Submission Text Full Submission Page
Daedalian Opus is a puzzle game for the Nintendo Game Boy. You have to put pieces into a canvas. The pieces are like the one used in Tetris, except that they are pentominos instead of tetrominos (with the only exception of the square piece you receive in the last level).

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: VisualBoyAdvance 1.7.2 re-recording v19.3
  • <List the objectives of your movie here>
  • Beat all the levels as fast as possible

Comments

<Put here a longer explanation of your submission> When you start a level there are pieces all around the screen. You move the cursor with the directional arrows, then you pick a piece with A, then you move the piece around with the directional arrows. B will rotate the piece 90 degrees counterclockwise, Select will flip the piece vertically, Start will flip the piece horizontally. Then A will drop the piece. You can move and rotate in the same frame; you can move and flip in the same frame; you can't rotate and flip in the same frame. You must wait 1 frame before doing the same operation twice (e.g. up, wait, up, wait, up), though you can do different operations on consecutive frames (e.g. up, left, up, left). The resulting number of frames needed to move a piece is the same in the two cases anyway (as up, left, up, left takes the same time as up+left, wait, up+left, wait). I tried to optimise the solutions by looking for the shortest paths and shortest keypresses, in order to minimize cursor movements. Sometimes this wasn't possible because the pieces were completely spread on the screen. After each level there is a long cutscene where the character moves from a level to the next one. Unfortunately those cutscenes are not skippable.

Other comments

Puzzle games are always particular when it comes to a TAS. I think it can be interesting to see a movie that finds all the solutions in the shortest time possible, but I don't know if this would apply to people who never played the game. Daedalian Opus is still a cool game, in my opinion. My main concern are the ultra long cutscenes, but in case this submission is accepted, it wouldn't be hard to shave them from the AVI file. All in all, I'm happy about this movie, also because it's technically almost perfect. By "almost" I mean that I found out some possible improvements while I was playing the later levels, and I could apply only a part of them to the earlier levels, because hex editing the movie file caused desync. I doubt this would save more than 1 frame per level, though, resulting in 1÷2 seconds of global improvement. A more massive improvement can come if someone finds a better solution or a better path. If that's the case I would be more than glad to see someone obsoleting my run.
Well, I'm looking forward to see how this one turns out, I put a lot of time and effort in this run.

mmbossman: As a puzzle game this is ok, but the unskippable cutscenes ultimately kill the entertainment value of the run, so I'm rejecting it. Good luck with your future works.

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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2107: nineko's GB Daedalian Opus in 11:05.30
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I'm providing an encode of my own movie. Thanks for watching :)
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Glad to see you finished this. It was about what I was expecting... I personally like the parts of the movie that feature the game itself, seeing the pieces fly together quickly; unfortunately it's pretty much the same thing over and over again, with long pauses in between. Seems pretty well done though. I gave it a 5|7 ... Good job, hope to see some other games from you.
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I pretty much agree with Alden. Conveniently, the time between levels (for levels where no new piece is provided) is perfect for VLC's forward-skip, so there wasn't much dead time when I watched it. :) It was short enough that I didn't really get bored, but on the other hand it wasn't really impressive either.
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Since you sent me the WIP, I decided to spend a few minutes to watch this. Unfortunately, as I told you on IRC, I don't think this game is very well suited for TASing at all. The long cut scenes are offset by action that gets repetitive after the 7th or 8th level, and there isn't much to really get excited about this game. It looks pretty well done, but with games like this, there is often a lot of frames to save with different techniques that aren't immediately obvious. Rated it 2|6.
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This movie is fun to watch... if you hold down turbo. Honestly, if the cutscenes weren't utterly fucking boring, unskippable, and long... it would've been a lot better. 7, 8 maybe. The action scenes were good, fun, nice to watch. Seemed decent. But the actual run itself was rediculous.
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6/6 I would have rated entertainment as a 4, C-/D+ range, until I noticed that every level had a ridiculous name that did not describe what the empty box looked like. I mean, "snow" looked like a fucking staircase XD! I STILL laugh my ass off at that shit XD Technique, it looked pretty good. I don't pretend to know that you did things as precisely as possible, but considering you have a game completely centered on a mouse movement (so to speak) it would have been near impossible to get everything perfect the first go round. By no means am I talking seconds improvements, here, but frames... don't take it the wrong way! Anyways, I don't know if there will be a large demographic for this game to be published. But, I was at least a bit entertained, so there ya go :)
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
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stickyman05 wrote:
6/6 I would have rated entertainment as a 4, C-/D+ range, until I noticed that every level had a ridiculous name that did not describe what the empty box looked like. I mean, "snow" looked like a fucking staircase XD! I STILL laugh my ass off at that shit XD
That word they use is the password system. It doesn't have anything to do with the shape of the next piece.
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whut. this game doesn't have cutscenes. and the levels don't have names. they have numbers. Those are passwords. At least play and understand the game yourselves before checking out the TAS. >_>
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Cheezwizz wrote:
whut. this game doesn't have cutscenes.>_>
What exactly do you call those scenes that cut in between the levels then?
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So I guess super mario bros is a giant cutscene then, since you have to move in that game too. Also, definition: A cinematic sequence which helps further the story without giving the player direct control.
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Well, because of all those CUTSCENES, it really brought down the overall entertainment of the movie. Which is a pitty as the puzzle elements were quite quick and well thought out. I'm still have not quite caught up with the new rating system, so i'll just give this a Meh vote for the moment :)
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mmbossman wrote:
That word they use is the password system. It doesn't have anything to do with the shape of the next piece.
Bossy, you ruined my fun :'((
Cheezwizz wrote:
whut. this game doesn't have cutscenes. and the levels don't have names. they have numbers. Those are passwords. At least play and understand the game yourselves before checking out the TAS. >_>
Step your game down, son.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
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They're cutscenes you clear by holding right for 3 seconds and then up, unlike the traditional cutscenes where you have to press A or whatnot. Or, they would be exactly like Mario if in Mario you couldn't jump, run and there were no enemies or obstacles of any kind :D
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Also in the Knuckles Chaotix TAS there are cutscenes longer than the actual levels. They shouldn't count that much while evaluating a movie, as one can always fast forward through them.
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I played this game way back when an found it kind of nostalgic run here. The cutscenes indeed take up a large portion of the run, though I found them entertaining in an odd sort of way. The puzzles don't look like they could be completed much faster. However, that aspect doesn't add much new after so many levels and seems to be regulated to one scripted solution, though I think some of them had more than one way of finishing the puzzle.
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5/6 from me. 5: Unfortunately, entertainment was held at a meh level because of those overly long password showing parts. 6: While watching the run, it seemed to me that several pieces may have been picked in a different order to complete some levels faster. I can't name any specific levels or blocks, just a feeling. Besides, I saw some piece of conversation on IRC about somebody being ~64 faster after level 3 already (probably using the optimizations nineko couldn't hex in w/o the whole run desyncing). Overall, meg with a very slight tendency to no.
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nineko wrote:
Also in the Knuckles Chaotix TAS there are cutscenes longer than the actual levels. They shouldn't count that much while evaluating a movie, as one can always fast forward through them.
Yes, but the problem is that the cutscenes are repetitive, boring, repetitive, slow, annoying, repetitive, and they take up way too much time compared to actual gameplay. Did I mention repetitive? Especially for how short they are.
Cheezwizz wrote:
whining about the definition of a cutscene
You are an idiot.
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"boo hoo, we are elite and think we know everything because we are TASers and you hurt our feelings, go away you obviously more learned non-TAS creature"
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It's more like the concensus on our planet is that a cutscene is a part of the game, usually between levels, where there is nothing that can be done to speed it up any further, either due to a minimum of input required (e.g., holding right) or by set delays (e.g., getting a piece from the fairy). For your refrence, from grabbing the flagpole to the beginning of the next stage (i.e. when Mario can begin moving) is considered a cutscene.
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Then you're just basically agreeing with what I said, that you're wrong and choose to be because of what you are. Thanks.
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Cheezwizz wrote:
Then you're just basically agreeing with what I said, that you're wrong and choose to be because of what you are. Thanks.
Different places have different rules and concepts, smartass.
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Ooo, a tautology argument. How very interesting!
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Could we all just, y'know, stop being jerks and idiots and arguing over things that really don't matter? Anyway, as for multiple solutions: there definitely are multiple solutions for most, if not all, of the puzzles. At the very least the puzzles with rotational symmetry can be solved in different orientations, and the puzzles with mirror symmetry can be solved by flipping the original solution. Even beyond that, though, I'd be very surprised if the later puzzles only had one solution, because it'd take forever to find (and I know that as a kid I beat the last puzzle without spending too long at it...). Finally, the carpentry puzzle in Puzzle Pirates is basically a direct rip of this game, and I know there are plenty of ways to handle a given situation in Puzzle Pirates -- granted, in that game you do get multiples of the same piece.
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I found it quite interesting, but the cutscenes are so long they ruin the actual movie...