I played back the movie but it seems to be missing a final input or something. It beats the final boss and then gets to the final dialogue in the throne room. There it ends input after answering a question, while there is still some dialogue to go through.
Unlike the submitted movie file, your encode includes the full credits, so did you maybe upload the wrong file?
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It's almost 500 frames faster to walk over the lava, because of the screen transitions required to use the hovercraft. It's the same reason the Ice Digger is not used to traverse one area on Dezolis. Even though it looks like it should be faster, surprisingly, it's not.
Hikaruon wrote:
Watching your speedrun, one question:
Why you didn't have used the Flowmover/Hovercraft in lava from Baya Malay? I think if you have used you can have saved some HP's from characters and some frames too
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Thank you!
Noah needs to be level 17 for the spell that opens magically locked doors, so I think this is the bare minimum unfortunately.
You did just give me an idea though. What if during the Evildead experience farming, you deliberately let Odin die to speed up the experience farming for the other 3, who all benefit from some level-dependent spells? It sounds good in theory but I'm not sure if it would end up being a net time save, because you'd need to boost Noah's attack to ensure reliable Evildead kills, and you'd have to revive Odin before Dr. Mad. Hmm!
Challenger wrote:
Watched your encode. Thanks a lot!
What a surprise! Although I'm not much familiar with this game and the published run (I watched a few times), this new run impressed me:
- Japanese version choice, because I like this FM sound, especially the dungeon themes.
- That "pause button"! Never knew that this game could be very manipulated with that. Seems that your work wasn't so painful after all.
- Every battle now looks more solid.
- New location for second experience farming.
Well, despite a lot of maniuplation, could be still possible to survive the last battle with 1-3 less levels?
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Hmm, I can't say definitively whether you can get a guaranteed battle every tile. From my testing I'm leaning towards 'no', however.
I'm not sure how to precisely calculate time saved, unless all text in both versions was timed (ugh!).
theripper999 wrote:
Never played this, but it looks optimized. I did notice a little moving back and forth to get the next lich (english evildead). Would it have been possible to always get the next lich on the next tile? That last boss looked tight. It hurts entertainment that about 85% of the entire run is comprised of grinding though, but that is par for the course for rpgs like this I guess.
There is an English Phantasy Star on the site already so how would you calculate time saved?
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If you have an improvement for your currently submitted movie, you can upload it there: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/my#uploadfile
Then I will replace the submission file for you, like I already did for the blank frames.
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ktwo wrote:
Nice to see a TAS of this category. Good find of the new clip jumping!
While watching the movie, a few improvement ideas came to mind. I decided to play around with them a bit to see if any time could be saved. Most of my ideas didn't produce faster solutions. This was only a spot check in a few places, but I wasn't able to shave frames off the solutions that were used in this run either. I still have a few comments/questions though:
* At frame 17911 (room 22), you should have jumped over the blue flame without quenching it first. That would have saved 20 frames.
* In room 29, it's possible to get the gargoyle to start moving to the right (iso left in this run). I think that could speed up the jumps to the exit. Unfortunately, I don't know the game mechanics behind this. It's only based on (a lot of) RTA experience.
* Not a time save at this point, but I'm still mentioning it. At the end of room 31, it would be faster to use a fire ball against the last demon head. However, all fireballs along the route would cost more to collect than the time saved in room 31. At least from what I can see.
* How much slower is the current RTA-route in room 48? I assume you have already tested it, so it's just out of curiosity on my part.
* Finally a very, very minor comment. There are lots of "garbage" inputs (inputs that don't do anything) in the movie file. Unless these serve some purpose not explained in the comments, it's good practice to keep the input file as clean as possible.
From an optimization point of view, I think the time loss in room 22 should be corrected. It would also be nice to get clarity of the possibility to save time in room 29. Other than that, this appears to be optimized in my eyes, both in terms of solutions and execution.
If you're up for it, I hope you consider looking into the best ending run as well. There is a little time to save in that run.
Thank you for the feedback. I think the quench in 22 was a hangover from a prior strat -- whoops! I've updated the TAS accordingly.
For 29, I tested a few different things, but couldn't get the gargoyle moving right. Perhaps someone who understands the game logic better can help? I know bisqwit has done some impressive disassembly, but it's all over my head.
For 48, while I was making the TAS I actually tested a version using the RTA route, because it looked like it might be faster. Unfortunately it ended up being slower, although I can't remember exactly how much slower I'm afraid.
I want to create a clean version that only has the necessary inputs. The problem with this game (I don't know if it's unique to Solomon's Key, because this is my first TAS) is that inputs that seem benign end up changing later RNG/AI/lag frames. For example, the 20 frames now saved in room 22 (thank you!) changed the timings and inputs on every subsequent room. Sometimes only by adding/removing one frame, but at other times several changes to inputs are required to get the TAS "back on track", so to speak. And this happens every time there's any change at all! I suspect it's due to timers changing and interacting with lag frames / eaten inputs, but I can't seem to get any consistency when I test. I'm hopeful that some smart cookie who knows the ins and outs of the game might know what's really going on...?
Thank you also to SpikeStuff, DrD2k9, and ThunderAxe31 for helping fix up the original submission. Is there any way I can update it with the new time save?