Currently working on a Timedemo of Sparkster, the sequal to the Genesis game Rocket Knight Adventures (You know, the Rocket Possum) on hard, and wow I forgot how fun this game was ;P
I hope when I get this done and if it gets published you all use a good sound system to hear the games music and sound effects, because they are AMAZING (It got a award for music and sound effects in 1994)
After this, LOTS and lots of replaying of Cybernator, then I'll start a time attack on that one
There is an even more extreme difficulty called Crazy Hard Mode that can be unlocked by pressing the following button sequence at the Setup Screen.
Left, Left, Right, Right, Down, Up, Down, Up, A, X
In case you didn't know.
Andreas
Cool, I have to RESTART my entire movie anyways because SNES9X desynced, and there is NO option for "Continue recording movie" so I coulden't go back and fix it.
Whats the deal? Why can you only "record from here" and "Record from reset"? Why can't you continue recording? I just lost 3 hours work
you can resume recording by playing the movie, making a save state where you want to resume recording, and then loading the save state. Be sure that you load the save state while the movie is still playing.
I finished the game on hard mode, took some damage to save time in places and to get in better posistion with some boss's etc
http://members.shaw.ca/nezgreengoblin/Sparkstermovie.zip
This game is FAST. When you play it back at full speed it makes Sonic 3 look slow
This is the sequal to the Genesis game Rocket Knight Adventures
Edit: I'll be cleaning it up later, that took me about 2.5 hours to do the first time. Beaten it many times before so I had most of it in memory. MOST of the re-records are with the 3rd last level boss. He is REALLY hard to beat, because if you hit him too many times too fast he goes into a beserker mode that almost always kills you. Thats why the fight takes so long
EDIT by Bisqwit: No ROM links are allowed here.
Also, this post is probably in wrong forum, because the SNES games forum is meant for discussing games - one thread per game. There already is a Sparkster thread. Thirdly, what's the point of this post? If you're going to submit it for my site, then submit it.
Since movie publish I am working on version 7 of this movie, and trying to make a even faster run. I don't know how much more time I can squeeze off, but here's hopeing!
Good luck: haven't watched it recently, but my suggestions would be to make the self scrolling stage more exciting(ex. go way closer to bullets- play chicken with them almost), and, yes, the boxing stage. I know, I know, you're tired of hearing it, but I bet that's the most improvable part of the run, even without being able to get him stuck in the corner.
I found this game some months ago and thought it would make a great TAS, then I noted that Nitsuja had already made one so I didn't. A few days ago though I decided to try and improve his run and it has worked quite nicely, so far I'm about halfway through the second level and ~10-10.5 seconds ahead of him.
Now I would of course appreciate some input if there is anyone interested, like improvement suggestions or known errors in the last movie and such.
Microstorage seems to be down for the moment, so I uploaded the WIP to mediafire instead.
Have you tried to boost up when the ape bot explodes to see if it reduces lag from the explosions? Can't think of anything else that might be useful.
IIRC, Nitsuja said one of the most improvable parts of his TAS was luck manipulation (most prominent in the Axle Gear fight, I suppose).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
I go through and, for some practice using 9x's cheat search, do a little RAM searching on this title to find out how much damage each attack deals, then come here and see this. I figure you've already done the same, so I won't bother posting them unless asked.
I do remember encountering an interesting glitch in level 8. The first time I destroyed the crystal reactor, the scrolling somehow bugged out, broke free of its constraints, and allowed me to move a screen or two to the right where it would stop at the bottom of the shaft; I couldn't go up until the explosion had finished.The obvious benefit is that you'd get a head start for when the explosion stops, but it also reduces lag.
I have no idea what caused it, and have not been able to reproduce it since.
One request: While you're waiting for the piano boss in level 6 to finish blowing up, could you play a simple little song? "Mary Had a Little Lamb" would be much more fun to listen to than, "3 Year Old Pressing Random Keys".
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I figure you've already done the same, so I won't bother posting them unless asked.
Yeah, it's 6 for the charge attacks, 5 for the spinattack (L,R) 4 for the Sword attack, 3 for the projectile coming from the sword and on some enemies you can cause 1 damage by touching them.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
I do remember encountering an interesting glitch in level 8. The first time I destroyed the crystal reactor, the scrolling somehow bugged out, broke free of its constraints, and allowed me to move a screen or two to the right where it would stop at the bottom of the shaft; I couldn't go up until the explosion had finished.The obvious benefit is that you'd get a head start for when the explosion stops, but it also reduces lag.
I have no idea what caused it, and have not been able to reproduce it since.
Sounds very weird, I hope I'll be able to reproduce it, though it seems that it would be very hard to do so without having any idea of how to do it...
Ferret Warlord wrote:
One request: While you're waiting for the piano boss in level 6 to finish blowing up, could you play a simple little song? "Mary Had a Little Lamb" would be much more fun to listen to than, "3 Year Old Pressing Random Keys".
I'll see what time allows me to do...
moozooh wrote:
Have you tried to boost up when the ape bot explodes to see if it reduces lag from the explosions
Tried it now and I couldn't get it to reduce any lag.
I do remember encountering an interesting glitch in level 8. The first time I destroyed the crystal reactor, the scrolling somehow bugged out, broke free of its constraints, and allowed me to move a screen or two to the right where it would stop at the bottom of the shaft; I couldn't go up until the explosion had finished.The obvious benefit is that you'd get a head start for when the explosion stops, but it also reduces lag.
I recently found this glitch on the console while trying to beat the game on crazy hard. It was fairly easy to do, and I was able to reproduce it many times. I stayed on the left side of the room the whole fight, and when the boss is destroyed, charge up, walk over and boost right, from about the center of the room. There is a pause in the next room until the screen can scroll normally, it seems to depend on what Sparkster does.
It will probably save time, and also causes some interesting colors in the adjacent room.
I recently found this glitch on the console while trying to beat the game on crazy hard. It was fairly easy to do, and I was able to reproduce it many times. I stayed on the left side of the room the whole fight, and when the boss is destroyed, charge up, walk over and boost right, from about the center of the room. There is a pause in the next room until the screen can scroll normally, it seems to depend on what Sparkster does.
Great that you figured it out :D
And I finished up the second level, am 14 something seconds ahead now (most of it saved on the boss battle).
WIP
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
Nice.
I only have one concern. When working through a vertical shaft, why not boost at a properly positioned angle so that you have some boost momentum when you clear the floor/ceiling?
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
If you are talking about around 9000 frames in to the movie, it simply turned out to be faster to save the boost for when going down again (to not have to recharge it). All other plausible shafts are too tall for a diagonal boost to do any good (a.i you'd have to get so far up before boosting that it would waste time in the end).
Just got done with level 5 now. It's going pretty good, I'm about 40 seconds faster now. Of the top of my head I think it was something like 10 seconds in level 3 (not surprisingly since the speed in the level is capped most where from the boss battle, the rest where from the mini boss and less lag), 4 seconds in level 4, and 12 seconds in level 5.
(probably) Last WIP
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
I know that sooner or later someone will get angry with me and will start to beat my movies, but I'm also working on an improvement to the game Sparkster.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
I also hope so! I'm basically trying to reduce lag, but weird enough, I managed to save some frames moving slower!?! I'm fighting the Golden Knight, 216 frames ahead.
I'll post a wip as soon as I finish the fight, right now I'm in a really bad spot for the next hit...
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Can't watch this right now but I'm curious. How much time did you end up saving in the first level, and how much of that was reduced lag and how much was faster movement?
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
252 frames saved on the first stage only with lag reduction, I'm using the same techniques found in your run, but sometimes I need to delay a spindash or use it somewhere else.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
