Post subject: Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest
Joined: 9/29/2011
Posts: 10
I apologize beforehand if there's a duplicate thread, my previous one was eaten, and I'm not sure if it'll show up again. anyways... I've got Cubivore to work in Dolphin, and I've already optimized the starting menu (with no memory card) as best as possible, but I've saved my work right before I take full control of the character. Just checking to see if anyone else happens to be working on it at the moment before I get too in depth on this project. And if no one is, would people prefer to see a 100% run or an any% run? 100% would be easier for me to do, but much longer and repetitive; the any% run would be much tougher to optimize and plan, but would make for a medium to short game (I'm estimating an hour and a half max, most likely an hour to maybe 40 minutes if I can plan it right). In the meantime, since glitches aren't well documented for the game, and there's no TAS or SDA run to compare it to yet that I'm aware of, I'm going to fool around for a bit to see if there's anything special I can do with it being a TAS (primarily I need to find out if I can sustain sprint indefinitely, otherwise there's going to be a lot of hopping)
Post subject: Re: Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1141)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
Jurk0wski wrote:
I apologize beforehand if there's a duplicate thread, my previous one was eaten, and I'm not sure if it'll show up again. anyways...
* Sometimes posts show up later, but it is few minutes at most, so that earlier thread isn't going to appear. * I searched the forums. There doesn't seem to be another thread for this game.
Jurk0wski wrote:
I've got Cubivore to work in Dolphin, and I've already optimized the starting menu (with no memory card) as best as possible, but I've saved my work right before I take full control of the character.
You disabled dual core and idle skipping, right? Sure these make the emulation faster, but both cause severe desync problems (and idle skipping additionally makes encoding virtually impossible).
Jurk0wski wrote:
In the meantime, since glitches aren't well documented for the game, and there's no TAS or SDA run to compare it to yet that I'm aware of, I'm going to fool around for a bit to see if there's anything special I can do with it being a TAS
Here are couple pages that might be helpful: Wiki: Guidelines Wiki: GameResources/CommonTricks And the take home message from the latter page: * Attempt the unexpected. * Untested code paths equal high probability of bugs. * Bugs (a.k.a. glitches) can be very helpful in TASing. And there's of course: Wiki: MovieRules
Joined: 9/29/2011
Posts: 10
Thank you for the helpful links. I had already browsed most of them by this point XD. I tend to be overly cautious when I do anything, so I tend to do a lot of research before I take on any task. Yep, I've already disabled dual core and idle skipping, I made sure to follow the suggested config on the GC/Wii emulation forum. The only thing I really need at this point is a working RAM/Memory watch for Dolphin. I remember reading that Dolphin isn't programmed to accept third party support, so the only thing I can think of to do something similar is use CE to follow the emulator's RAM, but that likely wont have the same results. Edit: I'm stupid, I just remembered that the cheat section of the emulator also lets me search ram values. Edit again: bah, doesn't work the way I though, it's of no use to me.
XkyRauh
He/Him
Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
If I recall correctly, many of the forms are only unlockable by choosing to spawn into them after mating. A 100% run would have to clear the game multiple times, making sure to choose the correct forms to quickchange into. That said, I have fond memories of 100%ing this game back in 2003 or 2004. :) I'd love to see a TAS of it!
Joined: 9/29/2011
Posts: 10
at minimum, a 100% run requires doing the game twice. you could consider the 2nd time a New Game+, since while the areas are the same, the creatures will be slightly different. To beat a 100%, someone merely needs to get all 150 mutations, and you automatically win. The primary problem is that to do so you must also finish the any% run and then continue the game after the credits end. To do an any% run, you simply need to beat the killer cubivore. to do this, you need to have 100 mutations, at which point you get teleported to the boss rush, and after beating all bosses, you face him (and 4 colored cubivores, I'll have to find out if you need to kill them or not, if not, I'll just attempt to skip them). this is possible on the first play-through, but only if you very carefully choose what to eat and when. on the other hand, if I skip getting 100 by the time I end the first play-through by not going after the more annoying mutations that may cost time, I can get some slightly easier lower-limb count mutations, but to do so might cost me too much time with cut-scenes as well as the loss of a usefull EZ-mutation. Right now, I'm planning it. since it's a TAS I should never get hit if I don't mean to get hit, so I can ignore killing excess for exp (to increase my stomach, and thus HP), collecting scar points (increased defense), and collecting hump points (to increase the effect of healing). I have to consider whether taking the time to gather horn points for the bonus to attack is worthwhile, both the cubes I can collect and the training stations. There's also the matter of the tounge, which allows eat-n-run, allowing me to sometimes skip the animation for eating (but not always, only really works on weaker creatures, so it might not be worth the time). I also can either choose to collect rejuvinators to allow me to heal at any time, but to need to would be might be seen as sloppy, even if it saved a bit of time. As for what mutations I take, I have the choice in the end of yellow vs. grey. yellow is slower but stronger than grey, but grey is of course faster yet slightly weaker (they're both the top attackers) more than likely grey. I shouldn't need lovebits if I can correctly manipulate luck to make sure all females (or at least the ones I need) bear children, but to do so, I need a working rom/memory watcher, and the cheat tab supplied with Dolphin doesn't update adresses dynamically, only when you refresh it, so I need a better version. speaking of luck manipulation, getting a slot token would do wonders there, allowing me to pick exactly what colors I want (though not type sadly), so all the more reason to get a working rom/memory watch. The actual playing will be rather simple since the camera controls are nice; it has 8 fixed locations around you, so little in the way of figuring out complicated angles to be moving at has to be done (except right after certain cutscenes where the camera moves a bit). Edit: after thinking about it, I'll be doing a 100% run, but I'll set aside a .dtm that ends after killer cubivore as well, since looking at my plans so far, a 100% run's play-through to 100 mutations is exactly identical to an any% run, so while a 100% run will be longer than an any% run, the first 100 mutations will be the same length of time for both. to facilitate this, I've re-optomized my main menu to format and save to a memory card instead of having no memory card. this'll force viewers to delete their memory card manually before playback, but it shouldn't be an issue otherwise. For minor entertainment (and because I noticed it in the movie rules) I chose an actual name as opposed to "A" because the game isn't enough of a frame war yet to need to lose the entertainment of the character's name. still chose something short though, but it's fitting for the silly game. almost set to do the actual gameplay, just doing a non-TAS run to get my bearings and make some makeshift maps and layouts to make finding stuff I need easier.
XkyRauh
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Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
Awesome. Looking forward to this! :)
Joined: 12/16/2008
Posts: 59
Location: a brontosaurus... havin' breakfast
i didnt know what this was, so i went and found an LP of it on youtube ended up watching the whole thing i would really enjoy a 100% tas of this