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There's always the usual high-level competetive games, Counter-Strike, Quake, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, you can play in a LAN setting. May be hard to find old DRM-free versions of those games, though.
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I like the idea of it, and Metroid should, in theory, be easier to 2-game-1-input because you can freely move in one game during screen transitions of the other.
The video linked was pretty cool. I'd be curious to see how it would look TASed.
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JoeDamillio wrote:
I'll edit this post at the end of the day and fill in any further improvements etc. Thank you for the snes9x files. I think 1.51 works with 1.53 so I should be fine. Otherwise I'll download the other.
Edit: 1.43 gives me "File is wrong version" when opening in snes9x 1.43, and 1.53 is an invalid link
Edit 2: WTF, I ZIPPED! Unfortunately this wasn't in my favor, and it happened super early (after the 3rd jump when you're at the top). First time I've gotten the 3rd jump. I couldn't react immediately because I wasn't expected to start zipping already, so I just zipped left and died. Hopefully I can do this again and try to input Left and see what happens. Like I said the zip happened early so idk if anything will even work.
Whoops, I fixed the link now.
In any case, wonderful! You may need to time your one or two jumps very precisely so you start zipping at the right height. If you jump too many times, Simon actually ends up too far upward and dies.
It is also possible to zip out of bounds if your height is off, which is nifty, but leaves you trapped.
//Edit: I can also tell you what I know about the points you listed.
- The bosses take damage in a really wonky way. arukAdo did all the boss work in the actual TAS, so I'm afraid I can't tell you too much about them. The Viper seems especially bad about this because of how laggy the fight is.
- The skeleton in 4-1, as far as I can tell, jumps if you're standing still and uses his sword when you move towards him.
- Killing Medusa Heads with the limp whip produces a frame of lag each time if more than one is on screen. You should be good when hitting them with your subweapons or the regular whip.
- Stage 8 gave us a lot of trouble when making the TAS. We haven't gotten around to figuring how the spike platforms work. I do want to point out it's an interesting idea to pick up the invincibility potion. Considering how badly the game lags in this area, it might actually save time even in a TAS.
- Yeah, you pretty much have to jump off the gold platforms on the exact frame you land on them, or they disintegrate. Some other objects like the treasure chests in the same stage exhibit similar behaviour.
- The Clock Tower is just absolute hell in lag. Lots of enemies, a highly animated background that scrolls vertically, there's not much I think you can do there to be honest.
- I think the best option is to turn around when there's three to four bats on the screen, whip diagonally backwards and resume holding right the moment you begin whipping. You will lose a couple of frames from turning around, but it should make up for the lag frames you save from the bats. Just be warned, if your whip misses, you're probably going to lag-town.
That's all I can help you with. I hope it's useful to you. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about what happens in Stage 6 or 8 with the invincibility potion. I haven't seen these things occur yet.
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JoeDamillio wrote:
I'm able to make 4 jumps (starting from where your screen capture is) maybe 40% of the time. I'm currently stuck at the jump after that. I can't time that jump correctly and I always hit the ceiling. Really all I can see to make this possible in RTA is mashing the rest of the jumps, or somehow developing a visual cue for every single jump. You'd know this for sure, but it seems like it's a 2 or 3 frame window to jump and avoid screen scrolling.
Your screen capture helps a lot. I thought you had to include the jump onto that ledge Simon is standing on. That should make the first two or three jumps pretty easy. Sadly I don't have much/any knowledge of TASing and never used Bizhawk until yesterday, so maybe a snes9x movie will help better.
I'll keep on trying. If this becomes possible in RTA, I'll be lowering my final goal to sub32. Though this goal is another 7 seconds less than sub32:15 w/o this new zip, I'm going to be so close to sub32 that I need to just do it.
Here's the snes9x versions.
Snes9x 1.43Snes9x 1.51
Bizhawk is fairly slow, which is why it might be more convenient to test this glitch out on Snes9x. Just be warned that Snes9x 1.43 is pretty inaccurate, especially in regards to lag emulation, so the timing for the jumps will probably not be the same.
It's also pretty tricky actually making the game zip Simon to the other side of the level rather than just killing him. There's some pretty screwy behaviour to this, and both collision detection and camera scrolling can get rather screwy if you push the game to its edges. I'm trying to get a better understanding of what actually happens within the game there.
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JoeDamillio wrote:
Hey Scrimpeh. That new 4-4 zip is sick haha. I will download Bizhawk and your input file and see if there's anything I can do for RTA. I'm sure the other players will do the same, as this is quite a big timesaver. Though I think if those 3 last ledge jumps have to be perfect, then it's not going to be possible to incorporate into RTA. Otherwise I'm confident we can make it part of the run. Thank you for all your findings, and all the time you guys have put into this game.
Hey there.
I really do hope it's possible to pull this zip off in real time, but it requires hitting the jump button nearly immediately after you land for about 8 or 9 times in a row, the last couple where you can't even see Simon. This probably requires either a turbo controller or the fastest button mashing known to man.
If it helps, you can stand as far up as here and still have enough room upwards to make it into the ceiling, but that's still several nearly frame-perfect jumps that need to be made.
Best of luck with your attempts. If you want, I can make a quick Snes9x movie of the same trick as well.
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Link to video
Faster way to initiate the zip on block 4. Should save about 8 seconds from my calculations.
It's done by madly jumping up and down so that the camera doesn't get to scroll up. As SCV4 follows the old adage of "not on screen, not there", you can simply let the rising platforms carry you into the ceiling. Once the ceiling scrolls in screen, you're in the wall, and free to zip around.
It appears Block 4-2 is the only level in the game where the camera works like this, anywhere else, the camera will catch up with you before you can do anything funky.
I'm not sure whether there is a consistent set up for real time speedruns, there's a good chance you may die if your timing or positioning isn't right.
Input File, Bizhawk 1.8.1.
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Initially, I wanted to just watch a bit of the run now and watch the rest of it tomorrow, but ended up watching the whole thing now (Thanks, solarplex, for the encode!)
This is one of the most technically impressive games I've seen in a while, and the TAS looked spot-on too. I have only one question: Is there any reason you die to the second boss once? It seems like you set up your Health to be low so you deathwarp later at the cactii, but dying to him resets your health. (Probably still wouldn't save 50 seconds, but still. This'll teach people to complain about the SMB 21 frame rule again.)
Very entertaining watch all in all, and it's great to finally see the game get TASed. Voting yes.
Also, "it's mommy". Seriously, WayForward?
Seriously?
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This is huge, and very unexpected. I wasn't aware C64 could run games as of right now, let alone make actual TASes. Great going on being able to pull this off from a technical standpoint.
After some fidgeting with the firmware, I was able to get the run to sync. The gameplay was pretty smooth, which made the run quite a nice watch. Simple, but short enough not to get boring. With that, I'm happily yes for what I guess is our first C64 submission.
Also, it bears saying, the music is awesome.
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Kids, there's nothing more cool than submitting a TAS for a game you like. But if someone tries to submit a run for a game that's just one level or of poor quality, that's no good! It's against the movie guidelines, no one can just submit bad runs if they're not up to site quality. So, what do you do?
First, you say NO and cancel this submission!
Then, you upload it to userfiles!
Most important, you gotta tell someone you trust, like the discussion thread, the community, the IRC channel!
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I've made a quick TAS for fun of this game in 11:34.
Link to videoInput File (Bizhawk 1.7.4, QuickNes core.)
I was on the edge about submitting this, but decided against it. The run's not entertaining enough for moons, and not well optimized enough for vaults, leaving it in the stateless limbo where it's only good as reference for a future improvement.
Tricks used:
1.Double hit: With projectile weapons, you can make both the projectile and your weapon hit at the boss at the same time for extra damge.
2.Kicks do extra damage with precise positioning.
Abusing both of these allow for the bosses to go down reasonably fast. Other than that, there's some small assorted tricks, but they don't really save any time. Despite all of this, the game's still a pretty slow slog.
Better understanding of the game's randomness and more optimization will probably end up saving a few seconds.
Also, here's some useful RAM addresses:
0085: Character X
0086: Character X 2nd byte
0089: Camera X
0087: Character Y
0607: Boss Health
0627: Frank's Head Health
Enjoy or whatever.
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This was quite a treat to watch. I'm especially impressed by how much entertainment there was in the movie. A great improvement and a definite yes vote.
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Hello P0rtalFTW and welcome to TASvideos
Unfortunately, the goal choice of this run is kind of pointless, as in the second quest, nothing changes that significantly changes the TAS. You can effectively copy and paste the entire input from the first half to the second half without any problems, making you effectively just run through the same game twice.
The run also had a few technical mistakes which made it not up to par, in particular:
1.You noticably bump into walls and perform walljumps in several places where it is unneeded, which slows you down needlessly.
2.The 4-2 warp zone glitch can be done considerably faster.
3.Various minor slowdowns, such as in the Water in 8-4.
You also point out you want to learn the flagpole glitch, which is basically essential for publications to perform.
You should check out the published runs by HappyLee to see how 4-2 is done optimally. There's also a Game Resources page for Super Mario Bros, showing all the major tricks in this game. You might also want to post WIPs and stuff in the SMB forum thread before submitting them, as that will allow you to get more detailed feedback.
For a first run, this wasn't so bad, but it wasn't quite there yet. Keep trying!
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andypanther wrote:
scrimpeh wrote:
andypanther wrote:
I'm also messing around with Gex 3 a bit, we're still trying to find a way to beat it with 0 remotes. I'm so sure there's some way...
Tell me more.
It's very frustrating: Technically, we can already enter the final bossfight early. There are two TVs where you can cancel off, go OoB and enter the boss TV. The positioning in front of the boss TV is very specific, and I don't even know if the OoB is needed (it definitely would be impossible without it in real time).
The TVs to cancel from are Superhero Show (26 remotes) and a bonus level (31 bonus coins). Recently, the community has timed both TVs and found out that it is faster to go for the bonus coins.
But why only these two? It's because of the physics of TV cancelling: Every TV has a range, in which Gex will automatically get sucked into the level once it's activated. This can be stopped by cancelling it with an attack every 18 frames, not being on the ground, or certain animations. If you stop cancelling the TV outside of its range, the game will crash, unless you're in the range of another TV. It actually is possible to break into levels early this way, although it was never achieved from flat ground, but from precise falls from above. Now the problem is, that the range of TVs is much larger horizontally than vertically. The two levels used to break into the boss TV, are both high enough to be out of range. The frustrating thing: There's a 0 remote bonus level in the same area! The game designers just happened to place it at the bottom, so that its range overlaps with the boss TV. I tried many things, I even managed to "disable" the bonus TV with lag while cancelling from it, but it still wasn't possible to enter the boss TV. If that bonus level and the 31 coins one had reversed locations, Gex 3 would already be dead.
I see. Just one Question: How do you get into Funky Town without getting one remote in the first place?
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Derakon wrote:
He tried -- the loading trigger at the top of the stairs isn't there, so you just fall off when you get to the top.
That is correct.
The game will only load the objects for each side of the room if you came down from the right set of stairs. Since the exit trigger is not placed there, I'm stuck.
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Link to video
This has to be some kind of cruel joke.
So yeah, unless someone can find a way to restore the level objects when crossing the wall, this lead is dead.
(Input File, made on BizHawk 1.7.3)
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This was quite a bit shorter than I expected. Great going, I especially liked the route. Wasn't aware you could zip into the Arena from Floating Gardens
Very nice run, voting yes.
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Excitement incoming!
I'd be all for Julius fighting Julius, and am hopeful you'll find out a faster way to reach him. I'm really curious about the route you'll be taking in general as well.
Best of luck with your attempts. If you want, I can make a quick Snes9x movie of the same trick as well.
Kids, there's nothing more cool than submitting a TAS for a game you like. But if someone tries to submit a run for a game that's just one level or of poor quality, that's no good! It's against the movie guidelines, no one can just submit bad runs if they're not up to site quality. So, what do you do?
First, you say NO and cancel this submission!
Then, you upload it to userfiles!
Most important, you gotta tell someone you trust, like the discussion thread, the community, the IRC channel!