Finally, the long anticipated Bubble Bobble improvement arrives! This movie was started early January of 2008. This movie improves the published movie by 2 minutes 40.68 seconds.
As with all adelikat submissions, I recommend you download the release package found here
It contains the movie file, memory watch file, and most importantly, level savestates; including a savestate to go directly to the boss fight.

Contributers

  • Tompa 72
  • adelikat 64
  • Bablo 12
  • CtrlAltDestroy 5
  • Baxter 7
  • Cardboard 4
  • Randil 2
Numbers reflect the number of levels each author worked on. They did not have to be the "final version" to count on the list.

The movie

(flowplayer module removed)

Warps

We decided to use warps in this movie (whereas the published movie did not).
To warp you must collect an umbrella. Umbrellas warp you 4-5 levels (depending on color) Umbrellas appear after you pop 20 water bubbles. Water bubbles are spread out over several levels. Unfortunately they appear in the levels at 240 frame intervals. So it is actually not worth it to hang out in a level and pop 20 of them. We determined that the optimal amount is to pop 2 bubbles in each water bubble level. Doing so allows for 2 warps to occur in the game. The reason for 2 is that all levels are completed with a 240-480 frame time span, so no bubble is waited on for a full 240 frames this way. In reality not all levels work the same. As such, some bubbles are waited on for a full 240 frames. Still, enough aren't that warping is profitable.
Unfortunately warping is only 1 level if used in A6 or A7! As such the optimal situation is to collect extra bubbles in 92 to initiate a warp then.
Water bubble levels:
5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 40, 49, 52, 64, 74, 77, 87, 92, A6 and A7
We use the warp in 21 to skip to 26 and in 94 to skip to 99

EXTEND

This is perhaps classified as a warp. Spell the word EXTEND and you go to a bonus screen immediately then to the next level. This allows you to skip a level and is often faster than completing the level.
To get letter bubbles, you must kill enemies in combos. The bigger the combo the more letters. Even then, the letters are very random and require manipulation. In later levels, it requires delaying frames to make the right letters appear (whereas in earlier levels, movements during the level wait times was sufficient).
To make matters more complicated, later levels often give you letter bubbles in the level you got the combo. This is unfortunately useless for collecting the final letter. This reduced the number of times we could effectively EXTEND.
We managed to use EXTEND to save time in many places throughout the movie.

Power-ups

There are 3 useful power-ups in the game. The shoes for increased speed (a must!), the blue candy for longer range bubbles (comes in handy often), and the green candy for faster bubble delivery (a must). Only 1 power-up can appear in a level at a time. Each dragon needs each of these upgrades. The upgrades happen based on certain events: Blowing bubbles, popping bubbles, hopping on bubbles. The first levels of the game are devoted to making these power-ups appear in an optimal fashion. Once both dragon's are leveled up, they keep them until they die (making dying never profitable). The hardest part in planning the TAS was figuring out the optimal power-up strategy.

Glitches

One useful glitch was found in the making. When the bubble pops at the beginning of a level, you are able to jump in the air. This is used in almost all levels.

Ram Values

  • 0439 Water bubble counter
  • 0435 Bubbles blown
  • 0436 Bubbles popped
  • 0437 Bubbles hopped on

Categories

  • Uses warps
  • Aims to get chicks (Best ending)
  • Uses death to save time (on final boss)
  • 2 players
  • Genre: Platform

mmbossman: Congratulations to all for knocking the famtasia list down by one more! I will accept this to obsolete the currently published run from way back in 2004.

adelikat: Replacing with a 34 frame faster boss fight by CtrlAltDestroy.

Player (116)
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 700
Location: suffern, ny
this run was fun watch. Yes vote from me!
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Joined: 10/24/2005
Posts: 1080
Location: San Jose
I thought this was puzzle bobble! Voting yes! Congrats on a great run! You guys did an amazing job! P2 is indeed a bad ass!
<agill> banana banana banana terracotta pie! <Shinryuu> ho-la terracotta barba-ra anal-o~
Post subject: Commentary on Ustream announcement.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3599)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
We are going to do LIVE commentary of this on ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/adelikattas It will be on Tuesday (2/2/2010) 2:00PM eastern time zone. It will be me, tompa, and hopefully cardboard and others.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Experienced player (699)
Joined: 2/19/2006
Posts: 742
Location: Quincy, MA
Wow, the boss fight was incredible! I really enjoyed that. Yes vote.
Super Mario Bros. console speedrunner - Andrew Gardikis
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Wow, I actually managed to watch all of this? Go me. And go you guys! Nice run! One question: after the second EXTEND warp, you spent a long time with both players being one letter short of getting another EXTEND. Why didn't you complete one of them? Did it just take too much time to set up the combo for it to be worthwhile? Of course, you did then use the warp twice in rapid succession. I'm curious: did you use a button configuration where P1's inputs were P2's reversed inputs for some of the levels? Also man, human Bob has a major case of hypothermia.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Former player
Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587
Derakon wrote:
One question: after the second EXTEND warp, you spent a long time with both players being one letter short of getting another EXTEND. Why didn't you complete one of them? Did it just take too much time to set up the combo for it to be worthwhile? Of course, you did then use the warp twice in rapid succession.
Some levels are faster to complete than others. So skipping those slower ones is obviously faster. EDIT: I guess I was wrong :( *cries in the corner* EDIT2: <Tompa> You were right as well though, Brushy - Yay!
Tompa
Any
Editor, Expert player (2142)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1934
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
Derakon: Something that should have been mentioned, is that letters can only appear on levels with a hole in the ceiling or the floor, as far as I know. So that's another reason why we don't get EXTEND as often. I didn't use an input configuations like that for levels at least. Not many levels can be done with the same, but reverse, input for both players.
Editor, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Voted not, this movie does not color a dinosaur, which I couldn't care less about.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 150
Wow, I loved this game as a child. I must have played it a hundred times. It was great watching you guys destroy it. Even those PITA levels to play un-assisted. Boss fight was unbelievable.
MarbleousDave
He/Him
Player (12)
Joined: 9/12/2009
Posts: 1555
Great run! A yes vote from me.
NitroGenesis
He/Him
Editor, Experienced player (551)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
Bisqwit wrote:
Voted no, this movie does not color a dinosaur which I couldn't care less about.
I have formatted Bisqwit's text for all your enjoyment. Also, mklip2001, Solomon's Key is still standing.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
mklip2001
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
NitroGenesis: My bad. Yeah, Solomon's Key is still left. Still, this is incredible progress in the right direction. Cardboard: Yeah, P2 may have been a badass and stole the girls, but because of that boss strategy, P1 totally owned him in score. I mean, P1 basically tripled his score during that boss fight and P2 got hardly anything. I dunno if that counts for anything... Also, is the submission file being replaced with one with a faster boss fight?
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Skilled player (1637)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
Yes vote because now adelikat can stop bothering me to do a level.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Skilled player (1307)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 1354
Location: U.S.
Yes vote because I say so.
Active player (325)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Quick!! Somebody has 2 hours to obsolete the Solomon's Key run!! I'm going to give this boss battle one more shot in a moment.
Post subject: Re: Uploaded to Archive.org
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Flygon wrote:
Longest filename I've ever hard to create for an encode.
I wonder if a shortening convention could be used for cases where there are so many authors. An overly long file name can be inconvenient (and some file systems have a limit on file name length, most prominently some commonly used data CD/DVD file systems, IIRC). Maybe something like "various authors", or the authors could agree on a representative author and have his name with something like "and others" attached to it.
Experienced player (822)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
DarkKobold wrote:
Yes vote because now adelikat can stop bothering me to do a level.
^ This
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Post subject: Re: Uploaded to Archive.org
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Warp wrote:
I wonder if a shortening convention could be used for cases where there are so many authors. An overly long file name can be inconvenient (and some file systems have a limit on file name length, most prominently some commonly used data CD/DVD file systems, IIRC).
The standard way this is handled in other publications is to pick a primary author and then add "et al", e.g. "Flygon et al".
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
There is a difference between the published run and this one, and it's that the published run didn't use any warps where as this one did. I doubt I'm gonna vote. I was entertained up until the warp, then I just kinda fell out of it. I really don't think this TAS should replace the current run because of the use of warps. It should at least have it's own category.
Active player (405)
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708
I've chosen not to vote. I don't really find this to be a very entertaining game to TAS. Maybe I'd enjoy it more if I played the game more thoroughly, but after a couple of levels the run does get very repetitive. I could have just voted meh, but I thought that might not be fair due to my lack of experience with the game, and especially since this would likely obsolete existing runs.
Active player (325)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
If there is a separate warped category for Bubble Bobble it would only include 10 more levels (and no EXTEND) out of 112. That wouldn't fly on this site for entertainment I think. This game is already boring enough for most people, 10 levels is an acceptable (and welcome) loss.
Skilled player (1402)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
If there is a separate warped category for Bubble Bobble it would only include 10 more levels (and no EXTEND) out of 112. That wouldn't fly on this site for entertainment I think. This game is already boring enough for most people, 10 levels is an acceptable (and welcome) loss.
Yeah, I (and I think the vast majority) fully agree. The amount that is skipped is relatively low, and skipping the levels is a science in itself, collecting water bubbles in the right levels, and planning ahead (same for EXTEND).
Expert player (2454)
Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822
I have a question: Is this really fast enough? I saw the next level is start after 2 players hit the ground of the next level, so why not get to the lowest place at the end of the previous level, to hit the ground faster. Am I right about that?
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3599)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
There is a minimum amount of time that has to go by before a level starts. As long as both players get to the bottom of the scree within that time, no time is lost. In this TAS no time is lost unless it is intentional to manipulate letters.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Expert player (2454)
Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822
Oh, I see.
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).