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This looks awesome so far! I see that you used the compatibility core. I tried playing it back with the performance core and it desynced at the otes. Do you have a rough idea of how many frames have been lost due to lag differences?
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CP,
Do you have a definitive route planned out yet? As far as I can remember, the route originally discussed will be the same as the last but with getting the charge and wave beams early. There were some other small things like getting xray early, but I think the beams were the biggest changes.
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Just managed to get the new version of bizhawk running. I noticed that the FPS for me stayed around 50. On the older versions of bizhawk I had 60. I wonder if it uses the more accurate core now?
I watched the ceres run. It is impressive how quickly you finished it. I personally don't care about the escape timer, as long as the actual game time is as good as it can be. I don't think most people will notice it anyway. Upon entering the ridley/metroid room, I noticed that you did not use the reverse jump/hitbox trick to trigger the door earlier, as seen in the other recent SM tases. Did you purposely lose time here, or did it not actually cost any time at all. I didn't watch the run with memory watch, so I don't know how the frames compare.
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It took alot of testing to find the correct steam patterns for ceres on Snes9x. Delaying frames and such during the intro sequence. I cant say I was ever successful in making a perfect ceres run. I wonder if it will be equally difficult to manipulate them in bizhawk? Without hex editing, it may become an incredibly difficult task.
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It is really a great strategy you made there. Using that damage boost was very clever. Indeed this does bring up an interesting question. Using this route, a huge amount of realtime is saved at the cost of a couple in-game frames. I would say in this case it would be worth losing the 2-3 ingame frames for the sake of entertainment.
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I believe I posted an smv similar to it many years ago, and if I recall it was indeed faster.
creaothceann,
For the purpose of demo files, I don't see why using snes9x would be a problem. It is much quicker and less CPU intensive, and it has some awesome lua scripts. Of course actual runs should be done using bizhawk.
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Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
Just a minor idea i couldn't test: In the Super Missile room above Phantoon's lair, while waiting for the PB to destroy the block on the right side, stay on the top of the robot and get a mockball through the tunnel. You can shoot the robot once when jumping for the mockball and using wave beam you can shoot it again right when samus land on the Super Missile pack. The idea here is that with a mockball Samus will travel faster through the tunnel and land closer to the hub, so she can jump from duck position for a ledge grab.
Edit: Just for better visualization of hero's Kraid Exit trick.
smv
Edit 2: Got a better smv by 5 frames. Anyway, just trying to improve my TASing skills...
smv
Edit 3: One more frame saved. I think it's the best i can do, but it's still probably improvable.
smv
I am not sure exactly what the strategy you mention in the first paragraph is. Can you provide a smv of your idea?
Nice job on the optimization for the kraid exit. Your skills have come a long way, even publish worthy at this point.
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wow, that script is incredible. Thanks so much for implementing those. I also like the way you added the recoil counter. It is a perfect way to know how many frames are left before a damage boost can no longer be executed.
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That's a really nice script. Do you have any plans on implementing more features? It would be awesome to have a universal lua script for making Super Metroid TASes. Some examples I was thinking of would be:
- Including the bomb count down timer for regular/ power bombs as a little number in their hitbox.
- Including samus' speed (running, walking morphball, etc..) as a little number in the corner of her hit box. The booster level could go into another corner. Falling/jumping speed can go in a different corner.
- Damage/cooldown (invincibility) counter for Samus
- Cooldown counter for shinesparks
- Charge beam counter
- On screen clocks for in-game minutes/seconds/frames
Would you, or anyone for that matter, be willing to make a script that includes these? If not, I may take a crack at it myself, even though I suck at coding :P
I usually use Snes9x watch tool when making TASes, but since that tool does not work with Bizhawk, I think a LUA scripts may be the best way to go.
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I am guessing it is caused by some left overs in the coding. I scoured a good portion of the game with turbo firing the grapple beam, and I only managed to find 1 more location where this occurs. The lava rising room with the little mini volcanoes in Norfair. I guess this wont be of much use after all :/
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I am gonna test that PB pack area in LN, see if any magic can happen.
Edit: Well it is certainly not unique to that one place in kraid's area. After about 1 minute of searching I found another spot it works in. I imagine these are all over the place. Just need to find one that contains one single ceiling block to test if clipping is possible.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/572551019/GRAPPLW.smv
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Wow, that grapple beam thing is weird. I am trying to think of practical applications for it, but unless it enable samus to clip through walls, I don't see where it could save time.
I also like the nice little timesavers you posted. These types of things add up big throughout the course of a run.
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Very nice run, Saturn. I really liked some of the new boss strategies which are only possible in a higher level run. yes vote.
Any plans to do a non-glitch any% run?
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I would assume it is a bizhawk issue, since bsnes does not normally support rerecording. Maybe it has been fixed in subsequent releases. I will check it out soon and report it to the appropriate forum if desyncs happen.
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There isn't much progress to speak of on my end. A few weeks ago I started to make a new Vegas Stakes movie (found a massive timesaver) using the new edition of bizhawk. My intention was to get a feel for the new emulator and then move on to Super Metroid. The problem was that I ran into numerous desync issues. Before I start a new Super Metroid run, I want to make sure the newer version of bizhawk corrects this. The Vegas Stakes movie is only 2 minutes long and already suffering from desyncs, so naturally I am worried about starting an hour long Super Metroid run. At least for me, when progress is made, I will post it here. I can't speak for anyone else who may be working on a run.
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The console timing comparison thread in the bizhawk forum. I know the differences are minimal, but I figured it was worth mentioning on this thread. Snes9x 1.52 stays in perfect synchronization with the actual console for the 10 minute loop. I also read the official explanation on the higan forums as to why there was a timing difference between bizhawk and the console, and unfortunately it was not convincing. Again I will emphasize that the difference is so minimal that it does not matter, I was just bringing up the point that it was there :)
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Thanks for posting! It is a great resource video to have.
Bizhawk is now the official snes emulator of choice for this site. I found it interesting that snes9x 1.52 was actually more accurate than bizhawk. Does anyone have an opinion on which emulator future Super Metroid runs are made on? Not that the matter may even be up for debate, considering rules have been put into place by the staff which prohibit further usage of snes9x. I don't really mind one way or the other, considering they are both exponentially better than snes9x 1.43
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Thanks for breaking those figures down. I didn't see a calculation showing the difference of doing kraid without the speed booster, versus with the speed booster. Did you include this when you were doing your calculations.
Another big thing to consider is that the pipe bug visits seen in CP's run would be way way way shorter than the pipe bug visits in a new run (if collecting the wave beam). I figured the difference alone would be about 10 seconds. This makes the decision to do kraid first much easier.
here is some real food for thought!:
If we do red binstar PB pack early, a radical new route change can also come into play. We could do the maridia mainstreet room without the gravity suit on the way up to wrecked ship. This would look similar to the old RBO run, except after getting the mainstreet missile pack, you would go up and out the door in the big maridia room and then through the green gate to enter red brinstar. This route would eliminate the need to get the missile pack later in the run, which saves 5 seconds alone (going up and falling back down is a long process).
This route is actually very plausible, but again needs a solid demo in order to get the exact figure.
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I found a new timesaver that uses the wavebeam in maridia. Check it out
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/772176792/wave_new.smv
Now samus can jump directly up towards the missile pack instead of having to land on the lower edge and shoot upwards before jumping