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This is a River City Ransom EX "Wussy" TAS, an improvement over my previously submission.
This is played on Wussy Difficulty (Very Easy), with Alex as the player, and Ryan as the AI ally.
It has the following:
  • Aims for fastest time (Ends on final blow)
  • Aims for shortest completion of main story plot
  • Takes damage to save time
  • High Foul Plays
  • Used Long Jumping, which makes the player move faster than running
  • Used Jump Throwing, which boosts attack damage to enemies
  • Used multiplier settings
  • Took in constructive criticisms from previous submission
  • Less input spam
  • Skips cutscenes

Same rules apply from previous submission. I still don't have a lot of knowledge on the randomness in the game, so there isn't any information I can give or explain at the moment.
  • I went with Alex and Ryan, because I believed that having an ally makes the game faster to complete, than playing solo.
  • I played on Wussy difficulty, so the majority of enemies' stats are low enough to deal 1-hit KOs.
  • I increased Alex's stat multipliers in order to deal as much damage as possible.
  • I rushed through areas as quickly as possible, while moving up / down to avoid oncoming projectiles that will increase gameplay time because of sprite animations and movement being stalled.
  • I went with the route: Moose -> Rocko -> Blade -> Turk -> Mojo -> Thor -> Ivan -> Randy & Andy -> Slick.
  • It is a lot quicker to just die, than to traverse through multiple areas without dying. In my previous run, I aimed for 0 damage, hence it is slower to traverse than in this run.

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: There has been some arguing in the thread about the difficulty choice for this run. It seems like the hardest difficulty mode is preferred over the easiest for this game, as this current movie on easiest mode plows its way through the enemies with a bit too much ease and with relatively little strategy involved. As such, rejecting for using the easiest difficulty when per the guidelines and public opinion the hardest difficulty is preferable.
That aside, I'm also not getting the impression that this movie is sufficiently optimal. Besides the lack of knowledge on randomness and luck manipulation so far, I'm also not seeing much of a consistent battle strategy, or the run does not appear to finish off enemies as fast as possible, which makes the run look suboptimal. For instance, in the Moose fight, Moose is defeated by knocking him down, grabbing him, and jump-throwing him into the ally so he bounces into the pit - but it looks like it would work just as well to grab him and just throw him down directly, which would save a few seconds. I can't tell if there is any reason for doing this, but I'm not convinced that there are no better ways of going throughout the run either. In general, for a future run of this game, I'd like to see some more insight on exactly what the strategy is behind the move choices that the player character makes.
In conclusion, rejecting for poor difficulty choice. Better luck next time!

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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5872: tom_mai78101's GBA River City Ransom EX "Wussy" in 08:39.02
Spikestuff
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Spiked the input. 400-odd blank frames. You may want to be careful if you do create another improvement. Upload it to userfiles and post it here, don't create another submission.
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tom_mai78101
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I see. I'll take heed next time, and I probably don't plan on making another submission for this mode in the short term. I thought that if there's a significant improvement, I would need to cancel my old one, then resubmit a new one to take its place. This is the rules I followed. http://tasvideos.org/SubmissionInstructions.html But other than that, I didn't realize there's still extra 400 empty frames. :/
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Hi tom_mai78101, welcome to TASVideos! I haven't watched your run, so I can't comment on it, but I congratulate you for taking the time and patience to make it. I unfortunately have to point out that it's rare for runs that use anything other than the highest difficulty level to be published here, though there are exceptions. If there are reasons I've missed for why choosing "Wussy" makes for a more impressive run, then I apologize. Otherwise, I don't think you should be downhearted if this doesn't get published, but instead use what you've learned to now try and beat it on the hardest difficulty, or to TAS another game. Keep at it, and we're glad to have you here!
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c-square wrote:
I unfortunately have to point out that it's rare for runs that use anything other than the highest difficulty level to be published here, though there are exceptions.
Specifically, the rules are here: http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html#SelectYourDifficultyWell The most common reason to play on the easiest difficulty is if all it does is make enemies have more HP, which isn't as rare as you imply (I don't know what it does for this game).
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tom_mai78101
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Patashu wrote:
c-square wrote:
I unfortunately have to point out that it's rare for runs that use anything other than the highest difficulty level to be published here, though there are exceptions.
Specifically, the rules are here: http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html#SelectYourDifficultyWell The most common reason to play on the easiest difficulty is if all it does is make enemies have more HP, which isn't as rare as you imply (I don't know what it does for this game).
The goal of this run is to get to the end in the fastest time possible. I chose the Easiest difficulty, because it allows me to quickly finish off enemies and Bosses. Playing on the Easiest difficulty allows almost all enemies be dealt with by 1-KO, when an enemy dies, it drops money that will stay on the screen for about 5 real-time seconds. You need to collect all money on the screen, if not despawned, in order for Bosses to appear. And you need to defeat all of the enemies in an area, in order for that Area Boss to appear. If you play it on the Hardest difficulty, it takes about 5 to 10 times the amount to finish off an enemy due to their stats being raised, particularly when during this run, I never attempted to raise stats at all. Bosses in particular would recover very quickly, compared to Easiest difficulty. Raising stats means you have to watch the animations, you have to grind for more money to spend on boosting stats, and the stat boosts only boosts a little bit. Overall, it takes more time to play, as well as not being able to skip out the animations, so it cannot be counted towards as the run with the fastest time. If you don't raise stats, your attacks are snipping off 2 to 5 HP at most per hit. Of course, you can raise your stats quicker by purchasing the more expensive items in shops, but that also means you have to grind enemies. Certain enemies (in respective colors) have higher amounts of money dropped when they are defeated, but they also have stats increased, so it takes much longer to grind overall, than to swiftly deal KOs to them. For comparison, the first Boss you meet is Moose, and the area you meet him in contains a Death Pit. Anyone going into the Pit will die immediately. On Easiest difficulty, not only you can easily knock him down in order to pick him up and throw it into the pit, you can quickly skip a large part of the Boss Battle with him. However, on Hardest difficulty, because of stat increases, Moose recovers faster before you even get the chance to pick him up to throw into the pit, so the battle will drag on for about 1 minute extra just because of his ability to recover. Not only that, your attacks are much weaker, so it takes a bit more time for Moose to entirely lose his HP. And when the run's aim is to get the fastest time, the tradeoff for Difficulty versus Completion Time is considered, and I chose to go with Completion Time over Difficulty.
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tom_mai78101 wrote:
If you play it on the Hardest difficulty, it takes about 5 to 10 times the amount to finish off an enemy due to their stats being raised, particularly when during this run, I never attempted to raise stats at all. Bosses in particular would recover very quickly, compared to Easiest difficulty. Raising stats means you have to watch the animations, you have to grind for more money to spend on boosting stats, and the stat boosts only boosts a little bit. Overall, it takes more time to play, as well as not being able to skip out the animations, so it cannot be counted towards as the run with the fastest time. If you don't raise stats, your attacks are snipping off 2 to 5 HP at most per hit. Of course, you can raise your stats quicker by purchasing the more expensive items in shops, but that also means you have to grind enemies. Certain enemies (in respective colors) have higher amounts of money dropped when they are defeated, but they also have stats increased, so it takes much longer to grind overall, than to swiftly deal KOs to them.
Frankly what you describe here sounds like a much more interesting and entertaining run than simply one-shotting everything like you do now.
tom_mai78101
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Radiant wrote:
tom_mai78101 wrote:
If you play it on the Hardest difficulty, it takes about 5 to 10 times the amount to finish off an enemy due to their stats being raised, particularly when during this run, I never attempted to raise stats at all. Bosses in particular would recover very quickly, compared to Easiest difficulty. Raising stats means you have to watch the animations, you have to grind for more money to spend on boosting stats, and the stat boosts only boosts a little bit. Overall, it takes more time to play, as well as not being able to skip out the animations, so it cannot be counted towards as the run with the fastest time. If you don't raise stats, your attacks are snipping off 2 to 5 HP at most per hit. Of course, you can raise your stats quicker by purchasing the more expensive items in shops, but that also means you have to grind enemies. Certain enemies (in respective colors) have higher amounts of money dropped when they are defeated, but they also have stats increased, so it takes much longer to grind overall, than to swiftly deal KOs to them.
Frankly what you describe here sounds like a much more interesting and entertaining run than simply one-shotting everything like you do now.
Thanks for letting me know, but for now, I need to take a break from TASing since this is my first publication. (Second one, because it significantly improved completion time over my previous submission.) Of course, I will be tackling the Crazy difficulty eventually, but here's a list of things I need to do first:
  • Figure out how to control the randomness of the enemy gang type when entering a new area.
  • Figure out what optimal stats is preferred to give the most damage.
  • Figure out if I need to increase my willpower, which affects how quick you recover after taking a blow that knocks you into the air. Would it make it more interesting?
  • Figure out how to quickly nab the best technique to unlock. So far, I have one in mind that I use prominently when playing regularly.
  • Find out if playing Solo or having an ally is more interesting.
  • Find out if playing a non-protagonist character as Solo or have allies join up over the course of the run is more interesting.
I will probably need a lot of help in figuring out all of these from others who are interested in doing this speedrun, also. Oh well, this is my current best run. I hoped you all enjoyed it.
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tom_mai78101 wrote:
Oh well, this is my current best run. I hoped you all enjoyed it.
And, published or not, I hope you can take the making of this run for the accomplishment it is. You've taken a great step in making making your own TAS. I truly hope it won't be your last. :)
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