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Tompa wrote:
Alright, time for a new WIP for the full run. Because of the improvements Yuzuhara found before, I restarted the run from scractch together with him.
Current WIP goes up to finishing Hera's Tower.
SMVYoutube
Explanations are in the Youtube link.
Oh this was just great. Really looking forward to seeing the full run.
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I liked the run. It kept me entertained for the three quarters of an hour that I watched it, and it looked pretty good, aside from what was pointed out in the thread. Really glad to see more of the game too, though a full 100% run, whatever the definition of that category may be for that game, wouldn't go a miss.
I don't see why we shouldn't accept this run.
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'lo and welcome to tasvideos, hope you enjoy your stay. I'm glad to see more people giving Castlevania some lifeblood. I once did a "no subweapons, no damage" run, was rejected for poor game choice (and, upon reflection, could have been improved by about 10 - 20 seconds).
Regarding your questions:
1.In read-only mode, if you load a savestate, it plays back the movie up to where you stopped recording. If the savestate you're trying to load doesn't belong to the movie or is from after your current progress (which can happen if you loaded an earlier savestate beforehand), it brings up an error.
In contrast, you can load any state that belongs to the movie in Read+Write mode and resume TASing. This is how you got your progress back.
I recommend learning the hotkey to switch between the two, as it is really convenient to be able to switch between them quickly.
2.Oh please, do go for it. The Castlevania tricks page is horribly empty at the moment. To edit the page, you can just ask the staff to make you an editor. There's also the Castlevania thread on the forum in which you can post findings.
I hope that's helpful to you.
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Toothache wrote:
zem wrote:
I still would like someone else to try running La-Mulana through hourglass and find out if they have the same input problems that I do. I still have no idea whether this is unique to my setup.
Also, just to check my sanity — in the original version, a 100% run would pretty much have to save and reload, right? Watching the segmented run so far in the SDA thread, it looks like the amount of money you need for the optional purchases will take way more than all the coin pots in the game give you, and no amount of manipulated coin drops from enemies will make up for just being able to respawn all the 10-coin pots whenever you want.
No you are right, it will take more gold than the game normally contains for 100%, so some save-loading will inevitably be required. The question will be whether it's more optimal to do only a few save-loads on easy to reach pots near the Grail points, which also resets other pots in areas you need to revisit later, or do many of these and only collect the nearby ones for coin farming only (ie, dedicated save-loads for cash grinding).
I'd definitely prefer seeing the former, though I imagine the planning required will be insane.
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You can just go to File > AVI/WAV > Record AVI to record a video. The emulator will write every frame into an .avi file. You'll have to select a codec first - some of them are good while most of them are horrendously bad. If you just want to get a video on youtube, pick one that produces a low filesize. Select Stop AVI when you're done.
For more advanced help regarding dumping, editing, resizing and compressing the video, check our Encoding Guide
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I'm beginning to take a liking to Special Delivery because it holds a lot of potential for interesting maps and level design. I'm hoping we'll see more of them soon, either custom or official.
Doomsday itself is quite a nice map to rocket jump, as I demonstrate here.
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Mukki wrote:
Also, wow, I did not know about that boundary stuff. It should definitely save a chunk of time. Hopefully someone works on this.
There's more where that came from:
Link to video
I'll be playing through the game, recording all the useful skips and glitches I can find. Also, here is a 100% speedrun at 3:19:52. It makes the idea of 100% TASing the game almost look feasible. While there are no crazy glitches in the run, the runner uses death warps to get back to the TVs quickly in the Anime channel. Pretty nifty if you ask me.
Link to video
More.
Link to video
One more for the kids. Enter walljumping, which works on convex, slippery surfaces. If gex slides down a wall, he can jump when he hits the edge of it. Allows me to finish Western Station without ever touching a donkey.
The video also contains a way to get the crap mountain quicker and a neat little vertical zip that happens if you put a donkey between a rock and a hard place.
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I propose an improvement to this run should be done on the PSX version, as that one is superior in nearly every regard. Hence the new topic. If one already existed, apologies, I couldn't find it.
The game seems to have a rather haphazard approach to collision detection, there may be quite many big and small improvements by clipping through walls or jumping over boundaries. Refer to this video to see what I mean:
Link to video
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Mothrayas wrote:
Screenshot suggestion:
http://i.imgur.com/zBRSt.png
It's fun to see the entirely messed up castle map from all the sequence breaking. Also, there are so many numbers on screen that it made some of the lifebar graphics disappear.
Though if we're going with a single screen image, here's an alternative suggestion:
http://i.imgur.com/jmMPu.png
I think those numbers clearly show there's something quite unusual going on.
Don't DS games normally use both screens for the publication screenshot anyway?
In any case, I love the number spam and the screwy castle map that results from the Suspend glitch, so I'd go for the former screenshot.
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RinKaenbyou wrote:
The gameplay is what I was referring to, which should be obvious, since I was responding to people calling the action boring, which is primarily the gameplay's job. It's taken almost directly from Castlevania with some Mario elements mixed into it and really is not any easier then the classic Castlevania games (you'd know if you had played it) so I believe my comparison is actually very accurate.
The issue, I think, is the level design. Castlevania's Stages tend to be very small and tight, without much room for messing around. Stairs, Blocks, Enemies and Candles, all of it is really close together, and enemies present a real challenge that way.
It works well with Simon's slow movement, limited jump arc and slow attack. However, the subweapon use and damage boosts are what makes the Castlevania run stand out.
With Super Mario XP, on the other hand, we get long and slow stages without much going on in them. It's simply not as tight as it should be to get the most out of Mario's limited moveset.
Despite that, Mario still had to slow down and wait for enemies several times, which simply looks bad. Neither was there much room for damage boosts or subweapon use in the run. Perhaps more subweapons could have been used in the run, but as far as I'm concerned, the boring stage design is what makes this TAS unenjoyable.
//In a nutshell, I think I come to this conclusion:
Castlevania's limited moveset + Mario's Stage design doesn't work. Doubly so, if the aesthetics and sound are not pleasing.
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Yeah, I can't say I was disappointed. The movement of all four three characters, Alucard, Trevor, Sypha and Grant Alucard, Julius and Yoko was very entertaining to watch, and the boss fights were an absolute highlight. You moved swiftly and efficiently, and made an absolute mockery of the game.
For another thing, I'm really happy to finally see a Dawn of Sorrow run that shows off all areas in the game. Obvious yes vote right here.
Also, here's a screenshot mothrayas suggested on IRC:
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I need to be honest, I didn't find the run very enjoyable. It seems like Super Mario Bros' stupidly simple stage layouts were taken while Mario's legs have been crippled to Belmont level. It doesn't make for a good combination, I have to be honest. And despite being so slow, you still had to slow down a couple of times. If you could at least control your jump height, or use subweapons more often, the run could be more entertaining, but this way, it doesn't look good.
The platform glitches and boss fights were fairly amusing, but to me, they weren't enough to save the run. The game itself is also not very enjoyable because of the sound: Randomly picked low-quality* Castlevania tracks combined with Mario's jump sound and a really annoying yell - Not good. This way, the game does not really have enough for me to offer to make a good TAS. Therefore, I'll have to vote 'no'.
Please don't be discouraged, but unless it can somehow be made entertaining enough to excuse the sound, it's a bad game choice.
*To be fair, this could also be the encode's fault.
Mothrayas: I think some tracks were taken from the (J) version of Castlevania 2 and Castlevania 3, both of which use extra sound channels to enhance the music beyond what a NES normally can do. Therefore, they are authentic. Still doesn't sound good, though.
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Just for once I'd like to see a Portrait of Ruin run that doesn't use out-of-bounds exploits. The run itself was very nice though, and it's nice to see a bit more of the game. Yes vote.
Screencap'd because it's easier to do that with Chatzilla than copypaste.
