Post subject: Battletoads & Double Dragon!
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
Ahh, I think this is the game that marked the final appearance of the toads, if I guess right. Anyway, if I were to try and provide as much info as I could, would anyone be willing to try out a speed run of this game?
nesrocks
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Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
should be 2 players, maybe a toad + a dragon. i looked at the nes version for the first time today, funny heh. they used the same sprites + code for the toads, even the way he runs is the same (backwards headbutt is also present there lol)
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498
Yeah, this is pretty much "Battletoads 2 with Double Dragon cameos", so it's no big surprise some of the old glitches are still present. :p Phil and Genisto said they would take this up, if I remember right. Could be a while before they get around to it though, they've got quite a few other projects...
Joined: 8/12/2004
Posts: 651
Location: Alberta, Canada
There is a Battletoads on SNES too, there are 3 toads in that game. Rash, Pimple, and something? Edit: Ahh I had forgotten there is all 3 on the BTDD too.
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I went and did a quick playthrough up to the middle of Level 5. Here's what I've found so far: (Note: I used Jimmy when I played through) Bosses are easily beaten with running attacks. They can be pulled off relatively quickly. In level 1, the move of choice should be running attacks. Any enemy except the hands are easily beaten in one or two attacks. The hands in level 1 are quickly beaten by waiting for the hands to miss while holding onto a ledge. Jump back up and elbow drop it. Abobo won't actually enter until you stand on the ground, so running up the ramp to wait for him will just make things take longer at the end. In level two, get a walking robot's leg ASAP. It's the quickest way to beat the guys in green. The second quickest was just doing the punch combo. They took four flying kicks each to beat, and they kept flying offscreen, making it even longer for them to be beaten. Surprisingly, in level three, there's only one very limited opportunity to knock enemies into a pit. However, two flying kicks each will kill the women with the whips. Level four is TOUGH. The quickest way to beat it is not to get hit by anything. Way, way easier said than done. The guys who throw stars in level 5 are easily defeated with one flying kick. That's about it for my quick run-through info.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498
Something interesting I found about the Dragons: it seems a regular jump kick (jump up, then hit attack) is stronger than the running attack. Most enemies I tried this on went down in 1-2 hits. o_O
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
The running flying kick is the same way. However, it takes some enemies longer to kill. (See my above findings)
Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 551
Location: Karlstad, Sweden
I would love to see it too :> Really fun game :)
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Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Rick wrote:
The hands in level 1 are quickly beaten by waiting for the hands to miss while holding onto a ledge. Jump back up and elbow drop it.
If you're a battletoad, you can kick the hands without needing to jump back up. In fact, strategies for the toads has many differences.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498
Or, with either character type, just do a running attack once the hand is stuck, to kill it in one hit. =P
Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 551
Location: Karlstad, Sweden
Play it with one toad and one dragon :> Would be cooler and more entertaining to watch and I guess it would be no time difference wheter u use 2 toads or 2 dragons
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
Hmm...well, I could always try a run, but I'd need a whole lot of help with it from you guys, especially using SNES9x to do the runs on, 'cause I'm not familiar with that emulator at all. Obviously, I use ZSNES. If someone's willing to work with me at it, I'll do the run of this game to hopefully get my feet wet in the world of speed runs.
Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 551
Location: Karlstad, Sweden
Rick wrote:
Hmm...well, I could always try a run, but I'd need a whole lot of help with it from you guys, especially using SNES9x to do the runs on, 'cause I'm not familiar with that emulator at all. Obviously, I use ZSNES. If someone's willing to work with me at it, I'll do the run of this game to hopefully get my feet wet in the world of speed runs.
Have you played this game alot before? snes9x is easy to learn, but just like you I was also only familiar with ZSNES before I started to watch timeattacks.
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I've been playin' run-throughs of this game quite a bit. I don't think I'll start one until I've memorized everything in every level. Isn't that what the speed run people do? o_O
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (966)
Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
Location: Sweden
With savestates you have the option to learn a level, record it, learn the next one, etc. Speedrunning people usually don't have that option, they have to play it all at once and therefore practice a lot beforehand. If there are any planning issues (like where to pick up which item) it's better to have a plan in advance though. And it's not like extensive knowledge of the game hurts ;)
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
Thanks for the advice. ^_^ Anyhoo, I did find that the three hardest places in the game are gonna be Level 4-1, Level 4-2, and the Dark Queen. Those are gonna probably take a lot of rerecords, and I haven't figured out how to do any of these without getting an ass-kicking and a half. >_O -EDIT- I took ZSNES and made a sort-of outline of how I'd plan to do the first level. It's not perfect by any means, and I didn't use any special features. You can download it here: http://www.webpost.net/le/lefthooktohead/battletoads-double-dragon.zip
Player (104)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 562
Location: Québec, Canada
There hasn't been an update about this run for a while ... How is this run doing?
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I updated with a quick, non-tool-assisted video of how I would do the first level. I still need to get SNES9X for the tool-assisted-recording and figure out just how to both actually do this run and make it look so totally awesome, and how to get the patience to actually do these things. I dunno, maybe I'm just overthinking most of it, but it just seems like an incredible, incredible, incredible amount of work. o___o;;
Joined: 7/2/2005
Posts: 309
Location: Baltimore, MD
Seems like it would be really tough to do, but I'd like to see the finished product.
Guybrush: "I'm selling these fine leather jackets." Wally: "Really?" Guybrush: "No. I 'm lying." Wally: "In that case, I don't want one!" Currently working on: Nothing at the moment.
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I haven't been able to actually do any sort of run with this. I'm very, very unconfident about my speedrunning abilities due to the combination of I know some aspects and not others, and the fact that I have to save every little eency-weency frame I can or else it's not gonna be very good. Not only that, work has been hell, and one I've been returning to often. I was hoping to do a Zelda glitch run where I do things out of order in the game as an entertainment run, but I wasn't able to. Maybe I'll do this at some point, but the fact remains that I don't think I'd be able to do a good speed run. ^^;
nesrocks
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Joined: 5/1/2004
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Location: Rio, Brazil
Rick wrote:
and the fact that I have to save every little eency-weency frame I can
that's how i do it
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Did anyone use tool-assists to try to finish off the enemy ship (space stage) quicker? I wonder how easy that can be?
Aran_Jaeger
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Joined: 10/29/2014
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I did some TASing work (using Lsnes) on this game and have some improvements over the published TAS up to stage 3 (since I haven't done any TASing beyond that yet). I know that the published TAS for this game is in the Vault since the NES TAS seems similar enough (and better, I guess), but that doesn't need to matter. General notes on the Test-TAS so far (and comparison to Whitegastra's TAS): At the beginning, one has to wait for a high note of the title screen music until one finally can affect the game and choose and confirm the chosen characters as soon as possible. Note that testing other character combinations still is remaining to be tested, but I just went with this combination because the resources that I checked lead me to believe it'd be good to start out this way. I also chose the mode in which both players cannot hit each other, of which I'm not entirely sure that it is faster, but at least it'd get rid of annoying instances in which they get into their way and hit each other instead of targeting enemies (or even just when they do jumpkicks to get past obstacles while moving synchronized), and additional collision checks might also cause more lag at few places. The first 2 enemies are taken care of similarly as in Whitegastra's TAS, but the next pair of fighters climbing along the floor are killed with simple fist attacks that let them just straight fall and not move up and down which keeps them longer on screen and hence stalls the screen longer before it continues moving at its seemingly fixed/constant speed throughout stage 1. Opening a capsule generally produces 1 lag frame when it bursts, and I assume the reason for this is the many small projectiles/capsule pieces with their own trajectories. I wasn't aware of this right at the beginning yet, so the very 1st capsule should be left untouched, but there is a strange behavior of (any but especially) the 1st brown robot for which the sound of a bursting capsule (or jumpkicking an enemy while the robot is on screen) at any point earlier on will influence the robot's behavior (because the robot normally has an attack preparation phase during which it flies upwards out of the player's fist attack range, and if the sound of a jumpkick hitting an enemy occurs meanwhile (or a capsule was opened before in the stage), the robot's AI is interrupted and it keeps its speed for a bit and drifts further, but then can afterwards immediately start chasing the player, which allows to cancel the usual preparation phase immediately as soon as the robot appears, with a well-timed jumpkick sound or capsule-opening sound, since not actually hitting a robot stalls it but the hit sound already causes this). So probably at least 1 capsule might be opened to achieve the fastest result. In the Test-TAS one can see the 1st brown robot still moving upwards for about 3 frames, but I think I had instances in which it moved straight down from the beginning. The next 2 brown robots have their particle effects (when they burst on the ground) occur at the same frame to merge the lag frames that each of those bursts would cause to 1 remaining lag frame. The 2nd fighter afterwards that Jimmy is kicking is kicked at the same frame as Billy hits the other enemy for whom he can wait and doesn't have positioning constraints to meet, so for Jimmy, the hit should have occured as soon as possible aswell already, provided those 2 enemies spawn at the same time (and thus can be hit at the same frame). Then I keep Billy climbing along the floor because getting up would stall the screen movement, and I don't need him yet to get rid of further enemies, and I let him up as soon as the screen would anyways stop. The next brown robot causes another lag frame when it bursts. And at the next pair of brown robots, I could have done the final attack on both at the same time but this would have resulted in 2 lag frames instead of 1 for which I delayed the kill of Jimmy's robot, since both need to be dead anyways in order to allow the screen movement to continue (and the height of the floor actually matters for the frame in which they burst/reach the ground). As opposed to the NES version of the game, after a bunch of tests, it seemed to be impossible to deal an initial early hit on Abobo before the player characters are stunned temporarily. Generally, it seems when enemies appear, there is frames during which it seems that no collision check is executed for hitting them with an attack (maybe only for 1 of the 2 players, or for every 2nd frame which is to be checked), which in few cases caused me to lose 1 frame compared to Whitegastra's TAS. In the 2nd stage I use the 1st wooden enemy as target for both player character's finishing moves to get rid of the last 2 enemies at once, which often seems to be a successful strategy. Most of the time, a running jumpkick shifts the screen to its final position where it stops (in stage 2 and 3) within the same time as running does already, and is only rarely 1 or a few frames faster with proper timing. The strategy for both dynamite throwers is to first let them throw all dynamites that I'll need in total to kill them, followed by throwing the dynamites at them (which turned out to be a bit more tricky in the 2nd case, where 1 dynamite was already about to explode and had to be thrown in order to pick it up later again). It seemed to be impossible to pick up a dynamite that was about to enter the door in order to essentially duplicate dynamites such that one would hold 1 and another dynamite enters the door (which is possible in the NES version). The range in which dynamites can still be picked up (even if it is far away from a character) is extraordinairy, by the way. The time it takes for a dynamite between throwing it and it entering the door depends on its trajectory in the room, but there seem to be fixed minimal delays between dynamites to make the hits count, and I think the minimum was reached in each case. At the part before the rat, in the orange floating bikes, I could avoid a lag frame that would (usually) occur when a heart symbol for an additional life (of which I need a bunch for death warps in stage 3) appears. Keeping orientation closer to the 2-player speedrun by PJ and Mecha Richter than the older TAS payed off at this part aswell, since it allowed for the largest improvement over the TAS with 1000 saved frames, I think, simply by not killing any biker and just stalling 1 of them and letting him disappear, which skips an otherwise additional ''bonus'' phase in which capsules appear. And it seemed to be irrelevant at what time the biker finally disappears from the screen (but maybe killing him well-timed might save or even waste time), which he does on his own at some point. At the rat, a jumpkick together with a fist attack allowed to initiate a knee attack early on (and further kicks were just used to keep the rat down on ground so the knee would hit, aswell as manipulating the rat's position close to the edge of the screen), and turned out to be faster than spamming jumpkicks. Already at the beginning of stage 3, after the first couple enemies, (aswell as at few spots later in the same stage) I could make good use of the longjump storage mechanic (explained further below for 1 of the movies, but basically allows to accelerate during a jump up to about running speed which is even kept after the character lands), aswell as sliding onto higher platforms via jumpkicks. And a longjump for Billy is also used after the first turret in order to jump over a platform and land on the ground next to Jimmy as soon as possible to initiate the rope swinging animation as soon as possible. The following few whirlwind attacks fortunately didn't cause lag to my knowledge at the birds (even though this kind of attack is somewhat heavy on the game), but cause 1 lag frame later on each time (where I tried to let the whirlwind attack animation almost run out before it hits an enemy as soon as it appears, from as high as possible against the same wall one is attached to, to reduce the amount of rope sprites which otherwise also throws in a few lag frames here and there). So far, I didn't find any way to get off the ropes in a better way than just optimizing the position rather than position and speed or acceleration, which seemed to not matter much. Note though that the current Test-TAS doesn't have the use of a RAM Watch incorporated yet (and only uses the input editor, which on its own is already pretty powerful), since I'm still looking through the addresses to map their behavior to parameter's that change in the game, for a later TAS attempt. Right after jumping off the ropes, Jimmy gets rid of the capsule (for which I managed to avoid the lag frame that the collection of the 5000 score sign normally causes) so Billy can dash forwards with a jumpkick (instead of being forced by the capsule's position to initiate an ellbow attack against it). The longjump mechanic then allows me to simply jump over the ''Tarzan-gaps'' as I call them, instead of getting past them the normal way. At around the frame 22153, after finishing off 2 turrets, dashing forwards midair after a jumpkick with Billy barely allows Billy to land on the higher platform. Also noteworthy is that in stage 2 and 3, there seem to be parts at which the screen (provided it reached a certain position already) starts moving at a fixed speed, so that character movement couldn't induce a faster forced screen-shift anymore. After the chainsaws, jumping normally onto higher platforms (and being attached to them in a standing pose if one keeps holding Jump and is close enough) ended up being faster than using a jumpkick onto the 1st higher platform, since this would trigger the stomper earlier and would require to start running again after the jumpkick finished, which doesn't allow to get past the stomper anymore, so one would get hit. At the lever gates, I could nicely abuse the fence side-kick animation that can happen simultaneously to falling from the fence and still hit the lever that way in each case. Then there is capsules on the path which effectively hinder jumpkicks from being a quick option to get onto higher platforms, and another longjump is used over a platform, followed by a slightly different approach to get rid of the women with the whips. The game often doesn't spawn more than 2 fighter type enemies simultaneously and often hitting/getting rid of 1 of 2 such enemies instantly causes the next enemy to appear. And again longjumps over Tarzan gaps are used, followed by shifting the screen as quick as possible sufficiently far to the right with Jimmy so that Billy could respawn on the right side quickly. Billy's jumpkick afterwards shifted the screen faster to its end position, and the woman that Jimmy kicks on the ground first allows him to initiate a knee attack that then hits the other woman, so both can be finished off faster in the end. Then a jumpkick trajectory into the following abyss for a death warp is chosen in such a way to still respawn on the right side but also with a lot of falling speed to land early to start swinging ropes quickly. The turrets afterwards didn't cause any lag, but I think each whirlwind attack caused 1 lag (though some were synchronized). The final bird that is attacked either flies off-screen far to the right or to the left, depending on where the highest character is positioned, so I made sure it moves to the left so it can be finished off together with the previous bird. Billy and Jimmy are attached to the long fence further ahead using jumpkicks, and this fence will probably take a while to optimize (and is the reason why the Test-TAS stops shortly after), since the time at which obstacles spawn near the fence depends on the screen position, and one would want to minimize the time needed to dodge obstacles (or counter-attack them) without being able to move, so one would want to merge or let many obstacles overlap or be synchronized at 1 place to reduce the total amount of frames spent on dodging them (and a normal death warp would just let a player respawn at the far left of the screen and essentially waste already travelled distance). And for this task, not a constantly moving screen matters in the end but the furthest ahead player character's position matters to reach a fixed final screen position as soon as possible (since the character drives the screen position and ultimately allows for a death warp for both characters as soon as the screen has reached a certain position which it will have reached as soon as the character reached a certain position by travelling a sufficient distance). And since it suffices for 1 character to reach this position that then allows a death warp for both, the other character can be used to stop the screen movement bit by bit by how much it should be, whenever needed in order to delay new obstacles from appearing or change the distance between the further ahead character to the side of the screen for the times in which new obstacles will appear, as long as it doesn't unnecessarily keep the further ahead character from moving to the right. Regarding this fence, I couldn't make the fast fence travel method from the NES version work here. - - - - - Lsnes movies: This is my current Test-TAS until about half through stage 3, and the following movies containing short improvements (or potential, not yet confirmed possible, improvements in few cases) refer with their X frame improvements (over the Test-TAS) to this Test-TAS. Generally, in the input editor, there is some (useless) inputs used as markers for orientation, and the frames at which differences occur between the Test-TAS and an improvement movie are marked in the improvement movie by 2 frame-rows of L and R inputs for both characters (instead of just 1 row of L and R, which I use generally as breakpoints for when the screen starts to move or stops moving or when certain animations start or end to see how well the TAS does). Most lag frames (outside of cutscenes and loading times) should be marked with Start inputs in the movie. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344550065261772801/Test-TAS.lsmv Local known improvements (and improvement ideas) as Lsnes movies: A jump kick with Jimmy at around 7857 allows to have the screen finish its movement 1 frame earlier (but might not anymore allow to move Jimmy vertically along the ground to lure the enemy coming from the right side into the screen fast enough to keep the frame save). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344593095737737247/jumpkick_for_1f_faster_screen_shift_stage_2.lsmv This is one of my largest oversights of stage 2 for my current setup with Billy and Jimmy, since I simply started the finishing knee attacks with Billy and Jimmy at least 18 frames later than I could have done (which is around frame 7986) with better positioning and timing. I think I thought the sliding of the enemies on ground needed to finish before I could finish them off, and must have gotten to that conclusion by just doing a few tests that didn't allow me to finish them off earlier, but some more testing later on when I came back (now knowing that the finishing move can be started much earlier, basically as soon as the enemy lands on ground) made me realize this mistake. Even the published TAS does this faster (which I didn't use for comparison at that time). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344580493926203392/18f_stage_2_time_save_with_earlier_knee_finisher.lsmv A jumpkick in stage 2 - 2 at around frame 9200 in the Test-TAS allows the screen to finish its shift 5 frames earlier, but this improvement should be obsolete. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344551374450589697/obsolete_jumpkick_for_5f_faster_screen_shift_stage_2.lsmv Doing a jumpkick at around frame 9243 with Jimmy allows to shift the screen 7 frames earlier to its next fixed position compared to the Test-TAS, and 2 frames earlier compared to the above obsolete option. The 2nd movie is the same improvement in a different way that keeps the the final fixed position of the screen as it is in the Test-TAS. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344579053459734529/7f_faster_screen_shift_stage_2_and_diff_final_background_x_pos.lsmv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344597979820457984/the_7f_stage_2_faster_shift_with_same_background_x_pos.lsmv Finishing off the remaining 3 enemies climbing along the floor at around 9975 with stomps instead of jumpkicks despawns them much earlier and hence allows the screen to move much earlier, which should save around 20 frames. The 2nd movie takes (only) this improvement and continues further up to the dynamite thrower, where the RNG desynchs. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344593624950112257/stage_2_downstomp_strat_huge_20f_improvement.lsmv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344596243420545025/Test-TAS_improvement_at_stage_2_uncontinued.lsmv A jumpkick with Billy at around 10060 allows the screen to finish its shift 1 frame earlier (but might not be implementable due to possibly hitting the left guy afterwards later than originally). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344586283634393088/another_1f_shift_save_stage_2.lsmv At around frame 22227, instead of using a jump-kick, one can use a late airial kick shortly before Billy would land, in order to be able to run earlier to the right (and be further to the right) to do the final attack 2 frames earlier than in the Test-TAS. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344551944859418634/2f_save_stage_3_with_non-dash_jump_kick.lsmv At around frame 22238, jumping later after turning around keeps Jimmy further to the right (probably because of now already lost momentum) and allows him to hit the woman to the right 3 frames earlier. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344574496465747980/3f_stage_3_save_with_later_jumpkick_after_turn.lsmv At around frame 25101, after the jumpkick off the platform, one can continue moving forwards midair and enter the running animation midair to shift the screen 1 frame earlier to the next position where it will stop. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344570190404648960/1f_stage_3_faster_screen_shift_with_running_jump-kick_midair_dash.lsmv These improvements (and possibly other fixes such as a few remaining lag frames here and there remaining to be eliminated or merged to change 2 lag frames into 1 if one knows what causes the lag and can synchronize lag-inducing actions) are things that I'd want to implement into the Test-TAS before continuing further with the test, because I expect RNG and lag patterns to have a more major impact/relevance in stage 4, and so far, it seems the only ''majorly'' RNG depending scenario was in stage 2 at the 2nd dynamite throwing guy with the trajectories of the dynamites which seemed to depend on RNG. To me it seems the game would allow for various ways in which one can implement stylistic elements (entertainment) which don't seem to be fully exhausted in the published TAS, but (except maybe of the 1st stage in the Test-TAS) entertainment is something to care about and do at the end when the frame-optimization is mostly done, I guess, because otherwise it might happen that already implemented stylistic elements will have to be revised after finding new improvements. - - - - - Lsnes observation movies throughout the TASing process: - - - Stage 1: When the 2nd fighter that gets into the screen and is kicked at around frame 2391, the screen in this test movie is kept far left to test if the fighter would despawn earlier that way after being thrown far off-screen to the right instead of landing and despawning shortly after, but this didn't work (which though turns out to be possible in a few cases of kicking fighters in stage 1 off-stage to keep the screen movement going). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344645430870540288/level_1_test.lsmv This movie shows how one can take out the 1st (and apparently only the 1st) brown robot in stage 1 with a simple, well positioned (in relation to the robot's position, not too centered and not too far away vertically along the ground) fist attack as soon as the robot sank far enough down from above. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344607040376668161/brown_robot_grab_and_jab_kill.lsmv Here is a comparison movie for the case of finishing off a fighter in stage 1 around frame 3407 with the knee attack (which ended up being slower than waiting for the fighter to stand up, kick him and let him despawn off-screen). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344641174885367810/knee_smash_finisher_test.lsmv - - - Stage 2: In the 2nd stage, on the first floor, there is an occassion at which 2 enemies approach Billy and Jimmy from both sides, and they will try to adapt their vertical position on the floor to the player character that they are targeting, but I haven't quite yet figured out how they decide their target, which can be important to figure out, as I learned in stage 3. This movie shows how those 2 enemies both lock onto the same player character, ignoring the other one (until hitting the former, at least). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344605710673248256/both_fighters_locking_onto_same_char.lsmv A movie that uses the TAS strategy that Whitegastra used for the 1st dynamite thrower, for comparison purposes. And the 2nd movie shows what happens if one throws a secondary (or later) dynamite too early into the door (which causes a repetition of the dynamite thrower's backwards movement animation and doesn't let the previous danymite hit count anymore, so it seems). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344614054087884801/dynamite_thrower_old_TAS_strat.lsmv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344614364416049153/dynamite_thrower_animation_repetition.lsmv Here one can see an example of some kind of inverted situation at the 1st floor of stage 2 where the enemy fighters' AI ignores the closer player character. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344639302577422346/fighter_AI_char_lock_demonstration.lsmv At the beginning of the 2nd floor in stage 2, this movie shows roughly how long one can delay a 2nd knee attack against an enemy on the floor while the other player character is finishing him off. This uses the mechanic that the knee attack can still be triggered after a dash that ends near the enemy and already stopped, (and even during a stationary jump at that spot) as long as the/some target enemy on the ground is still there. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344647460498702336/most_delayed_stored_knee_finisher_from_present_object.lsmv At the 2nd floor in stage 2 at the 2 wooden enemies, it occured (and is shown in this movie) that a knee attack was capable of hitting 1 of the wooden enemies while it was in its stunned knockback phase shortly after getting kicked. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344656786680315928/wooden_enemy_kick_and_knee_kill_midair.lsmv This is where I first noticed the longjump mechanic (at the 2nd floor of stage 2). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344640281246957570/horizontally_speed_up_dash_jump.lsmv The time it takes until the 2nd stage ends (with a fade-out of the screen) depends on how soon the rat boss exits the screen (and despawns), apparently. And the following movie indicates the time difference of knocking it to the left or the right out of the screen for a given final rat starting position where the rat lies (which one wants to have as close to 1 side of the screen as possible). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344642512817750026/L_and_R_markers_for_offscreen_rat_delay_difference.lsmv - - - Stage 3: At the lever gate, if one does a jumpkick against the laser, then the knockback animation will occur after the jumpkick animation finished (which is usually the case when touching fire rings aswell), and the character will be thrown back during the jumpkick (which doesn't seem to happen anywhere else so far). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344637375470895124/electric_gate_jumpkick_delayed_damage.lsmv At the chainsaw downwards climb, it doesn't help trying to let both player characters die and respawn near the end in order to obtain and keep i-frames to get past the stomper shortly afterwards (which is possible for 1 of the characters and would be faster if the other one wouldn't get hit and then stall the screen for a whole long time), because at least 1 of the player characters has to finish off the final turret in order to allow the screen to progress, and at this point the last chainsaw is gone already and both would be in their death animation, and waiting for a turret shot to let a character die would already waste too many frames, so at least 1 character cannot get the i-frames and would get hit if the other one triggers the stomper too early (except it might still allow to trigger the stomper just 1 or a few frames earlier without yet hitting the slower i-frame-less character so that the character that is further ahead still can keep his distance-wise advantage). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344652802339110913/stage_3_iframe_strat_doesnt_work_bec_turret.lsmv This here is a comparison movie that contains the order/method in which the published TAS got rid of the women with the whips at the beginning of stage 3 - 2, which turned out to be slower than using the 3rd last woman (which is the last woman that takes 2 hits to despawn, in order to be useful for using her to trigger a double-knee-attack which usually seems to be the best way to get rid of the final 2 enemies) to get rid of her and the final one at the end. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344650061181091850/slower_stage_3_whip_ladies_strat_from_published_TAS.lsmv This movie contains an earlier, slower strategy of getting off the long fence near the end of the Test-TAS using a deathwarp for Jimmy and Billy. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344649595856355329/old_stage_3_Test-TAS_fence_strategy.lsmv Having another enemy lie around on the ground next to an enemy that already has been delivered the final attack allowed Billy at around the frame 25385 to initiate another final knee attack which then targeted the already finished off woman, which was a strange noteworthy occurence since it could be of relevance at some point. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344654900871036930/strange_knee_multi-kill_of_same_whip_lady_at_other_enemy.lsmv - - - - - Snes9x 1.51 rr movies (mostly for tests and documenting some things): Stage 2: One can jump and grab the orange floating bike (similarly to the NES version) for a higher jump, except one doesn't stay up there. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344544889779781643/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_vehicle_grab_jump.smv Some tests with the orange floating bike (dashing forwards and backwards, ramming and kicking, jumping and kicking in different rhythms that can cause weird vertical teleportations and kick animations). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344530057773187073/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_forwards_vehicle_kick_and_resonating_jumps_and_hi.smv - - - Stage 3: 2 types of game crashes: A game crash with black screen during the narrow climb section in stage 3. I think the crash is related to having a character close to the bottom of the screen near/beneath a bird (possibly bird AI or collision related) and either switching between holding Right and Left or just holding Left or Right. I assume it is related to the birds, because during the tests where I reproduced this kind of crash in similar situations a bunch of times, I think there was always a bird involved and I don't think I could get the game crash without a bird (except of 1 specific other instance). I don't think it is related to the fire ring sprites, since there were cases where the game crash could be reproduced without them aswell. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344491806295195648/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_another_climb_game_crash.smv While the (seemingly) bird related crash was easy to reproduce, a crash that seemed to be related to the height or timing at which a capsule that spawned at the end of a climbing section was much more precise and harder to recreate. It might be related to the sound or particle effect or the drop's positioning inbetween the 2 characters. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344524982124019712/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_down_climb_capsule_game_crash.smv This movie demonstrates a clip through the left wall using a laser and the induced animation from touching it (and one can get stuck on that left side that way). In the narrow shaft, this also works to clip through the right wall. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344512718843281409/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_clipping_past_left_wall_in_climb_shaft.smv It is also to note that the position of the capsule's drop from the above capsule game crash movie depends on positioning/timing of hitting the capsule when it spawns (since that drop can spawn far left or right). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344539150743240715/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_opening_capsule_far_right_when_it_spawns_for_drop.smv Jumps over/through the ceiling in stage 3: With the jump-kick mechanic using a crouch midair to gain height and distance (by chaining such kicks) during jumps, one can explore the collision-behavior of the ceiling a bit in stage 3 after the downwards climbing sections (if the jump that gets rid of the rope is well-timed while moving upwards at the top of the screen where the character is teleported back down a bit if one goes too high), and it seems that one cannot stand on any part of the ceiling (at least this seems to be true for the parts of the ceiling I could reach, and instead of landing on the ceiling, one will just fall through), and some parts of the ceiling don't allow the character to move sideways through them (i.e. some tiles in the ceiling have walls). In none of the cases I could get past the left wall with a crouchjump-kick near the top of the screen (but in some cases one can get hit by a blue laser and use the animation that happens when the character is shocked to clip through the left wall). And the stompers seem to extend very far upwards (since they still could hit the character in the ceiling even if they were triggered to move downwards by the other character). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344497436628353025/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_another_jump_through_ceiling.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344511697282924545/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_ceiling_clip_in_stage_3.smv This movie shows how stompers extend into the ceiling (and it would still be like this if the stomper was triggered earlier by the other character). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344543603516899341/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_stomper_extends_far_into_ceiling.smv At the climb section in stage 3 shown in the following movie, the last bunch of birds will not spawn and the screen will not stop going downwards if one doesn't attack at least 1 of the 2 birds that come after the first 4 birds higher up in the climb, but if one doesn't attack any of those 2 birds and reaches the bottom, one is stuck and cannot progress anymore (because the screen doesn't move anymore). And in the case that one does attack 1 of those 2 birds, then the screen will continue going downwards as long as the bird isn't despawned yet (when it exits the screen at the bottom), and the next set of birds will spawn (at fixed positions relative to the screen's position for at least 1 of them) as soon as the screen movement stops or as soon as a certain height of the screen close to the bottom of the shaft is finally reached (though it might also instead happen as soon as the juggled bird gets its final hit delivered). One can then also see some sprites of birds on screen that one cannot attack yet because they are actually higher up and will take some time to go down (and their sprites will disappear at the bottom of the screen and appear at the top again). And after those birds are finished off, the capsules that normally would spawn at different heights in relation to each other will all be lined up at a specific height near the end of the shaft (probably because this limiting height has priority and stops the capsules that are usually positioned further below from appearing lower than this limit). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344502913713963008/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_bird_climb_messed_up.smv The following movie shows how a bird clips through the left wall with its attack animation, and is then stuck over there (where one could still hit it) unless it clips back through if it is lured downwards close enough to the bottom of the screen and attacks. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344509361743462402/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_birds_can_dash_past_walls.smv The fence in the movie extends to the left (past the range of fence sprites), but unfortunately the stomper is in the way, so I couldn't test how far one could climb over to the left, but one would probably anyways stop at the left side of the screen. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344510690956017665/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_cannot_climb_left_past_stomper.smv A midair crouchjumpkick-chain test in stage 3 into an abyss to get an idea on how long the point in time of respawning can be delayed that way. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344515686489522186/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_delaying_the_respawn_with_Down-jumpkicks.smv In stage 3, if one jumps and presses Down at any point during the jump (except during a jumpkick or crouchjumpkick animation), the character cannot move sideways anymore until he lands (or until he executes a crouchjumpkick). And the following movie also contains some crouchjumpkick chain tests (going the same direction or alternating the direction each time), and slowdown tests to do a normal fist attack quickly after running in some direction (instead of a jumpkick which normally would happen). And if one jumps and keeps holding Jump after landing, one cannot dash anymore in order to run as long as Jump is held (nor can one jump by pressing the 2nd Jump button, since apparently the 2 Jump buttons act as 1 Jump button, and the same seems to be true for the 2 Attack buttons). And if one keeps holding Jump, lands on ground and presses down, then the character will be ''stuck'' in the crouch pose and cannot move sideways anymore as long as one keeps holding Jump (unless one presses Attack to do a crouchjumpkick). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344521835997822977/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_Down_button_and_jumpkick_boost_tests.smv When climbing a fence in stage 3, one can execute crouchjumpkicks that move the character upwards and forwards a bit, but the forwards movement is stopped as soon as one (vertically) comes close enough to the fence so that the character just stays in the air for a bit beneath the fence. Though if one falls further, one can move sideways during a crouchjumpkick before the character gained enough height from the crouchjumpkick in order to ''stick in place'' for the rest of the crouchjumpkick animation. One can also do a sideways kick animation on the fence and press Down about the same time to fall from the fence and do the kick animation (and can then still continue with midair crouchjumpkicks). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344526835197018112/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_downkick_fence_climbing_and_travel.smv Triggering an ellbow attack (due to the midair capsule) while running into the abyss in stage 3, and the 2nd movie shows the same with better timing where one can even reach the laser on the other side (and possibly could land over there if it wasn't for the laser). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344528935029309444/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_ellbow_attack_into_abyss_again_.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344544428721176586/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_triggering_ellbow_attack_while_running_off_cliff_.smv A fist attack can be executed at the right height shortly before attaching a character to a fence in the ceiling, but the fist attack seems to not be capable of hitting the lever. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344529390035664896/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_fist_attack_before_attaching_char_to_ceiling.smv Walking into the abyss and starting to run midair in stage 3. And the 2nd movie shows that one can also change the direction midair. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344531615944540160/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_gaining_dash_speed_in_abyss.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344539869269327874/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_running_diff_directions_midair_falling.smv One can also run into the abyss and do a fist attack midair (after turning around). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344540777730277376/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_running_into_abyss_and_fist_attack.smv When a character moves into an abyss and respawns, then the speed and animation is kept and i-frames are given. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344541191376994304/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_speed_and_animation_is_kept_when_respawning_and_i.smv If one gets hit (in this case by fire rings) while running, then the ''dashing'' state of the character is kept, i.e. one doesn't need to press Forwards, release it and re-press it again in order to start dashing (or in order to do jumpkicks) and can just hold Forwards to continue running. And no i-frames are given by getting hit unless one loses a character's life. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344542747459584010/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_speedkeep_after_getting_hit_and_lack_of_iframes.smv Jumps over gaps (as applications of the longjump mechanic and or midair crouchjump-kicks): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344536914432622592/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_huge_abyss_longkickjump.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344537462493806592/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_jumpkick_float_over_gap.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344538146005843979/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_longjump_over_tarzan_gap.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344538264004329472/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_longjumps_for_more_gaps.smv The midair crouchjumpkick also allows to run off a platform and jump back onto it. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344537134910406656/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_jumpkick_back_onto_platform_.smv In stage 3, a running jumpkick allows to get pushed up onto higher platforms without much of a loss of sideways speed. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344537639803682818/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_jumpkick_to_get_onto_higher_platform_smoothly.smv If one is close enough to a wall like in the following movie, then a character will get attached to a wall and stand on it, and tapping the other direction will make him stand on the same wall but on the other side of the wall. And one can execute those ''whirlwind'' attacks towards both directions on a wall (either away from it or towards it where one will stay in place). And near the bottom of the screen during climb sections or this place, pressing Down (either while walking on a wall or hanging) can make the character go up, which will happen until one reaches a certain height within the screen during the upwards movement in case one holds Down, or in the case one only taps Down bit by bit, one will not stop moving upwards until reaching the top of the screen. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344545433026166814/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_wall_behavior_with_rope.smv - - - Stage 4: It seems that remaining Missiles cannot hurt/hit the rat ship at the end in any way. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344538327816470529/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_missile_doing_nothing_to_rat_ship.smv - - - - - Snes9x 1.53 v.7 movie: Here is a test of a longjump mechanic that i found kind of by accident (which seems to exist in the NES version of this game aswell at least in a similar manner as someone told me afterwards). The longjump is possible once a character dashes to some direction and slows down for a sufficiently long time (and can even have stopped moving entirely and still be able to execute such longjump). The longjump is then done by jumping (for any amount of time, depending on how high the jump shall be) and pressing and holding Forwards at any point of the jump (but the earlier, the further the jump can go). The high sideways speed of this longjump (which seems to max out at a very similar speed as the maximum running speed) is cancelled if one kicks early on during the jump (on the way up before the apex) or turns around (or starts moving towards the background or foreground in stage 1 or 2, which isn't possible in stage 3). If one turns around after dashing to one direction, one cannot execute such jump anymore either (unless dashing to a direction again to ''store'' jump speed, or rather enable sideways acceleration for such longjump). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344516595848183808/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_USA_dash_longjump_mechanic_tests_.smv - - - - - Timestamps (in frame counts) for the published TAS by Whitegastra: ----- (1883) 1st stop of screen movement, to the right: 1883 (42) first frame of screen movement after 1st stop: 1925 (546) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 2471 (65) first frame of screen movement after 2nd stop: 2536 (65) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 2601 (69) first frame of screen movement after 3rd stop: 2670 (220) first frame of screen movement after 4th stop at brown robots (neglecting the player induced screen shift): 2890 (175) first frame of screen movement after 5th stop at 3 purple fighters after brown robots (overtaken by player stopping the screen longer): 3065 (225) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3290 (48) first frame of screen movement after 6th stop: 3338 (161) 7th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3499 (204) first frame of screen movement after 7th stop: 3703 (17) 8th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3720 (571) first frame of screen movement after 8th stop: 4291 (161) 9th stop of screen movement, to the right: 4452 (167) first frame of screen movement after 9th stop: 4619 (65) 10th stop of screen movement, to the right: 4684 (570) first frame of screen movement after 10th stop: 5254 (113) 11th stop of screen movement, to the right: 5367 (553) first frame of screen movement after 11th stop: 5920 (42) 12th stop of screen movement, to the right: 5962 (72) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 6034 (667) 1st frame of Abobo's flying animation: 6701 (398) - - - first frame of input in level 2-1: 7099 (693) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right (neglecting the player induced delay): 7792 (531) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 8323 (206) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 8529 (131) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 8660 (675) first frame of elevator door fully closed: 9335 (407) --- 1st stop of screen movement, to the left at level 2-2 (neglecting the player induced delay): 9742 (302) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the left: 10044 (575) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the left: 10619 (1091) 4th stop of screen movement, to the left: 11710 (130) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 11840 (1131) first frame of elevator door fully closed: 12971 (289) --- first frame of screen movement after 1st stop in level 2-3: 13260 (8001) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 21261 (282) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 21543 (808) - - - first frame of screen movement after 1st stop in level 3-1: 22351 (101) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 22452 (220) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 22672 (531) 4th stop of screen movement, downwards: 23203 (63) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 23266 (189) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right: 23455 (268) 7th stop of screen movement, to the right: 23723 (97) 8th stop of screen movement, to the right: 23820 (113) 9th stop of screen movement, to the right: 23933 (138) 10th stop of screen movement, to the right: 24071 (157) 11th stop of screen movement, to the right: 24228 (340) 12th stop of screen movement, to the right: 24568 (94) first frame of screen movement downwards after 12th stop: 24662 (1279) 12th stop of screen movement, downwards (with movement to the right): 25941 (363) --- 1st stop of screen movement, to the right at level 3-2: 26304 (529) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 26833 (257) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 27090 (169) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 27259 (443) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 27702 (227) first frame of screen movement after 5th stop: 27929 (672) first frame of screen movement downwards after 5th stop: 28601 (2104) 6th stop of screen movement, downwards: around 30705 (188) 7th stop of screen movement, downwards: around 30893 (676) 8th stop of screen movement, downwards (with movement to the right): 31569 (2212) --- first frame of screen movement, downwards at level 3-3: 33781 (1365) 1st stop of screen movement, downwards: 35146 (545) first frame of screen movement, to the right (at the sideways rope travelling part): 35691 (498) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 36189 (209) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 36398 (472) first frame of screen movement, downwards after 3rd stop: 36870 (1980) first frame of screen movement, to the right after garbage dodging on rope: 38850 (785) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 39635 (202) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 39837 (666) 1st frame of 3-3 boss losing his weapon: 40503 (126) first frame of screen movement after 3-3 boss: 40629 (4371) - - - first frame of rat ship moving to the left at start of 4-2: 45000 (640) first frame of inner rat ship explosion sprite appearing: 45640 (876) - - - 1st stop of screen movement, to the right at level 5-1: 46516 (394) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 46910 (128) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 47038 (280) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right (neglecting ladder climb): 47318 (145) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 47463 (383) first frame of space ship door closed: 47846 (1344) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right at the dynamite throwing guys: 49190 (712) first frame of screen movement to the right after the dynamite throwing guys: 49902 (244) first frame of space ship door closed: 50146 (1675) 7th stop of screen movement, at the multi ninja ambush: 51821 (382) --- 1st stop of screen movement, to the right at level 5-2: 52203 (130) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 52333 (369) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 52702 (20) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 52722 (380) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 53102 (22) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right: 53124 (462) 7th stop of screen movement, to the right: 53586 (411) first frame of space ship door closed: 53997 (1444) first frame of space ship door closed: 55441 (2302) - - - first frame of players lying on ground from falling at level 6-1: 57743 (262) 1st stop of screen movement, to the right: 58005 (168) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 58173 (289) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 58462 (295) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 58757 (122) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 58879 (161) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 59040 (82) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 59122 (2275) first frame of screen movement to the right: 61397 (440) - - - 1st stop of screen movement, to the right at level 7-1: 61837 (243) first frame of screen movement after 1st stop: 62080 (23) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 62103 (202) first frame of screen movement after 2nd stop: 62305 (23) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 62328 (355) first frame of screen movement after 3rd stop: 62683 (18) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 62701 (575) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 63276 (223) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 63499 (717) frame of last input: 64216 ----- Timestamps for the Test-TAS above (in comparison to the published TAS): ----- (1862|-21) 1st stop of screen movement, to the right: 1862 (21|-21) first frame of screen movement after 1st stop: 1883 (546|-0) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 2429 (66|+1) first frame of screen movement after 2nd stop: 2495 (65|-0) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 2560 (28|-41) first frame of screen movement after 3rd stop: 2588 (186|-34) first frame of screen movement after 4th stop at brown robots: 2774 (160|-15) first frame of screen movement after 5th stop at 3 purple fighters after brown robots: 2934 (217|-8) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3151 (47|-1) first frame of screen movement after 6th stop: 3198 (161|-0) 7th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3359 (146|-58) first frame of screen movement after 7th stop: 3505 (3557 with knee finisher) (17|-0) 8th stop of screen movement, to the right: 3522 (567|-4) first frame of screen movement after 8th stop: 4089 (228|+67) 9th stop of screen movement, to the right (neglecting the player induced delay): 4317 (36|-131) first frame of screen movement after 9th stop: 4353 (65|-0) 10th stop of screen movement, to the right: 4418 (568|-2) first frame of screen movement after 10th stop: 4986 (113|-0) 11th stop of screen movement, to the right: 5099 (549|-4) first frame of screen movement after 11th stop: 5648 (42|-0) 12th stop of screen movement, to the right: 5690 (72|-0) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 5762 (664|-3) 1st frame of Abobo's flying animation: 6426 (343|-55) - - - first frame of input in level 2-1: 6769 (666|-27) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right (neglecting the player induced delay): 7435 (439|-92) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 7874 (228|+22) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 8102 (132|+1) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 8234 (627|-48) first frame of elevator door fully closed: 8861 (396|-11) --- 1st stop of screen movement, to the left at level 2-2 (neglecting the player induced delay): 9257 (298|-4) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the left: 9555 (526|-49) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the left: 10081 (944|-147) 4th stop of screen movement, to the left: 11025 (131|+1) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 11156 (1011|-120) first frame of elevator door fully closed: 12167 (284|-5) --- first frame of screen movement after 1st stop in level 2-3: 12451 (7001|-1000) 1st frame of players jaw drop animation: 19452 (283|+1) last frame of players jaw drop animation: 19735 (753|-55) - - - first frame of screen movement after 1st stop in level 3-1: 20488 (92|-9) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 20580 (130|-90) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 20710 (597|+66) 4th stop of screen movement, downwards: 21307 (58|-5) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 21365 (192|+3) 6th stop of screen movement, to the right: 21557 (266|-2) 7th stop of screen movement, to the right: 21823 (28|-69) 8th stop of screen movement, to the right: 21851 (110|-3) 9th stop of screen movement, to the right: 21961 (114|-24) 10th stop of screen movement, to the right: 22075 (145|-12) 11th stop of screen movement, to the right: 22220 (274|-76) 12th stop of screen movement, to the right: 22494 (95|+1) first frame of screen movement downwards after 12th stop: 22589 (1279|-0) 12th stop of screen movement, downwards (with movement to the right): 23868 (327|-36) --- 1st stop of screen movement, to the right at level 3-2: 24195 (492|-37) 2nd stop of screen movement, to the right: 24687 (258|+1) 3rd stop of screen movement, to the right: 24945 (107|-62) 4th stop of screen movement, to the right: 25052 (207|-236) 5th stop of screen movement, to the right: 25259 (136|-91) first frame of screen movement after 5th stop: 25395 (256|-416) first frame of screen movement downwards after 5th stop: 25651 (1715|-389) 6th stop of screen movement, downwards: 27366 (139|-49) 7th stop of screen movement, downwards: 27505 (656|-20) 8th stop of screen movement, downwards (with movement to the right): 28161 (1920|-292) --- (...)
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
Aran_Jaeger
He/Him
Banned User, Player (9)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here is some more Snes9x 1.53 v.7 test movies on stage 1: Brown robot AI tests (with manipulations where the character moves upwards or downwards during a jump during a time interval in which the robot will mimic this movement, and with jumpkick sounds that stun the robot and capsule interactions to check how early the 1st brown robot will start moving downwards in different situations): Making a robot move higher up or down is shown in the next movies. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344952175488925706/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_brown_robot_chasing_visual_height_of_char_upwards_USA.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344952191359909889/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_brown_robot_chasing_visual_char_height_downwards_USA.smv Further robot manipulations: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344952202068099082/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_char_movement_dependent_robot_movement_2_USA.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344953652957544448/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_robots_position_and_height_adaption_USA.smv Stunning a robot by hitting another enemy. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344954886313738241/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_kick_hit_sound_stuns_other_robot_in_prep_phase_USA.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344954863177695232/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_the_robot_hit_sound_stun_works_with_purple_enemy_aswe.smv In this case, a robot stays stunned and takes longer until it attacks than usual. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344952226919219201/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_brown_robot_really_drifts_and_can_delay_attack_part_2.smv And with better timing, the hit sound can get a robot out of its slow preparation phase quickly so it can start moving down earlier. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344953676944769024/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_hit_sound_can_release_robots_preparation_phase_after_.smv An instance in which the 1st brown robot moves down quickly. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344954875064352778/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_good_robot_movement_USA.smv At the beginning of this movie, the HUD for some reason looks glitched. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344953642085908484/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_weird_HUD_and_brown_robot_drifts_when_hearing_hit_sou.smv This movie shows how 1 robot waits for its attack while the other robot is taken care of. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344954851207282698/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_friendly_robot_waits_until_action_is_finished_when_he.smv - - - Demonstrations of a delayed knee attack with a jump. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344953688588288000/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_knee_finisher_after_complete_halt_with_jump_attack_US.smv https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344952214563061761/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_knee_finisher_initiated_via_jump_and_attack_late_duri.smv With good speed and positioning/timing, an ellbow attack can miss its capsule target (and possibly hit something else), and a knee attack can be initiated against capsules in stage 1 aswell (which maybe could be useful to destroy a clown hand in stage 1 earlier, provided one cannot get hit by the hand's slapping attack mid-jump (which might be possible if one loses a life for i-frames). https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/344953664701595649/Battletoads__Double_Dragon_-_The_Ultimate_Team_overshooting_with_ellbow_smash_USA.smv - - - Some interesting thoughts from Whitegastra's TAS submission thread ( http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8399 ):
Also on that note, a 2P beat each other up mode could be FASTER because of the finisher. P1 knocks P2 down, goes to do the finishing knee drop aaaannnd...oops, smashes the boss who just happened to be in the way. So the boss fights could turn into a few hits instead of juggling them.
This remains to be tested on some enemies and bosses, and would be interesting if it is possible.
Also, the lag produced in level 2 surely came from the buggy flames, which appeared because you went too fast (the slow flame that came from the left went all the way to the end). It's obvious that if you waited a little for it to go away and then going to the next section would avoid the glitch, and so the lag.
Lag differences induced by the remaining fire ring sprites on screen past a lever gate near the end of stage 3 will also have to be looked into if one needs to slow down in order to avoid them (to compare 'how much more lag would be there' with 'how much one would need to slow down in order to avoid this additional lag').
I've watched it and to me it was very good, but only one question, why use mode "A" ? Isn't there a rule on the site that says always use the hardest difficulty level ? To me it's more difficult on mode "B" since you can hurt yourself. But I also know that it won't be as fast..."
This is something I'm not quite sure about and don't know how it was handled in similar situations for other games. Of course it would be an easy decision if the ''technically harder'' mode allows for a faster TAS. But currently my stance is to take whatever is faster (and in the worst case, it could at least be compared in a more straight forward way with Whitegastra's TAS in case mode A is taken/kept). It also remains to be tested if climbing along the floor in stage 1, or using different positions on the ground (or possibly losing a life for i-frames), or using a toad with his finishing move can speed up killing clown hands; aswell as if the wooden sticks in stage 2 can speed up the stage. https://youtu.be/p5XiAnAoYKE In here around 8:36, there's some sprite bug where women in stage 3 after getting kicked by a toad stay in place and don't land on ground (and then despawn after a while), and their sprites loop back into the screen later on. And at around 9:32, 1 of those women is kind of resurrected during her despawning animation and can attack and get hit again, which seems quite strange. Maybe the start of the next section on the stage reset the state of some enemy so it is alive again, and that enemy slot might still been occupied by this woman since it took so long for her to despawn. At 17:05, the video shows how missiles can be used on the rat ship. And this is the 2-player speedrun that uses some new strats since the old TAS: http://speeddemosarchive.com/BattletoadsAndDoubleDragon.html Apparently there is also a code in the game that allows to use a level select screen (accessed by pressing Up, Down, Down, Up, X, B, Y, A in this order on the character select screen), but this isn't going to be used anyways (and using this code would change the credits message, apparently). - - - Some more observations and remarks: It seems that the game doesn't use the L, R and Select button. During a Dash attack (if one lands soon enough afterwards), one can hold Jump during the Dash attack to buffer a jump right afterwards (together with direction held if wanted). In 1-1 with Billy/Jimmy, it seems one has at most a 3 frame window for chaining dash attacks without starting to run again. In level 1-1, the time at which each of the purple fighters (at least the 2 right before the first brown robot) appear are individually dependent on the screen position, if it is far enough to the right, they will spawn. While carrying an enemy on stage 1, it seems Billy/Jimmy cannot switch into the floor climbing state. It seems that the game only checks every 2nd frame for hitting a purple fighter that starts falling from a glider in stage 1 (since 1 frame attack delay causes hitting such enemies 2 frames later instead of 1 frame later). The brown robot's AI seems to work roughly like this: Initially, it would rise up in preparation of chasing/targeting the player (and moves its shadow towards the bottom of the vertical range that the player's character box spans on ground), and does so by adapting its height to the player's height (if one isn't in a jump, it adapts properly to the player sprite height) by correcting its position by the player sprite's visual movement (during an early phase around when it stops rising in preparation phase, where it will go further up if the player is visually moving up during that time, or down when the player moves down). When a robot already starts sinking and targeting a player, the kick stun sound alone cannot stun it anymore before its next action. If during the preparation phase a kick attack hit sound occurs (on purple fighter, capsule, or the robot itself which would stun it the normal way, so that one can assume that its stun is induced by the hit sound and not necessarily when the robot itself gets hit), then it will continue its preparation phase movement and then stop moving roughly until the score sprite would take to vanish after rising (if the hit sound was caused by opening a capsule), but if this score sprite animation ending for the hit-sound stun of the robot happens before the robot reached its final preparation spot, then it doesn't need to reach this spot anymore in order to initiate an attack but can start its attack movement instantly afterwards. Apparently the fighters with the green clothes in the 2nd stage area, as soon as they spawn, their AI is locked onto (probably) the nearest player character among the 2, and isn't triggered to attack with the fist if the other player character comes near the fighter, which can be used to let them enter the inner parts of the screen faster because the fist attack animation slows them down so it seems. There might be further generalisations of this mechanic in the game. It seems that the range of the jumpkick hitbox reaches much more further forwards if one carries a stick (in stage 2), so maybe this might allow to hit some of the enemies earlier before they come even into the screen. Longjump mechanic: If Billy or Jimmy on normal ground start to dash forwards (even if just for short time, or also for a long time, even when touching an invisible wall at the sides of the screen) and then don't hold forwards anymore (and don't attack or jump or turn around (or get hit?)) so they enter a slowing down forwards animation, and then one jumps and strictly afterwards (but not too late) presses and holds Forwards (while holding Jump or releasing it at any time for lower fast and long jumps), a huge jump can be executed that way (but an early kick attack will interrupt the horizontal jump speed and slow it down a lot, and going diagonally forwards does the same, and turning around, too). This kind of jump can be stored at times when the screen is about to allow a screen shift again while the players wait at its borderline, in order to initiate fast jumps, seemingly exactly as fast as the running animation (except it allows to get past obstacles aswell), but it seems that the screen can't be shifted faster in stage 2 that way, compared to running normally (so maybe some screen shift speed limit is already reached by running). When the characters are at the chainsaw evasion part, and one walks downwards, one can accelerate to that direction. It seems that in the 3rd stage, the screen at some points starts shifting once the last door finished closing (and hence, it shouldn't depend as much on when all enemies got their final hit). If one jumps and attaches a character to a turret in the ceiling in stage 3 to hit it 3 times and then fall off of it, then the trajectory of the jump that was used to reach the turret will be continued afterwards (which means one will fall slower if one jumped late to attach to it, and will fall faster the earlier one jumped towards the turret). Swinging the ropes to start climbing downwards can delay the start of the climb if a rope-swinging character is (too) far away from the edge of the platform and moves towards it, so it seems to require some minimal time during which both characters have to swing the rope at the edge of the platform. The AI of the women with the whips in stage 3 seems to behave strangely and seems to not attack if a character is close enough to the boundary of the screen, next to them while they enter the screen (similarly to how the fighters in stage 2 behave). If one jumps towards the edge of a higher platform, only if one continues holding jump (for a stronger jump), one will be placed into standing pose at the edge of the higher platform while rising (to interrupt the jump and land immediately, skipping the apex of the jump and falling afterwards). In some cases of jumping up to a higher platform from a lower one near the edge of the higher platform, holding Jump for too long can prevent an earlier jump from causing the character to get attached to the higher floor in standing pose, so it is not enough to check the 1st frame of an indefinite jump at which a character would be put on the higher ground, but different jump frames need to be checked aswell. And the frame at which one can start dashing after landing on the higher platform, among jumps that work, depends aswell on the number of Jump frames. It seems that in very most cases, running (or using a stored longjump and continuing from there) against an invisible wall to shift the screen as fast as possible as soon as possible gets the screen into its final position the fastest, and only in rare cases a well-timed running jumpkick close to the end of the screen shift can allow the screen shift to finish about 1 frame earlier. If one gets knockback and lands flat on ground and stands up again, the dash state (to the previous direction that one did dash before getting hit) is kept. There might be some asymmetry between the 2 player characters where collission between 1 of them and enemies runs at frames where it doesn't run for the other character and vice versa, so there might be frame savers caused by switching the roles of the 2 player characters. If one jumps and then kicks (outside of the dash state) late before landing, to connect a hit with an enemy as late as possible before landing, then one can land within fewer frames after the enemy got hit, compared to hitting an enemy with a dash jumpkick, so this might be important if one needs to do some further actions with the same character right afterwards. There is (e.g. in stage 3) certain spawn positions for when a player character respawns after dying, and those should be looked into aswell for potential frame savers. At the long fence climbing section, sometimes, a fire ring spawns higher and executes its trajectory with this upwards shift and then stays active when it reaches back to its spawn point on screen (which can be problematic), and it seems that either moving the screen further to the right while a fire ring is spawning, or certain screen positions causes a fire ring once to spawn higher for some reason. In stage 3, at the lever gates, the spots at which the fire rings start moving upwards are RNG dependent. In stage 4, there is a missile fire mechanic, which requires the player to hold Shot long enough until a cross appears (and disappears as soon as one releases Shot), and targets (which can be rocks of any size and mines and enemy spaceships) attract the cross a tiny bit when they are near it (so that it gets pulled towards them), and a missile is fired as soon as one releases Shot, provided one kept the cross close enough to a target long enough (so that the "LOCK" sign appears), and if an target dies before a missile hits it, then it will go in circles a few times until it disappears and it seems that it then cannot hit any further targets anymore. And as soon as the boss phase of stage 4 occurs, one moves the own spaceships in a different way (where the directions one presses are the directions the spaceships move to, as opposed to moving forwards with Jump held or backwards, and doing circular turns by pressing Left or Right), and one controls the missile cross the same way simultaneously (for as long as one keeps the cross on screen by holding Shot), and the cross cannot exit the screen's boundaries and just stays in place when pushed against it. The enemy spaceships can be finished off rather efficiently with missiles, it seems. - - - - - At this place one can find some memory addresses used in the game: http://gamehacking.org/game/42307 - - - By the way, here's now a video of the WIP: Link to video
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
PJ
He/Him
Joined: 2/1/2011
Posts: 181
Location: Western NY
Wow. Ok, I finally read through these two posts. It was quite a journey! I am one of the two runners of the SDA run you linked above, and have also run this game single player. My 1P PB is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gAwf3C6aFU I am unsure if there is anything in there that would be of use to you. I found some manipulations in stage 3 to trick the Lindas into killing each other while I was in the middle of a knee press, and there were some wall clips in stage 5 that may or may not have been in the last TAS. I honestly do not remember if I found them myself or not. There was a rather neat glitch involving Linda that I forced to trigger for my own amusement (7:12 in the video). I do not know *why* it works, but I know that those actions will cause the crusher to revive her as a zombie. She cannot hurt me anymore, and very likely causes lag. Thank you for the information regarding the longjump! I noticed the longjump after being knocked down, but I was never able to reproduce it without being hit before. I used the glitch you mentioned above to spawn in mid-air with dash speed to skip several of the fences in stage 3. I don't recall if you said it above, but if you dash off a ledge, you will fall slower if you hold the jump button in mid-air. The longjump will be really nice to work with now! Re: 2-player mode A vs mode B, I highly recommend doing the run on Mode A (friendly fire ON). Mecha Richter and I are planning to improve our run in mode A because, as you mentioned, you can redirect finishing blows to bosses. I had been curious about this for awhile but didn't test it until last week. A finishing blow will instantly kill Abobo and Big Blag, and will do 15 hits of damage to Robo-Manus (he took 25 normal hits for us vs. 1 knee press and 10 hits). We were unsuccessful at redirecting a finishing blow onto Roper or Shadow Boss, but I remain convinced that it is possible and will do damage similar to Robo-Manus. I will be looking for more improvements in the future. I'll post about them here as I find them.