Post subject: Pilotwings 64
Spacecow
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I'm probably a total moron for even suggesting this, but for some reason Pilotwings strikes me as a great game to make a TAS for. It's an early N64 game that a good amount of people have played, it has varied and vastly different modes of play, and with the exception of a few of the hang glider levels it's pretty short. There are probably a number of ways the game's ranking system can be exploited, which could be very interesting. There are some videos from Stefan Mahrla here. Check out the "Sky Diving - Fast Landing" video for an example of how corners can be cut quite drastically--and it's probably possible to open your chute even later! So, I'm just wondering if anyone is a big enough fan of the game to do this. I like the game, but I'm absolutely no good at it and probably would be absoltuely incompetent at optimizing and seeing which methods work best. Also I think I'd kill myself trying to go through some of the hang glider levels at anything less than 100% speed. :P
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There is a good trick in this game to get the gyrocopter to rediculous speeds, hit the ground at a slight angle, but bounce off to get going over 100km/h faster than otherwise possible. I used this a lot, but it was hard to controll. It might come in handy in a speed run. I think the fastest semi stable speed is like 390km/h, a good bit more than the normal 250. Also, once flying this fast, you maintain this speed like it is normal. Edit: I was fooling around with it, and it turns out that it takes 5 points for each time you hit the ground, so unless a perfect run is not needed or someone finds an extension to the trick, it wont be useful.
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This game would be good for a TAS because you can eliminate having to slowly align things such as the cannon and just go to the perfect coordinates instantly, making the challenges go by in a very short time.
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I think I know Latin, cause I just pulled off a thread necromancy ^.^ Since Pilotwings is still one of my favorite games, I decided I'll try to pull off a nice, decent run. Play along, folks at home. Would an all-perfect run be more entertaining? Or should I just do an any%?
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OMG JUST DO SOMETHING I LOVE THIS GAME thanks.
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Tragedy wrote:
Would an all-perfect run be more entertaining? Or should I just do an any%?
I'm not sure, having not played the game enough on my own to know the difference... I saw mentioned that increased speeds by bouncing can be achieved at the cost of points, so in that regard an all perfect points run would be slower. But I don't know enough what constitutes any%/100% in this game to give a final verdict. If you described what the differences would be between the two goals, and what the projected speeds attainable and overall movie length are I could help more.
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Tragedy wrote:
Would an all-perfect run be more entertaining? Or should I just do an any%?
I don't remember the game anymore, other than that it was really friggin hard to get perfect scores. The all-perfect may be repetitive, or the any% could be too minimalist, but I'll be looking forward to whatever you come up with. :)
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I think, the route planning would be a lot harder for an any-% run (issues like which rings should be skipped to get the shortest route etc). On the other hand, there are quite a lot tasks in which the given points are directly connected to the time only. I suggest to do a 100%-run first and an any-% run later. Most important: Just do something. I wanna see this! :)
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spockybiemmichab wrote:
I think, the route planning would be a lot harder for an any-% run
This may be the only game in history that's like that. I'll do a 100% first, just a quick little fullspeed run through a few stages and such. This should be up tonight or tomorrow, depending on how on-task I am. EDIT: I finished a quick WIP in fullspeed. Strangely enough, like most of my other WIPs, it clocks in with about 309 rerecords. Currently I'm watching through it to see if it desynchs any (cause desynchs will cause me to lose 100 points o.o), but I'll make a new post with the WIP (even if it's a double post, I kinda have something against just editing when something's important) once it's ready. EDIT 2: It desynchs -.- I guess it's a computer problem since a lot of N64 things I do tend to desynch... I really liked the run, too o.o Maybe I'll put it up if someone wants to tweak around with it.
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Spacecow
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Wow, I forgot I'd ever posted a thread for this game. Well, needless to say, I'll be following this closely. I played this game a lot in my spare time over summer last year and will try to help out if I can. comicalflop: The most obvious difference in 100% and any% is that getting gold medals in every category (A/B/Pilot) will open up the bonus games (human cannonball, skydiving, Jumble Hopper). I don't know if Tragedy plans on doing those (since Jumble Hopper is really the only interesting one, in my opinion), but there you go. 100% seems like a better goal than any%. Like Dromiceius said, perfect scores are pretty tricky to get, and therefore more impressive. It seems like one of the main benefits of doing any% is allowing yourself to lose points by bumping into the ground with the Gyrocopter so you travel faster (which I've never gotten to work), but... the Gyrocopter isn't that great at handling or anything, and I imagine that doubling its speed would make it a lot harder to maneuver tightly. Maybe it's possible, I dunno. Like I said, I've never done it.
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Spacecow wrote:
There are some videos from Stefan Mahrla here. Check out the "Sky Diving - Fast Landing" video for an example of how corners can be cut quite drastically--and it's probably possible to open your chute even later!
Bukki wrote:
This game would be good for a TAS because you can eliminate having to slowly align things such as the cannon and just go to the perfect coordinates instantly, making the challenges go by in a very short time.
well, here's two quotes that say the other two bonus games would be interesting, so that's 3 out 3 bonus games that would be cool. That, plus the mention of how difficult getting perfect scores, the hassles of planning an any% route would be, (and maybe Tragedy's initial interests) leads me to believe that a 100% TAS first would be ideal.
Mukki wrote:
Another thing you should look at is ROM size. The larger the ROM the more likely it is to desync. I assume that this is because desyncs are caused by savestates not recording the last few frames when it is made. If the ROM is larger then one could argue that the savestate has more data to save and hence there is more chance of final frames being lost. Working on my experience: the SM64 ROM is only ~5Mb (very stable), Majora's Mask ~30Mb (very unstable). This idea has been reasonably consistent across all ROMs I've researched.
PilotWings is 8 mb, so i don't know if this is why it is desynching...
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I'll look at it myself just to confirm. Pilotwings desyncing doesn't sound quite right, of course, there will be exceptions to what I said. Also, a user named Bukki? Do I have an evil twin on the forums?
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Hunh, this is weird. I'm watching it again and it's either not desynching, or desynching in a different place... I'm confused by N64 emulation. EDIT: Yeah, it still desynched -.-
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Hrm. Maybe I should give it the "30,000 frame test run desynch test" and see what the deal is.
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Here is the run in question. It desynchs early on, but actually continues to work fine until I start Class A. The run is supposed to go through beginner, class A, and Cannonball and stuff.
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Haven't fully watched it, but maybe Glide64 will be the better video plugin... I noticed major environment texture problems with Rice, while it had no shadow or major lag problems, Glide64 may be better, because there were very obvious see through problems- see through hills and some platforms you have to land on- unless it's a part of the game (which can only help you, but make it look weird to audiences.) also, D-Pad... I'm positive for the actual run that you will get far more precision with the analog stick and the TAS input plugin.
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comicalflop wrote:
Haven't fully watched it, but maybe Glide64 will be the better video plugin... I noticed major environment texture problems with Rice, while it had no shadow or major lag problems, Glide64 may be better, because there were very obvious see through problems- see through hills and some platforms you have to land on- unless it's a part of the game (which can only help you, but make it look weird to audiences.) also, D-Pad... I'm positive for the actual run that you will get far more precision with the analog stick and the TAS input plugin.
I switched D-Pad and analog because of Fighter's Destiny o.o I should fix that... And I have no idea where that TAS input plugin is... I want it, though o.o
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TAS Input Plugin Easy to follow instructions for setting it up are in the thread. it will take a little bit of fiddling to make your controller (if you have one) and the plugin work in perfect tandem, but once you get it it becomes a thing of beauty.
Mukki wrote:
Also, a user named Bukki? Do I have an evil twin on the forums?
You're the imposter. He joined the site before you did. :P
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There is a good trick in this game to get the gyrocopter to rediculous speeds, hit the ground at a slight angle, but bounce off to get going over 100km/h faster than otherwise possible. I used this a lot, but it was hard to controll.
If you reach around 600 kmh and hold left/right to go in a circle, the speed increases faster than in hell, and you can reach several thousand kmh. but you just turn faster and faster so it's impossible to escape the centrifugal forces and you get pulled in like it was a black hole, but once i escaped it and the helicopter was sideways and i flew 3700 m high (roof/sky is at 1000 m). i think the speed was 5000kmh, but dropped to 1000 in a f ew seconds
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Tragedy, are you still working on this? that strat nfq suggested does not go against the 100% restrictions to not receive damage that the other gyrocopter technique uses. That technique actually reminds me a little of DTD's in F-Zero X... you gain amazing speeds in the air, but it's the subsequent, higher than average speed that you hit when you reach the ground that is sought after.
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arflech
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Has there been any progress on this game? I just might get into this...
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would be cool to see a TAS of this. too bad it desyncs so much. although that didn't stop people from making a majora's mask TAS for example.
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All times are for perfect-score runs Albatross Nest (HangGlider): 00'29"27 Balloon Crash (Rocket Belt): 00'19"99 Novice Rings (Gyrocopter): 00'48"76 Indeed it would... just watched the 2007 WIP and tried some TASing on this game myself. I think the previous WIP is rather unoptimized and can be improved on (for instance the first Hang Glider mission was beaten by ~a second by Stefan Mahrla non-TAS) I found some interesting things but unfortunately... there is too much desynchs. I used Mupen v2 rerecording v2 + reset but it desynched before actually playing any level. I will try some more times but I suspect the desynchs will be too much an obstacle for me. (note the same thing happened to me in Goldeneye and 1080 snowboarding.... my Snes9x TAS experiences are *so* much better :P) edit: Ok done some more trying on the first HangGlider test (Albatross Nest)... this game seems interesting to be optimized tbh, unfortunately... more desynchs pester it's progress so at the moment I still do not know whether I will continue non-TAS time = 0'40"81 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es34-IZKcQU) TAS time = 00'29"27 (cannot capture avi :/) pretty nice difference if you ask me :( shame on the desynch monster! edit2: lots of desynchs but the first test succeeded edit3: Okay I realize Stefan Mahrla doesn't claim his vids to be speedruns but they are the fastest times I could find.... anybody got better ones?
TASes: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/Movies-298up-Obs.html]Mr. Nutz (SNES), Young Merlin 100% (SNES), Animaniacs 100% (SNES)[/URL]
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Sorry for double-posting but needed to get some attention :P managed to not desynch the first HangGlider test so let's hear some opinions (or does it even play for others) I know it can improved by landing more towards the start of the bull's eye btw... just want opinions on general strategy [obsoleted m64] (ROM = "Pilotwings 64 (U) [!]")
TASes: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/Movies-298up-Obs.html]Mr. Nutz (SNES), Young Merlin 100% (SNES), Animaniacs 100% (SNES)[/URL]
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looked really nice and synched up perfectly :)