Since this is my first post, I suppose I should introduce myself a little. I've been hanging around TASVideos for a while and watching runs that catch my interest. I never considered trying to make one myself, given my lack of technical knowledge and mediocre gaming skills, but I started this run on the spur of the moment and decided to post what I have so far. In short, hi, I'm new here, please try to help my stupidity.
In case you're not familiar with it, Back to the Future is a relatively simple but frustratingly difficult game. It consists of sixteen "street" stages, which are basically timed, autoscrolling shooter levels. These stages are divided into four chunks by three minigames, culminating in one final driving game.
While an autoscrolling shooter is obviously not the best choice for a TAS, I discovered several tricks involving U/D and L/R input that, while not making the game any faster, allow for a much more interesting speedrun. After looking at the only previously submitted TAS of the game, which was rejected for being quite dull, I decided to try to make my own run.
So here's what I came up with: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/12674532/Back%20to%20the%20Future%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.fcm (Note that this uses FCEU 0.98.15 because I totally forgot about FCEUX. Also, the link is messed up because phpBB is very stupid about parentheses in URLs.)
My run is a minute and a half shorter than spoonshiro's, but most of the difference comes from the fact that he played the first two minigames up to 99 points as opposed to the minimum of 50. The only real improvements are that I press Start optimally on the title screen, get the skateboard on the first possible frame, and don't slow down on the final stage -- all simple optimizations that should have been in the other run anyway.
This run's chief achievement is picking up all of the 720 clocks that appear in the game, a feat I believe to be impossible in real-time. This was done by using various U/D/L/R tricks to warp and slide across the screen at very high speeds.
This run might also technically be considered pacifist because I don't kill any enemies and instead shoot every set of bowling pins in the game (hey, they're not alive, so I'm not killing anything, right?). I also take no damage, except at the end of the last street stage in order to show off a bug (and even then it costs me no time).
But that's enough bragging for a WIP movie I may not even finish. At first, this run seemed like a lot of fun, but as it went on and I invested more hours in it, I started to doubt that it's worth the trouble of optimizing. While the glitches I've found are neat (in my obviously unbiased opinion), I'm afraid the game might be too long and repetitive for a few tricks to make it engaging. I've completely lost the ability to judge it objectively, as with everything I make, so I'm asking for you guys' much more professional opinions on this. If you think it's worth continuing, I'll make a version that optimizes the few spots that can actually be made faster and make Marty's movements smoother, but otherwise this is it.
tl;dr Is this run interesting or not?
I tried to do that at first, but then this happens: link
Then when I posted just the URL, the forum tried to be smart and automatically link to the file, but the spaces threw it off. Now that I think about it, I should have used the encoded URL. Better edit that in. (EDIT: And it didn't help at all. Oh well.)
Guess I'll just rename the FCM next time.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Here's what I think (I haven't played the game before):
First of all, could you explain how the L/R and U/D trick works? It seems like it just teleported you around the screen randomly. It looked pretty cool, I just don't get how it works exactly.
In terms of quality, it looked very optimized. In the "collecting clocks" parts I didn't spot any lag, and I think you did as well as you could entertainment-wise on the levels. The bar sections looked optimized too.
The "collecting clocks" parts of the run got a little repetitive after a while. The L/R trick is nice and adds some entertainment, but I still didn't find them very exiting. They're not terribly boring, just nothing special, in my opinion.
The "bar" scenes were pretty entertaining, more entertaining than the clock collecting parts in my opinion. Nice accuracy, and pretty entertaining, but I think the scenes lasted for a little too long, but that's the game's fault, not yours. :)
To sum things up, the run seemed like a very high quality run, but even with the L/R glitch I found the game choise a little meh. I found myself tapping the turbo button during some of the autoscrolling sections of the run. If I were to rate it entertainment-wise I'd give it a 5/10. I think the game is a little too long to keep the viewer interested the whole time.
Perhaps someone who has played this game will find the run more entertaining than I did.
I hope to see more work from you in the future, for a first TAS this holds very high quality.
Note that this uses FCEU 0.98.15 because I totally forgot about FCEUX.
Syncs just fine with the latest FCEUX :)
But about the run: As I loved the AVGN's review about it and thus can imagine what a pain this game must be like when actually playing it, I found it fairly entertaining. As already said by Randil, the street stages weren't the very best entertainmentwise, but that's just the game, I guess. It seemed well optimized and might even be suitable for submission. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether or not non-AVGN-fans will also like it.
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Well, I was someone who unfortunately played the game before. As a kid I actually forced myself to play this horrid game until I beat it. (I had issues)
In a weird way I appreciate the run due to the nostalgia factor, but this is a rather bad game choice. It is mostly auto-scrolling and the end of level scenes are highly repetitive. The U+D stuff was kind of neat but not by much. Even the nostalgia factor is minimal since my (and I would imagine most) peoples memories are quite negative to this game (AVGN-style).
At first I thought the one impressive thing about this game was its rendition of Johnny B. Goode... and then I found out that the music to the street levels is actually Power of Love with the melody removed and a much faster tempo. Maybe the programmers didn't get the rights to put the real song in the game, so they tried to disguise what they had already finished. You should mention that bit of trivia in your submission text to help people keep from being bored!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Warning, long post ahead. Responding to every single person in a thread is a bad habit I need to break.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
At first I thought the one impressive thing about this game was its rendition of Johnny B. Goode... and then I found out that the music to the street levels is actually Power of Love with the melody removed and a much faster tempo. Maybe the programmers didn't get the rights to put the real song in the game, so they tried to disguise what they had already finished. You should mention that bit of trivia in your submission text to help people keep from being bored!
My mind has been blown. How the hell did I miss that? I didn't even notice when I slowed the song down to half tempo to make a MIDI (don't ask). I have the worst musical ear in the world.
And I just found the video combining the songs on YouTube. Oh god, this is hilarious. I was already addicted to the song, but now I don't think I'll ever stop listening to it. Thanks for the tip.
Randil wrote:
First of all, could you explain how the L/R and U/D trick works? It seems like it just teleported you around the screen randomly. It looked pretty cool, I just don't get how it works exactly.
Can do. Here's an abridged version of the notes I typed while making the run. Sorry they're still pretty long, but I love to go into detail.
-- Walking Glitches --
All of these work when Marty is walking. You don't see much of them, of course, but they're a little more interesting than the skateboarding tricks.
UP/DOWN/RIGHT -- Pressing these directions simultaneously causes Marty to begin teleporting among different locations on the screen at the rate of one per frame. I have yet to research it extensively, but it seems that it makes Marty first warp to a location on the upper part of the screen, followed by an area on the lower portion. As long as U/D/R continues to be held, he will then warp to the area just to the right of where he first appeared on the upper half of the screen, then an area to the right of the lower, and this repeats until U/D/R is released. If Marty's next warp spot is off the screen, he will be wrapped around to the left side. Releasing the combination causes Marty to warp two more times before stopping, meaning that he appears to a location to the right of wherever he was two frames after releasing the buttons.
This trick can be used anytime that Marty is walking, but is most useful when jumping because if Marty's next "warp spot" contains a harmful object -- an enemy, a fence, or a yard -- he will fall over wherever he is and take damage.
UP/RIGHT/LEFT: Makes Marty walk down and to the left at a pace much faster than normally possible.
UP/DOWN/LEFT: Causes Marty to drop dead if he's on the ground. If he's in the air when the buttons are pressed, he'll move to the left and down as though you had pressed those directions alone.
UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT: Causes similar effects to UP/DOWN/RIGHT, but with a much smaller warp to the right for each frame. More or less useless unless you have some need to especially fine-tune a teleport.
-- Skateboarding Glitches (a.k.a. 75% of the game) --
UP/RIGHT/LEFT: Has effects similar to those of the UP/DOWN/RIGHT glitch used while walking. On the skateboard, however, teleportation only occurs across the y-axis Marty is on. He will warp between two points on that line, appearing to the right of where he was the last time he warped there.
UP/DOWN/RIGHT: Causes Marty to move backwards and to the right at a rate much faster than normally possible. Note that this version of the tricks is significantly slower than its walking counterpart.
UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT: On the ground, makes Marty move downward and to the right at approximately a 45 degree angle at a much faster speed than normally possible. Similar to U/D/R, but at a different angle.
When used in the air, this causes Marty to move mostly to the right and slightly downward at a fast pace.
This trick is also different from U/D/R in that it does not trigger the OIL WARP glitch described in "Other Tricks."
UP/DOWN: On the ground, causes Marty to trip and take damage. In the air, causes Marty to move backward and to the left at a slightly lower speed and angle than in U/D/R (I think? Haven't tested).
-- Other Tricks --
OIL WARPS: If Marty rides over an oil slick while performing the UP/RIGHT/LEFT trick (sliding down/right), he will teleport to a different location. I haven't tested to see what determines where he appears, but in general:
If Marty slides across an oil slick while it's at the top of the screen, he'll end up at the bottom.
If Marty slides across an oil slick while it's near the bottom of the screen, he'll appear at the top.
HOUSE SITTING (get it?): For some reason, the walls and shadows of houses are considered solid ground. Every other part of the house -- the roof and the windows -- is deadly to the touch, but Marty can stand on the walls and shadow and even walk around on them with no penalty.
PSEUDO-DAMAGE: If Marty runs into the fence at the end of the level just as the level ends, he will start to fall down and the "damage" sound effect will play. The end-level point tally will interrupt the animation, however, and the game will continue to the next level. If Marty had the skateboard when he crashed, he will still have it on the next level. The same most likely holds true for the bowling balls.
That's all I found, though I don't doubt there's more in a game of this caliber.
Randil wrote:
In terms of quality, it looked very optimized. In the "collecting clocks" parts I didn't spot any lag, and I think you did as well as you could entertainment-wise on the levels. The bar sections looked optimized too.
The "collecting clocks" parts of the run got a little repetitive after a while. The L/R trick is nice and adds some entertainment, but I still didn't find them very exiting. They're not terribly boring, just nothing special, in my opinion.
The "bar" scenes were pretty entertaining, more entertaining than the clock collecting parts in my opinion. Nice accuracy, and pretty entertaining, but I think the scenes lasted for a little too long, but that's the game's fault, not yours. :)
To sum things up, the run seemed like a very high quality run, but even with the L/R glitch I found the game choise a little meh. I found myself tapping the turbo button during some of the autoscrolling sections of the run. If I were to rate it entertainment-wise I'd give it a 5/10. I think the game is a little too long to keep the viewer interested the whole time.
Perhaps someone who has played this game will find the run more entertaining than I did.
ShinyDoofy wrote:
But about the run: As I loved the AVGN's review about it and thus can imagine what a pain this game must be like when actually playing it, I found it fairly entertaining. As already said by Randil, the street stages weren't the very best entertainmentwise, but that's just the game, I guess. It seemed well optimized and might even be suitable for submission. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether or not non-AVGN-fans will also like it.
adelikat wrote:
Well, I was someone who unfortunately played the game before. As a kid I actually forced myself to play this horrid game until I beat it. (I had issues)
In a weird way I appreciate the run due to the nostalgia factor, but this is a rather bad game choice. It is mostly auto-scrolling and the end of level scenes are highly repetitive. The U+D stuff was kind of neat but not by much. Even the nostalgia factor is minimal since my (and I would imagine most) peoples memories are quite negative to this game (AVGN-style).
This is basically what I was afraid of. The glitches are fun, but the game's of an inconvenient length for showcasing them. I started off the run having a lot of fun and doing a lot of unnecessary glitching, but by the last few levels, you can tell that I was getting tired of the game and just wanted to be done with the run.
Randil wrote:
I hope to see more work from you in the future, for a first TAS this holds very high quality.
Thanks. I hope to do more, but like I said, I don't have a lot of technical knowledge (hex editing, memory address watching, etc.), and this game just proved convenient for me to TAS through the nature of its gameplay. I'll hang around and see what I can do, though.
Bottom line: It sounds like I won't be continuing this run. I'd rather not redo the whole thing if it's just going to be mediocre in the end. If only the game was shorter...
Anyway, hopefully I'll find some other project to busy myself with. Thanks for all your time and input.
Bah, don't believe the hype, this movie was awesome... ok, I'm probably in the minority on that one. You should submit it anyways.
In any event it should find a home here :D
Bah, don't believe the hype, this movie was awesome... ok, I'm probably in the minority on that one. You should submit it anyways.
In any event it should find a home here :D
Oh, so that's why you were talking about needing more AVGN runs. I somehow didn't understand that despite stumbling across that gallery earlier.
Eh. If this movie had better presentation, I might think about submitting it just for the gallery, but I didn't progress through the tricks logically enough for this to be a good showcase of them. Plus I know I could eliminate a few frames at the end of the Cafe level and possibly in other places, and if I'm going to TAS an autoscroller, it'd better be perfect.
Maybe eventually I'll work through this in a cleaner manner and submit it for completeness's sake, but not anytime soon.
Use %28 and %29, and %21 for the exclamation mark. In fact, this will work with ANY character of your choice, you can use %41 for "A" if you want, though that's pretty useless.
There you go.
Also, I love Back To The Future. Please go on.
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Supper wrote:
I started off the run having a lot of fun and doing a lot of unnecessary glitching, but by the last few levels, you can tell that I was getting tired of the game and just wanted to be done with the run.
I have a few unsubmitted/unfinished works that suffered the same problem, they were fun at first but it just got old and lot less entertaining than I hoped at the beginning.
Thanks. I hope to do more, but like I said, I don't have a lot of technical knowledge (hex editing, memory address watching, etc.), and this game just proved convenient for me to TAS through the nature of its gameplay. I'll hang around and see what I can do, though.
I wouldn't worry so much about knowing that stuff, you can make a good TAS without it (I had about 5-6 published runs without every having memory watch available). Just look at each project as a learning experience. Trying to learn all that stuff at once is overwhelming but slowly learning them as you find the need to use them is a lot easier.
Bottom line: It sounds like I won't be continuing this run. I'd rather not redo the whole thing if it's just going to be mediocre in the end. If only the game was shorter...
The important thing is you learned and you gained knowledge that will help you in the future. This has a lot in common with my first submission. The game was not well known and mostly an auto-scroller. This meant I could handle it a lot better but also that it wasn't a very good game choice. In the end it was benevolently published but it really shouldn't have been. The important thing was it was a stepping stone for me so I could learn and understand the TAS process. That project helped me take off and do many others.
Anyway, hopefully I'll find some other project to busy myself with.
I am going back to the future (in an all new TAS style of gameplay, of course)! :D
So far I am at the cafe stage! I have 056550 points right now! My all new run will consist of fastest time and high score!
I took the liberty to get rid of that disgusting thread title...
Wut wuz wrong w/ the topic title?
Also, I just finished the school part and now I'm on my way to the dance (in the game, of course ;D). I'm half way done now! :)
Good luck making this interesting. This game is pretty boring even for an autoscroller. The only difference between the four street segments is the speed of the enemies and the color of the road, and the minigames are relatively short and uninteresting.
If the game were half as long, I think you could make a decent run with the UD/LR glitches I posted in the other thread. As it is, I think the only thing that could save this game is an extremely bizarre level skip glitch that probably doesn't exist.
Good luck making this interesting. This game is pretty boring even for an autoscroller. The only difference between the four street segments is the speed of the enemies and the color of the road, and the minigames are relatively short and uninteresting.
If the game were half as long, I think you could make a decent run with the UD/LR glitches I posted in the other thread. As it is, I think the only thing that could save this game is an extremely bizarre level skip glitch that probably doesn't exist.
That is the glitch I was using the whole time. When I first played this (with U+D/L+R enabled like I always do) I was like "why is my character moving toward the bottom of the screen so fast" and I realized that pressing up, down, and right at the same time did that. I found a way to use a combination of those controls to get to all the clocks, bees, hula-hoop girls, bullies, and guys with glass windows. I also realized that shooting the clocks with the bowling ball doesn't count. You have to actually touch the clock.
The walking stages are basically the same (I watched a couple of playthroughs of the game on YouTube). Not only are the palettes for particular walking sections different, but the setup has been modified a bit (not by much). I could practically memorize the palette for all the walking stages after playing them so many times.
Get the bowling ball and the skateboard as early as possible for the fastest time.
Aim for exactly 50 in the cafe and school stages.
Hint: Hit the faraway Biff for hit number 50 and let the nearby Biff throw you out of the cafe.
The dance hall stage you need to hit every note.
For the last stage, keep the speed at 88 mph and avoid every single lightning bolt to get back to the future (or 1985).
Get the bowling ball and the skateboard as early as possible for the fastest time.
Aim for exactly 50 in the cafe and school stages.
Hint: Hit the faraway Biff for hit number 50 and let the nearby Biff throw you out of the cafe.
The dance hall stage you need to hit every note.
For the last stage, keep the speed at 88 mph and avoid every single lightning bolt to get back to the future (or 1985).
You're kind of late because I had already submitted this movie (which will probably get rejected for obvious reasons). I was mostly going for highest possible score anyway. I already did all of those you mentioned except for the cafe and school. Now I know why my run was 1 minute slower than Supper's run.
That stuff you mentioned is a good way to get fastest time. Thanks for sharing that information. :)
About the Back to the Future run, I found a way that I could luck manipulate enemies to get a higher score and to save time in the cafe stage (not that I'm submitting another run but I thought I would show you all this):
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1269539271/GlitchMan-Back%20to%20the%20Future%20%28U%29-new%20score.fm2
It turns out that if I destroy the enemies at the right time, another enemy that is worth more points can come up. Also, in the cafe stage I hit the waitress with an ice cream sundae/milkshake because she is blocking the path of the bullies.
This saved 17.95 seconds which means that it's probably a good thing that this run got rejected. :)
I might actually redo the Back to the Future run but this time it will be for high score (I will not submit it, just post it in this forum).
I was thinking of doing the dance mini-game and the estimated score is 15000 for each time, then I lose on purpose and get at least 10000 points on the previous street level. I get an extra life every 30000 points which means I will have enough extra lives to last me to 999990 points which is the max number. I never got that high but I assume that is the max number.
