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Hi! Here is a casual TAS of Survival Kids, which was recorded a while ago. Thanks to KaitouKid and LSK for the idea.
The game is about a dude who gets trapped on an island and tries to survive/escape. There are multiple endings in the game. This TAS aims for the fastest ending.
The gameplay resembles some Zelda title with less fighting. Actually, no fighting happens at all, because enemies were avoided here. The only interesting trick is skipping a cutscene by restarting the game just before stepping onto a cutscene triggering tile. When the game restarts, the player is already standing on the tile, so the cutscene won't be activated and the player can continue walking to the next tile. This trick is used twice on the same spot, but on the third time it was actually faster to let the cutscene happen.

Route

Here is a breakdown of the important events. Being able to skip any of these steps might result in a timesaver.

Jungle

  • get backpack (knife, radio, matches)
  • equip knife
  • get tree bark
  • restart game to skip a cutscene
  • get stick
  • get big stick
  • sleep to advance time (to make a timed obstacle disappear)
  • merge tree bark with stick to make kindling
  • use big stick to move a boulder
  • retrieve backpack from the stealing monkey
  • get tree sap
  • get stick
  • use big stick to move a boulder

Cave 1

  • merge tree sap with stick to make torch
  • use kindling
  • use torch (because it isn't possible to walk in the dark)
  • get stick

Cave 2

  • use kindling
  • use torch
  • get iron chunk

Jungle

  • merge stick with iron chunk to make an axe
  • equip axe to cut trees
  • get battery
  • use big stick to move a boulder
  • merge radio with battery
  • use radio (to get information about an ongoing search)
  • restart game to skip a cutscene
  • build S.O.S. sign
  • sleep (this is forced by the cutscene that was skipped earlier, but now it saves time to not skip it, because we want to sleep anyway)
  • sleep again (all this sleeping is done just to wait a helicopter to appear)
  • go to the beach and get saved by a helicopter (Eh, the player character says he feels sleepy in the helicopter, after sleeping two days straight!)

Movie classes

  • Uses a game restart sequence
  • Takes damage to save time (I'm not sure if this counts, but damage is taken near the end from the lack of water. Avoiding thirst would waste about a second.)
  • Genre: Adventure
adelikat: Replacing submission file with a 172 frames faster version at author's request.

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Posted: 3/11/2010 3:39 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2597: Aqfaq's GBC Survival Kids in 06:13.15
Posted: 3/11/2010 6:09 AM
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RadioKJ
Joined: 1/2/2010
Posts: 29
Location: China
Well now here's a game I never got around to finishing. And here I could've done it in three days. Kinda boring movie by itself, but as someone who's played this before I found it pretty good.
Posted: 3/11/2010 7:07 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Yes voted and HD encoding. I found it reasonably enjoyable.
Posted: 3/11/2010 9:50 AM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2480)
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Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
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Flygon wrote:
Yes voted and HD encoding.
Thanks, but please save your HD encoding resources for later, master Flygon. If this gets enough positive response, I might try to improve it, so then you would need to redo it. (Crappy encodes are welcomed even now, though.)
Posted: 3/11/2010 10:31 AM
(Edited: 3/11/2010 10:43 AM)
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Too late now, the encode has already finished. It's in YouTube's upload queue now... part 2 of Tempo has a huge ass.
Posted: 3/11/2010 10:34 AM
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Mukki
Skilled player (1099)
Joined: 8/26/2006
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Location: United Kingdom
GBA TASer of 2012 GBA TAS of 2012 Lucky TAS of 2011 Gameboy TAS of 2011 N64 TASer of 2007
I played through some of this game a few months ago. Six minutes is a very impressive time as I always thought of this game as being long(er). The run itself was pretty good, but it'd be cool if you could improve it :) Yes vote.
http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html
Posted: 3/11/2010 1:00 PM
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mklip2001
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The game was pretty cute, and I was entertained enough through it. It also seems pretty straightforward: how much could this really be improved without glitches? Also, are any other endings particularly worthwhile? Anyway, yes vote. For a screenshot, I'd suggest when the boy is pushing the boulder from the side, shortly after cutting down trees with an axe.
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.
Posted: 3/11/2010 10:58 PM
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NitroGenesis
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Ha! That was funny. I vote yes.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Posted: 3/12/2010 6:18 AM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
On YouTube, finally
Posted: 3/12/2010 6:38 AM
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Kirkq
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
It's quite watchable. TASing didn't add too much to a human played run really. You skipped one cutscene twice. Everything else seemed to be just sort of point A to point B. It's short enough. Weak yes I suppose.
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Posted: 3/12/2010 12:38 PM
Post subject: Manipulating the forces of nature
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2480)
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Heh, I just did it 172 frames faster: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1098936413/survival-kids-172-frames-faster.vbm It's not worth watching, if you just saw the previous version. First, I noticed a little mistake and edited it out. Then the movie desynched, because a destroyed bush did not respawn as it had done before, so I accidentally found out that bushes have a random chance of respawning. I then managed to manipulate another bush to not respawn, so that's a total of 2 less knife swings, 14 frames each. I also managed to make the rain not start near the end of the movie, which saved about 2 seconds. I lost 1 frame manipulating the movements of the bats, so there is a chance that the movie is not perfect yet. Anyway, I feel a bit clumsy with VBA and I don't have ideas for more improvements, so feel free to replace the submission file with this one. Sorry again for improving a movie shortly after submitting it. I did wait a few months before submitting, but it did not help. :)
Posted: 3/12/2010 12:56 PM
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Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
If no improvements are found within the next day, I'll reencode this.
Posted: 3/12/2010 12:59 PM
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henke37
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I have to agree, it is it quite low on the super human aspect. Someone could easily do something like this manually without being noticeably slower. The game itself doesn't have a lot to say, it's pretty much a zelda 1 clone. I don't think this was interesting. It's barely above boring, it's watcheable, but not particularly enjoyable.
Posted: 3/13/2010 11:05 AM
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Nicos
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 893
i like the idea and the design of the game, the tas is not that fast paced but it still entertained me. yes vote
Posted: 3/15/2010 11:30 PM
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DarkKobold
Skilled player (1652)
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After watching this... it appears like others have stated, that there is no sense of danger. You mention avoiding enemies, but I didn't notice any enemies on screen... ever. Are these luck-manipulated away? Are routes done for the purposeful avoidance of enemies? A little bit more on why this is a TAS, and not just a real-time run done with tools might help this submission.
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Posted: 3/16/2010 9:06 AM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2480)
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Here is all luck manipulation that was done: - In the first cave, I waited 1 frame in the menu to manipulate a bat out of the way. ~50% chance. - Two bushes required manipulation to not reappear. ~50% chance for each. - The correct radio transmission is heard in the first try. ~20% chance. - The rain did not start in my updated run, but I'm not sure what the chance is. Anyway, that makes about 2,5% chance of success for the whole run. Even if luck fails, only few seconds are lost. I agree that this is not extraordinary at all. Concerning the sense of danger, the player starts taking damage near the end, but could still walk 83 tiles before dying from malnutrition. Nothing extraordinary there either. I just tested playing it through normally and got a time of about 9 minutes without any practicing. A trained speedrunner could possibly do it under 6:30, depending on how fast he could handle the menus. I agree that it's not the best game choice for a TAS. At least it's something slightly different.
Posted: 3/16/2010 12:16 PM
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klmz
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An ED 8 run might be better.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 3/18/2010 3:24 AM
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Zurreco
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Meh. It's a fast version of an uninteresting game.
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Posted: 3/18/2010 3:51 AM
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Limne
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Posts: 153
I'd never heard of this game so I thought this was neat. What an interesting game concept! On the other hand, I do agree that it was a bit underwhelming in terms of technical accomplishments. Pretty much all the entertainment I got out of this run can be chalked up to the novelty factor. I have to ask though, what about the other endings? I guess that picture at the end is completed by getting them all? How difficult would it be to do an all exits run? I saw that there were three save files so maybe you could get away with never having to start over from the beginning? Something like that might make this more complex and interesting, but then again, if it's already kind of bland making it longer might not be such a good idea...
Posted: 3/18/2010 7:38 PM
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sgrunt
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I do not think that a "fastest ending" run is suitable for this game; there wasn't very much variety in what this run presents and one can tell that there is a lot more to the game than what is presented here. I understand that there are multiple endings, so perhaps a "best ending" run would be more interesting to watch? This run gets a Meh from me.
Posted: 3/19/2010 6:10 AM
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Patashu
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Agreed that a 'best ending' video might be more suitable.
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Posted: 3/26/2010 8:48 AM
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Cardboard
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This was pretty good. It ended just when it was about to get slow.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
Posted: 3/27/2010 11:10 AM
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klmz
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This run (left) could be improved: http://union.bokecc.com/flash/player.swf?vid=255F9D1125302FE8&siteid=DBDDE2C26D084296&autoStart=false
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 3/27/2010 3:51 PM
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Aktan
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I just realized yesterday that this was a game I played (and was somewhat addicted to) when I was younger! Good run Aqfaq! I was going to post an encode, but then I saw klmz's link and saw it can improved. Are there any plans Aqfaq to do such an improvement? Since I played this game, I also agree that "best ending" would be fun to watch, but I guess that only applies to people who have played the game. klmz: Do you know who TASed the right side?
Posted: 3/27/2010 5:43 PM
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2480)
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Aktan wrote:
Are there any plans Aqfaq to do such an improvement?
No thanks. Also, cancelling the submission. It seems that my "casual" TAS was actually much worse than I thought. :)
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