Topic by Dooty

Posted: 6/18/2015 2:24 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2583)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

That's some really good news, Alyosha! Having someone else to help you out is something of great value, so good luck to you two. I'd like to be of some assistance, but since I just played the first stage, I'm afraid I can't do much. In any case, you said you found the right frame to insert the coin. I just like to point out that it's better to insert just one coin at the title screen. You can insert the other two coins later, while the name of the stage is being displayed, without losing any time. Again, good luck with your project!

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 6/19/2015 1:50 PM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3535)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2732
Location: US

Dooty wrote:

That's some really good news, Alyosha! Having someone else to help you out is something of great value, so good luck to you two. I'd like to be of some assistance, but since I just played the first stage, I'm afraid I can't do much. In any case, you said you found the right frame to insert the coin. I just like to point out that it's better to insert just one coin at the title screen. You can insert the other two coins later, while the name of the stage is being displayed, without losing any time. Again, good luck with your project!

yup, I got that far : ) ...but not much further, it seems the game does some weird things with inputs, when I get one character doing what i want and try moving on to the other two, I noticed occasionally that the first character can drop an input somehow. So I've had to take itvery slow and haven't had a lot of time to work on it either. Being able to edit input in a .csv is the only thing that is saving me. How did you ever do this with a game controller D:

Posted: 6/19/2015 11:04 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2583)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Yeah, pretty much like the SNES port this game is full of lag. You can only change input every three frames or so. I used an Xbox 360 controller to play the first stage, and it was a little awkward to tell you the truth. :) Here's a Lua script that shows my input and enemy health, if you ever want to try controlling them with a joystick; http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/23580756880692663 And here's the input file for the first stage. Pretty useless, even for comparison, but it shows some neat enemy manipulation; http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/23580714210511068 I think it's not obvious in the movie, but the best place to spawn the enemies is near the entrance to the subway. But the enemies tend to spawn as far from the characters as they can, and it's kinda annoying most of the time. It's easy to trick them to spawn where you want though. By keeping one character far from the other two. And of course, my strategy here is to not kill the stronger enemies. I'ts a lot faster to kill the weaker ones.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 6/20/2015 1:18 PM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3535)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2732
Location: US

Dooty wrote:

And here's the input file for the first stage. Pretty useless, even for comparison, but it shows some neat enemy manipulation; http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/23580714210511068

How is it useless? Do you think it is not very optimized? It has 27000 rerecords and looks pretty good to me. I managed to extract your inputs from the movie into a .csv file, so I'll see what I can do with it looking at different parts of the level, but I try not to reinvent the wheel.

Posted: 6/20/2015 10:59 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2583)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Um, as far as my plan to just kill the weaker enemies go, yes it is optimal. The re record count is a little misleading, though. (I have been using this same file over and over again, even for my easy difficult test...) But I mean it's useless because it's just the first, and undoubtedly easier, stage of the game. :/ (I don't have a test run of the full game, and I think it would be more useful than this.) .csv? I don't know what a .csv is. But please, feel free to do with this file whatever you think that might be of any help. :)

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 6/21/2015 12:28 AM

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DiscoRico

Joined: 10/11/2012
Posts: 48

.csv is "comma separated value". Think of a spreadsheet, where the columns are determined by a comma, the rows correspond to frames. Pretty ingenious little creation by Alyosha, if I might say so myself!

Posted: 6/21/2015 12:30 AM

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dekutony

Experienced player (633)

Joined: 11/23/2013
Posts: 2208
Location: Guatemala

I hope it can obsolete the SNES run, because they're 2 different systems.

Here, my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/dekutony

Posted: 6/21/2015 12:38 AM

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DiscoRico

Joined: 10/11/2012
Posts: 48

I believe the idea was that since the SNES version was a dumbed-down version of the arcade version that a faster run on arcade would obsolete it. I hope that's the case, though.

Posted: 6/22/2015 9:17 PM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3535)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2732
Location: US

well I am making slow progress on various fronts. Since Dooty's inputs resync in the piano roll style input format, we'll probably just be continuing on to level 2. @Dooty do you know anything about RNG in this game? My next thought is to try and check if levels can be worked on independently and resynced into a complete run later. So far my testing ran into desync do to lag, causing inputs to be missed (I think do to 1 frame inputs) So I would need to figure out how to make inputs robust to lag before continuing down that road. But there is big gains in simplifying the whole process if it works out, so I'll be putting effort into testing it.

Posted: 6/23/2015 5:05 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2583)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Alyosha wrote:

@Dooty do you know anything about RNG in this game?

Unfortunately, I don't know much. But I bet it's tied to character position somehow. Move one of the characters around, even for one pixel, and the enemies will behave completely different. You can even spawn a different enemy, sometimes, by simply moving a character to a different place.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 6/24/2015 12:49 AM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3535)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2732
Location: US

I'm also considering a redo on the first stage, but first I need to find out how to reproduce this glitch: http://youtu.be/LDkal0qreEI

I believe I know why this glitch happens after doing some testing on my own. I haven't gotten that exact thing, but have gotten similar. (Same effect, but it goes away since I keep getting hit.) It seems like what is happening is the enemy grabbing you falls just in range of a power attack after you knock him off of you (the pink one.) The game immediately adjusts the players position when you are about to execute it, but the enemy stands up on the same frame, so there is no way to complete the animation, leaving the player with hyper speed but no where to go. It's rare because the enemy lands near you while you face the other way, uncommon and usually he will already stand up before reaching this position. I've only gotten this glitch when knocking enemies off from the front, as in this video. This seems to be the key, as it for some reason knocks them behind you. I believe something similar happens when picking up the motorcycle while facing the wrong way. You get warped to the right position (you can even see it happen to yellow player in the demo.) Of course the motorcycle doesn't change its state like the enemy does. I don't think it is of much use.

Posted: 6/24/2015 4:48 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2583)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Aww, too bad. I was hoping to find a way to pull it off consistently. I thought it would save some time to reach a far away enemy. (as they tend to spawn as far from you as they can...) But since the enemy used to activate the glitch stays alive, I also don't think it will be of any use.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.