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IMPORTANT: The current Circus Charlie game B record can be found here. It's 31 frames faster than this. All future Circus Charlie game B TASes should be compared to that run, not this.
This is my second attempt of a TAS for this game. It is 32 frames faster than the previous version. Here's what's changed:
  • Saved 31 frames at the startmenu
  • Saved 1 frame on stage 4
This time I tried to make this run frameperfect, but I could only improve the gameplay by 1 frame.
I won't make another run of this game until I find out how to manipulate luck in it.
I will often use the term "game B" in this submission text. "Game B" is "hard mode" on Circus Charlie. Just so you know what it is.
There is no english version of this game, only a japanese version.
And I know that some of you are thinking "Hey, he didn't beat the game, after stage 5 he's back at stage 1 again!". That's correct, but the thing is that after you beat stage 5 all stages start all over again. That's why the completion of stage 5 is accepted as the end of the game.
  • Emulator used: FCEU Ultra 0.98.12-blip
  • Length if movie: 12262 frames (~3m 24,37s)
  • Plays at NTSC speed. Don't use PAL emulation!
  • Takes no damage and doesn't die.
  • Does not abuse any glitches, since I haven't found any :)
The goals of this movie:
  • Complete the game on game B ("hard" mode) as fast as possible
  • Get an as high score as possible without wasting any time
I will not compare this movie to Phil and Genisto's run simply because that movie plays on another difficulty, which makes it hard to compare the two movies. The stages in this run looks somewhat different than in Phil and Genisto's run.
I tried to find out how to manipulate luck in this game, like making the obstacles appear on different places, but couldn't find out how to do that. Perhaps it's simply not possible to manipulate luck in this game, I don't know. If I could have manipulated luck in this run I could've shaved of at least 3 seconds I think.
I will now comment each individual stage briefly:
Stage 1: On this stage you ride a really cool lion with purlpe eyes. This is a very easy stage, even on game B. Some notes though:
Note #1: Around frame 1200 you will see that I miss a goldbag. Believe me, I tried to take it, but even with frame advance and savestates I found it impossible to do without hitting the burning pot behind it.
Note #2: Around frame 2500 you will notice that I suddenly stop for a few frames. This was done in order to avoid jumping into the firering that's coming towards me. I really tried to prevent this but wasn't able to.
Stage 2: On this stage some monkeys are trying to kill you by walking right into you. This stage is really easy, so I try to be entertaining by being really close to hitting the monkeys. This stage was probably completed as fast as theoretically possible, because the only thing I do in this stage is running forward and jump, and since jumping is exactly as fast as running in this game, I don't see how you can complete this stage any faster.
Stage 3: On this stage you are to jump on balls to the other side. This stage is really easy, and once again I try to do it as entertaining as possible by making very precise jumps and being close to fall off the balls and die. Whenever you jump over a ball, you get 500 points. I try to do this as often as possible.
Stage 4: I... hate... this... stage... On game B, this stage is crazy hard. I don't have time to do tricks and get points and stuff, all I focus on in this stage is surviving, since it's extremely easy to fall off the horse.
Note #1: I slow down once on this stage, this was necessary to stay on the horse. I know, it bugs me too, I really tried to avoid it. Really, really.
Stage 5: This is the last stage. This is the stage that I improved the most. While Phil and Genisto falls down three times to catch the new rope, I only fall down once. This saved me quite some time. This stage was generally easy.
This run was done in just one day, to be exact it took me about 4-5 hours to complete it. This run was quite easy to do, except for stage 4 which was crazy hard. I used frame advance with frame counter on for most of the run. Between stages i ran the game on normal speed.
Here are the times for each stage. With "time" I mean from the first frame on the stage that Charlie appears on to the frame with the first "wave animation" (after you finished a stage, Charlie waves his hand) on each stage. The time is measured in frames.
  • Stage 1: 2519
  • Stage 2: 2305
  • Stage 3: 2003
  • Stage 4: 1805
  • Stage 5: 1105
Fun fact: Did you know that Circus Charlie (the character) doesn't have any eyes? If you look carefully, you'll see that Charlie's eyes are always the same colour as the background. Doing all those crazy tricks without having any eyes is really impressive!
I hope you enjoy this run.
/ Randil

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #805: Randil's NES Circus Charlie in 03:23.83
Editor, Active player (296)
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Still made in Game mode B, it seems. Therefore I can't say whether it's better or worse than the existing publication. Voting Meh. Note: I will not publish two movies of Circus Charlie parallerly. Either this has to be better than the existing movie (in which case it will obsolete the old one), or it will be rejected. In frames, this movie is faster than the existing submission, but that's not to say much because the timers are different in the two game modes.
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Yes, it is still made in mode B because if I'm to do a run of game A I want to be faster (or equally fast) )than Phil's version on every stage. So far I can't finish stage 1 as fast as Phil. If I was to make a run of game A, it would probably be a little faster than Phil's version bacause I found out that you can save some time on stage 5, stage 1 would still be slower than Phil's run however. To Bisqwit: What do you mean by that the timers are different? All stages on game A and game B start of with the same time, and time goes down equally fast. In game B you get more point per timeunit though. Of course it's up to you voters to decide whether this run is better than Phil's or not. I will not vote myself on this. Unless someone finds out how to manipulate luck in this game I don't think that this run is improvable by more than 1 second.
Skilled player (1402)
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Like I said in previous post at the forum, and on IRC... I think it's unfair to publish a movie when the only reason for it being faster is the fact that it's played on another mode. I can easily reproduce this time on B mode, but I can't get a time equally as fast as Phil on A mode. Therefor the quality of Phil's run is higher, and I think it's silly to obsolete a better run for a run that's played not as good, on another mode... Therefor, voting no.
Skilled player (1886)
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All right, then I'll do a run on game A, just to see if I can beat Phil's time. In terms of gameplaying, this run is most likely as good as possible without manipulating luck, and since I don't know how to do that I don't think that this run is improvable on game B without manipulating luck.
Skilled player (1402)
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I agree on that... I didn't say I could beat this time on B... I said to make a time equally fast is very possible for me. Since I also don't know how to manipulate the objects, I can't beat the time on A... My mode A movie's length is 12348 frames long, and I predict that yours will be aswell.
Former player
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I checked your previous version, and if only one frame where improved in level 4 I have to vote no. This is because of Bisqwits statement and also, despite it's played on "hard mode", Phils movie looks more fluent. Nice try though.
/Walker Boh
Joined: 5/27/2005
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I also voted No for the same reasons as Baxter. The run should be made in the same mode/difficulty as the previous one to obsolete the older one. Or it has to be done _way_ much better/faster/entertainier/etc. than the previous one so that it maybe get published to company the older one (which was made in the difficultiest mode).
Which run should I encode next? :)
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I'll also give it a "Meh" - I honestly don't know whether it should be published or not. The fact that it gets a better time on a harder difficulty normally would make it an obvious "yes", but the old movie was recorded in Famtasia, while this one's done in FCEU, so it's not clear to me if the times can be compared in a meaningful way. Of course, maybe this should be taken as an opportunity to get rid of a movie that a) is not played on the hardest difficulty (which it should be) and b) is not played in FCEU (which arguably is a better emulator choice than Famtasia), but that's something I think only Bisqwit can decide.
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Well, this game is simple and both emulators do emulate the game the same way. By adding 2 null frames at the start of my movie and convert it to FCM, it should play fine under FCEU, from what what I remember.
nesrocks
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I don't think the site is for competition NESVIDEOS as i see it is made for hosting entertaining videos, and i think that most people want to see a game finished flawlessly on HARD rather than on EASY. Picking MODE A in the first place was a mistake if you want to compete on circus charlie do it right.
nesrocks
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Phil's movie seem to be ~20 frames too slow on the menu. I tried stage 1 and i could finish it doing the same strat he did without need to wait on the menu.
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That's kinda strange. Because my video was faster than walkerboh, so both of us didn't do the intro correctly? Pretty strange. Maybe there's a frame rule and you did 1 frame faster which gives you 20 frames faster.
nesrocks
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You can hit start so that the menu appears so that you rpess start again to start the game. I made the same mistake on kick master.... i had to redo everything.
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Anyway, I think I should redo all games that I have done with Famtasia with FCEU. Btw, FCEU does have a slower clock than Famtasia so, when someone beats a Famtasia movie with FCEU then, it is really faster. ;)
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I have been trying to beat stage 1 on game A on the same time as Phil, but no matter how many times I try, I always end up with the same situation: I can't make that last jump without slowing down. I can't make the first jump on stage 2, where Phil jumps over a ball, either. And I tried doing this many times, using frame advance. So my question stands: How does Phil do it???
nesrocks
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randil, watch closely his movie in slow motion you'll see what happens
Skilled player (1886)
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Yes, I'll probably do that, and if I'm lucky I'll figure out if I can find out what it is that he does... That means i'll probably have to use Famtasia again :( (no, I don't like that emulator)... And I can understand that most of you think of this movie kind of like Walker Boh did, that it's a generally good try but Phil's movie looks more fluent. If I can figure out how to manipulate luck, then hopefully my game B run will be as fluent. I will be unable to do work more on this this weekend, I'm going away and won't be back until monday, but I'll look into this matter more when I'm back. Even though this movie has more NO-votes than YES-votes at the moment, I'm glad that so many users has shown big interest in this. I'll see you all on monday then!
nesrocks
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Ok phil doesnt manipulate luck on his movie, there's no ramdomness in this game. He actually stops to wait, but you didnt notice :)
Former player
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No, he do manipulates luck. An ordinary stop is far longer than that.
/Walker Boh
nesrocks
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No, walkerboh, it wasn't ramdomness, it was just enough wait frames to get through without getting burned (3 frames of wait, then 2 frames back before last jump).
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But if one waits after the pot the waiting is much longer. I can't explain that with anything than some sort of manipulation.
/Walker Boh
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FODA wrote:
Ok phil doesnt manipulate luck on his movie, there's no ramdomness in this game. He actually stops to wait, but you didnt notice :)
But there is randomness in this game.
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FODA, if you tell me exactly where Phil waits I could make an .fcm and find out if I can make that last jump without wasting a lot of time. BTW, thanks for finding this out FODA :) Ok, going to check out if I can make that annoying last jump on stage 1 with this new information... EDIT: Okay, I have spent a lot of time today trying to make that last jump... Here's what I found out: What Phil does in his movie is this: After his jump through the last ring before the 10 meter mark, he walks one frame back, two frames forward, one frame back, two frames forward, one frame back, and then two frames forward again. This is the only time that he either stops or walks back as far as I know, therefor it is probably this that makes it possible for him to make that last jump. I have tried doing the exact same thing as he does, but I still can't make that last jump... :( Right now, I'm starting to get tired of not getting this last jump right. I hope that I find out how to do this soon, or else I'll probably give up on this game...
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I am cancelling this submission for various reasons. Mainly because I have came to the conclusion that Phil's run is of higher quality than mine is, since I could beat his time on game B but not on game A. Generally though, I do agree with FODA (and the guidelines) that the TAS for a game should be done on "hard"-mode, if it's avaialable. But the fact it's harder to do a TAS on this game on game A than on game B, at least in my opinion. Therefor it's still pretty good that there is a "game A" movie on the site. Anyway, I hope you still thought my run was pretty interesting. At least it was fun making it :).