Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/WIPamhaynes-ewj2.smv First two levels I'm pretty pleased with, the two Puppy Loves are hard to make extremely interesting but I did my best (lots of diving, nearly missing, trying to make Jim do doubletakes and have him look half-incompetent while still not missing a puppy). Villi People could probably be done slightly better, and I'm really not sure about Flyin' King; the collision detection on that stupid balloon makes no sense whatsoever, so I went with the fastest route I was able to mange (lining it up to get hit by those rockets is ridiculously hard, especially near the end). I remember being able to send it flying to the end of the level before, so I may take another shot at this before submitting (but I'll need to read up on how to rerecord parts of the movie without losing what comes after). It ends about 1/3-halfway through Udderly Abducted.
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Oh, and I took the Hard route on Villi People despite Easy probably being faster because, really, no amount of justification could make taking the easy route look good in a speedrun. ;)
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Finished Udderly Abducted, Inflated Head, and ISO 9000 tonight. Saw that the next one was Puppy Love 3, so it could be a while before I work on this bastard again. Anyone check out my WIP file?
Active player (253)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 476
Yeah, it was cool. I have a feeling that The Flying King could have definitely been improved by trying to bounce the balloon while taking a continuous rocket ride at the same time through the magic of frame-by-frame precision.
[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcuV2JdaBYY]Streets of Rage 3 (2 players)[/url]
Wren
He/Him
Joined: 4/11/2005
Posts: 196
Location: Michigan
I also liked what I saw. Never really a big fan of this series before, but after watching your WIP I tried it out again. Anyway, I agree with your decision to take the hard path even if slower. After all, why not? The only complaint I have was the balloon level. It really didn't impress me although I really don't know how the level works, having never played it myself, it felt like it could have been a bit more, I don't know, fluid looking. I look forward to your next WIP.
<i>A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.</i>
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
What I didn't like about the flying level was the damage you took, that looked really sloppy.
Former player
Joined: 9/12/2004
Posts: 184
Location: Austria/Styria
Aaron Haynes wrote:
Anyone check out my WIP file?
Tangerines and Soil: excellent Puppy1: you did good in keeping the level at least a bit entertaining Sally: hm didn't look very smooth King: didn't like it at all, but I know what a bitch that level is Puppy2: see Puppy1 Abducted: so far, so good
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Thanks for the comments, everyone. atro city: I've actually used frameadvance for the whole movie, it's just insanely difficult to optimize that level because the physics for the balloon are so retarded. It has a lot of natural resistance to you hitting it and a lot of times will simply go in the direction it feels like regardless of what you do. You basically have to wait for it to stop moving sometimes. I'll try out hex editing when the rest of the run is finished though. KDR: EWJ2 has a charming no-time-loss feature when you take damage in midair or on the rocket, so sometimes I'll simply take the hit without rerecording back to see if I can avoid it without losing frames. When I redo that level I'll see if I can avoid it more. I get down to about 25% health in Udderly Abducted simply because I'd have to drop the cow or seriously slow down to fight back, but for the most part it looks a lot more professional than Flyin' King did. Zer0: Blind Sally has a few rough spots, but those sheep-bubble enemies often fly directly in your path, are impossible to easily avoid, and slow you down tremendously when they attach to you. As an added bonuse they're ridiculously difficult to hit, and shooting while ascending slows you down. I did my best to optimize the paths I took, but sometimes I really couldn't figure out a fast one-frame way of killing them. The bumpers don't offer as many opportunities as you might think either. Will consider running through it again though. Udderly Abducted, Inflated Head, and ISO 9000 are all nearly frame-perfect since I actually started doing frame comparisons, and probably the most entertaining part of the run so far as far as I'm concerned. I'm really looking forward to the final level, since the whole idea is to speedrun it in the first place. :)
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Finished! http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2rough.smv I'm going to go back and hexedit it to redo Blind Sally and Flyin' King before I submit it as I mentioned, and See Jim Run has a moment where I pause before a jump by accident that I'll go back and fix, but other than that this is the complete run. Oh, and the movie end is in a weird spot because I skipped past the last cow image out of habit, I'll fix that too. Comes out to be 41:08 with 148105 frames and 9132 rerecords. A few things of note: In Udderly Abducted there's a few spots where I jump/whip for seemingly no reason, it's to stop the UFOs from lifting the cow so I can pick it back up. And in the fight with Flamin' Yawn at the end of Level Ate it might look like I missed, but I actually went through it a couple of times to be sure of the number of shots needed to kill him, so I'm still connecting. I tried to avoid taking damage where I could, but I'm a little inconsistent on where I shoot for best time and where I try to make it look better by avoiding it. Level Ate especially is a little weird about this with the eggs on the frier. Let me know what you think, the full submission should be ready pretty soon.
creaothceann
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany
The SNES game uses HDMA to transfer some bytes to the SPC700 while the screen is drawn. HDMA support is not perfect in most emulators, and the CPU-to-SPC synchronization even more so. bsnes (and maybe SNEeSE) should be able to emulate it correctly, but they don't even have savestate support yet...
Former player
Joined: 9/12/2004
Posts: 184
Location: Austria/Styria
Aaron Haynes wrote:
Finished! http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2rough.smv I'm going to go back and hexedit it to redo Blind Sally and Flyin' King before I submit it as I mentioned, and See Jim Run has a moment where I pause before a jump by accident that I'll go back and fix, but other than that this is the complete run. Oh, and the movie end is in a weird spot because I skipped past the last cow image out of habit, I'll fix that too. Comes out to be 41:08 with 148105 frames and 9132 rerecords. A few things of note: In Udderly Abducted there's a few spots where I jump/whip for seemingly no reason, it's to stop the UFOs from lifting the cow so I can pick it back up. And in the fight with Flamin' Yawn at the end of Level Ate it might look like I missed, but I actually went through it a couple of times to be sure of the number of shots needed to kill him, so I'm still connecting. I tried to avoid taking damage where I could, but I'm a little inconsistent on where I shoot for best time and where I try to make it look better by avoiding it. Level Ate especially is a little weird about this with the eggs on the frier. Let me know what you think, the full submission should be ready pretty soon.
Looked very good. One question, why did you do this secret room in Level Ate?
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Purely for entertainment. It's skippable, but it's also a pretty hard room to navigate quickly, so I did it because I thought it'd be fun to watch. Also because EWJ2 fans will know about it and might want to see it.
Active player (253)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 476
And if it's any consolation, he stocks up on plasma blasts for Flamin' Yawn.
[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcuV2JdaBYY]Streets of Rage 3 (2 players)[/url]
Former player
Joined: 9/12/2004
Posts: 184
Location: Austria/Styria
So how is it going? If you have problems with hex-editing I could give it a try, have done some successful edits in the past
Former player
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 518
AARON! where are you? i was thinking it would take a day or so to submit, not this long. please let us know how its going.
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Sorry, I'm still around, I just haven't had much time to really sit down and hammer this out. School's been killing me. I may have a chance sometime this week, though.
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
What's the current state of the run, actually? I had the impression it was almost complete, too.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
It is, the last WIP finishes the game, but two or three levels have some noticable rough spots that I was hoping to go back and fix before submitting. I have no idea how complicated hex editing is, though, so I'll decide what to do when I take a look at it. One way or another I'd like to tweak and perfect this, even if it means redoing the run (apart from the Puppy Love levels, I wouldn't mind, it was a lot of fun).
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
this desynchs the the beginning of level 2. what version are you using, emu and rom? or is there a workaround?
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
Are you using the improved version of SNES 9x?
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
The (U) [!] version, with the improved 9x. It should keep all the same settings, but in case it doesn't, use WIP1 timing and Fake Mute desync workaround.
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
This got shelved for a long time when finals, a job, and a few different SDA projects took over. Upon returning to the run, I realized it was pretty subpar and probably wouldn't be accepted if I submitted it, so I started over. I recently finished the entire second level in one sitting, but it felt strange, because I was hitting the final stopwatch at about the same time as I did in my previous run despite several areas in the level being a lot better. So I timed the big dirt-crawling section and realized that it ended up being 210 frames slower than in the first run. This means the fantastic boss fight I did the other day gets scrapped. However, I just spent about two or three hours on the early sections of the level and I think I've FINALLY figured out the intervals at which the dirt breaks. I don't understand it precisely, but there's something of a pattern to when the dirt gun works: 1-1-1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5, where you press Y, wait one frame, press Y, wait two frames, etc. If you simply hold Y, you end up losing a frame or two in the chain at regular intervals, which adds up over time. It's still a huge matter of trial and error and planning where to stand, which direction to shoot, for how long, and in what order to set you up to proceed when you clear enough to clip through the ground, but I don't mind slogging through it if the end result is going to look as good as the first ten seconds of this level. I have a feeling I'm going to cut the total time down by a third here. Edit: Just timed three seperate runs from the beginning of level 2 to a certain point where Jim breaks through the dirt and lands. If I can keep to this level of precision, this run is gonna be a blast. The frame differences are: Final WIP from April: 437 frames Run from two days ago: 375 frames Current run (done today): 307 frames Anyway, I'll hack away at this as I get a chance to over the next few months. Hope people are still interested in it.
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
glad to hear from you again, this is an great project for a very good game, and after what I've seen from the first game, this one should make a very good TAS.
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
Wow, I just woke up and I doesn't understand how did you save so much time, but that is definitely awesome. Looking forward for a WIP if you're going to release it. Great that you've returned.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Thanks for the comments, guys :) I'll get a WIP up when the second level's finished. SXL: The link to the final WIP from my run in April is still up if you haven't seen it, you can find it on page two of this thread. It's alright for a first full game TAS attempt, you'll notice rough spots in a few stages that would probably get the run more no votes than yes, but it's pretty entertaining.