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Doing more research, I conclude there's two more ways to disalign yourself from the stairs:
1.You can abuse Grant's climbing ledges mechanics to get ahead of the camera scroll - eventually reaching the edge of the screen. There's a lot of weird stuff happening there, but mainly, if you climb stairs there, it's easy to disalign yourself.
2.As has been posted here before, Sypha's freeze spell can be used to create barriers that force you to disalign yourself. In general, I see a Sypha Improvement getting a lot more use out of that freeze spell:
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Lex wrote:
Here are the current WA TASes well-encoded to h264 video; way better than my newbish earlier encodes in this thread.
These archives each contain all 33 mission TASes in video form, for the first time! :D
This first link has the higher-quality YUV 4:4:4 10-bit encodes with CRF 14. Don't worry if you don't know what that means. The point is, these videos are for videophiles like me. They only work in newer video playback systems.
http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/worms/movies/wa-tas-videos-hq-allmissions.zip (424 MB)
This second link has the more-compatible YUV 4:2:0 8-bit encodes with CRF 20 which save file size and still look very good. All video players should be able to play these videos without issues.
http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/worms/movies/wa-tas-videos-allmissions.zip (256 MB)
Ahahaha, oh god, those were awesome. In between the downright suicidal enemy AI, to crazy roping skills, to very sophisticated shots that take out multiple worms at once and prepare more to be slain next round, and the occasional move that happens so fast I need to rewatch it and pause constantly to even see what's even happening, to moves that are crazy random or imaginative, I can't even pick out my favorite moment.
Wonderful work right there
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Watched the encode, the run played much like your average Mega Man game, nicking elements from the classic series, and even Mega Man X. The execution was done very well though, so hoorai for another windows TAS with a Yes vote from me.
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phunqsauce wrote:
Would it be possible to take damage from one of the floating platform enemies' bullets by the ladder at the end of D and do the pause/unpause trick to elevate yourself through the small crevice next to the ladder and possibly carry yourself with the pause/unpause trick all the way to the ladder at the top left of E? Or is my understanding of how the "damage elevation" trick works totally off?
I think it's impossible to activate screen transitions without actually climbing the ladder.
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Cpadolf wrote:
I've made some more progress, and just beat the cocoon thingy. Besides a few unlucky moments with enemy manipulation everything has been going very well. The cocoon fight went just about as well as I could have ever wished for. I managed to get enough refills from the first burst of spores to be able to make do with just 2 from the second one (this is a bit difficult since it seems you can only get 2 drops at a time here, and have to pick up one of the drops in order to get a new one). Then I managed to make my way over to the other side and use up all my missiles, and with a margin of just a few frames managed to shoot the second burst of spores on the first frame possible. I think I gained about 400 frames over the old 9% WIP on that fight alone, and am ahead by about 1000 frames at this point (plus maybe 50-100 frames which were lost from emulator differences). No idea how I'm going to optimize Ridley properly though...
WIP
The run desyncs from the very beginning for me, could someone perhaps make an encode or something?
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Guess who still hasn't forgotten about this game.
I've done a few short tests, and came to the conclusion jumping slows you down by a frame or two. You move consistently at 1.5 px/frame, too. I had a run completing the intro stage ready, but, of course, DeSMuMe ate it >_>
I was ahead of theenglishman's WIP by a couple of frames though, even though this version of Desmume (0.9.7.) adds more lag. That mainly came from using additional damage boosts.
Managing Money and upgrades will probably be the hardest part of the run - I don't think I'll need extra hearts as long as I have plenty in the puzzle - Melee master and the likes probably come in more helpful to speed up the ludicriously slow boss fights and arena rooms.
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Warp wrote:
If you go to google and write the word "tilt" in the search field, does something funny happen?
It's one of many little easter eggs google put in their search engine. To answer your question, no, you're not going crazy.
There was a list of them somewhere, but I can't find it right now.
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For most MSX games I've TASed, it's the input delay, 30 frames per second and lag.
For any game, it's coordinating multiple actions at once while also finding the perfect frame to do each and every single one on, especially if one action is dependent on another. (For example, after you use your weapon, you can't use it again for n frames). This is especially bad with boss fights, I hate TASing boss fights in General.
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Now here is the one effect I managed to achieve that persists even after death in the glitched world - I can temporarily confuse the game as to whether I'm playing as Trevor or Grant.
When you respawn, you spawn as Trevor, but the switching mechanism thinks you're still grant - so you switch to Trevor. After that, switching works as normal. But, it is possible to abuse this fact to collect subweapons grant wasn't ever intended to carry - the cross and the holy water.
Useless, but pretty amusing in its own right.
//Many of the tricks I'm outlining probably will also work for Alucard/Trevor. But right now, I'm only testing out Grant.
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I keep finding all kinds of ways to disalign myself from the stairs. This shortcut seems to even save a couple seconds, even with the slow as hell character switching.
Link to video
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Unfortunately, due to how slow the character switching is, this skip only saves about a second. What a shame, really.
It seems the game becomes the most unstable when you do the glitch in the ship level. I've had the weirdest glitches and effects there, and even found functional stairs that lead to even weirder places. I'll have a video up soon. Do note that, once you're in that dimension, exploring becomes a fight against the game freezing. I die to return to normalcy - the game would have frozen frames afterwards.
/here. And I still have no idea how to properly make videos.
Link to video
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Alright, after more research, these are the points I figured:
The glitch can be done with any stair that's set up properly and allows you to overcome the boundary of the screen
The glitched worlds can only be left by dieing after you get off the stairs. There seem to be no functional stairs, doors, or anything else that could lead you to even more different screens.
There seems to be some regularity in the level data that comes up when you do this. Enemy Data seems to be pulled from the level that comes afterwards, so you'll find elements of the ship level when doing this glitch in Mad Forest.
Go far enough, either in the the glitched worlds if the game lets you, or by traversing enough screens vertically, and the game screws out and glitches. The game freezing is very likely in that case. The garbage tile data that's generated when the game freezes up seems to be pulled from the sound engine. (At least that's my best guess)
I've had even weirder effects, such as playing with a glitched-tile Grant that could throw holy water like Trevor. The game is at its most unstable then, with freezing being a matter of time. To be honest, I can't trust FCEUX's emulation accuracy on that one. In either case, if you manage to die before the game freezes, it mostly returns to normalcy. I haven't found any possible deathwarps, unfortunately.
However, some weird, if minor, effects may persist even when dieing and returning to the normal worlds. My ultimate hope is to be able to call the credits or cause some other effect that glitches up the game enough to require a separate category.
Even if the glitched worlds turn out to be useless for a TAS, the glitch itself allows for some legitimate shortcuts. (See video below)
Link to video
I know of at least one other place where such a shortcut can be used. Unfortunately, I don't think they're as entertaining as playing the game normally. Additionally, I greatly hope to find a way to speed up character switch.
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I'm currently investigating this glitch, and while I haven't found any actual use for it yet, it suffices to say, I just fucked the game.
//More possible outcomes.
Walking back also creates really weird nametable drawing. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no usefulness for a TAS yet.
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At last this is run is finished, and it came together beautifully. The exploits in the game engine can be abused all the more in a 100% run and there were quite a few pleasant surprises. For added thrills, I watched the run on the wrong ISO and emulator version, so when you quit the level after getting the puzzle peice I thought the run desynced - turns out, you planned that all along, you magnificient one.
Obvious yes vote for showing the game who's boss around here.
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Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. To answer some questions:
Feos: Actually, I haven't taken a look at the character-switch glitches. It's certainly something to be looked into, though.
Cardboard: The next place I can grab the axe is in the second-to-last room of the clocktower. It would take around 5 frames, though I think that's still quicker than getting it early on. I do think grabbing the axe earlier allows for more entertainment, though.
mklip:
1.It seems that, even with perfect positioning, the damage boost wouldn't reach far enough. Even so, ghosts will always follow you, so it's near impossible to position him properly.
2.Yeah, I feel it's sloppy too, but that's the quickest way to initiate the autoscroller.
3.Manipulating Medusa heads is kind of tricky, since the game wants to spawn them on the opposite side of the screen. What I did do was manipulating two to spawn at the same place so I could kill both quicker overall.
Combining your position, the position of the Medusa Heads, and the random frames at which they can spawn hearts when killed, placement isn't always convenient.
Now here is the one effect I managed to achieve that persists even after death in the glitched world - I can temporarily confuse the game as to whether I'm playing as Trevor or Grant.
When you respawn, you spawn as Trevor, but the switching mechanism thinks you're still grant - so you switch to Trevor. After that, switching works as normal. But, it is possible to abuse this fact to collect subweapons grant wasn't ever intended to carry - the cross and the holy water.
Useless, but pretty amusing in its own right.
//Many of the tricks I'm outlining probably will also work for Alucard/Trevor. But right now, I'm only testing out Grant.
I'm currently investigating this glitch, and while I haven't found any actual use for it yet, it suffices to say, I just fucked the game.
//More possible outcomes.
Walking back also creates really weird nametable drawing. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no usefulness for a TAS yet.