Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
The 2nd shinespark after ridley has been eliminated (it is slower), saves 65 e. The draygon battle can be done losing only about 20-30 e. The 50 e damage boost may be eliminated as well. I actually plotted out all the energy concerns a while ago, with good botwoon drops I will be able to do it.
Now thanks to moozooh, the new concern is weapon management.
-48 shortcut through the lava
-65 second shinespark
Can be largely substituted by Saturn's method (going the upper route through the acid room refilling on the way, taking a boost into the pirate room, then running through it), which will allow more energy and ammo collected on the way. Actually, it's feasible to skip the first spark as well, substituting it with a CWJ. Here you go, ~150 energy saved at a cost of maybe 2-3 seconds.
[EDIT]
Though on the other hand, it might not be so easy with Ice beam equipped… I guess it'll have to be tested a lot.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
The first shinespark after ridley only saves 1 second according to Saturn, but I plan on using it anyway. I know that I can get at least 11 big energy balls from botwoon (220 e).
The question is, with the ice beam always equipped, how the hell am I gonna kill enemies in a timely manner to manipulate super missile drops? I need an extra 4 super missiles just to kill botwoon alone. After killing botwoon I am gonna need 1 to open the green door, 1 to open the eye door, and 3-4 for draygon. All of this could be avoided if I use the PB combo.
Sigh.. the difference is going to be minimal either way, though a pauseless run is more visually appealing.
though a pauseless run is more visually appealing.
Especially since it is a realtime run and the ingame run can avoid all pausescreens. I'd say that as long as it don't keep you from getting sub 40 you should try to do it even if you would loose some time.
bombs on botb00n? wtf? i dont mean the speed just i thought he cant get hit by bombs/powerbombs!
dudes: you cant bomb(including pbs) botwoon! it was just a new feature in SMR :P
I guess because with high enough speed you will never be at the position of the hole, you simply move far enough on 1 frame to move from one side to the other. The same thing can be seen while running over crumbling blocks at max speed, some won't crumble since you never touch them.
I guess because with high enough speed you will never be at the position of the hole, you simply move far enough on 1 frame to move from one side to the other. The same thing can be seen while running over crumbling blocks at max speed, some won't crumble since you never touch them.
This is actually a very strange phenomenon. Every block has a surface of 16 pixels, all of them effective for collision detection. At the same time, the maximum speed you can achieve on a horizontal surface is 10.75 px/f. You can't possibly skip over a whole block without touching it for at least one frame.
In other words, there is something fishy with collision detection at high speeds. I hope Kejardon can clear that up.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I might know why this happens with the crumbleblocks at least. While making my TAS I encountered something strange in the room before botwoon, no matter if I did it exactly like JXQ the blocks in the top of the room would not crumble. I later redid a previous part and saved a number of frames and then the blocks crumbled when they where suposed to. So perhaps blocks can only crumble every two frames or the game only do collision checks every two frames.
Samus *can* run fast enough to go over a hole. Samus is 11 pixels wide, and a hole is 16 pixels wide. Samus only needs to go 7 pixels (and have correct positioning) to go over a hole without falling in it.
Crumble blocks are a bit more complex. Keep in mind that Samus can be standing on two blocks at once (and also hit two ceiling blocks at once). In such a case, the game alternates the first block to check according to a frame counter... I forget which one right now. If the first block checked is solid, the second block is never checked.
If the game checks the left block one frame and then Samus moves far enough, a block may be skipped entirely as the game checks the right block.
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
Just tested: Samus can stand 5 pixels right onto a hole, and 4 pixels left onto a hole. 4 holes and 5 good blocks:
21 on, 7 off, 25 on, 7 off, 25 on, 7 off, 25 on, 7 off, 20 on.
Going exactly 8 pixels per frame with perfect pixel positioning (position must alternate between XXX4 and XXXC) should work, and is within Samus's running capibility. Tested (used codes to get correct speed and positioning) and it works fine.
It should be easy to do in a TAS. *Optimizing* it would be tricky though, and should be done empirically, not theoretically. So have fun. :P
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
I'm back from Vacation, and it's cool to see so many news here!
hero of the day wrote:
round 2 for 100% techs. This time I am showing off one of the biggest timesavers left untapped.
damn nice gain right here
This trick will save around 40-50 frames IIRC, and I really wanted to use it in the LN escape of my RBO run. Unfortunately you can't avoid taking damage from the big hopper right after passing through the ceiling, which would cost me 160 damage - too much to survive the escape later. Even with skipping the 120s damage boost in the room before entering the Elite Pirates room for that, having 40 less points would drop me below the 30's mark, which wouldn't allow for the extremely important ammo refills in the last rooms before exiting Norfair.
I however planned to use this trick on my any% run for a good surprise. Spoiler hero did a good job to prevent that though. :-P
hero of the day wrote:
This however is new to me, probably because it was just out of question to use any damage boosts in the RBO run at this point. (When finishing my any% very sloppy just to see what time is possible to get, I just didn't give a shit to search for new tricks in any part of the run after Draygon).
This trick seems to save around 6-10 frames on cost of 15 energy points (with Gravity Suit of course). Depending on the actual health it may or may not be worth the use in a any% run, but it's still a very nice trick to keep in mind, and obviously a must use in 100%. Well done hero.
Also I probably should mention that I highly doubt a 0:36 100% time is possible if avoiding the pause screen completely. The in-game slowdowns would be just too big. I think even with full in-game time optimization, a 0:36 is very very hard to get, even by using all the mentioned tricks.
Kejardon wrote:
hero of the day wrote:
Let me explain how this works. I recently found out that the elite pirates can take damage even when they are not in their yellow attack form. When they throw their arms at samus, they are actually vulnerable for 2 frames. If you hit them with a charged/plasma/wave/ice, you will do 900 damage. They only have 1,800 hp, so 2 hits are required. If you turn on the x-ray just after it makes first contact and wait for 10 frames, they will become vulnerable again and a second hit will happen from just the one beam, killing them instantly.
I first found this out on accident with super jump echoes. :P That might be the only place where super jump echoes are an actual useful weapon.
Though, it's apparently not very feasible to do so quickly. Saturn did so I think, but I think it was actually slower than using super missiles normally - it was useful mainly because it saved weaponry.
Right. The Super Missile variant is around 100 frames faster, but will get much less Supers refills, which at least in a RBO run will definitely be slower to use at the end.
Here is the mentioned variant I did for comparison when making the RBO. I probably shared it with Kej and some other few guys last year, but I think most who are interested missed it back then:
http://rapidshare.com/files/54762367/SM_-_ElitePirates_SuperMissile_Variant.avi.html
(and yeah, it abuses the vulnerable 2 frame period of the pirates hero mentioned before)
evilchen wrote:
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Welcome back Saturn :)
The running over holes tech was something else I was thinking about adding to the 100% route. Though my calculations may be wrong, I estimated that it would save 60 frames to collect the Spazer beam last. I made a test of it and compared it to JXQ's spreadsheet, but when I talked to JXQ he said it was actually 60 frames slower to collect it last. I will have to run through the numbers again. Anyway, if it is collected last, that area must be done without the plasma beam (spazer auto equips). So samus would have to run over the holes with only 1 or 2 of the yellow things frozen. When tourian is finally reached, the screw attack can be taken off and the plasma reactivated, thus removing a whole pause screen menu without costing any time at all (if my tests were correct). I still don't plan on making a 100% run, though all these little improvements should be compiled somewhere.
Sweet super missile variant on the elite pirates. I guess the x-ray scope does not need to be collected early.
Joined: 3/17/2007
Posts: 97
Location: Berkeley, CA
Dear Hero,
Does this mean the appearance a desyncless snes9x-1.51 (one of Moozooh's 4 points) is unlikely to affect your decision?
[tangent]
Sure, I'd love to see you improve the 100% run instead of taking a lengthy, well-deserved vacation from SM. But I'm also trying to decide whether it's worth my time to produce a fixed Windows binary now that I've (possibly!) discovered the source of all these desyncs. An active 1.51-TASer could be extremely helpful for making sure my changes really fix the bug (and maybe for compiling them too).
[/tangent]
Thank you regardless for your efforts to bring "perfect" SM gameplay to the world. :) That goes for the rest of you players too.
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
nitsujrehtona,
Thanks for the comments :)
As for me using a desyncless version of 1.51, it now becomes a much more difficult decision. JXQ's recent tests have shown that the timing is horribly off in that emulator. 10 frames of artificial lag is added to every single door transition, a total of about 15 seconds would be added to the entire movie. 15 seconds that would not be present if the timing was correct. I love that fact that it fixes a couple of the noticeable graphical errors, but the timing is just too much of a factor to overlook. I doubt I would use it until that particular issue is also fixed. I realize this would require a total rewrite of the emulator's core, so I don't expect it to happen. Unfortunately, for the time being I will have to stick with 1.43.
Though I applaud any effort you make to fix the desync issues in 1.51. I think before you invest too much time into this, you should make sure the timing is not messed up in every other game. It would be bad if we start obsoleting our current runs with slower ones only to find out later that the timing was more accurate in 1.43.
Yeah Saturn is back!
I really liked both of those videos, too bad other one of them again spoiled a part of your RBO, but this time you didn't keep anything secret. ;) I'm really hoping to see some progress in your runs, Redesign WIP 5 has been on my mind for a long time.
Also, I hope you check the WIP 2 of my Super Metroid Impossible TAS I've started. And I think you know already but the X-Ray has been found.
<Deign> .dice 1d1999191023443691
<BisqBot> Deign rolls a blackhole and destroys the planet.
