I don't have the patience and/or dedication to do this run myself but I will gladly help out in route planning.
One thing I just thought of: since it wastes time to go through the statistics screen when you can't get a clear gem on a level yet, and the stats screen only shows up when you've cleared the level with one life, we need to kill Crash immediately after starting any level where the clear gem is not immediately attainable (i.e. almost all of Island 1 - Jungle Rollers, The Great Gate, Upstream, Rolling Stones and Native Fortress). This means that we can't pick up any Aku Akus in most places to allow Crash a quick and painless death. Heavy death abuse is a must.
Also, bonus rounds do NOT count towards the level's box total, so Tawna, Brio and Cortex tokens should be avoided.
This is my potential route for Island 1:
N. Sanity Beach
Get all boxes and avoid the Aku Akus. There's a way to hit the crate bridge so that Crash can hit each one as it spawns but I haven't been able to do it consistently.
Jungle Rollers
Death - Spin Crash into the TNT, complete as fast as possible w/o boxes.
The Great Gate
Death - It's probably faster to send Crash into the pit past the turtle (Crash has a pretty long death animation when touched by enemies). It may be slightly faster to go through the level without a death but I haven't tested that yet.
Boulders
Clear Gem.
Upstream
Death - Immediately drown Crash in the river, play as normal without going for boxes.
Papu Papu
As normal
Rolling Stones
Death - have Crash touch the man-eating plant. Play without going for boxes.
Hog Wild
Get the clear gem, no Aku Akus on this level iirc.
Native Fortress
Death by turtle. Play normally.
So - anyone else have ideas?
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
[quote="theenglishman"]
Also, bonus rounds do NOT count towards the level's box total, so Tawna, Brio and [b]Cortex[/b] tokens should be avoided.
[/quote]
You can avoid Tanwa and Brio but you need the keys from Cortex bonuses to open 2 secret levels.
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
That's awesome, but it's a speedrun so we wouldn't be opening secret levels.
I've used this game as a bit of a "get to know the pcsx" kind of run.
Progress
The run would only be ~45 minutes and it's pretty straight forward to TAS. However, the game desyncs a lot, and crashes a lot. It's still pretty fun to TAS though so I may see it through depending on how much better/worse it gets.
This .pxm desyncs about halfway through Jungle Rollers.
P.S. I don't use death in Jungle Rollers because the level can be optimally beaten with missing only 7 boxes which is faster (and looks better) than blow up, death animation, restart. I'm not a huge fan of liberal death abuse as would be seen in this run.
I haven't ran into any de-sync issues when I've been recorded my Gran Turismo movie. I have recorded a total of 222,000 frames and the movie runs fine.
Be sure to use the SCPH1001 BIOS, I also have the CD image mounted with Daemon tools and use the Xeven's Cdr plugin.
What settings are you using?
That's awesome, but it's a speedrun so we wouldn't be opening secret levels.
What? Come on, 100p plus going through the Great Hall is the best way to show off how broken this game can be.
PCSX is also crashing every time I try to play your run. Can you make an AVI or YouTube copy?
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Joined: 10/11/2008
Posts: 64
Location: Kajaani, Finland
I am also interested, though I have never beat the game myself.
I would definatetly watch this if someone would make.
Off_this_topic; how you can make AVI from your pxm recording?
I am also interested, though I have never beat the game myself.
I would definatetly watch this if someone would make.
Off_this_topic; how you can make AVI from your pxm recording?
I also need to know how to make an avi from my recording.
Thanks in advance.
I agree with Paused on this. I've never managed to actually get 100% nor have I seen any non-totally-sucking-quality run on Youtube or the like of this game being beaten to the full extent.
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
I'll try and make an .avi tonight. On another note, has anyone been able to play this .pxm back yet? I'm not sure how stable this pcsx is yet. Is it likely that movies from this version will be accepted and published? I've not been around too much so I'm not sure what Bisqwit's feelings about this emulator are. It'd fill me with confidence if someone else could watch this movie :-)
Paused: I agree with you. It'd involve almost excessive backtracking, but I think it'd look better. At the moment I'm going to play on with any% and see how it goes.
Also, eternal is the best sound plugin for this game by far but doubles the desyncs in comparison with peops. I'm still messing around with a few plugins to figure out which would be best. It's looking likely that I'd have to restart anyway so I may adopt for a 100% run instead.
Oh, and my current plugins for anyone trying to play the run back...
Video: P.E.Op.S Soft Driver 1.18
Sound: plays back with P.E.Op.S DSound Audio Driver 1.9 (but recorded with No Sound 0.4)
First Controller: N-Rage Plugin 0.95
CdRom: Mooby2 CD Disk Image Driver 2.8
Bios: schp1001.bin
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
Mukki wrote:
On another note, has anyone been able to play this .pxm back yet?
I was able to get the movie to play just fine (I'm using the actual CD, by the way). My plugins were exactly the same as yours, except I have P.E.Op.S CDR Driver 1.4 for Cdrom. I would be very interested in seeing a full TAS of this game, since it was one of my favorite games to play some years ago. If/when you start TASing this, are you planning to use MHS to watch Crash's speed? I was messing around with the tool while playing, and it seemed like Crash gets a slight boost forward when spinning (but he also gets slowed down a bit once the spin stops, so I'm not actually sure if it's faster).
On another note, you may want to consider getting a mask or two for levels like the Great Gate, where you can hop onto the spiked pillars (and other obstacles) to save time. I know it usually wastes time to collect masks, but would it be worth collecting three at strategic points for the increased speed and invulnerability?
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
Chef Stef: Cool! It plays back. I spent some time using the inbuilt RAM watch to try and find some values but never found much. Before I start I'll try and find a few using MHS as I'm more comfortable with that.
Okay, I've decided to start over and make this a 100% run (all gems) since a suicidal bandicoot would just make for sadistic viewing and this will be considerably more awesome. I'll post up a WIP later.
Okay, I've decided to start over and make this a 100% run (all gems) since a suicidal bandicoot would just make for sadistic viewing and this will be considerably more awesome. I'll post up a WIP later.
Agreed.
Though you'll still have to kill Crash pretty often, just not every level.
Also, I found that you still get the great screen if you die before the first checkpoint, so we have to kill Crash right after he hits the first checkpoint. Route planning will have to take that into account.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
The run would certainly look a lot "cleaner" if you chose to impose a "no death" restriction on it, but I suppose it doesn't matter that much since there aren't that many levels where you'll have to kill yourself. Good luck with the run! I'll definitely be watching your WIPs and providing feedback.
Well, I watched the TAS for this game the other night, while it was enjoyable, it does have it's downside.
The Crash Games are always more enjoyable to watch when run at 100% completion.
I have yet to watch the TAS for the second game, but I should get to it soon. :3
I decided to make another run after the second wasn't accepted.
For now I have only done the first 3 levels, there already an improvement, but I want to know if I can make others.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/1ocfypeenpmufp1/WIP.pjm
I think a few more revisions and this will be accepted. Where is Mukki when you need him... If I was him I would be coming out of retirement right about now.
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
Yes, that looked much better. Spinning and jumping is important. Make sure that Crash jumps before his leg is raised at the end of the spin and you won't lose any time. Also, make sure that you are constantly comparing to the published run to make sure that you are not losing frames. Keep posting WIPs every few levels and I'll give some feedback. I didn't notice anything major so feel free to continue.
