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nymx wrote:
Checking back in to make sure that the improvements have all been explored and finalized. If so, I'll continue with judgement.
I made one more improvement. Changed the RND11 Minotaur fight to beat it closer to the elevator that spawns. Haven't been able to get the other suggestions to work - it always ends up with a death in RND11.
Encode embed link is updated and here's the revised .bk2: User movie #638500824710515904
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Thanks, Challenger - those are all great suggestions. I can't believe I didn't know about the start button functionality, that's a big time save. Interestingly, it also changes the point of final input, because the UFO's message just before the credits is fast-forwardable. I suppose that changes what's considered the final time for the TAS?
I've incorporated the start button functionality and the RND10 jump into the updated version, and I've updated the encode embed link in the submission: User movie #638493990861075742
I haven't found anywhere else the wall glitch works, including the places you noted. The vertical section in RND3 seems like a good candidate for it too, but so far I've only managed to get it to work in that one RND2 location. Strange though... in principle it seems like if it works there, it should work elsewhere.
I haven't managed to save time using the RND8/9 alternative damage suggestion. There's a similarly frustrating part in RND10: because of damage taken in the underwater section, an enemy needs to be killed to get some health later or Wonder Boy dies. In principle it should be faster to avoid the damage from the underwater enemy and then skip past the later enemy - but I haven't been able to get that to work without it messing up RND10/11's RNG, which currently works quite well (at least, as of right now!).
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Ok... I vastly underestimated how much time the Round transition screens take. (My thanks to GJTASer2018 for the suggestion.) Went back and took deliberate damage to keep health as low as possible throughout most of the run, and the result is a substantial improvement: User movie #638491354432209448
In this updated version, I stop deliberately taking damage from Round 8 onward, because a lot of health is needed for the final Round, and because enemy damage is so high from that point on that even one hit generally kills Wonder Boy. It's still possible there's more time to save via health manipulation -- but Round 11's RNG is fairly volatile, so I'm not sure.
I've updated the submission with the new encode embed link, and removed the no longer relevant round by round comments. (Is this appropriate? If not please let me know!)
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
Couple of things:
1. Has anyone found out why the "wiggling" changes the money value? (Unintended memory corruption, perhaps?)
2. You start the final boss with a little more than two hearts you don't need to use - have you tested if it's faster to take chip damage in most rounds to skip the PERFECT bonuses and reduce the overall health bar you're taking along (and need to waste frames refilling at the end of each round)?
3. There's some areas that are obviously very laggy - would killing some enemies in those areas as you pass through help in that regard?
#1
Short answer: I have no idea. Longer answer: There's a few things I've learned about the gold values (but not really the wiggle glitch).
First, hidden gold drops are primarily a function of the value in 0xC82A. But I've never seen a number calculated this way. It splits the low & high bits out and... umm. Well, here's some examples: 0x00 = 0 gold; 0x0F = 15 gold; 0x10 = 10 gold; 0x1F = 25 gold. But then at 0x99, it wraps back to 0 rather than incrementing to 100+. Anyway, the point of all that is that 0xFF = 65 gold.
Second, if Wonder Boy switches horizontal direction 2 frames prior to a hidden gold drop appearing, 0xC82A is set to 0xFF. Otherwise it's set to 0x01 for a coin, 0x10 for a bag. Why? No idea. It's definitely tied to these hidden gold drops appearing though, because 0xC82A is not changing when Wonder Boy is otherwise flipping directions, nor when gold from monster drops appear. Gold from monster drops seems to be calculated separately.
Third, there's a gold coin 'decay' value at 0xC80D. It's set to 4 when a coin first appears, and slowly counts down to 0. Its value is added to the value in 0xC82A to get the total gold obtained.
#2
Not exhaustively. By the time of the boot upgrade, Wonder Boy is so fast that taking damage from enemies is (usually) a fairly big time loss, even when they boost him in the same direction. So getting his health down super low would take a fair chunk of time. That said, those screens between rounds sure are time sinks, so it's worth investigating.
#3
Again - not exhaustively. I did try in a couple of spots to kill enemies, but it ended up being faster to just keep moving. As with #2 though, it's probably worth looking into some more.
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Here's a TAS of the original Shining Force Gaiden: https://youtu.be/TBoC7Qwq-70
Like the one I made of the remake, I don't feel it's good enough to submit to the site, but I thought I'd drop it here in case someone finds it helpful/interesting.
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I made a quick and dirty TAS of Book 1 of Shining Force CD, if anyone's interested: https://youtu.be/WZdvG_tmR4I
It's not really good enough to submit to the site (especially in comparison to the existing Shining Force TASs... wow), but I thought I'd link it here in case it gives anyone ideas or fuels discussion.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Starting up Karnov for Arcade as a side project, and was wondering if anyone has knowledge about any bugs or glitches they could share about the game?
I made a lazy TAS of it a couple years back. I don't remember any bugs/glitches, but just in case you find the run helpful it's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXnFRVV3UKc
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nymx wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638156248767474820
Here is an example of what i mean for controlling jumps in that level. This is about 5 frames ahead just on the second jump, and this applies to both going up and coming back down, I would guess at least a second can be saved in that level.
I've been waiting for a follow up on the finding that Alyosha made. Are you planning on revising your movie, or can I continue judging with the latest inputs?
Apologies, it's been a busy week. Here's the revision, which results in another 62 frames saved on World 3-3: User movie #638160865224113248
My thanks again to Alyosha!
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Upon further reflection, and in light of GipFace's comment, I think it makes sense to cancel this submission. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to do a deep-dive into the game to make either kind of suggested TAS, but I'm hopeful someone out there takes a shot at it! I'd love to see what kind of madness happens compared to RTA.
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Alyosha wrote:
Pretty cool homebrew.
At frame 5955 (in the updated movie file) it's faster to go to the right rather then wrap around the screen to the left.
For the level starting on frame 9213, you can save a lot of time by controlling jumps better to always line up with the holes in the floor you need to jump through.
Nice! With your findings I've shaved off another 44 frames -- although I may not be understanding the World 3-3 jump precision exactly. Here's the updated file: User movie #638155597503281974
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GipFace wrote:
Therefore, while I am flattered that my RTA WR run was a blueprint for this TAS, I don't feel this video should be approved. A TAS has the possibility to do much more outrageous tricks than what the RTA WR can do, and I don't feel this submission shows that. It does not go for maximum speed, nor does it go for maximum score. It is essentially just an input and luck optimized version of the RTA WR.
Totally fair criticism. Opinions about what constitutes a publishable TAS are always going to vary, so I leave it to the community/judge to decide -- I'm sure they'll take your comment into consideration. (Really impressive RTA btw!)
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juef wrote:
Nice TAS! Some of those jumps must have been a pain to optimize.
If you remove your A press on frame 13383, you can complete that stage 3 frames faster. The rest of the movie can then be resynced quite easily.
Also, in the long ice stage, I have found one (or two?) improvements. See this userfile to see them. There is a difference at the beginning which seems to save a little under 10 frames, but it ended up making the rest desync, so you'd have to redo the rest of that stage properly. I also went for a different strategy at the top of the stage, but I'm not sure if it actually saves time or not.
Thanks for the finds! I went back and edited at a few points. Stage 2-3 is now 1142 frames (down from 1159). I started with your strat, but then found it's faster to just take the damage. Weirdly though, that made some desync happen in 2-4, leading to +4 frames (1069, up from 1065 originally). But with the 4-4 saving of 3 frames (618, down from 621 originally), it's still a net gain of 16 frames overall. I also discovered in re-syncing the boss fight that you can manipulate the boss movement pattern (i.e., make it not move at all; might prove helpful for RTA runners?).
Here's the updated file: User movie #638146669278793350
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Hello! I see that MAMEhawk isn't on the list of emulators for arcade submissions. That means we can't submit arcade TASs made with MAMEhawk, right?
If that's the case, is there some (hopefully easy?) way to convert TAStudio projects into one of the accepted formats (LTM, MAR, FBM)? (Please forgive me if these are stupid questions.)
p.s. An enormous thank you to feos. I LOVE being able to use TAStudio with arcade games.
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Just posting this here in case someone stumbles across it one day and it might prove useful.
Ren & Tlatchga can be petrified -- the odds are just very low (3%). I suspect that with the right RNG manipulation, this fight could be over in 2 turns with 1 Dark Hunter, and maybe 1 turn with 2.
The current RTA WR and the TAS I made (which shamelessly copies the RTA) uses a strat that takes a whopping 21 turns (~4 minutes), so a petrify strat could potentially be a big time save. But, I haven't confirmed whether it can be done. You have to get pre-emptive and petrify Tlatchga before she binds the party. Ren is also highly likely to 1-shot someone.
Plus, I don't know to what degree it would mess up earlier/later sections. But something to consider at least.
Original nicovideo version which also shows the final time to avoid any confusion with the title of a YouTube bloatload (59:57.34): https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm15562485
Ah, thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'll withdraw the submission then :)
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Original submission .bk2 includes frames all the way up to the end of the credits. Whoops! Here's a truncated .bk2 that ends on final input: Little Nicky (GBC, USA) truncated .bk2
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Well, it's more than 5 years after you made this post, but I've put together a TAS of SMT Devil Survivor. It's 6 hours long and I suspect not entertaining to most people, so I'm not going to submit it to the site, but here's the TAS on youtube: https://youtu.be/_Tit64umAksruadath wrote:
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Those all sound like great improvements! If I can find the time someday maybe I'll take another stab at this one. I definitely put it together hurriedly.
Darkman425 wrote:
I checked this out and this run seems pretty solid. One very noticeable improvement that I know of is that both of the final boss forms can be sped up considerably by shoving the boss to the left corner and getting double stabs per boss pushback. This also prevents the boss from attacking and having to deal with the jump height RNG. I know of this from the RTA runs and from the Sega Ages Switch replays. I also don't know how much of an RNG challenge it would be to get gauntlets before as many bosses as possible could save time but it's worth looking into. The last idea I can think of is only buying the best boots and getting the sword upgrades. While not getting armor reduces the amount of potential damage boosting in a run it does simplify the money route.
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feos wrote:
ninespaces, are you using spells and skills throughout the run?
No. It seemed that the amount of time to get them and set them up probably wasn't worth it, compared to just slashing through everything. That said -- I put this together fairly quickly, so I won't be surprised if I'm totally wrong!
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I (perhaps obviously) disagree that the password system shouldn't be allowed, otherwise I wouldn't have submitted the run ;) But I happily capitulate to whatever the community deems appropriate.
deuxhero, I don't see RTA runners using passwords, but as you note, those runs are 7+ hours long -- and that's on Redux, which has several quality of life changes that make the game faster.