Rerecord count: 7894 (Piece of cake compared to the others)
Goal: Highest Score
- This is accomplished by achieving maximum kills & maximum bonus chest kills.
Result:
- Score: 170900 (Perfect)
- Enemies killed: 101 (100%)
- Bonus Chest Kills: 35+36+28=99 (98 is perfect, plus one JJ)
- Kills in a row: 37, 36 & 28
- Rank: 5 Stars (Maxed, Granted for scoring at least 60000 points)
Why NTSC Base?
The NTSC Gamecube Base only has 101 enemies, compared to 117 for all other versions, thus lower potential score. I chose to TAS it because:
- Wii version was not TASable on the earlier Dolphin versions due to frequent desyncs. This may be fixed with Wii .dtm recording updates on Dolphin 2503.
- I have the NTSC version and no other Gamecube version.
- This is the version my TASes of the other three levels use.
About The Mercenaries
Mercenaries is unlocked by completing the main game. It is a timed minigame with the objective of scoring the most points before time runs out. Per the intro of a map "Eliminate as many Ganados as you can before your evac chopper arrives! Successive kills will result in earning you more points!" Initially only Leon is selectable. There are four other characters playable when unlocked after scoring 30000+ points in one of the four (unofficially named) maps:
- Ada from the Village (Stage 1)
- Krauser from the Castle (Stage 2)
- Hunk from the Base (Stage 3)
- Wesker from the Waterworld (Stage 4)
Each map starts with two minutes of gameplay time, and time extensions are spread throughout the map. The Base map has a total game time of up to XX minutes. Two minutes were saved skipping time extensions. Item menu and item grabs do not consume game time. Gameplay ends when the player dies, or when time runs out (the player is "rescued").
Each map has three Bonus Chest timers. Each gives 31 seconds during which time extra points are awarded for each regular enemy kill. The majority of effort put into this TAS was spent optimizing the Bonus Chests, with final kills being registered with few, if any, frames to spare.
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details HERE.
Spawning:
The enemy spawning is generally easy to predict and control on this level. Here are some general observations.
- Each zone spawns a specific number (5) of enemies, with no respawning (unlike the three other maps).
- Enemies will spawn from a zone provided there are up to ten enemies on the map.
Manipulations: The reason for most Rerecords.
Luck (RNG) is based on actions the player takes. RNG was manipulated throughout the run by trial and error. When Wesker pauses, or turns in an odd direction for no apparent reason, it is usually because I was manipulating ammo drops. This manipulation achieved the following:
- Critical Headshots- In high scoring real-time runs, the pistol is only used to shoot barrels and to get emergency kills if Rifle and Magnum ammo runs out due to unreliability. With a Crit probability of about 50%, TAS effectively turns it to 100%.
- Desirable Ammo drops, primarily Hand Grenades used for blowing up enemies outside Wesker's line of sight.
- Plagas (Bug like monsters which pop out of the mouths of a few specific zealots) were not allowed to appear.
Enemy AI was manipulated to:
- Keep them from damaging Wesker.
- Keep postmortem movement to a minimum (to allow for quicker spawning).
Enemies:
- Ganado: Easy pickings with the handgun.
- JJ: A gatling gun wielding behemoth. Can be killed with four rifle or two magnum shots, or one rifle plus one hand grenade plus one handgun shot.
Wesker's Arsenal:
Firearms:
- Silenced Handgun: Primary weapon used in this TAS, it shall hereby be known in this write-up as the "TASER" CANNON (don't forget the quotes). The silencer is usually discarded in high score runs to free up more space in the weapon inventory (attache case), but it is kept here for aesthetics. It is the fastest and weakest gun, quick to draw/fire and lower. It's effective for getting critical headshots against ganados. It cannot shoot through any enemies.
- Killer7: A powerful magnum pistol. Just used to kill JJ after the 2nd bonus chest. Limited ammo through barrels (I picked up none), none dropped. Quick to draw/fire and very slow to lower.
- Sniper Rifle: The primary weapon in real-time runs due to its power, instant kills, and 5 enemy penetration. Slow to draw/fire and slow to lower. Its use limited in this TAS, only against JJ.
Granades:
- Flash Grenade: Used once for stunning enemies. Can also kill plagas. Kept in inventory for increasing run speed when no other grenade is available.
- Incindiary Grenade: Lingering area of effect, kills register slowly after burning enemies drop. Used at the start of the second bonus chest timer.
- Hand Grenade: Used for taking out large groups and for killing enemies outside player's line of sight. Vital for maximizing Bonus Chest kill count, but the pistol is faster generally.
- Exploding barrels: This map objects were useful during all bonus timers.
Aiming:
Dolphin's TAS input was used often to minimize aiming time.
- Analog Stick: Most Precise (Slowest), Has radial conversion (i.e., full right tilt with full up tilt will result in slower movement right than full right tile alone).
- D-Pad: Faster than full tilt A-stick. No radial conversion.
- D-Pad+Analog Stick: In opposition, this can fill the speed range between Analog Stick alone or D-Pad alone. Used in combination aiming is quicker than either individually. Constructively using this technique, the Rifle can swing 180 degrees in the time between shots. Used during immobility period after firing a shot to turn toward next objective.
- C-Stick Quick Aiming: Tilting C-stick left or right and pressing R will cause the player to rotate while drawing a weapon, which is faster than turning with the weapon drawn.
- C-Stick Multi Turn: A C-Stick turn can be interrupted by releasing R for 1 frame, and holding R again. This can be chained together for very quick turning over large angles.
Iterative Optimization: The Cooperative Pursuit of the "Perfect Score"
Real Time NTSC Base Runs:
- My old 162500 World Record, 13-DEC-2006 PART 1
- Roxus' 164900 WR 30-DEC-2007 HERE
- Head Minerve's 168500 longstanding WR, go-by for my TAS, 29-JUN-2009 HERE
Potential Improvments:
There is no improvement possible to the score. I'm sure the run can be accomplished faster with more efficient gathering of ganados before the bonus chests.
Highest Score Links:
The Mercenaries High Scores, Vol. 14 Atwyatt's GameFAQs topic kept the ideas coming. Each volume prior was 500 posts.
Cyberscore This site was briefly used before Shin's site for some players like myself
Special Thanks to:
- Head Minerve, whose World Record run (above) served as the basic route for this TAS.
- Dolphin Developers, who made available the amazing Tools execute this Tool Assisted Score-Attack.
- SoulCal, whose amazing captioned Full Game run taught me many tricks.
- Capcom, for making such a great game!
Playing the .dtm file on Dolphin:
Use Dolphin 2503 with included dsp files.
Use the following memory card file with Mercenaries and Wesker unlocked: MemoryCardA.USA.7z. You may need to export its contents to GCI folder to get the files to read.
Verification run to generate above memory file:
Play this Mercenaries: NTSC Base submission on Disc 2. It desyncs on Disc 1.
Other info for judging/publishing:
Suggested Screenshot: Frame 27091 60hz timing (Thrust punching two TNT ganados)
Encoding notes:
Native aspect ratio is roughly 4:3, letterboxed to roughly 16:9. Please crop out the letterboxing if encoded.
Dumping frames and audio from the start causes audio to be longer than video. Starting dump of both at the initial Loading text window causes them to match.
Dolphin dumps 59.94 hz video, apparently duplicating each frame. In VirtualDub I processed every other frame in my high res texture encode for 29.97 hz to save file size with no loss of quality.
I recommend TASVideos encode use default textures, this would be consistent with all my other RE4 Mercenaries publications and would differentiate it from my encode with high res textures on Youtube.
If published to Youtube, please include links to my HD Project encode at the bottom of the description, similar to this: "Ubercapitalist has provided an encode of the movie with HD Project textures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZD4G5KaBQ0"