Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Looks like there wasn't a thread about this game, so I'll start one here. I'm planning on an improved TAS of this game, and I've slowly started recording now. Blechy and cyghfer are working on a console speedrun on this game, so we're helping each other out.
One thing I'd like your opinion on is the matter of taking damage and using death to save time. The published run is a no damage and no death run, but I'm considering employing these options in this new TAS. There are a few places in the game where taking damage would save time - sometimes these improvements are quite creative and funny, others look ugly but save a few frames. What are your thoughts on this matter? Should future TASes continue having the no damage + no death tag or is it ok to break this in the spirit of saving time (and for the prospect of adding the occasional funny damage/death scenes)? Or does taking damage and/or dying always look bad in this game?
As an example of taking damage to save some time, here is a movie file showing how the docks room can be finished 19 frames faster by taking damage.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Cardboard wrote:
How much time would you expect to gain in the whole run by taking damage and/or being slain and having your organs harvested?
Hard to say, having the organs harvested should save more time than being slain, but it all comes down to randomness in the end.
On a more serious note though, I haven't looked into this in detail, but I don't think it's that much in terms of time saved - my guess is that it's between 5 and 10 seconds in total. Blechy and/or cyghfer might have a better idea on this (they take damage and use death in their console run).
Why hello there! Randil and I have been talking over the past week and I'm really excited to see a new TAS of this. As he mentioned cyghfer and I have been doing runs on console, and having a blast doing so. We've been at it on and off since June of last year or so.
Here's our best overall run, which was ruined at the end by bad final boss luck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EPuWeef5g
I'm definitely all for damage & death abuse, I think the deaths especially look funny, and save a lot of time. Damage "boosting" in this game is different from most games in that it doesn't shift your character or open up any new route possibilities, it just allows you to charge through stuff instead of avoid them. I think that was Randil's concern, but I'm still all for it. We haven't timed out how much the damage/death abuse saves, but I'd say probably in the realm of 10-15 seconds.
There are a few rooms in the existing TAS where cyghfer picked out that luck can be manipulated a bit better, and definitely bosses besides stage 4 can be as well. That is definitely the pain in taking up this game, be it TAS or real-time, but hoo doggy is the final result worth it.
Having watched blechy and cyghfer do Goof Troop attempts for the last month or so using death abuse, I just want to stop by and show my support for using these tactics in an improved TAS. I'm looking forward to seeing this!
Hey, Randil, really excited to see you're working on a new TAS!
I know Blechy has asked you already if you're testing the Max as Player 1 option, but I want to reiterate that it's an important routing aspect that shouldn't be overlooked, despite being a pain to test. I would test it myself but I have no experience TASing and, simply put, it would take me far longer than a seasoned TASer like yourself to find out which is faster.
Concerning deaths and damage, obviously I'm biased here, but I wholeheartedly urge you to use them in your new TAS. Although simply taking damage to pass by enemies may not be pretty, in most cases intentional deaths can be synchronized with another element in the screen to make it humorous, i.e. dying so the sound effect plays at the same time as an enemy's death and dying at the same time you kill a snake with a grapple, etc. If you watch the run Blechy linked, you'll notice I try to die with a bit of a humorous touch in most cases. I'm sure you can get even more creative with this, so yeah, go for it in my opinion. Also, I'd say 10-15 seconds saved through deaths/damage is a good estimate, yes.
I know a few rooms where luck could be manipulated better (besides bosses), yeah. I don't know where in the planning/testing/TASing stages you are right now so let me know when you want me to post/send my ideas. I need to check that list of realtime strat differences Blechy sent too so I can make suggestions that aren't redundant.
Anyway, like I said, I'm pumped to see this TAS being updated. Good luck!
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Well, taking damage seems to have big support, so I'll go for it.
It seems I need to go back to the drawing board for this run - the player order is something I've dreaded looking into a bit, but it seems I'll have to do so. In the worst case scenario I'll actually have to make 2 parallell TASes to see which one is faster in the end.
There are many tricks and strategies one can use in this game, so I've made a game resources page where I intend to document them:
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/SNES/GoofTroop.html
As you can see, not much so far, but I'll add in more when I get home from work.
EDIT: Orange Claw Hammer, please do send me all your findings, even if I won't have any immediate use for them, I'm still very interested in hearing them.
ok, here goes:
1. Stage 1 room before golden key block puzzle: can manipulate the blue guy to walk toward max immediately so he dies quicker
2. Stage 1 golden key block puzzle: I imagine it's faster for Goofy to kick the bottom left block upward first than the top left block due to walking distance, etc.
3. Stage 1 boss: bombs can kill 2 enemies at once if you hit a back-row guy near either edge of his hitbox and the adjacent front-row guy comes out at any point during the bomb's explosion. An extremely fast kill would probably entail multiple bombs being manipulated and used to take out a number of guys in quick succession.
4. Stage 2 three purple guys + 2 gray blocks in middle: I think Blechy already told you about this one but you should get the purple guy in the middle to kick the bottom block to the right to decrease Max's walking distance
5. Stage 2 two grapple bridges 2nd pass: Goofy should probably kick the first block? I haven't been totally sure about this one
6. Stage 3 boss: could probably be manipulated even better, particularly in the first half of the battle, with the skeletons throwing double barrages of bones, etc.
7. Stage 5 lure blue guy onto switch: with best manipulation, it might be faster to skip the bell and lure the guy onto the switch without it (getting the bell takes 4 seconds)
8. Keelhaul Pete: a given, but you could probably get even better luck. Blechy and I have had 7+ bombs given to us on a long tornado pattern, etc.
I think that's all I have in addition to Blechy's list of realtime differences. Also, nice to see a knowledge base being made!
Oh yeah, and good luck testing the player swap thing. I wish I could be of some kind of help but I think jumping straight into 2p TASing would be overwhelming for me unfortunately.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Awww sad, I was hoping that our run was going to be safe from further optimization. If you keep going Randil, I only have one request: Make sure that Goofy still fellates that enemy in level one. A wholesome Disney character performing an unmentionable act like that is just too awesome to leave out.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
mmbossman wrote:
Awww sad, I was hoping that our run was going to be safe from further optimization. If you keep going Randil, I only have one request: Make sure that Goofy still fellates that enemy in level one. A wholesome Disney character performing an unmentionable act like that is just too awesome to leave out.
Of course, this will definitely be kept for the new run! :) (perhaps I can add more of them? There are some more guys just innocently hanging around on level 1...)
Random fun find I don't think the tas currently does - in the last stage 4 block puzzle, goofy can "wind up" a kick on the exploding block before it explodes, then as the solid block falls into place that same kick lands on it instead.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Here is a map of level 1 where I've added room numbers, as they are named by RAM address 7E0067. I will refer to room numbers using this map:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2zzhxj7.png
Also, the Game Resources page has been updated, so check it out if you're interested.
Other wiki ideas.
Dealing damage/enemy health lists (could use sprites at http://www.spriters-resource.com/community/showthread.php?tid=19734 to be fancy)
I think bombs thrown by Max deal 5 damage to enemies and 4 damage to cannons/bosses. That seems weird though, there might be something behind the scenes we don't know. Bunch of other circumstances seem to deal 5 damage, but no way of testing further. This includes bombs shot by a cannon, bomb explosions, kicked blocks & their explosions, pots thrown by red pirates, mine-cart roadkill.
Skinny blue pirates, snakes, porcupines, frogs, ghosts, bats, bees, boss 1 enemies all have 4 health. All non-pirate enemies can be killed by hook (untested on ghosts & bats).
All other pirates have 5.
Knights take 1 hit to be vulnerable, second to kill.
Stage 2 cannons have 10 health, stage 3 & 5 cannons have 20 health (not fully tested)
Boss 2 has 48 health.
Not positive on boss 3/5 health. Boss 4 takes certain amount of hits.
Other helpful info:
Frame durations of pot pickup (different between goofy/max?), throw animation, point blank hook animation, damage animation, stun animation (from friendly barrel), death animation, and falling to death animation. I think death animation might always be the same no matter how far you have to travel to reach the edge of the screen.
Information on z-axis. Goofy tends to be hit by a thrown object before Max is. Think he can also throw from behind max further than max can throw from behind him, without it hitting the other player. Can throw over some of the animal enemies, in a speedrun this is relevant for porcupines & frogs.
Helpful info that requires extensive testing:
Fruit spawns. All I know about this is that some pots will never ever spawn fruit, at least with the path cyg & I take.
Determining enemy AI
Interesting info that's not particularly helpful
Kicked block speed
Shovel details!!
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Thanks, I've added some of that info now, I'll gradually add the rest in the upcoming days.
It seems what you get when you pick up a pot depends on the usual two RAM addresses: 7E1A58 and 7E1A59, the same addresses that determine enemy movement. This means that if one pot held a diamond due to the RNG value, all pots would have held a diamond - all pots share have their item determined by these RAM addresses.
I'll look into this more this weekend, in the worst case I can make a lua script that simply loops through all 65535 possible RNG values to get a table of what item you will get depending on the RNG. It could be interesting to see, as it gives an estimate of the chance to get a certain item from a pot.
EDIT: Digging seems to work in exactly the same way - if the current RNG says that you'll find a banana under a pot, you will also dig up a banana with the shovel wherever you dig.
EDIT2: Ok, big edit: I've looked into the player order more in detail today - I've calculated a rough estimate of how many frames would be saved/lost in each room if the player order was reversed. Short story is that switching Max to player 1 should be about 30 frames slower than having Goofy as player 1, so it's a very close call. I do believe, though, that I was quite thorough when I checked this, so I do think I have enough material to say that using Goofy as player 1 is faster.
Also, maps, with room numbers, of all the 5 levels:
Level 1: http://i41.tinypic.com/2zzhxj7.png
Level 2: http://i44.tinypic.com/2d1u7t3.png
Level 3: http://i39.tinypic.com/9icq4x.png
Level 4: http://i41.tinypic.com/141861i.png
Level 5: http://i42.tinypic.com/23rpp1k.png
Here's a google document spreadsheet with my calculations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Akge7o4BbEEgdEl2UUNCTkdCTjY5SDljeXllX1JOWWc#gid=0
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I thought I'd make a new post since I have a new WIP:
Movie file
This is up to the first boss, and I've saved 38 frames so far. I had some bad luck towards the end, so in the last room before the boss I took damage instead of zig zagging between the pirates. This is exactly as fast, but doesn't look as impressive. I will try to manipulate luck so I can do the zig zagging, since it looks better, but if I'm unsuccessful I'll keep this as it is.
EDIT: I just gave the boss fight a try, just testing stuff out, and managed to improve the fight by 20 frames! I'll try to improve it further, but still, this is a good start.
Movie file
In game completion time is 1m 38.45s. I will redo the last part of the fight and move Max around more before the level ends.
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Wow, that was sick! One thing looked suspicious though; on the room with those porcupines, wouldn't it be faster to use Goofy's grapple to pick up that vase instead of Max?
edit:
On a second thought, looks like Goofy can't reach the spot to use the grapple in time, so your solution makes a whole lot of sense to me now.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Hey Randil, nice WIP, cool to see you making progress! A couple things though (both of which I noted in my list of ideas):
- The blue guy in the room before the golden key can either stay put long enough for Goofy to grapple twice, or he can even walk downward toward Max and Goofy can grapple him once. Either way, it is definitely possible for him to be closer to Max when Max throws the barrel upward at him than is the case in the WIP (I think even pretty much adjacent to Max).
- I noticed you got a couple bombs in the boss fight this time around, yet still no double kills! Perhaps it wasn't possible with the exact pattern you got here, but it should still be obviously faster to have a fight with double kills going on than all single kills.
I realize luck isn't very readily mainipulable in this game as some others, so if it simply wasn't possible for you to implement these strategies then I understand.
Also, one question: is it possible for you to find out how the final in-game time works, the one displayed after all the credits have rolled? We're not sure if it takes into account hidden demicals cut off in the individual stage times or if it simply adds the integer figures displayed after every stage is completed and spits that out.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
- The blue guy in the room before the golden key can either stay put long enough for Goofy to grapple twice, or he can even walk downward toward Max and Goofy can grapple him once. Either way, it is definitely possible for him to be closer to Max when Max throws the barrel upward at him than is the case in the WIP (I think even pretty much adjacent to Max).
This was an oversight on my part, I will look into it.
Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
- I noticed you got a couple bombs in the boss fight this time around, yet still no double kills! Perhaps it wasn't possible with the exact pattern you got here, but it should still be obviously faster to have a fight with double kills going on than all single kills.
I have not yet looked into this in detail, but I have full intention to do so (think of the current WIP as version 1). Given that I do get some bombs, this might be possible (I hope so, it would look really cool).
Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
I realize luck isn't very readily mainipulable in this game as some others, so if it simply wasn't possible for you to implement these strategies then I understand.
Yeah, this is indeed a problem. For example, I've managed to get around 10 different boss fights (=10 different RNG settings) by manipulating the RNG in the room before the boss. It's better than nothing, but putting it in the perspective that there are 65535 RNG values, it's not that much.
Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
Also, one question: is it possible for you to find out how the final in-game time works, the one displayed after all the credits have rolled? We're not sure if it takes into account hidden demicals cut off in the individual stage times or if it simply adds the integer figures displayed after every stage is completed and spits that out.
This I can definitely look into. I'll get back to you on it.
Cyg & I noticed in our runs that some pots reliably will never drop fruit. I was messing around just now and had a breakthrough as to why this is: it seems pots picked up via hook will never drop an item.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Blechy wrote:
Cyg & I noticed in our runs that some pots reliably will never drop fruit. I was messing around just now and had a breakthrough as to why this is: it seems pots picked up via hook will never drop an item.
Yes, this is the case. Also, pots picked up with the hook won't affect the RNG (picking them up normally does) - this is useful in a TAS, but just a "fun to know" fact for a console speedrun.
As for my progress, I haven't had much time to TAS in the last few days, but I hope to have some time this weekend. I'll get back to you on the progress.
EDIT: Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
- The blue guy in the room before the golden key can either stay put long enough for Goofy to grapple twice, or he can even walk downward toward Max and Goofy can grapple him once. Either way, it is definitely possible for him to be closer to Max when Max throws the barrel upward at him than is the case in the WIP (I think even pretty much adjacent to Max).
I just managed to beat this room in this way (get the pirate to walk down, so Max could kill him faster), but the barrel hit the pirate on the same frame, so no potential frames to be saved here it seems. I don't see how the pirate could be closer to Max than he is in this case. If anyone wants to take a look: Movie file.
EDIT2: I played around trying to kill two enemies with one bomb, and although it worked quite well, I didn't manage to improve my best time, even though it came close. However, I did manage to improve my best time by 60frames = 1 second, using a different starting RNG. Now the boss fight is 82 frames faster than the published run. Take a look: Movie.
Also:
Orange Claw Hammer wrote:
Also, one question: is it possible for you to find out how the final in-game time works, the one displayed after all the credits have rolled? We're not sure if it takes into account hidden demicals cut off in the individual stage times or if it simply adds the integer figures displayed after every stage is completed and spits that out.
Only the integer figures shown after each level are added. Interesting!
Uh oh, found an improvement in early stage 1. In room 6 pass 1 on your map, goofy can actually make it out the right exit faster than Max can.
Edit: Watched your videos, that boss is insane. We were thinking that double kills might still improve it further, but considering that everything gives you something to throw, might not improve by much. Again I think it's just a case of how far can you push the insane amount of luck in the game.
