Well, System Error, there are people who have undertaken such a monumental task.
HideOfBeast has a minimalist X Only run on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/HideofBeast#g/c/9A7DD8572486C671
Oh, and it's also on Xtreme difficulty and a No Damage*** run. And non-TASed.
***Not taking damage is slightly bent, as the acid rain segments in Rainy Turtloid and Gate Lab 2 are unavoidable as X. (Zero gets a trash compacter segment instead, but this is X only, so yeah.)
HideOfBeast also did similar runs for X4 and X5. (X Only, No Damage, Final Destination)
I, too, was wondering why this suddenly disappeared from the submission queue but was not yet on the front page as a publication.
Originally fearing the worst (cancelled/rejected), I was relieved to see it sitting here.
Hooray for utter mangling of a classic! ZALGO would be so proud!
FFFFFFFFFFFF-
Even after updating my codecs and downloading the files you linked to, I still get those strange pauses.
(Curiously enough, the pauses are much less noticable when using Windows Media Player. I don't even know anymore.)
Thanks again for the encode, Aktan!
I appreciate the HQ encode, Aktan.
However, I noticed that the movie throws in a pause (one frame?) everytime a screen transition occurs (whether horizontal or vertical).
ie 14:13-14:15 in Crashman's stage, or 19:03-19:05 in Wily Castle 2
I noticed this in the Rockman 2 (non-hacked) TAS mp4 encode as well, which I noted in that thread.
I'm using Media Player Classic HC v1.4.2689.0 to watch these videos, if that makes any difference.
I just got enamored with the idea of not getting any souls. Depending on which armor (or Zero) you use, you would....
Since beating any of the 8 main bosses nets you 200 souls, this means accessing the Gate stages via beating High Max in the secondary area. (As opposed to beating all 8 bosses or collecting 3000 souls.)
But damaging High Max requires one of the following things:
1. Special weapon with Normal/Falcon/Blade X (including Guard Shell + Blade Armor combination, as used in SDA's speedrun in Gate's Lab 2)
2. Special technique with Zero (usually Ensuizan or Shoenzan)
3. Shadow Armor X (Tip of charged attack)
4. Ultimate Armor X (Nova Strike after Plasma Shot)
(1) and (2) are already out, since we're going by a hypothetical "No Souls" run. (As no weapons/techniques can be gained.)
(3) requires collecting four Shadow Armor parts, one of which is in Metal Shark Player's stage, and, as far as I know, can NOT be collected with normal (unarmored) X, Falcon Armor X, or Zero UNLESS certain parts are equipped OR certain weapons are used.
ie Ground Dash to move the Nightmare blocks (if Scaravich's effect is there), Magma Blade to slow/reset X's descent, Jumper/Speedster/Hyper Dash to cross the gap in a single bound, etc.
Again, since no weapons can be collected (since defeating bosses nets you souls), and no parts can be equipped (since a minimum of 500 souls is needed to be rank A), it is therefore impossible to complete the Shadow Armor in a "No Souls" run. So (3) is out.
That leaves (4), which can only be accessed via a cheat code at the beginning of the game.
Gate's Lab 1 will have to be completed with Zero (who has a double jump), as Ultimate Armor X cannot progress past the spike walls without help from Jumper/Speedster and/or Ice Burst.
tl;dr: A "No Souls" is possible, but requires a cheat code for the Ultimate Armor.
As others have pointed out, revisiting (nearly) every stage isn't very interesting for a TAS.
Satoryu wrote:
You shouldn't be required to kill him (Dynamo) every time because he always comes back and you should have enough souls to get you through.
The thing is, in a 100% run, since most of the stages do have reploids in secondary areas (ie Wolfang has just ONE, the Jumper part), and since (I'm pretty sure) you can't exit out of secondary areas (post-portal, regardless of having beaten the stage already), you only have two options: defeat Dynamo or suicide multiple times.
My guess would be that the last frame of input was lost/desynced. The last frame of the movie is an A key press. This causes Sonic to use his shield and it saves 8 frames.
Well, damn. I can't reasonably ask for a re-encode due to one frame of lost input at the very end, now can I?
So I'm kind of late to the party (no more cake!), but why did this run get three no votes?
I'm seeing some indications that this is a frame-war flame-war, but don't really understand.
The camhack encodes seem to have a small inconsistency with the non-camhacked run itself.
The time for X-Zone (FINAL) is 00:43:13, but the camhack encode and side-by-side encodes end with 00:43:28.
Can someone explain what causes this?
http://img602.imageshack.us/i/4313vs4328.jpg/
I don't know if it's just me, but the archive mp4 encode seems a bit choppy.
For instance, in Quickman's stage, during the Laser sections, everytime Megaman falls down to the next screen, there's always an extra pause (one that isn't part of normal screen transitions).
edit: downloaded bisqwit's .mkv encode, everything seems to be fine now.
Two videos side-by-side would be much easier to follow than 8 or 9 at once, which is sort of the point for these kinds of TASes, is it not?
It depends on if he's making the TAS for people to watch as a normal video, or if he's making it as a technical challenge, in which case you'd watch it at a more technical level.
You could make a horribly baroque house that looks terrible yet nonetheless demonstrates impressive mastery of the techniques of housebuilding, and can be appreciated for that fact if nothing else...
Technical prowess is to be commended, but if it (the TAS) is not sufficiently entertaining as well, it seems the time and effort would be better spent on a different project.