Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the arcade game, in 12:15. Except, this isn't titled 'The arcade game' because it was played in arcades, and so it was just TMNT. Its not like a Honda Civic is titled "Honda Civic, The Automobile that Drives on Roads." Anyway, rant over. As this is my first non-shining and non-rpg solo submission in 4 years, it was quite a change to do 4 players at once. However, I had determined that I wanted to do this run since I learned it was playable in FBA. I needed multi-track ability, and that didn't exist in FBA. Lua to the rescue!
note, game version is World. Unfortunately, World is not yet a submission option.
  • No Deaths
  • Takes damage to entertain
  • Plays Four Genetically-altered Humanoid Turtles
  • Used Lua (I think my submissions on this board should have this auto-tagged.)
  • Contains Speed/Entertainment Trade-offs.*

Making the run.

Multi-track scripts work by allowing the author to control each player individually, and then having the script play back movements. While I was able to create the movie doing this, it caused many headaches. All enemies alter their position, attacks, and activities based on all 4 turtles. Thus, modifying the movements of one turtle would cause another turtle's attack to miss, to happen too late, and various unpredictability.
Additionally, there is a bug in FBA's emulation of TMNT. If you load a state during a lag frame, the game freezes, while the music continues. The only way to continue is to restart the movie, which has special problems. Lag only happened in 3 places in the run, once in the sewer, and twice in the technodrome. However, due to this glitch, I almost gave up on the run twice.
Finally, there is a bug in FBA related to a pointer for music playing. When saving a state, this pointer is not saved. This means that anytime you create a savestate, it will only work for that session of FBA, and that playing of the movie. Restarting the movie, as in the lag-bug, eliminates the ability to use that savestate. Thus, I had to fast-forward to where I had been working in the run. I've probably fast-forwarded through big portions this entire movie 50 times, due to the lag bug. The frustration every time these bugs worked together was painful.

The Turtles

All turtles have a special move that can be activated by pressing attack and jump on the same frame. Mike, Don, and Leo all have the exact same special attack. Raphael, on the otherhand, has a unique special move. His rolling kick is the fastest form of movement, however it does 2 damage to the foot clan, unlike the other special moves which do 3. However, since I can move past the foot clan if they are off screen, I often use Raph's attack backwards to try and keep the screen moving forward. This is the reason Raph's kill count ends up way less than the other turtles. Additionally, he can catch-up to the other turtles using this attack.

Level 1: April's Burning Apartment

Things to watch for: A Foot solider getting hit by the big ball. Donatello takes a bullet from Rocksteady.

Level 2: The City Streets

Things to watch for: Hitting of street objects to kill Foot clan. A warp glitch which allows me to move towards the Foot faster. Mike playing around in the Sewer.

Level 3: The Sewer

This is the first time I encountered the awful lag glitch, right at the falling gate. You will notice the run becomes sloppy around that point, due to constant replays of the movie. I'm still happy with how it turned out, given the pain I went through. Also, Baxter Stockman only has 24 HP, and each special attack does 3 damage! Also, this part of the run introduces another annoyance, the Mouser holes. While usually I can push past Foot, if there are 4 or less trailing, at this point, the Mouser holes act like 8 Foot, and therefore I have to wait for 4-6 of them to exit the hole to move past it.

Level 4: The Car Lot

Another fun level where I get to play with the scenery. Watch for: The Car running over a bunch of Foot, Foot smacking into Signs, and explosions everywhere! Also, Bebop and Rocksteady is my favorite boss-battle of all time.

Level 5: The Freeway

Watch for: Riding on cars, and killing guys on motorcycles (way harder than it looks!)

Level 6: RocketSkateboard Auto-scroller

One of the more annoying levels, as the level won't change length based on the number of kills. I attempt to keep it interesting by racking up as many kills as possible.

Level 7: Save Splinter

A pretty generic level, once again the mouser holes slow me down at the beginning. I particularly enjoyed the kills right before the 'over-grown corkscrew.' Also, the boss is the first of the 3 really annoying boss battles. Lieutenant Granitor has 48 HP, and no matter what attack is used, he takes only 1 damage.

Level 8: The Technodrome

I encountered the lag glitch twice in here, once with the moving turrets, and again at the bottom of the elevator. This made me want to scream. Additionally, General Traag had 44 HP, and same 1 HP damage rule. Krang, of course, made things worse by having 60 HP/1 dmg.
Finally, Shredder. Shredder has 192 HP and 16 HP after his helmet comes off, but each special (Raph's included) does 7 damage. This means Shredder effectively requires 30 attacks. Also, Shredder is invincible while he splits, so I try and kill as few of his clones as possible, while maintaining consistent damage on him.
Seriously? 3 damage, then 1 damage, then 7? What were the programmers thinking?!?!?
(* I tagged this run with 4 player, and noted the speed vs. entertainment trade-off, because it is possible to spawn bosses with slightly less HP by having only 1 turtle alive at the time the boss comes in. However, this would require having the run be 4-player-ish-but-only-part-of-the-time. Future versions may want to use that time saver, I chose not to for the run's quality.)
Actual Suggested Screenshot:
[dead link removed]
Thanks to:
  • mz, without his work with FBA, this TAS would not exist
  • adelikat, encouraging me to finish as soon as possible
  • Sonikkustar, for his commentary. [dead link removed]
  • FatRatKnight for the idea of using multi-track.

adelikat: Accepting for publication
Aktan: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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adelikat
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First to vote yes. Only our 2nd 4-player movie ever, but the most epic one so far. Congrats.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
NitroGenesis
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DUH, WHO PUT THE LITES OUT
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
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Commentary....NOW! Visit my Ustream page for special commentary on this new run!
NitroGenesis
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that was FUN. I watched Sonikkustars commentary and never missed a second to make a stupid comment. Gotta love ustream.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Skilled player (1305)
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That was awesome. Just fucking awesome. A strong Yes vote. ARCADES FOREVER!
GabCM
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Shotgun for an HD encode! Edit : Yes vote
Player (67)
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I got so many boners
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I could finally get this to sync thanks to Sonikkustar, and as I expected I gave it a very easy yes vote. Multiplayer TASes are always entertaining to watch (I can only imagine the pain it is to make them, though!). DarkKobold did a very good job on this. edit: Youtube video removed and no official encode being made from me as requested by DarkKobold himself via Private Message.
Joined: 5/13/2009
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Holy crap yes. Some of those boss fights were poetry in motion.
GabCM
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Well, my HD encode's uploading right to YouTube. Since it takes like 4 hours (excluding the processing), you'll get it tomorrow. A nice thing is the fact my video's duration is less than 15 minutes, so it will be in one part on YouTube. And I have a new and less distracting logo.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
edit: Youtube video removed and no official encode being made from me as requested by DarkKobold himself via Private Message.
...TASers are allowed to do this?
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Posts: 2687
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Flygon wrote:
...TASers are allowed to do this?
What, have a say in what happens with their submissions being posted elsewhere?
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
caitsith2
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Flygon wrote:
Noob Irdoh wrote:
edit: Youtube video removed and no official encode being made from me as requested by DarkKobold himself via Private Message.
...TASers are allowed to do this?
Has any TAS on record ever been published without an encode? I am pretty certain we have to have encodes, for those that can't or won't set up emulators / dump their roms / sort out other tech details.
Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 393
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
edit: Youtube video removed and no official encode being made from me as requested by DarkKobold himself via Private Message.
Aww, guess I have to wait for it to get published before I can watch it then
"No love for the game gear"
nesrocks
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I'm voting YES before watching. I will watch later, I promise. Consider the vote valid after that.
sgrunt
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caitsith2 wrote:
Has any TAS on record ever been published without an encode?
The [movie 133]original Gunstar Heroes run[/movie] was published without an encode, though standards were rather different back then... EDIT: Here's Mister Epic's HD encode for those that don't want to wait for him to return to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E89YcmKQFU This run was phenomenal; I can only imagine how much work was needed to coordinate all four players to achieve the end result we see here. You know something has gone right when for the first couple of stages you think the game is an auto-scroller. Obvious yes vote.
Warepire
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I followed this closely while it was being made... this was very entertaining and very cool. It must have been hell recording this due to the emulator bugs. Extra credits to DarkKobold for putting up with that as well as having to constantly edit the turtles movement due to the RNG. Yes vote.
GabCM
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Sorry for the little lags in the video, it's YouTube's fault. The original MKV runs smoothly at 60 fps on my computer. The same thing happened on the first part of my HD encode of Sonikkustar's Sparkster run.
Player (116)
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Location: suffern, ny
AWESOME. Well TASed. I LOve the ninja turtles, and i love this run!
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
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Continuous mayhem from start to finish, a few cheesy one-liners, and pizza; what's not to like?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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Video Download | 1080p (415.75 MB) http://www.multiupload.com/TEJ4PAZQFQ Video Download | HQ (76.74MB) http://www.multiupload.com/T2X0TFMNBF (^Rapidshare, Megaupload, Zshare, Uploading, HotFile^)
GabCM
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antd, you game me the idea to upload the original MKV file on MegaUpload and MediaFire. It has a higher-than-HD resolution, better quality and 60 fps.
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There is a misunderstanding as to what Noob Irdoh said about not encoding. Basically, DarkKobold notified Noob Irdoh that I was doing an encode already, and his services were not needed. It wasn't DarkKobold not wanting an official encode. Though it looks like antd beat me to it, since I've been slacking (thought it's in progress now).
nesrocks
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Alright I did watch, my vote stands. I thought it'd be a much longer movie, I guess I'm used to the NES version. That is a good thing. What I would have liked to see was more synchronized 4 player eye-candy action on the waiting moments.