Awesome, a 3 year bump from the last page of the forum...
I saw an interesting Contra 3 glitch on youtube that seems to let you skip entire levels. If someone was planning to improve the current run, this trick could save a TON of time. I would guess anywhere around 5 minutes.
The trick works by killing an enemy to get an extra life and dying around the same time. The game fades out to the game over screen and respawns you just before everything goes black, but rather than the game over screen, you get the level end screen instead.
I think that when you lose all of your lives the game triggers the same fade out function as when you beat a boss. If the game can detect you have remaining lives it assumes you beat a level, if you are not, it assumes you lost.
I was able to get this to work on the side view stages, but I wasn't good enough or didn't spend enough time to get it to work on the top view stages. If you do the trick on the last level, it takes you back to level 1.
Here is the youtube link
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uqXYIM2Yw44
Here is an SMV of the trick done on the first level
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/5774/Contra%20III.smv
Wow nice bug.
Edit: Though, it will be hard to do in 2 player movie but probably not impossible since you may make one make it Game over before but the Gme over one won,t come back :s or make both gain 1 life before the Game Over screen. :S
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It could at least be done on the pacifist movie perhaps?
Well, duh, you have to kill an enemy to do it :S
Maybe a 1 player (non-pacifist) movie that uses this bug would be more appropriate than a pacifist run as the complimentary run on the site.
You could do a two player run with it. Either kill off one of the players right before you do it or both die and gain a life. You get to keep one of your guns I assume so if you can get both players to enough points in time then it'd be nice to to both do, not to mention that you'll have another player. If points for both is a problem then just continue with 1 player and do the rest with him or die and continue with both players. The continue might be faster because of time saved on level 5 with two players.
I'll look at one of the previous runs and see how many points are available. I know you can get a ton from certain badies if you kill them and they'd be quick to kill too.
We need to know at how many points each extra life is given, it looks like the first one is really quick.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
What about doing it on a miniboss? There are lots of those in Contra III, and you have to kill each one of them, anyway. That would cut quite an amount of time off the pacifist run.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Two player I think it is best defined as a run started with 2-players, I don't know why you would use a different difinition. It says in the menu "2 players A" when you pick this how is that not a 2-player run? Also if both players do the trick they will both be around for the full duration. Whatever you want to call it, the fastest run would be one which starts as 2-player A and does the death trick multiple times.
Looks like first extra life is at 20,000 second is around 70,000 and thrid is 140,000, forth is 200,000
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
What if I start 2 player run and one dies at beginning and never come back? Imo, it's not a question if 2 player is selected at intro. Both should be there almost all the run. With the trick, I doubt it will happen. But if you prove I am wrong then it's good, I have no objection.
Edit: But the movie might be cool to watch even if it's "half 2 player run".
You have started a 2 player run, if you finish it you have a finished 2 player run. That’s how I see it. Bisqwit can decide what it is, whatever you call it seems trivial to me.
For the strategy I think you’d want to skip level 1 as soon as possible since it’s long and you can get 40,000 right away for a 2-player skip. You need only play up to the 3rd dog. Player 1 can take laser and 2 can take spread over start of level 2.
You'll want to get crushes on the last bunkers for each player. might have to get something better for the spread and laser on one of the earlier bunkers if you can't kill boss fast enough. Player 1 takes crush over to stage 3.
Stage 2 seems to give you a minimum of 1333990 points for completing it normally. This means one player could be on the verge of the second extra life but the other player will have to get the second extra life before stage 3 and will be about 20,000 points short of the third. I think it will take too long to get those points in stage 3 and stage 3 is long so a one player skip right away seems best here.
Stage 4 gives you tons of points at the very beginning and will be easy to get with the crush so the one player could do another skip here.
At the start of stage 5 you either want to die and continue with two players or finish the game out with one player. Continuing takes about 15s, having one extra player for stage 5 and 6 saves about 15s so some testing would have to be done here.
So there you have it, what do you guys think? Who’s going to start this? And when you do start it, be sure to dual vector (move diagonally) on stage 2 and 5.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
I like the idea of a half 2 player run where you would start with 1 player and bring the second one in as needed for levels 2 and 5 by using a continue.
In my opinion, using a continue and having two players for levels 5 and 6 should save more time than playing levels 5 and 6 with one because with two players you are able to beat level 5 faster as well as kill the bird boss in level 6 before it enters its second attack phase. But I can't say this 100%
Just curious Spider-Waffle, why does a player need to obtain two bombs in level two?
How do you join in with 2 players when you start a 1 player game?
I just found out when you do the level skip it sets your bombs to 0 for some reason so there is no way to carry bombs over after the level skip. There's a bomb at the start of stage 3 so you can skip with that one. For stage 4 you can get extra life, die, come back with a bomb, and then get another life all from those guys at the very start.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
This new strategy will make optimizing a lot more interesting. For level 1 you have to die 4 times, but you can't move the screen if you’re both dead and you have to be killing guys all the time too to get points. One player can kill the two dogs for his points, the other player kills one dog and everything else I guess, so you'd probably want this to be the player lagging behind, but he has to take lead when the other player dies two times.
Then I'm not sure how you’re going to get right amount of points going into stage 3. Need to find the address for points to see how much each thing is worth. You’ll need to get about 50,000 points and I think the boss is worth about that much, so you’ll want the other player to kill the boss. The player that’s level skipping stage 3 might have hard time getting 50,000 points. I think the bunkers are worth about 10,000 so he could go the route which kills 3 of those. But then you still need a bunch more points and they are very slow to come by. I think killing the stuff on the stage 2 boss gives decent points so that might be the best way. So the best way to do that would be to get 1 or 2 bombs off the bunkers.
Then the question of doing stage 5 and 6 with 1 or 2 players is a hard one to answer. It takes about 15 seconds to die and continue. Then when you come back you only have machine guns. The bulk of the time saved with 2 players comes from stage 5, being able to spilt up the bunkers, and killing the last miniboss faster. The other 4 minibosses and the final boss you save maybe 3 seconds total.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
How do you join in with 2 players when you start a 1 player game?
I mean that you can start with 1 player, do a level skip to level 2, and then die. At the game over screen you can choose to continue with 2 people. After level 2 you can game over this player until he is needed again (maybe at level 5). Whether or not this is faster than using 1 player needs to be tested however.
I looked for memory values for the score and found two interesting addresses. 7E1FA0 and 7E1FE0 count the score for player 1 and player two respectively on my snes9x, but it does not count in the same way the end of the level score counter counts. It is strange, according to these addresses you get the first extra life around 150000, but enemies give around 10000 points each. Strange enough you get 5 points for shooting the weapon carriers and around 3000 for the car in the beginning of the first level.
I mean that you can start with 1 player, do a level skip to level 2, and then die. At the game over screen you can choose to continue with 2 people. After level 2 you can game over this player until he is needed again (maybe at level 5). Whether or not this is faster than using 1 player needs to be tested however.
But it might be indeed faster to be game over at start of any level. If points restart from 0, you'll only need 20 000 points instead of 50 000 or so.
Well the level skip doesn't seem to work on level 2 or 5, after you do 2 you can be at enough points to almost get the second extra life at stage 3.
But now that you mention it and I think about; you want to game over stage 4, then restart with 2-players and double skip to 5. Because otherwise you have to get two extra lifes at stage 4, one for the bomb and then one to skip the stage, this means killing 15 air bikes plus when you die the first time about 5 bikes go by, where as a two player skip with 20,000 points each is only 6 air bikes but you have to die two times each but these can be simultaneous so only 5 bikes will go by. The extra 9 air bikes takes about 4 seconds. Killing youself on stage4 or 5 takes wastes about 15 seconds each. Having two players for stage5 and 6 saves about 15 seconds. So by reseting on stage 4 you save about 4 seconds.
you can kill the bikes with just machine gun and you have 2 bombs each to use to kill so actually you could use bomb die and kill your first two bikes that way so I think dieing twice will be the limiting factor. With this method you could prolly do it with less than 11 bikes going by, so it could save more than 4 seconds. You will start stage 5 with 1 crush total which is better than if you had restarted on stage 5, so this saves even more time.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
I've been planing a real speedrun which will skip 1 3 and 4 and a problem which stands in my way is at the start of stage 4 you are given either a spread or a crush. If I get the crush I can kill 15 air bikes do the level skip but if I get the spread I can't. Can anyone figure out how to get the crush to come instead of the spread? For the TAS you will want the crush too.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/49025512737328245
I played around with the death warps a bit and managed to save about 10 frames on the published run (when I resynced the published run to bizhawk 2.2.1). all I did was shoot as many enemies on screen as possible to reduce lag from the explosion.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
It feels slower than the even the Pacifist run and less entertaining overall. (and I think that no vehicles should also be inherent to the category).
Good job on the other wip, though. I'd go back and try to optimize that run as much as possible to make a worthy submission.
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Not picking up the weapon upgrades kinda kills the entertainment value for me. Why don't you try to obsolete my 2 player run instead? I know for a fact there are plenty of places to improve lag and the top down levels can be massively improved by dual vectoring to increase movement speed.
Not picking up the weapon upgrades kinda kills the entertainment value for me. Why don't you try to obsolete my 2 player run instead? I know for a fact there are plenty of places to improve lag and the top down levels can be massively improved by dual vectoring to increase movement speed.
I could see myself doing that. I dont have much interest in doing 2 players TASes since it feels complex to me. But since I have some knowledge of the game already I will probably give it a shot.
Is there anything specific in your TAS that could be improved?
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
At least 60 frames can be saved on the level 1 boss just by reducing movement after killing it. I don't know how the lag in Snes9x compares to Bizhawk though.
In the top down levels, you can press two directions at once and then rotate the screen to allow for really fast movements. This is explained by other members in the thread from my submission. That will save a bunch of time over the published run.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Looks nice so far. Do you know how many frames you were able to save over my run?
I only have a couple critiques in regards to style choices. Try to kill every single enemy that you can. This makes the run look really super human. Also, you should try to avoid meshing the two characters into one. I know it makes doing the run so much easier, but ultimately it loses a lot of style points. I meshed them together a lot in my run and I really regretted doing so.
Looks nice so far. Do you know how many frames you were able to save over my run?
I only have a couple critiques in regards to style choices. Try to kill every single enemy that you can. This makes the run look really super human. Also, you should try to avoid meshing the two characters into one. I know it makes doing the run so much easier, but ultimately it loses a lot of style points. I meshed them together a lot in my run and I really regretted doing so.
Not sure, comparing movies made on bizhawk compared to snes9x is difficult because snes9x 1.43 undershoots lag. But From what I’ve done in the second level from when the music cuts off I can assume time was saved.
Also I actually liked how you meshed the two characters together. Its actually just as difficult to keep them both meshed together.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
