skipped, but the dialogue issue is a major one: there's tons of it, and it tends to be extremely repetitive and redundant. "Isaac! We need to do this!" "Yes, we do! Or the world is doomed!" "Don't you agree, Isaac?" YES<- NO "Yes, good you agree. Because this is a dire crisis indeed!" "Yes, very much so!" "Yes, we must do our best to stop it with all due haste!" "Yes, we mustn't waste any more time!" "Yes, time is of the essense!" "Yes, we must travel to Generic Badguy Fortress and stop him there!" "Yes, and be quick about it!" "Yes, very much so!"
Don't forget the tons-o-fun desert with very random (and very, very annoying) text popups:
1A13 0805551A 00000001 Agh...{05} This desert is much{03}hotter than I ever{03}imagined...{02}{00}
1A14 08055538 014757D4 Just walking around{03}here saps every{03}ounce of my strength.{02}{00}
1A15 08055550 00000001 I can't stop sweating...{05}{03}I wish I'd brought{03}a change of clothes...{02}{00}
1A16 0805556E 00000001 I'm so thirsty...{05} Water!{05}{03}I need some water!{02}{00}
1A17 08055584 000001BB I can't keep my cool{03}when it's this hot...{02}{00}
1A18 08055596 00000001 Ew... My clothes are{03}drenched in sweat!{03}This is gross!{02}{00}
1A19 080555B0 00000001 Aghh!{05} I can't stand it!{05}{03}My feet are burning!{02}{00}
1A1A 080555C8 000001BB I can't stand another{03}minute of this!{03}Where's an oasis?{02}{00}
1A1B 080555E0 00000001 If we don't find an{03}oasis soon, I'm gonna{03}shrivel up and blow away!{02}{00}
Only problem is that the game has about an hour of dialogue alone -- that would make this run much less entertaining than it could be.
Though, again, this would be one of those games that is fun to play, but not fun to watch.
No filters, default options; any larger and it starts to get laggy (running at only 10%, with 0 frameskip)... no filters on (they're all unselectable) and the text as default.
Changing it to any other 'text display' mode won't fix it; the other option that uses the same text style appears the same way, the 'on screen' one is too big and too high up into the playing area.
I don't know if this is just a weird bug or a critical flaw in my system, but it looks like I won't be doing any TASes on this machine for now...
Edit: 1280x1024x24. Changing sound to anything other than "Mute" doesn't do anything. Program seems extremely prone to freezing for no reason (such as when selecting "ON" again in sound) ...
- You do 8 before 7; is this just to get the Fire Rod to make 7 easier?
- You seem to get the honeycomb and pineapple, though they serve no purpose in your run; do they trigger something, or was it just a 'oops' type effect?
- Do you have any insights on how the RNG runs in this game? If I can remember correctly, you said you expected (or half-expected) to get each piece of power/acorn powerup.
1. Yeah, the fire rod owns the boss.
2. You need to trade up through the honeycomb to get Marin to appear at the beach.
3. Piece of Power/Guardian Acorn drops are mostly based on the # of enemies killed. 12 for acorns and somewhere around 40 for PoPs.
You're looking at the newest run for the b&w gb version, right? And not tsa's old run?
I was actually watching TSA's run, heh; I did some research and sure neough, it is 32 points (1pt for getting hit, 1pt for giving a hit or a kill, not sure) for a PoP. Figures.
Also, I guess the trading sequence is the reason I considered my game to be screwing up; I never figured they'd require that.... oh well.
I'll go watch the B&W run now, provided I don't run out of space again.
As I've been [not at home/lazy/busy with school] I haven't had time to really work on this; however, I set aside time today to look at TSA's RT-TA*...
I figure if he ever sees this, maybe he could comment on some things:
- You do 8 before 7; is this just to get the Fire Rod to make 7 easier?
- You seem to get the honeycomb and pineapple, though they serve no purpose in your run; do they trigger something, or was it just a 'oops' type effect?
- Do you have any insights on how the RNG runs in this game? If I can remember correctly, you said you expected (or half-expected) to get each piece of power/acorn powerup.
Other than that, I'll try poking through the game's RAM so I can find locations as enemy health and such for easier monitoring, and possibly start planning a route that won't deviate much from TSA's, unless I find something better.
*(real-time time attack)
Voting yes.
This is a game I tried many times to beat (and failed), and it is nice to see it played.
I only was bored during the bonus round, although that cannot be helped unless you find something insane to do while wating for it to finish.
It is possible the run can be improved, but I doubt total improvements will total a minute even if they were found.
You only did because you happened to have perfect timing for your impromvent, as I was working on an updated glitch run just before it as my first TAS (and was even ahead of you by a few frames, which was encouraging)
It just sucked to see it blown away almost instantly... meh.
Oh well; if you want to do the run, go ahead.
I am, pending getting home, watching TSA's run of it (as I'm on dial-suck here, and do not care to download it), and then planning my own route.
Of course, also included will be me making sure my graphical hack (heh) can be used to play it as a local copy, mostly since I've played the game so much I've grown tired of the original graphic set.
Works fine for me, and I even fast-forwarded through most of it (mostly due to the sheer "kick opponent in face, punch in stomach, rinse, repeat" repitivity).
Maybe it's just the ROM used?
-- Edit --
I wish I could keep this in the post. People (in IRC) seem to be less interested in edits, even if they happen to double the post content. Bah.
Anyway, this movie is touchy. You do have to let the ROM 'warm up' for this; I just hold fast forward until the first demo starts. This also happens to be the first ROM that needed it, too... if you start it right after loading, it appears to do some strange things (mine desynced by going to the 2P game screen)
Also: voting yes.
That's what a glitch run should be, utterly confusing with a topping of "How the hell did he know that'd happen?".
Just one question, why did you move a screen to the left before picking up the sword? Would picking it up there cause unwanted bugs or is it just faster to go a screen to the left?
It's faster to move the sword left by a lot. If you just go and get it you have to talk to the owl, but if you move the screen left you don't have to talk to the owl. :)
That, and you have to move left a screen anyway to get to the warp point, so it acts as a sort of double timesaver (no boring owl message, screen change serves two purposes)
A lot of the effect was from glitchwarping through various areas as 'discovery'; it seems that the dungeons all share the same map 'bank', if you will (I haven't done enough hacking of this game to verify it, and have been waiting for more data from Jigglysaint about it...). It appears to be easy to tell which are which, by warping out of a given dungeon (first bank uses a completely square room, second bank uses the top-left room from Eagle's Tower 1F (the upside-down L), and the caves seem to be mixed between them...
Of course, now I'm overanalyzing the game, and will shut up for the sake of my fingers.
Great question. It'd be nice to be able to vote only if posting, so that you can't have unexplained yes/no votes, especially since it seems that one person constantly goes around voting yes to every movie...
--
It appears there's also another unexplained yes in the Ranma movie thread just below this (at the moment, at least). It would be nice to know who is doing this... maybe Bisqwit could check and see if it's always the same person(/people)
What can I say? You blew my (admittedly crappy) test run out of the water, and if you started this for the reason I think you did, in almost no (real) time at all...
Of course this would be a yes vote.
gannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn [...] nnnnnnnnnnnnon!
Or like Knox from OoSeasons.
(weird how TSA happens to show up in a different thread shortly after I mention his name even)
I've been thinking of it after this, it's just between the sheer agony of the boss fights (especially the end one), I may wait until I get someone to do those segments for me.
Although, I've been torn between doing the DX version or doing the B&W version; the B&W allows skipping of useless text with B (and would let me execute two instances of the warp glitch before Lv 4 for hopefully obvious reasons), but the DX version has another dungeon and (optionally) more powerful clothes for monsters which need the sword (i.e. most of them).
On an unrelated note, how long until TSA shows up and GANNON-BAN(NED)s me for using "gannon"?
current movie, ends with me ignoring the boss fight and dying
I'm starting to see a few places I might be able to improve, such as optionally moving to the left when warping down (to get closer to the sword screen edge), and a few other things (such as pushing B at the exact frame on the map to only have the cursor show up for one frame instead of two), but going and redoing the whole movie seems needlessly complicated... especially the boss fight, as it's hard to manipulate him to be close enough to hit twice, and it's about 90% of the time one of them ends up throwing a jack (which you can't hit and just take damage from)...
Much like the first movie, I miss two shots due to the boss changing back. This cannot be helped.
There were no extra hints, although I did find this...
http://www.hostultra.com/~z4g/tricks/fivemin.html
It appears to be another method, without backtracking back up and down after warping down the first time.
--
Of course, I can't continue the current boss fight (even if it was under the original frame count), simply because I don't have enough health, so that'll be redone. How far back I have to go, though, isn't known yet (all the way back to the first warp down? eep)
I suppose now would be a good time to mention I'm working on an improvement to the glitch run? (I started yesterday, and it is my first TAS...)
Of course, his text-fiddling was horribly inefficient (autofire doesn't work well), so that gave me about half a second, then I start mysteriously losing frames all the while after that... I'm almost tempted to restart my run from just after warping for the sword. Frame counts follow:
him me diff checkpoint
----- ------ ------ -----------------------------
2142 2105 -37 exit marin's house
3298 3246 -52 sword text disappears
4620 4578 -42 game restart sequence
... 4573 -47 redone game restart sequence
4756 4706 -40 level 8 fadein complete
5116 5069 -47 last 'e' in 'we were' [born of nightmares]
9676 ~9802 +126 phantom gannon beaten, pending dethl
I use the tilde to indicate that's an approximate time (it's probably less than that), but I'll have to redo the fight anyway as I ended up losing a full heart, and you need at least two-and-a-half hearts to make it through the end stairs with two Dethls pounding you.
No (recent) movie yet, as it's 6 AM and I'm in no mood to update, but... yep.
(Edit: whoops, didn't close the code tag properly)
one thing I think would be neat is to have a speed display in addition to the frame ticker/input thing. It would simply read things like "50%" to show the current speed of emulation...
However, this is either about speed or entertainment.
As this game does not go for speed, it must rely on entertainment.
To many people, watching sloppy mistakes and errors is not entertaining, myself included. I'm sure we all reconize that a lot of effort went into making this run, but the sloppy mistakes and countless errors ruin that feel of superhuman perfection TASes are supposed to aim for.
Watching someone beat the snot out of this game could very well be interesting, especially if variety (no one said you had to use the same shortcuts every single time) is shown.
No filters, default options; any larger and it starts to get laggy (running at only 10%, with 0 frameskip)... no filters on (they're all unselectable) and the text as default.
Changing it to any other 'text display' mode won't fix it; the other option that uses the same text style appears the same way, the 'on screen' one is too big and too high up into the playing area.
I don't know if this is just a weird bug or a critical flaw in my system, but it looks like I won't be doing any TASes on this machine for now...
Edit: 1280x1024x24. Changing sound to anything other than "Mute" doesn't do anything. Program seems extremely prone to freezing for no reason (such as when selecting "ON" again in sound) ...