Hello! This is my Super improved TAS of Pokémon Platinum Edition over my previous submission by almost 50 seconds or so. I did it as optimal as I could, and this time I'm more experienced in TASing than last time.
About the game:
This is a TAS of Pokémon Platinum on the Game Boy Color... wait... WHAT!? It isn't supposed to be on the DS??? Well, yeah... but this is a bootleg game that came out 4 years (2005) before the actual Platinum (2009). This game is called in chinese as Kou Dai Yao Guai - Bai Jin Ban, but its Pokémon Platinum translated in Chinese. It was made by Sintax, the makers of Pocket Monsters Saphire, Little Taichi: The Adventure of Myth among many others.
Most Sintax games utilizes a very broken engine with very sloppy controls that can be broken very easily on an emulator.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: VisualBoyAdvance rerecording v24 svn482
- Takes damage to save time.
- Abuses programming errors
- Heavy glitch abuse
Comments
It was fun to improve this TAS, when I discovered there was a run button, I instantly redid the TAS, since Spike and arandomgameTASer improved my last submission.
Tricks and Glitches used
- Drop direction frames:
When jumping without running, on the frame when you land, stop moving and press A and in the next frame move again, it's actually faster to move this way, but not when you are running.
- The running button:
Me with some speedrunners found that the B button was used to run, and then I found out how ridicolously broken running was in this game. When jumping, the falling speed increases insanely and you'll slide while falling, to cancel the slides you'll need no B input 1 frame (with direction) + press again B with A with direction again and you'll keep your speed momentum. You can clip through platforms while running, but not large sections of a level. However, the running button does NOT work on stage 2 for unknown reasons.
- Backjump and wall clips (Taken from the last submission):
This glitch requires to turn left and while holding Left+Right in the D-Pad and then jump, you'll jump backwards. The game isn't intended for you to do that, so the programmers didn't thought of making wall detection when the character moves to the opposite direction (you can also move backwards while falling). And NO, you can't do this from the other side, since unlike Zelda II, you actually can manipulate your jumping direction in mid-air. The walls and your jumps have a limited range though, so you can't clip an entire wall.
Stage by stage comments
Here I'll talk about the improvements I made though all the stages.
Stage 1:
Here's where the run button was discovered. I abused the slide-cancels here to jump earlier. A also clip through the final platform in the stage just to be faster. The first wall bump was needed to slide through the cliff, otherwise it doesn't work.
Stage 2:
THE RUN BUTTON DOES NOT WORK HERE! So I abused from the drop frame trick instead. The wall clipping got opimized as well improving the level by some frames.
Stage 3:
The level is straight forward, so keeping speed on the level was a priority, however bumping on platforms is still possible, so I avoided any of those.
Stage 4:
The upper route is considerably faster with the run button, unlike not running, it's not. Also, I used a trick for quick ladder exit on the level too.
Stage 5:
I confirmed that in this case, the lower route is faster while running. Same as stage 3 with the bumps though.
Electabuzz:
He was easier to kill this time, due to a new trick which consists of shooting projectiles in the air, which is considerably faster that shooting on land.
Other comments
Improvements that can be done:
Theres only one, and that's still finding a way to clip through walls on the other side... that's all I can think of right now.
Special thanks:
Spikestuff - for improving my previous submission, and finding the drop direction trick, as well as some minor optimizations to this run.
solarplex - for making and encode of my last WIP I posted.
The RTA runners of this game - they motivated me more (indirectly), to make an improved movie.
Suggested Screenshot (already compressed, for Nach's taste):
Thanks for watching and have a nice day!
Nach: Judging.
Nach: Replacing file with a slightly faster one from Spikestuff as discussed in the thread.
Nach: Based on some new things discovered since the last run I think there's still room for further improvement. However, this seems to have enough quality for a first run, and there was a warm audience response. Accepting to vault.
fsvgm777: Processing.