Submission Text Full Submission Page
Blue moon launched an attack to orange star, apparently without reason. Only the new assesor of orange star trained by Nell can stop him and discover the truth about that invasion by completing certain missions being helped by three COs named Andy, Max and Sami.

this movie

  • Was made using VBA-rerecording-v22
  • Aims for fastest time
  • abuses of pograming errors
  • Moves the cursor as fast as inhumanly possible (just in the beginning)

Comments

Tricks & glitches

Design map glitch (DeMaGl)

This glitch lets you fuse design maps mode with all the game (main menu, vs mode, campaign mode, etc.) How? If you play the mission of training naval forces in the field and lose by allowing the enemy to destroy your t-copter, then going to design maps creating and destroying a unit.

Force an enemy to yield (I've done that on every mission)

Once you've done the design map glitch you can "force the enemy to yield" by just creating a unit of that army (the game immediately thinks that It's army x turn, letting you have total control of that army in that turn) and yielding.

Skipping player's turn

If you create a unit (AI of course) earlier than the game gives you the control of the campaign cursor the AI'll take control of the army as a normal turn (because It acts as a normal day).(used to skip my turns in "Kanbei arrives")

Stage by stage comments

Fog of War

I used Tremalkinger's strategy for this mission because tries to evade most of the long battle animations but destroying both rockets and artillery in order to capture the HQ.
On this mission, after following Nell's intructions. I moved my units out of enemy's range then letting the enemy destroy my t-copter in order to use the design map glitch.

most of campaign missions

all the time yielding (DeMaGl active) to win the battle.

Kanbei Arrives

Excepting this because I had to skip sonja's missions, finnishing on day 9 skipping my turns in order to save time.

Other comments

This is my first full-length TAS so maybe there can be some mistakes in terms of planning.
thanks to:
  • Tremalkinger, whose wip helped me a lot in field training.
  • samurai goroh, for providing the DeMaGl glitch mentioned before.

DarkKobold: Since this is a Strategy RPG, I'd like to claim it for judging.
Flygon: Added playlist, and fixed some tiny spelling issues that were really really annoying me.

DarkKobold: This movie is improvable by a substantial amount. (To most people on this site, 24-25 seconds is a large amount.) This will be my stated reason for rejection. However, if you decide to remake, caveat tasor, TASer beware, the audience let out a huge 'meh' regarding the entertainment level of this run, and the chances of a new version being acceptable is questionable.
My personal opinion is that the movie in a more optimized form is good enough for publication, but we'd need to see the audience reaction.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15544
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2907: criticaluser's GBA Advance Wars "Glitched" in 14:42.58
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Originally I was going to abstain from voting. Then the glitching happened. Yes vote, SD and HD encode coming soon.
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
I played this back with Advance Wars (U) (v1.0).gba This run seems to be well executed at a glance. I can't particularly comment on the optimality of the strategy in the first two (field training) levels. Since the author was new, I made sure to check he wasn't turboing buttons or anything catastrophic like that. =p The run is quite glitchy, though admittedly a bit repetitive at points. I did like how you built water around Kanbei's units so he couldn't move. I think this should be published with room for a future non-glitched run if that is ever created. Good job on your first movie. Yes vote.
Skilled player (1098)
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
I find it very impressive that something like this was possible for this game. The glitches were interesting when they were first being used, but the overuse made the run ultimately rather dull once the novelty had worn off. My vote is meh; the glitch became boring, but I don't mind if this gets published.
Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
Suffers a lot from Zeldaism: you manage to shorten the gameplay by an impressive amount, only to find that most of the remaining movie is unamusing stuff like menu interaction, cutscenes etc. This would be a clear yes if it was shorter, but ~10 minutes of doing the same glitch over and over again get boring quick. Meh.
m00
GabCM
He/Him
Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
HQx encode incoming. But criticaluser, I have a question for you. Since now we can include a single YouTube stream in a publication, you'll have to choose one YouTube stream. Both are in high definition. Do you want Flygon's point-resized encode? It looks like these screenshots : 1 2 Or, do you want my HQx filtered encode? It looks like these screenshots : 1 2
Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
I remember there being a different way to get the fused map editor/field training mode, where you didn't need a specific unit to be destroyed, instead you just needed to save and quit during field training, and place and destroy a bunch of units. Must have remembered it wrong.
Editor, Expert player (2072)
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 3282
This game is glitched... Anyway, it's too bad that most of the movie was the glitch over and over, because I liked it.
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2154)
Joined: 5/22/2007
Posts: 1134
Location: Glitchvania
I think abusing the glitch prevents this movie from looking too similar to the published Advance Wars 2 movie.
<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
Glitcher
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2007
Posts: 216
Location: London, U.K.
I think forcing the enemy to yeild is an incredibly cheap way of beating the game. ........ I love it! XD
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Active player (304)
Joined: 8/8/2005
Posts: 296
Location: NSW, Australia
Yes vote, it's repetitive but broken as hell!
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I can't say yes to this. While it's buggy, it doesn't seem to be fun. Meh from me.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Dwedit
He/Him
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 692
Location: Chicago
I had messed around with this glitch before, but I voted Meh since it was boring to just walk into a battle, and make the AI player forfeit the match, repeatedly and repeatedly.
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
Thought: How free are you to move the cursor around during wait times? Is it possible to draw messages/designs on the screen with either units or terrain without losing time? This may be particularly notable in Kanbei arrives. If it is possible to do this, you are missing out on a fairly large possible source of entertainment for this run. EDIT: You mention in the Advance Wars thread "(also it's faster, aprox 100 frames than erasing enemy units one by one) " I noticed also that if you delete the enemy HQ you win. Is this also slower? ALAKTORN seems to think he may be able to beat the training stages (also in the Advance Wars thread), so maybe judging this submission should wait until it is better gauged how optimal this run actually is. Maybe it can be improved at this point.
Skilled player (1651)
Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy
I noticed in my first watch that you often created 2-3 enemy units, in various locations. Is there a reason to not just create one at the first place the map opens and forfeit?
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
My reactions over the course of watching this were roughly as follows: "Why are you actually playing through this stage? I thought you were going to glitch past everything. When do we get to the good stuff?" "*goes and looks up game data* ...oh, I guess you have to finish this stage first?" "*twiddles thumbs*" "Oh, that stage is done... now..." "Wait, what just happened?" "Oh, look, you broke the game." "...and it's still broken." "Am I going to see anything different now that the game is broken?" "Oh, look, the run's over now." So, basically, the sole highlight was activating the glitch and seeing it work the first time (or couple of times). After that it got very old very quickly. It's a good demonstration of the glitch, and highlights just how broken the game is a result of that, but as a run it's lacking in entertainment value. I vote meh.
Editor
Joined: 3/10/2010
Posts: 899
Location: Sweden
What exactly happens in this glitch? I get that the map editor mode gets merged with the normal gamemodes. But how does that lead to controlling the AI?
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Mister Epic wrote:
Do you want Flygon's point-resized encode? It looks like these screenshots : 1 2 Or, do you want my HQx filtered encode? It looks like these screenshots : 1 2
I'll just add nnedi resize to the mix: 1 2
Player (42)
Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
Kirkq wrote:
Since the author was new, I made sure to check he wasn't turboing buttons or anything catastrophic like that. =p
Mashing is catastrophic only if it causes lag. If it doesn't, it's a very useful technique that allows the runner to quickly get past the annoying dialogs some RPGs have without any loss of frames. There are also some RPG games where mashing accelerates the closing of text boxes. About the movie, I liked it a lot. Games of this genre are naturally repetitive, this type of criticism is common to almost all short RPG/strategy game movies. The glitching is also very nice and unexpected, I agree with klmz that it makes the movie very different from the TAS of the sequel. Definite Yes vote here, good job!
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
p4wn3r wrote:
Kirkq wrote:
Since the author was new, I made sure to check he wasn't turboing buttons or anything catastrophic like that. =p
Mashing is catastrophic only if it causes lag. If it doesn't, it's a very useful technique that allows the runner to quickly get past the annoying dialogs some RPGs have without any loss of frames. There are also some RPG games where mashing accelerates the closing of text boxes.
Not true, assuming input is polled at 60 fps, "mashing" will lead to a sequence of A_A_A_A_A (obviously). If the text box is able to advance at the first possible time on that second underscore, then you lose one frame. Depending on the amount of text present, that can add up to significant time for an RPG run (not this run so much, but hour+ runs can easily have several seconds lost due to lack of frame precision).
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Editor, Expert player (2328)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3929
Location: Germany
Sometimes I press A _ A _ A _ A _ A and see when the textbox goes away and then try _ A _ A _ A _ A and see if it's faster, then take the faster method. Why does mashing speed up things in RPGs? In Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, mashing A speeds up textboxes that can't be clicked away, but what other examples are there? I watched the run. I haven't played the game, but this was somewhat interesting.
Joined: 6/22/2010
Posts: 44
Location: The Hell of Blazing Fires
I haven't watched the run yet, but there is something I will say about Advance Wars itself. As a huge fan of the series, I couldn't find the run of Advance Wars 2 all that boring, because while the basic strategies used were very simple (and at times cheap), I was in awe at the perfect manipulation of the AI the run achieves and it's really truly impressive after you have actually attempted to complete the game yourself. Seeing a run on hard mode was something I looked forward to because of it's sheer difficulty, but I think I looked forward to Advance Wars 1 being run more because of how downright unfair the game gets on multiple accounts. So it kinda disappoints me that a glitch is used to skip the entire game. Zeldaism indeed. I'll probably vote once an encode crops up. I don't think it's really worth downloading and setting up the emulator for, when I'll probably just be skipping 70% of it.
This is only a little obsessive.
Editor, Expert player (2328)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3929
Location: Germany
If you take a look at the previous page, you can find that Flygon already provided an encode.
Player (42)
Joined: 12/27/2008
Posts: 873
Location: Germany
mmbossman wrote:
p4wn3r wrote:
Kirkq wrote:
Since the author was new, I made sure to check he wasn't turboing buttons or anything catastrophic like that. =p
Mashing is catastrophic only if it causes lag. If it doesn't, it's a very useful technique that allows the runner to quickly get past the annoying dialogs some RPGs have without any loss of frames. There are also some RPG games where mashing accelerates the closing of text boxes.
Not true, assuming input is polled at 60 fps, "mashing" will lead to a sequence of A_A_A_A_A (obviously). If the text box is able to advance at the first possible time on that second underscore, then you lose one frame. Depending on the amount of text present, that can add up to significant time for an RPG run (not this run so much, but hour+ runs can easily have several seconds lost due to lack of frame precision).
Most RPGs allow two buttons to cancel the text. Just mash ABABABAB for a GBA game, for example, and you don't lose anything.