Finally, the long anticipated Bubble Bobble improvement arrives! This movie was started early January of 2008. This movie improves the published movie by 2 minutes 40.68 seconds.
As with all adelikat submissions, I recommend you download the release package found here
It contains the movie file, memory watch file, and most importantly, level savestates; including a savestate to go directly to the boss fight.

Contributers

  • Tompa 72
  • adelikat 64
  • Bablo 12
  • CtrlAltDestroy 5
  • Baxter 7
  • Cardboard 4
  • Randil 2
Numbers reflect the number of levels each author worked on. They did not have to be the "final version" to count on the list.

The movie

(flowplayer module removed)

Warps

We decided to use warps in this movie (whereas the published movie did not).
To warp you must collect an umbrella. Umbrellas warp you 4-5 levels (depending on color) Umbrellas appear after you pop 20 water bubbles. Water bubbles are spread out over several levels. Unfortunately they appear in the levels at 240 frame intervals. So it is actually not worth it to hang out in a level and pop 20 of them. We determined that the optimal amount is to pop 2 bubbles in each water bubble level. Doing so allows for 2 warps to occur in the game. The reason for 2 is that all levels are completed with a 240-480 frame time span, so no bubble is waited on for a full 240 frames this way. In reality not all levels work the same. As such, some bubbles are waited on for a full 240 frames. Still, enough aren't that warping is profitable.
Unfortunately warping is only 1 level if used in A6 or A7! As such the optimal situation is to collect extra bubbles in 92 to initiate a warp then.
Water bubble levels:
5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 40, 49, 52, 64, 74, 77, 87, 92, A6 and A7
We use the warp in 21 to skip to 26 and in 94 to skip to 99

EXTEND

This is perhaps classified as a warp. Spell the word EXTEND and you go to a bonus screen immediately then to the next level. This allows you to skip a level and is often faster than completing the level.
To get letter bubbles, you must kill enemies in combos. The bigger the combo the more letters. Even then, the letters are very random and require manipulation. In later levels, it requires delaying frames to make the right letters appear (whereas in earlier levels, movements during the level wait times was sufficient).
To make matters more complicated, later levels often give you letter bubbles in the level you got the combo. This is unfortunately useless for collecting the final letter. This reduced the number of times we could effectively EXTEND.
We managed to use EXTEND to save time in many places throughout the movie.

Power-ups

There are 3 useful power-ups in the game. The shoes for increased speed (a must!), the blue candy for longer range bubbles (comes in handy often), and the green candy for faster bubble delivery (a must). Only 1 power-up can appear in a level at a time. Each dragon needs each of these upgrades. The upgrades happen based on certain events: Blowing bubbles, popping bubbles, hopping on bubbles. The first levels of the game are devoted to making these power-ups appear in an optimal fashion. Once both dragon's are leveled up, they keep them until they die (making dying never profitable). The hardest part in planning the TAS was figuring out the optimal power-up strategy.

Glitches

One useful glitch was found in the making. When the bubble pops at the beginning of a level, you are able to jump in the air. This is used in almost all levels.

Ram Values

  • 0439 Water bubble counter
  • 0435 Bubbles blown
  • 0436 Bubbles popped
  • 0437 Bubbles hopped on

Categories

  • Uses warps
  • Aims to get chicks (Best ending)
  • Uses death to save time (on final boss)
  • 2 players
  • Genre: Platform

mmbossman: Congratulations to all for knocking the famtasia list down by one more! I will accept this to obsolete the currently published run from way back in 2004.

adelikat: Replacing with a 34 frame faster boss fight by CtrlAltDestroy.

TASVideoAgent
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Experienced player (616)
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I saw this on adelikat's SVN before it was submitted. It deserves a definite yes because it's an awesome improvement.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Uuuuungh oh god yes.
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Expert player (2578)
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yes, of course.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Yes voted as an improvement on the previous movie and encoding.
Expert player (2448)
Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822
Yes, I have expected this for a long time...
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
Mitjitsu
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Joined: 4/24/2006
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Are you guys trying to beat the record for most authors of one submission?
Expert player (2448)
Joined: 12/23/2007
Posts: 822
6 of them. Really amazing.
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
mklip2001
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Location: Georgia, USA
And so the era of Famtasia comes to an end... Forgot about Solomon's Key, oops. Seriously, wow. The run felt a whole lot faster (did the previous run even use speed shoes?). It was a little weird having the delays for water bubbles, especially early in the game and in the one stage where you triggered the Hurry!, but I can see it was worth it. Also, nice style touches... I'm particularly fond of the player jumping excitedly like a maniac in the colorful EXTEND bonus rooms. Go Team Bobble! EDIT: In terms of number of authors, there are six in the submission field but seven in the comments. What happened to Randil?
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Active player (324)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Voting NO because the final boss fight is clearly unoptimized and contains several blatantly missed shots that waste 34 frames! The second suggested screenshot even showcases them! Even a toddler could see those 2 lightning bolts are higher than the boss's head! Anyway, jokes aside, that was the best I could do. To summarize my improvements, which I spent all evening doing: * Corrected the missed shots and saved 26 frames * Noticed my new movie had tried to fire a bubble when the sprite limit was maxed out, corrected that mistake by waiting 5 frames for the first lightning bolt to disappear, saved 7 more frames * Wondered if there was a way to pop the first bubble faster to avoid waiting all 5 frames, was able to "hex edit" in 1 more frame of improvement, but more wouldn't work * Theoretical 4 more frames of improvement are possible on this boss, using this strategy, but likely not practically possible. * I'm worn out on this game. Good riddance. Now publish this darn thing and be done with it. :P Last edit: Youtubed the new boss fight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdeLo0TqDvs
Player (223)
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Posts: 399
Yes. Because: *Does the funny. *Gets the girls.
<adelikat> I've been quoted with worse
Experienced player (698)
Joined: 2/19/2006
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Voted no... because it doesn't get "Bad End" lol not really.... I will vote later.
Super Mario Bros. console speedrunner - Andrew Gardikis
Skilled player (1882)
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I'm glad to see this finished, and the end result was as good as I had hoped. Very nice strategies overall, so here's another yes vote! I think it would be interesting to see how much time in this run is spent on killing enemies, moving around after all enemies are dead, and flying to the next level, respectively. My guess is that not more than 3-4 minutes in this run are spent on actually killing the enemies. mklip2001: A long time ago, when the world was still young, I seem to remember TASing a level or two for this run, but I'm fairly certain that the others have improved those attempts since then, so none of my input is actually in this movie. At least I think that's the case here, so I agree with that I shouldn't be a co-author, since I didn't really contribute anything to this run.
sgrunt
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Two years later... HAPPY END! However, I want to see the new boss fight as part of this run before I actually vote.
Post subject: Uploaded to Archive.org
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Longest filename I've ever hard to create for an encode. I'll upload it to DailyMotion when I can be assed splitting it.
Skilled player (1669)
Joined: 6/11/2006
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Location: Arboga, Sweden
P2 is so badass. Work with P1 until the final possible moment, then kill him off to get both hoes.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
Skilled player (1399)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
@CtrlAltDestroy: I improved the bossfight yesterday... so that screenshot is in fact not from the submitted movie. Problem is, I improved the old version by 33 frames, so yours is a frame faster :S (I do think your version can also be improved... as my version reached the powerups at the top faster).
Tompa
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The very first thing I did when joining the project was to improve previous levels. To begin with it the reason was that I found the air-jump at the start of the level. Since then I have kept trying to improve levels that had already been done, making me the official Frame Whore of the run which has made several people annoyed. I had fun working on this at least, even though it has been a pain in the little toe several times. I'm happy that it's finally done at least. I would have voted yes, but I don't like to do that on submissions I have worked on, so I won't. But it's a great run!
Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587
I vote yes, so that adelikat won't go insane. Great work guys, congratulations and happy end to you too!
NitroGenesis
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Holy crow this is freakin awesome. Take a guess at what ill vote. (cough*yes*cough)
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Active player (324)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Baxter wrote:
@CtrlAltDestroy: (I do think your version can also be improved... as my version reached the powerups at the top faster).
I thought I had gotten the file with the improved jumping. How much did you improve it by?
Skilled player (1399)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
It makes the jump towards the powerups 3 frames sooner, so the beginning is 3 frames faster. It's because bubbles are used to get to the top (see submission file)... I don't think these bubbles limit the amount of electro bubbles that can be fired, as these regular bubbles seem to disappear when a lot of electro bubbles are fired.
Active player, Reviewer (276)
Joined: 12/14/2006
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If this gets accepted, I think Solomon's Key will be the only famtasia run left.
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: Minnesota
I do not understand this fucking game. Level 81: I completely approve of not grabbing the martini glasses. Drinking is BAD, m'kay. Level 89: I completely disapprove of grabbing the martini glasses. Drinking is BAD, m'kay. B1 totally looks like a penis. I have to vote yes. It wasn't entertaining per se, I spend most the movie trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. I watched the whole thing and didn't turn it off, however, so it must have been entertaining enough. Nice work all.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Skilled player (1399)
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@CtrlAltDestroy: I now know the source of your confusion. Adelikat submitted the wrong file. This is also what has been encoded. http://www.wikiupload.com/download_page.php?id=213559 (put .fm2 at the end of the filename after downloading) This is the boss battle that I produced last night, which is 33 frames faster than what has been submitted, and 1 frame slower than your movie. I think you might be able to improve your version by using the the strategy at the start of the movie that I uploaded here now. Good luck! (adelikat will wait with updating the submission file, since maybe you can improve your version with this.)