Co-author slots available for beginner tasers! If you like the idea of tasing a simple 2D Turtles fighting game from 1993, then this is for you!
The game has 8 possible timelines and we don't know what the best timeline is. We need to tas the whole game 8 times, so I propose we do it as a team so that nobody needs to repeat the same thing too many times. I have tased one timeline and submitted it, but there are 7 alternative timelines left to test against this one.
We play as April O'Neil but the alternative timelines diverge because we can select a different first opponent.
5 Co-author slots available for beginner tasers!
Slot 1: LEO TIMELINE
Slot 2: DON TIMELINE
Slot 3: MIKE TIMELINE
Slot 4: CASEY TIMELINE
Slot 5: RAPH TIMELINE
You will be considered a co-author even if you do only one fight in one of the timelines. If you are interested please leave a comment below, so that others know that a slot has been taken.
2 Co-author slots available for expert tasers!
Slot 6: RAY TIMELINE
Slot 7: BEETLE TIMELINE
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.11
- Genre: fighting
- Takes no damage
- Aims for fastest time
- Manipulates RNG
No damage taken
The goal of this run is to finish the game as fast as possible without taking damage because this makes the fights shorter even though the movie length is longer. Flawless victory costs 121 frames in congratulation message time per fight. With 13 fights that is 1573 frames or 26.2 seconds of extra length to the run. If we want to save this time, then the fights themselves become longer (mostly) as we need to make the enemy attack us once and not lose more than 121 frames doing so. The 'takes damage' category would be interesting to see, but also more difficult to optimize.
Options
Set skill to max 8.
Set rounds to 1.
Timer off to skip 'time bonus' countdown.
After the options we can start the game 2 frames faster if we press start with the 2nd controller, but there is a programming error that changes the skill level to 4 instead of 8 that we selected. I will not use this trick because it would defeat the purpose of doing the run at the highest difficulty setting.
We play as April because she is the fastest character unless new glitches are discovered.
Set player speed and power to max 8. This will also make the enemies equally stronger, so it can be considered the hardest skill level.
Gameplay
Fighting is mostly about making 3 grab moves and 1 other attack to defeat enemies as fast as possible. The order of these attacks can vary depending on what is required for RNG manipulation.
If you grab too early then you can get a knockout animation that is 133 frames long. If you wait for 17 frames, then you get a knockout animation of 100 frames. Most often we wait the 17 frames, but sometimes the RNG requires a slower solution.
Timelines
We are allowed to select the first opponent, so we have 8 different timelines to consider. The remaining 7 opponents are fought in order that we can't select. Some of the timelines give a bad solution immediately so they are probably ruled out in the first fight, but the only way to know for sure is to complete the whole TAS very precisely with all starting opponents to find out the fastest timeline.
I only did one timeline where I select April as the first opponent.
Best fight times ever seen
Timing is from input start to the point when opponent health bar starts to reduce from the last hit.
284 Leo
319 April
277 Ray
251 Mike
335 Casey
270 Don
267 Beetle
260 Raph
305 Triceraton
348 Krang
347 Karai
Framecounts
p = projectile
w = walk
j = jump
jk = jump kick / jump punch
g = grab
gg = last hit (timed with enemy health bar)
468 Select character with 2nd controller. Fails.
470 Select character.
635 Select first opponent.
We can save 1 frame by pressing start on the 2nd controller to confirm our opponent choice. This only applies to the first opponent selection screen.
APRIL TIMELINE
852 April w
918 66 jk
936 18 g
1035 99 g
1171 136 gg 319
2179 Leo p
2221 42 jk
2263 42 g
2363 100 g
2463 100 gg 284
3471 Beetle p
3530 59 jk
3548 18 g
3648 100 g
3748 100 g 277 (best seen: 267)
4756 Mike charges instantly making this a good fight.
4778 22 g
4850 72 j
4892 42 jk
4910 18 g
5007 97 gg 251
Waited 19 frames here to manipulate RNG.
6033 Ray w
6056 j
6091 jk
6116 83 g
6213 97 g
6310 97 gg 277
7317 Don w
7327 j
7362 Press B
7387 70 g
7487 100 g
7587 100 gg 270
8595 Casey w
8679 84 jk g
8784 105 g
8930 146 gg 335
9938 Raph w
9951 13 j
10011 60 g
10111 100 g
10211 100 g 273 (best seen: 260)
10901 'Instant replay' visible. This is a good spot to compare results because only 3 bosses remain.
10964 Press start.
11146 Triceraton w
11261 115 g
11358 97 g
11455 97 gg 309 (probably a bad time)
12397 Krang p
12446 jk
12488 91 g
12595 107 g
12745 150 gg 348
Waited 12 frames here to manipulate RNG.
KARAI
13692 Karai j
13753 61 g
13850 97 g
13986 136 gg 294
14676 End
Summary of times for the April timeline:
APRIL 319
LEO 284
BEETLE 277 (best seen: 267)
MIKE 251 + 19
RAY 277
DON 270
CASEY 335
RAPH 273 (best seen: 260)
TRICERATON 309 (bad?)
KRANG 348 + 12
KARAI 294
319 + 284 + 277 + 251 + 19 + 277 + 270 + 335 + 273 + 309 + 348 + 12 + 294
Total frames: 3268
Total wasted on RNG manipulation: 31
Total wasted on bad solutions: 23
Theoretical possible timesave: 54 (probably 50-100 more)
Estimated optimal time: 3100-3200 frames
Alternative timelines not tested
If you want to co-author you could do one of the 7 remaining alternative timelines by selecting a different 1st opponent. Or you could try to improve the April timeline.
In either case you can take the submitted movie and start recording from frame 635 onwards. (Remember to press start on the 2nd controller to confirm opponent selection.)
The fight start frames listed below are delayed for some opponents because we waste time selecting the opponent, but this difference disappears into the RNG manipulations. The timelines for Ray and Beetle probably fail immediately because they do a bad move? This leaves 5 timelines to test.
I think if you do an alternative timeline and it is slower than the current best, then you could still be considered a co-author. This is because doing a whole timeline is not trivial effort. Some fights are slower and some are faster for each timeline.
If your Krang fight starts later than 12409 frames, then the timeline has probably failed because I think I got close to perfect Krang and Karai fights. So maybe the alternative timelines need to be played only up to Krang?
RAY TIMELINE
851 This is the fight start frame for this opponent.
Start is 1 frame faster for Ray for unknown reasons.
Anyway, it looks like this timeline fails immediately because Ray does a bad move?
LEO TIMELINE
852 Leo p
936 84 g
1036 100 g
1136 100 gg 284 + 18 frames for RNG manipulation
Not tested further.
DON TIMELINE
853 Not tested at all.
MIKE TIMELINE
855 Not tested at all.
CASEY TIMELINE
857 Not tested at all.
BEETLE TIMELINE
857 This timeline fails immediately because Beetle does a bad move?
RAPH TIMELINE
858 Not tested at all.
Tips for tasing this game
You can press start 4 frames after full brightness in level selection screen.
You can press start when 'outstanding' text disappears.
You can press start 1 frame before 'instant replay' text appears.
You can manipulate RNG by changing the timing of the moves, so this will usually waste frames. It looks like we need to wait for about 12-19 frames for the RNG to change for the next fight. This is why the most important timesave is to select the best first opponent so that RNG works well for many fights without manipulations.
Alternative encodes
The movie works with both (J) and (U) versions, so please consider making encodes for both regions with the same effort. Please leave this as 'delayed' for a year to wait if people are interested in co-authoring an improvement before publication.
Welp, have an uplifting day!