This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2932: Soig's Genesis Vapor Trail: Hyper Offence Formation "#2 plane" in 20:29.02

Ok, exact numbers please. How much damage does each weapon do? And how often?

Starting the HD and SD encoding EDIT: canceling encoding SD

soig, please give us more information about how you determined whether the S weapon or the standard weapon would be faster for a given boss. It sounds a little like you haven't investigated much to determine if your strategy really is optimal. I have to say that the art of the TAS is very mature and, these days, requires an incredible amount of effort and research. I've attempted to start 2 different TAS projects and each one has stalled due to the overwhelming amount of patience and dedication required. I wonder if you are giving enough attention to your own submissions. It would be better to post your Work-In-Progress videos in the forums to get feedback before submission to make sure you are on the right path.

It's a vertical (top-down) shooter, correct? And as you noted, the only real places to save time are at the boss fights, as the stages themselves are (likely to be) autoscrollers. Do you have secondary goals? Such as 100% kills? Or "pacifist" mode (kill only the bosses, no minor enemies, if possible)? I haven't watched your submission yet, but getting a TAS of a shooter published will require more than speedy completion. Does this particular game stand out as being innovative among shooters?

Ok, I'm watching this now. Here are some comments. Sorry for this being a long post. At the beginning: * You move past the plane you eventually pick. Why? First stage: * Lots of missed shots with the regular weapon. It doesn't seem to lose time or create lag, but it looks bad. * First boss looks alright. You look like you're using turbo fire though. Does the first shot land as soon as the boss is vulnerable? Second stage: * Waiting times are fairly boring. When there's nothing to shoot, there could be better dancing. * Nice little bullet dodging after the midboss. However, you seem fairly inconsistent about which planes live, which doesn't look good. * Good bossfight. Third stage: * Autofire with the regular weapon looks sloppy. * If you can, you should get a different weapon for most of the stage, to show some extra variety. You can always release that weapon for the boss fight. * Boss fight seemed ok, but not as good as the previous ones. Fourth stage: Nothing special to mention here. Fifth stage: * Whoa, what was that special attack which shot the ring of fire? That was cool but short-lived. * In some areas, this seems like it could be more impressive. Although you dodge bullets, it looks like you could dodge them closer and make it look more dangerous. * I have the same concerns about this boss fight as the first: autofire. Also, if S is more powerful, why do you use the fire ring so early in the fight? It looks like you should use it as the last attack, not one of the first. Sixth stage: * Ok, now you start dancing a little. * You took damage once to beat that last boss more quickly. Why didn't do you do this before with the third boss? In conclusion, this seems like an ok run. However, the game is a pretty bland autoscroller, with very little variety. This makes the game poorly suited for speedrunning. The play looks sloppy at points, like it's just a regular player with a turbo button. To make a bland game like this interesting, the player should really shoot very precisely, move in and out of bullets smoothly, and other things like that. I vote No, mostly because of the game choice.

Notice how, during the several days this has been sitting here in this queue, that Soig has not posted a single comment in response to these substantive inquiries. There seems to be a flood of these wannabe TASers who are willing submit but not to actually do the grueling work of getting feedback and constructing a solid TAS. At least I have the balls to admit that, at present, I'm simply not motivated enough to put together something submission-worthy.

Notice how, during the several days this has been sitting here in this queue, that Soig has not posted a single comment in response to these substantive inquiries. There seems to be a flood of these wannabe TASers who are willing submit but not to actually do the grueling work of getting feedback and constructing a solid TAS.

It may be more likely because many of these TASers are not native English speakers. It can be intimidating to answer these questions when there are a lot of them, especially if you just use a translator. Maybe writing a long post in this thread wasn't the best idea, with that factor in mind... oh well. Hopefully, more comments help somebody know what we're looking for in a quality TAS.

It is true that we have a lot of international participants who may have concerns about their English skills, but they need to put forth some kind of replies, even if they are simple ones. Perhaps we should identify folks in the forums who have various language skills by adding a "primary language" and "other languages known" bit to the user profiles. That way when someone submits a new TAS they have a way of identifying others who can give them advice, or at least help them express their own concerns and understand the comments of others.

PlayList Part 1 Part 2

Second stage: * Waiting times are fairly boring. When there's nothing to shoot, there could be better dancing.

And expectations like this are why TASes suck today.

As long as shot accuracy is strong and the boss fights are optimal, with lag and waiting time eliminated as much as possible, I don't think a lack of artful dancing alone should shoot down a TAS, but artful dancing and dodging is much easier to do than some of the other optimizations and can go a long way to making a TAS more watch-able. I've seen a number of excellent TASes that may not be able to be improved at all that I still found rather boring.

Second stage: * Waiting times are fairly boring. When there's nothing to shoot, there could be better dancing.

And expectations like this are why TASes suck today.

So....a boring, TAS without any attempt to entertain the auidience made when this site started are better?

Got bored. Stopped watching. NO-Vote.

Second stage: * Waiting times are fairly boring. When there's nothing to shoot, there could be better dancing.

And expectations like this are why TASes suck today.

So....a boring, TAS without any attempt to entertain the auidience made when this site started are better?

I laughed at this. I don't know why. and the movie itself is boring. :P

Voting no because too much autoscrolling.

Voting No because this looks extremely like human-play.

om, nom, nom... minty!

My impressions on this (as someone who can't do a decent TAS himself)... aren't good. it looks close to my style of gameplay unassisted by tools. There are, however, a few points I need to clarify on this one, having experience with actually playing the game on hardware (read: genesis and three four-button gamepad)

At the beginning: * You move past the plane you eventually pick. Why?

The game scrolls from the 3rd fighter (I believe it's the Seylen) to the first fighter (the Silph) before allowing you to pick any of them. This is present in both the Genesis/Megadrive port and the original arcade version, and cannot be skipped. For a 2-player TAS, joining 2P in after the start of stage 1 and having 1P pick the Silph (Plane #1 - the one at the top of the "hangar") avoids the issue.

First stage: * Lots of missed shots with the regular weapon. It doesn't seem to lose time or create lag, but it looks bad. * First boss looks alright. You look like you're using turbo fire though. Does the first shot land as soon as the boss is vulnerable?

more or less my thoughts, save that it should've been possible to avoid damage without losing too many frames. Since there's a bit of inconsistency over when damage is taken, a no-damage run might actually be better in my opinion. The only part about the second stage that really stood out was the plane dodging between the midboss and the land carrier. Detonating (and losing) the S-unit on the boss as soon as it became active, as counter-intuitive as it sounds to normal players, actually speeds this one up to no end, and taking a hit means nothing as one of the three guns around the core drops a life-up. It's around the third stage that I start wondering whether or not this guy actually knows this game as well as he thinks he does, and I start seeing stuff that screams "mistake" to me. For starters, I have never had to use the barrel roll in the tunnel, and I've gotten through the whole thing unscathed back on the actual Genesis. It's also here that I would like to point out that the console version lacks the first part of the boss fight. The fourth stage is probably the least entertaining stage of the game (a shame, since I got so many game overs on it back when I played it on the Genesis. the damn satellite didn't help, either). I don't see why you need to practically glue yourself to the bottom of the screen for a good portion of it. As for the fifth stage...

* Whoa, what was that special attack which shot the ring of fire? That was cool but short-lived.

That's what happens when you hit the "roll" button with the S-unit attached. it consumes the S-unit, but acts similar to a bomb in current shmups. Since S-units don't stack, it's a standard tactic to do this if another one pops up while you have one on you. Anyways, learn something new from every TAS (usually), and in this case, it's the positioning for those bomb-droppers. I would never have thought of flying just behind the cockpit of them. The console version's boss for this stage is a palette-swapped version of the first boss with a different second phase. Shame, since the arcade version's boss is actually interesting.

* I have the same concerns about this boss fight as the first: autofire. Also, if S is more powerful, why do you use the fire ring so early in the fight? It looks like you should use it as the last attack, not one of the first.

I'm not sure either. I dunno if the Valkyrie's vulcan attack, powered to max, has a higher damage rate than the S-unit's shot on a large enemy, which is the only reason why that tactic would be feasible, which begs some other questions (such as why he doesn't do it on the first boss... or the next one...) Now the final boss is a bit... annoying. For starters, anyone attempting a pacifist run (Yes, they are possible) will have to deal with a multi-minute timeout for the first part, and then another multi-minute timeout for the second part. And the "dancing" mklip2001 mentioned is pretty much required to avoid taking damage. The good news is that those two lasers that open up partway through the first part do NOT have to be destroyed (and the guy actually figured THAT out and saved them for last). Considering the guy used the S-unit throughout the fight, I have to wonder why he took the hit. I'm severely tempted to go and work on a submission of my own for this game (although I'd probably do the Arcade version, provided the emulator cooperates with me)