Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
As far as I know, that particular ring was discovered during working on Amy@S3K improvement, as the new method for this level involves reaching that area.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Loving that glitchless! I always felt like SprintGod's first run should never have been obsoleted, cause the second one abused vertical screen wrapping, and then nitsuja came along and straight-up murdered the game.
I think if we tell an admin about this and change his branch to "glitchless" it will be un-obsoleted for me.
JXQ wrote:
But! You've also picked up an extra ring in FB2. I'm wondering how you found out about this one ring. Is there some kind of map-searching utility or part of the LUA script which scrapes level data for the total number of rings? Is it possible there are other goofy hidden wall rings that aren't known about yet like this one?
Most of the research are manually with debug mode and checking the level maps in Zone 0 and the map pack with solidity display in Sonic TAS tools thread, I'm 100% sure we collected all rings now. About a ring counter adress data like in Sonic 2 I don't know, maybe marzo can answer that, the only LUA's we are Using are Sonic TAS tools and one that tell us when we lost a orbit ring with the lightning shield.
JXQ wrote:
Anyway, thanks for keeping on with this run. It's been a joy to watch.
Thank you, I hope the rest of the community can recognise this movie.
WST wrote:
As far as I know, that particular ring was discovered during working on Amy@S3K improvement, as the new method for this level involves reaching that area.
Yes, you improved a lot this year, you are less lazy than me and you have a faster pace, I hate to redo levels (mostly in the ring attack), trying to synchronize and even open gens at times :-P - But I take my time to optimize my levels
Wow I always thought I was lazier than you. I also hate redoing levels but for me that's only really a problem if it feels like I'm not making pregress and/or get plain sick of tasing it.
Also yes I am Kaan666 destroyer of worlds. Fear me mortal!
JXQ wrote:
I'm loving this ring attack. I am consistently surprised at the amount of time saved with each new iteration. Seeing you find improvements of 30 seconds in HC2 and IC2 is really surprising. I know it's a very tough balance between optimizing as much as possible, and knowing when to move on to the next level in order to ever make long-term progress, but it seems like just about every level is being tightened up quite a bit by this point. It's impressive!
Yeah I didn't think the optimization in this tas could get so tight due to its dynamic nature. Those time improvements were surprising to me too.
Personally the balance I like is optimizing the levels as much as possible and making sure it doesn't look noticeably sloppy.
boct1584 wrote:
Loving that glitchless! I always felt like SprintGod's first run should never have been obsoleted, cause the second one abused vertical screen wrapping, and then nitsuja came along and straight-up murdered the game.
Seriously? Screen wrap in a glitchless run? I know some of the exploits in this game can't truly be classified as glitches but that's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure stuff like that isn't expected nor wanted in a glitchless category. That's why I'm very satisfied with Evil's choice of restrictions.
Evil_3D wrote:
I'm glad to announce that we fixed LBZ 1 music, only need to finish the level now.
That's Awesome! We no longer have to suffer through like 2 minutes of invincibility music. Your inputs are also looking very clean.
Am I really that good? I mean I never thought I'd be able to surpass your skills. Thanks man :D
Yeah, I have no where near the knowledge to compare you two, but you've gotten pretty great pretty quickly mate. Controlling two player like that even under TAS conditions is baffling to me, yet you make it look like you just play co-op game solo all the time.
Evil_3D wrote:
I started a new project, Knuckles glitchless, this is the first wip.
Cool; excited to see this happen. Best of luck with it!
kaan55 wrote:
Seriously? Screen wrap in a glitchless run? I know some of the exploits in this game can't truly be classified as glitches but that's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure stuff like that isn't expected nor wanted in a glitchless category. That's why I'm very satisfied with Evil's choice of restrictions.
I believe you slightly miss understand. Sprintgods 1st (and the sites 1st) S3K 'glitchless' TAS was actually just an any% at the time. There were no glitches in it, not because he chose not to do so, but as none were know at the time. His next run that obsoleted it did have glitches in it, but it wasn't considered a separate category as the 'glitchless' category wasn't really a thing back then. They were both just considered any% runs.
Remember, this was way back when he played at 6% play speed to be precise rather than frame advance.
And obviously in regards to the Ring attacks; phenomenal work from all as always.
Yeah, I have no where near the knowledge to compare you two, but you've gotten pretty great pretty quickly mate. Controlling two player like that even under TAS conditions is baffling to me, yet you make it look like you just play co-op game solo all the time.
It's hard to compare our inputs just by looking at our runs. Our optimization levels appear to be nearly identical.
I'm not that surprised I got great so quickly. I was already pretty decent when I first started and I didn't too much trouble with keeping track of 2 players (well, at least when I learned track recording was a thing :p). Most of what I improved on was my knowledge of optimization and the game in general.
Paused wrote:
I believe you slightly miss understand. Sprintgods 1st (and the sites 1st) S3K 'glitchless' TAS was actually just an any% at the time. There were no glitches in it, not because he chose not to do so, but as none were know at the time. His next run that obsoleted it did have glitches in it, but it wasn't considered a separate category as the 'glitchless' category wasn't really a thing back then. They were both just considered any% runs.
Remember, this was way back when he played at 6% play speed to be precise rather than frame advance.
Yeah I did misinterpret what he said. I didn't realize he was talking about old any% runs instead of "glitchless". I know they were lacking the tools we have now and were basically just trying to learn about the game.
Here's LBZ2 with 4:19:27. I found a lot of cool improvements in this one.
gmv
Sorry for the delay. Progress on LBZ2 has been a little slow due to irl stuff and I somehow ended up forgetting to upload the gmv here when I finished it about a week ago. Whoops :p
On a brighter note I've resync'd the run without any major problems. I only had desyncs in MHZ2 due to lag differences.
I've also decided to redo SOZ2 (and the minute of Act 1) because I really wanted to fix the light switch trick while also beating the objects cycles we couldn't get beat before. I have succeeded at doing that so it's just a matter of finishing the level now.
It all looks so smooth! LB2 looks fantastic and I'm happy you were able to avoid going into the bonus area and Tails' drowning death, funny as it was :)
Is the extra delay near the end of SO1 (just before you get the last big ring) in order to change the global timer for SO2 for the spiked pillar moving up and down at 0:57? I could not tell what you did differently in SO2 (except that you didn't spend as long in the walls around the 0:55 mark).
Oh, and for anyone else wanting to watch this who maybe hasn't been following the entire time, I got the savestate needed to play this movie from this post. (Or this direct link.)
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
It all looks so smooth! LB2 looks fantastic and I'm happy you were able to avoid going into the bonus area and Tails' drowning death, funny as it was :)
Yeah I'm really happy with the new LB2 too. It has a lot of new neat trucks.
JXQ wrote:
Is the extra delay near the end of SO1 (just before you get the last big ring) in order to change the global timer for SO2 for the spiked pillar moving up and down at 0:57? I could not tell what you did differently in SO2 (except that you didn't spend as long in the walls around the 0:55 mark).
That delay was done to allow Tails to go through the last moving pillar. Since Sonic had to wait for it to move out of the way anyways it didn't cost any time. Instead I saved 53 frames by using Tails to make Sonic fall faster like you saw there.
Act 2 is mostly a bunch of small (and mostly noticeable) improvements that allowed me to beat the moving object at 0:55. What I did differently with the light switch trick was grab all the rings in the loop with Sonic. Thankfully it was pretty easy to replicate from my testrun.
Just for clarification I will tell you that Sandopolis in this run is being done as fast as possible, even in real time. We didn't need to do any cycle manipulation.
@Evil_3D, I noticed one very minor error with your inputs regarding Tails' flight. When you want to make him fly as high as possible from a jump you should hold A until it no longer effects his upwards speed and then on the very next frame press B. Don't leave any "blank" frames in between.
Wow, almost 70k rerecords in this level, that's was be a pretty tough challenge huh? I love all of it.
I was inactive this month too due for irl problems and dealing with depression, but I'm fine now. I hope you finish SPZ soon, I really want to finish this big boy.
As the end of the game draws slowly but surely near, is there anything either of you know of at this point that you'd like me to cover as a topic in the future submission text? Also is there a YT video or playlist of the full movie?
Wow, almost 70k rerecords in this level, that's was be a pretty tough challenge huh? I love all of it.
Yeah a few spots took me a while to fully optimize. If anything it was more time consuming than challenging. I still found this level to be fun to tas though.
Plus I had to really optimize SPZ2 (and the end of Act 1) to make it past the moving object at 0:57 in Act 2.
Evil_3D wrote:
I was inactive this month too due for irl problems and dealing with depression, but I'm fine now.
I'm sorry to hear that but I'm glad you're better now. For the future if you do want someone to talk with about your problems I'm more than willing to help you in any way I can. Just send me a pm.
Evil_3D wrote:
I hope you finish SPZ soon, I really want to finish this big boy.
I really wanna finish this too. We should be able to finish it june or early july depending on how things go.
SPZ2 shouldn't take me too much longer. I've gotten most of the level done. I could use your help with one thing though. Can you see if you can get me to clip through the moving object at 1:52 any sooner? I've been at it for a while now and this is the fastest I could do it.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/732705058/Evil_3D-TheYogWog-kaan55-S3K-ST-ringattack.gmvTheYogWog wrote:
As the end of the game draws slowly but surely near, is there anything either of you know of at this point that you'd like me to cover as a topic in the future submission text? Also is there a YT video or playlist of the full movie?
At the moment I can't think of anything you can cover but maybe Evil will have better insight on this.
Here's Evil's playlist containing all the WIP videos. I personally think it'll be easier for you to just watch the gmv above and the video for LRZ1.
Also thanks for reminding me about the submission text. I don't have much of it atm. I did start with AIZ2 and then just kinda stopped. That stuff might be outated anyways because it was for v3. Speaking of AIZ2 I think I'll do that one last.
As the end of the game draws slowly but surely near, is there anything either of you know of at this point that you'd like me to cover as a topic in the future submission text? Also is there a YT video or playlist of the full movie?
If you want you can start to write it, the most important things to explain are Tails grabs and explain some tricks, we don't need a wall of text too, just a summary explanation with [frame]-[time] is fine. If I see that things are missing I will add them later.
kaan55 wrote:
Can you see if you can get me to clip through the moving object at 1:52 any sooner? I've been at it for a while now and this is the fastest I could do it.
So I'm familiar with Sonic TASes but not many specifics of the mechanics behind this particular run. Would it be helpful if I sent a list of questions I would have as a somewhat-casual viewer as suggestions on what points would be useful to comment on in the submission text?
An example of the type of questions I would have: "In LB2 at 2:13, why did Sonic dash up the hill for a moment before turning around and going back the way he came?". (I assume the answer is related to Tails spawning mechanics, but I'm not sure.)
I can probably find some time to look through the entire thing so far - I've watched these WIPs so many times, it's silly :) - if you think that would be helpful.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
All help is welcome, also to make the movie more understandable for normal people I will make 2 encodes, the first in Sonic's camera and the 2nd in Tails, like in AIZ2.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
It’s only my personal opinion, but honestly, I hate camhack encodes. They usually cause more questions than answers. Why? Because they make the viewer see what they’re not supposed to see, including camhack’s own glitches (death pose in some places, visual glitches between the acts and so on). They make the run look more like a fake one. For me, camhack is a tool for the TASers, the public should see the picture exactly as it would be produced by the original console. If I do camhack encodes, I usually make them private and show only in this forum.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
I don't will provide a camhack encode, just a point of view encode that people can see what Tails is doing (because 90% of the questions is related to this), in this case this encode generates more answers than questions.
This will be a encode only for my submission text and maybe can summary some text of it, I don't think the publishers will do the same thing if this is accepted (but it would be good idea).
I wonder if we could make the camhack work in BizHawk. I'm being bed ridden as I can't use Gens due to my disability as I can only use a mouse and an on-screen keyboard. So screw the primitive TAS capabilities of the past decade! TAStudio is the best way to make TASes.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
Evil_3D wrote:
PikachuMan wrote:
So screw the primitive TAS capabilities of the past decade! TAStudio is the best way to make TASes.
Unless someone ported Sonic TAS tools to Bizhawk gens is still the best choice for this games in term of optimization.
As marzojr already told — he could port the TAS tools to BizHawk, but he can’t, because he uses Linux, and BizHawk does not support Linux.
But the TAS tools (Lua script set) is not even the worst part of the problem. The main one is still the camera hack, absense of which makes it impossible to control Sonic offscreen (which is absoultely required for almost any TAS).
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
My opinion on a camhack is that I think one for Tails would work very well for this TAS. There is so much happening off screen that is impressive, if you can see it. All sorts of places where Tails goes off and grabs some rings, sometimes in an interesting way that only he can do as an off-screen object.
One random example, in FB1, 0:33, Sonic misses 4 rings with the electric shield. You can hardly tell in real-time. And then at 0:39, the ring counter goes up by 4 (also very easy to miss in real-time), because Tails stayed below ground and doubled back to get these rings before despawning while Sonic can continue forward above.
Taking it farther, a series of cam-hacked encodes combined with a NESAtlas approach would be an enormous undertaking (which I've thought a lot about how to practically accomplish.. first step would be to create full-res maps like exist for Sonic 1 and 2), but it would make for an amazing result. These maps are sprawling, beautiful, and packed with interesting things, and getting a sense of the entire route and how it's split up among the two characters simultaneously would have a huge amount of light bulbs going off as you immediately understood how much more was happening outside of the traditional screen boundaries.
---
Here is the list of questions I came up with over the past few days that could be used as a guide some of the likely questions during the submission process. I'm not looking for all of these to be answered myself, just to use as a guide for what someone of my knowledge level on TASing this game (slightly above the basics; I did some of the old Sonic 1 TASes many years ago).
AI2
A general explanation of the "death border" with maybe a map would be helpful. I remember doing this manually and counting the rings to figure out where that line was, though unfortunately I don't have the picture anymore. People may also ask why you can't zip through the wall in AI1 to fight the Knuckles boss and if that would allow for getting more of the rings in his area.
HC1
2:24 - Why does Sonic bounce up high at the end? (I assume for a favorable global timer in HC2)
HC2
1:20 - Does Sonic bouncing up in the hand spinning thing cost any time? Does it help anything or just look different?
2:03 - How does Sonic survive on these spikes?
2:05 - Would it be faster/possible to get Tails to spawn/land earlier and fly Sonic across these spikes? (Maybe that would lose time on the boss?)
MG1
Why generate the fire shield at the end of act 1? (Spend time for a global timer again, just with something cool looking?)
CN1
Same question on generating unnecessary shields at the end of act 1 - global timer manipulation?
CN2
1:40 - Could you repeatedly bubble shield this red spinner downward instead of going around the fans?
2:26 - The balloon bouncing *seems* a little snow but it's unclear whether that would matter anyway due to the timed object (spinning set of 3 bumpers) at 2:30
3:31 - How does Sonic go through the wall here? Is this a consequence of being on the Knuckles route somewhere else?
IC1
1:47 - Why not use the springs and platforms here? (I actually know it's to preserve the slope glitch but that's not obvious at first)
2:10 - An explanation what happens here would be helpful. I think I understand it - both bosses are spawned by Tails falling below, the one above is killed, the one below is almost killed and saved for later in Act 2 to kill midway through, in order to get 2 signposts to get both sets of underground ringboxes.
LB1
Is it possible to fight the Knuckles Act 1 boss instead of the Sonic boss to keep Act 2's water level down (while still getting all of Act 1's rings, or maybe having to come back for them from Area 2 via bonus stage level border resetting, if that's even possible...)
LB2
2:13 - Why detour to the left for a second, up the side of the wall, before turning around?
4:05 - Could you detour back to the Knuckles boss around 3:38 instead and save time overall here?
MH1
At the end of the act, could you regain control of Sonic to begin Act 2 like in some previous TASes? Or does this make total ring collection impossible?
FB1
0:55 - Why the extra little hop before spin-dashing to the left?
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
JXQ wrote:
Taking it farther, a series of cam-hacked encodes combined with a NESAtlas approach would be an enormous undertaking (which I've thought a lot about how to practically accomplish.. first step would be to create full-res maps like exist for Sonic 1 and 2), but it would make for an amazing result. These maps are sprawling, beautiful, and packed with interesting things, and getting a sense of the entire route and how it's split up among the two characters simultaneously would have a huge amount of light bulbs going off as you immediately understood how much more was happening outside of the traditional screen boundaries.
Such maps actually do exist; there is also a tool for creating them — called Sonic Extractor. I definitely love the idea of HD atlas encodes, and I beleive that such a great work needs some extra encodes to show what’s happening (though the default encode should also be present and… should be the default one). I remember r57shell working on an improved camera hack for Gens, allowing seeing atlas-like picture in real time while playing, but the project seems to be abandoned at this moment.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
