Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
...will not run. Both the PAL and NTSC versions get as far as the company logo, then just stick there. Otherwise I'd be getting to this already.
Either way, I'll set this topic up now.
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.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Small update. Seems to be an emulation issue and nothing to do with plugins or other setup. I just booted it up in ePSXe with the same plugins and it worked fine.
Darn. :(
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.
Judge for yourself:
The main problem in Rayman Advance for me is that you can't even see what's two steps ahead of you. I would wait for pSX or a Jaguar or Saturn emulator with rerecording features, instead of TASing the GBA version. I think there are much better Raymans for the GBA than Rayman Advance.
I meant differences gameplay-wise. Because if there are any, my test-run wouldn't be of any help for a PSX run.
Although I do admit that a Rayman TAS should be made with the PSX version.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think every port of rayman is different from the PC version, with a little asking around. If TASing DOSbox or something similar does get around to happening, I would think that version would still be the preferable one.
Joined: 3/16/2009
Posts: 42
Location: In the USA, nowhere else.
There are some changes that are annoying between versions-
The music is PAINFUL to listen to in the GBA version. I've heard so many people complain about the watered down music with SNES ports, like SMA1/2/3/4, DKC1/2,Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis... all of those don't even match up to the annoyance of this one.
The game is significantly easier in the GBA version, like-
You have 4/6 health points instead of 3/5
Running and going down slopes is slower, making it easy to react
You start with 5 lives instead of 3
Any spot that makes something appear is now clearly visible- sparks show. The original's spots were invisible, making the "skip Dark Rayman" trick harder.
Some cages are easier to find or easier to make appear. The one in the first scene of Bongo Hills was moved and now it's painfully obvious. There's absolutley no way you can miss it.
The game frame skips almost 90% of the time. It makes it almost unpleasent to watch.
There you go. The "easier" already means you probably shouldn't run the GBA version, as you must use the hardest difficulty possible.
I've played through Rayman on the GBA. Surprisingly, it actually makes a lot of levels harder inadvertently due to the smaller screen. Boss battles are impossible!
Another change they made was that the autoscrolling sections of the game were completely removed. You can just run past them as if they are normal stages. (However, some strange screen scrolling behavior suggests that they were there originally but were cut out hastily.)
And the music... yeah. What a beautiful soundtrack, completely ruined!
I was TASing this game a while back. Here's an optimized run through Pink Plant Woods, Anguish Lagoon, and Bongo Hills. It plays one level of Allegro Presto, though it's more of a test run.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1642048931/cad_rayman_advance_tas.vbm
One more reason why PSXhawk should come along pronto. First take damage from one of the spike balls and then jump through a one tile gap between the wall and the lowest spike ball to nab the cage without backtracking.
Not sure if there's a good real time setup for it, the timing needs to be pretty precise.
Edit: You can also take damage from the spiked notes below and use that to get through, I think that's the best setup.
This is frame precise.
You need as many speed fists as you can (one doesn't cut it) and drop down from the higher ledge. Then you get as close to the cage as you can while still being able to get back to the lower ledge and use your fist. One frame too late, and you'll drop into the water.
Skips having to get the plum at the end of the level.
scrimpy, when psxhawk, get rdy to TAS dis with me Kappa
Current:
Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD
Paused:
N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair)
GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven)
TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
Praise Octoshock.
Here's a quick video showing that it's not only possible to get all cages in Anguish Lagoon on GBA, but on PSX as well.
Link to video
Great things are gonna happen soon.
There is a way to clip through the ceiling in Moskito's Nest in the GBA version to get the last cage early.
I was testing whether it's still possible without the helicopter power. This is important, because the different route in the PSX version forces you to go through the stage without it.
So, turns out it is. It's only a million times harder.
Link to video
Without the helicopter power, Rayman can't instantly snap onto the plum which makes it nearly impossible to get enough punches in to give the plum a large enough vertical boost. Even the way shown in the video, the positioning and timing needs to be incredibly precise.
It's still worth going for in an actual run, because not only does it save you revisiting the stage later, but you can also skip the first water section by flying over it.
"Nightmare" doesn't even begin describing what optimizing this will be.
At this point, I'm pretty much waiting for Bizhawk 2.0.0 to get an official release version so got4n and me can finally start doing this run proper. It's been long enough.
This is useless for a speedrun, but too fun not to share.
It's been known for a while that you can get very high speeds by holding up when letting go off a ring. (The reason for that is that holding up preserves whatever mid-air speed Rayman has, and holding onto rings adds to Rayman's mid-air speed)
Turns out, if you go at such high speeds, some rather, interesting, things tend to happen.
Link to video
The journey has just begun.
Link to video
Thanks scrimpeh too for the plum part, it was hell to TAS but he managed to make an awesome level :D
Current:
Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD
Paused:
N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair)
GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven)
TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
Oh my! When I heard that psxhawk was released, I got so excited since I realised that it might mean that Rayman run could be done some day. But oh boy, I never thought it would be this soon!
Thank you for posting WIP, looks great so far! :)
Wow, looking nice so far :)
The plum optimizing looked like it would have been pretty hard! Btw, what's happening at the beginning of each level where it looks like Rayman is spazzing out for a second?