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That's awesome. The only concern here is that there might not be enough energy to do the shinespark.
Also, using the power bomb early on the green brinstar door makes perfect sense. I see no reason why that wouldn't save a good chunk of time.
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Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
Hero, regarding that same room i sugested the damage boost, i did a poor test just to see if it was faster or not and it was around 25/30 frames faster using the grapple, but you guys could probably make it faster. Also, after the damage boost and after shooting down (grapple can be used for that), if you shoot the grapple up from the very ledge you're falling, it's possible to reach the cable right above Samus and maybe get a damage that alow Samus to land next to the door. The problem is you would loose too much health in this room, also, maybe this last damage doesn't even work cause you would have to quickly turn around in mid air after destroying the block to have Samus facing right for the damage to the left. Another problem would be (i don't even know if this is possible) to manipulate the sparks in the cable, because in my test when i shot up the grapple was not connecting because the spark was not there. Anyway, maybe this last damage boost is not even possible or would not save time.
Glad to hear that it's that much faster. I also tried the 2nd damage boost you mentioned, but like you said, Samus is facing the wrong direction for this to work properly. Health won't be an issue, as in a new run the WS attic will use the grapple technique to reach the crateria missile pack instead of the shinespark method.
Another plus of having the charge beam early:
This allows us to do the PB combo/early shinespark cancel technique. In order to use this technique, you must first do a shinespark in a room, with any PB combo being active at the same time. This then overloads the sprites on the screen, so that the NEXT time you do a shinespark in the SAME room, the animation sequence will be 40 frames shorter. There is only one spot in this entire run, where 2 shinesparks will be done in the same room. It is the shinespark to the gravity chozo statue, followed by the shinespark up to the WS reserve tank.
If only we had a way of doing this technique without having to do 2 shinesparks, it would save massive time.
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I'll try to test it, but I think he vanishes immediately if you use something greater than missiles on him. If it did work, that would save about 120 frames right there, as well as 12 missiles.
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I am not necessarily starting up a new 100%. I just want to get some conversation going as to what the best route may be, when a new run is started.
If the wave beam is collected early, then yes, spazer would be collected at the very end of the run. When switching the screw attack off in tourian, is the time when the spazer would be turned off and the plasma turned back on.
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Eye Of The Beholder:
I see now what you were talking about for that damage boost. It looks like it may save time indeed. Made faster by the grapple beam if needed.
In the robot room after phantoon, there is no way to shoot a beam and catch up to it in time to have the door open, unfortunately :/
The ice beam would save so little time throughout the run, that it would not be worth the backtrack to collect it early. Getting the grapple early is a must though, so there wouldn't be the benefit of doing croc later either.
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Kriole wrote:
The time it takes for a CF to start is 154 frames. It cannot possibly be worth it.
But you can shoot ridley after laying to power bomb to finish him off and before the CF activates. There wouldn't be any time lost at all. Though I cannot even confirm that him grabbing samus would result in a shinespark. It was just a theory, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work in this case.
Eye of the beholder:
Good suggestions, I will try to answer what I can:
1. There isn't enough room to charge a blue suit here
2. It is faster in realtime to do a bluesuit here, yes. For in-game time, the power bomb is faster.
3. Not sure exactly which room you are referring to here. Can you please clarify? Landing in water here would be a problem due to lack of gravity suit.
And in regards to the landing site spark, that is something to consider, but I bet CP had tested that in his run. Please correct me if I am wrong.
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Very good points. I figured it may be possible to get 2 big e's from the hanging guys right below the pipe bugs, and then maybe get lucky with 4 or 5 big e's on the pipe bugs themselves. This would nullify the need for the rtank I think.
Something else I thought would be cool, would be if we use the ridley KO grab to trigger a free shinespark. It would require doing a CF right before he dies, but getting a free shinespark would save over 85 frames on the time spent charging one up in the etank room.
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Useful stuff there, P.JBoy. Thanks for sharing!
Does anyone have any route changes that could benefit the 100% run?
One idea I had was to delay getting the r-tank and the 3 missile containers in the area where the first super missile pack is collected until the green binstar clean up session. This would allow samus to use power bombs on the wall behind the rtank chozo statue when getting the missile tanks. It might prove faster for in-game purposes.
I also had the idea of getting the charge beam early. Though it would only be beneficial if the wave beam was also collected. It would allow wrap around shots in the WS attic, croco area, and the landing site when going through the acid gauntlet en route to the etank. Getting the charge beam early costs like 5 seconds.
Getting the wave beam early would be nice, but I am really struggling to see how it would save any time. It would require much more time at the pipe bugs in order to survive the heated rooms before and after the wave beam. Also, the way the current run does it is very seamless, as dropping down from the speed booster area and going back up is another 5 seconds lost. The main time saved with having the wave beam would be on the gold torizo and maybe 1 second saved on draygon+botwoon. The wave gates can all be open almost as fast using missiles now, so I cannot think of any other reason for having the wave beam early.
I would like to hear what other people have to say on possible changes, or comments on the above mentioned stuff.
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Derakon wrote:
Incidentally, there is a defined in-game boss order, even if you ignore the obviously intended route that the world design encourages. When you go to the statue room (right before taking the elevator down to Tourian and the endgame), the statues "burn out" in the nominally-intended order -- Kraid, Phantoon, Draygon, Ridley.
I know nobody asked this, but I still thought it was worth pointing out.
To add to this, each bosses HP increases incrementally as the game progresses. This implies a very much intended order by the programmers.
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I don't think anyone is suggesting to publish all 9 submissions. In fact, like I pointed out, 5 of them are pretty much useless as they are nearly identical to the 3 legit categories. This run isn't like the any%, 100%, or glitched run in any way at all. It stands completely on it's own.
If there can only be 4 branches (which seems to be will of the judges), then this should replace one of the any% runs. The any% runs are almost identical in every way, and one of them could easily be removed.
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I believe Derakon and DrJones make very sound arguments in favor of this run. Additionally I would like to just give a quick rundown on how I feel of each of the 9 unique super metroid submissions and why this run should be published:
1. any% glitched - This run shows the game taken to the absolute extreme. It completes the game as quickly as possible without any restrictions. I see this as a completely legitimate category and seems rights at home with many of the other TASes featured on this site.
2. 100% items - Like the run above, I see this also as a legit category. It completes the game as quickly as possible while collecting every single item, as kept track of by the game itself. Many runs on this site also feature a "100%" category.
3 & 4. any% "non glitched" ingame & realtime - This is where the problems start to begin, because now we have 2 runs with the same goal. These runs complete the game as fast as possible using almost identical routes without the use of glitches. This is a legit category as seen by almost every run on the entire site. The issue is that now Super Metroid is a unique game on the website because it has 2 runs with almost the same goal. I think that one of these runs can be removed in order to save space. Personally I would like to see the optimizations of the ingame run put into a new realtime run, which would lead to a 22 ingame time and thus satisfy both categories in a single movie again.
5 & 6. low % "speed booster" & "ice beam" runs - These runs are really not needed on this site. The routes presented in these are almost identical to the any% runs, with the exception being that a couple beams are not collected. All this does is lead to much slower bosses fights along an identical path to the any% runs. They show off almost nothing unique to their respective runs that are not seen in any of the above mentioned runs.
7. any% "PAL" run - This category is just stupid and barely worth mentioning. It offers nothing over the any% (JU) run. It also had tricks purposefully excluded in it by the author.
8. GT Code run - This uses a debug code which breaks the rules of the site. Additionally, most of the run looks just like the 100% run. The only exceptions here is that you have the plasma beam for draygon and botwoon. Not nearly enough here to justify it's own category.
9. This RBO run - It offers something truly unique. The route presented here is nothing like any of the 3 legit categories. It presents a challenge that a professional human player would struggle to complete in twice the length of time. The TAS shows off tricks that will never be presented in any of the other categories and shows off many of the quirks in the game's programming. The way I see fit, the game has 3 legit categories, and room for a 4th category as long as it presents something unique and entertaining to watch. Having 4 categories for a game should not be a problem if all 4 categories are so truly unique from one another and are all entertaining at the same time.
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If I had to wager a guess, I would say that doing all of Norfair in a single trip would be much slower. The main problem would be the gold torizo and ridley fights. Without plasma beam or a full stock of super missiles, these fights would last considerably longer.
I like seeing input on the forums about possible improvements to the 100% run. I will work up a list of things that I think can be changed or improved in the current run. Maybe if there is enough changes to warrant a new run, we can create some sort of team/community tas in the future.
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Yeah a new 100% run would be awesome, even though CP's run still holds up amazingly well today. He optimized the doors for realtime, but if someone were to make a run optimizing the doors for ingame time, I think 34 minutes would be very doable, possibly even 33.
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In a 100% run, you can use the xray to glitch your way into the gravity suit room. This would eliminate the long statue walk scene. Looks very ugly, even though it would probably save time :/
In regards to the charging on a dime with xray, there appears to not be a single use for it in any run. Unfortunately to execute this trick, you must use spikes. Since spikes are not in any room where a super short charge would be needed, there is no spot to implement the trick.
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X-ray scope doesn't actually save any time in an RBO run (at least compared to the amount of time it would take to collect it). I think spoofer picked it up in one of his RBO runs, just for the sake of doing something different. I also agree with you that xray glitching is not very entertaining anyway. If a new 100% run is ever made, I would hope xray glitching is not used.
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This run shows off some pretty nifty new tricks. Tourian in particular was incredible. All the rooms leading up to the baby metroid had substantial improvements. The WS exit was very clever. Energy and weapon management was absolutely perfect.
My main concern with this run is that it might not be using the best in-game route. I don't know if Saturn looked into this or not, but I am pretty sure it would have been much faster to skip the plasma beam, and instead get the 2nd PB pack in red brinstar. This would give Samus a full 15 pbs for the PB wave combos on mother brain.
Another thing that bothered me was why the lower route was taken when exiting the highjump boots area. I thought going towards the missile pack is faster.
I am not sure how to vote on this. On a technical level, it is better than the current any% run. Though I am a little weary about the plasma beam stuff I mentioned above. I also don't like how pause screens were used to save less than 1 second of in-game time. De-equiping the speed booster is a good example. However, optimizing the doors for in-game time looks MUCH better. So for now, I will abstain from voting.
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Cpadolf wrote:
Tub wrote:
Tricks that were never used before? In Super Metroid? Awesome!
Technically there's nothing new going on. Reverse walljumping has been used before, though rarely for any good, as has walljumping on opening doors, though never on horizontal ones as far as I know. The application here is so fucking cool/sneaky/smart though. Blew my mind.
And then, just as I though the rest of the run was going to be standard (brilliant) fare, you went all Wave+PB combo on Crocomires ass, and opened the left door with a wrap-around shot (was that the charged shot at the energy tank, or the shot at the vertical door?). All around A+ jolly good work.
Speaking of new things, you forgot to mention the CWJ off of Croco himself :P
And yes you are correct, the charged wave shot is what was used to open the left hand door early.
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Cp's 100% run pretty much uses the fastest in-game and realtime route. It is the same essentially because all items have to be collected, so there is no trade off like in the any% run where collecting an item wastes 7 seconds of realtime. The only possible (though highly unlikely) change for an in-game oriented route would be doing kraid before norfair, so that the wavebeam can be collected early.
The only change that will actually need to be implemented in a new 100% run would be getting the xray scope right after the initial green brinstar cleanup. This is because a new method of charging a shinespark in a short distance has made it possible to shinespark through the entire room leading to the xray.
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I think I found a pretty large improvement (5-6 seconds) in the jungle hut. I am trying to record it, but I am having trouble with the emulator, so maybe I can just describe it.
Basically, the entire level can be cleared by only leaving the main room 1 time. It goes like this:
1. Get the grape, bannana, watermelon, and grape like usual. The apple will be collected later.
2. Enter shy guy stilt room.
3. collect all the coins in room to get the secret melon.
4. turn all the shy guys into watermelons and eat 3 of them followed by the melon. Then get the 5 remaining 5 shy guy watermelons (this is important)
5. leave the hut and enter the main room again.
6. get the lone water melon and this should make a total of 6 in a row
7. heart appears and yoshi goes super
8. ground pound to turn the shy guys into watermelons
9. grab the lone apple
10. grab the fruits near gabon
11. use the super flower to launch into the big heart.
12. end the super launch by the apple (the first apple you would normally collect in this stage.
13. That is 30 fruits.. and you removed an entire transition.
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Hi Brandon, you can use my input file if you would like :) I am pretty sure that the run that Rising Tempest was working on improved my run by quite a bit. Either way, good luck buddy. I've been waiting to see this run finished for a long time.
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Well thats good to hear. I only mentioned the J thing, in case you were doing any direct comparisons to the times in that run.
Anyway, good luck on the run dude!
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Has anyone noticed that the Japanese game seems to have different fruit placements on the level? One example I saw was on level 2 of the Japanese tas. At 2:52 on the youtube video, you can see 2 melons suspended in bubbles. In the American version, there is only 1. Subtle changes like that can affect strategy.
Also, I wonder if it was really wise to waste 30+ seconds in shy guy limbo just to get to the ghost castle on the last page. I was thinking that 6-1 or 6-2 would be just as fast to play through.