Hey kids. It's time for TAZ Mania in 6.36!
In today's episode of TAZ-Mania, TAZ manages to get a seagull egg by breaking the laws of physics, teleporting across entire levels, and using several other new tricks making it 8170 frames (02:16.17) faster than the previous episode.
  • As fast as possible
  • Hardest difficulty (swimming = instadeath!)
  • Takes damage
  • Definitely uses bugs to warp past a half/whole level now and then
  • Dies, too
Aqfaq found a way to use the bug that Truncated accidentally triggered twice in his original TAZ Mania run. He enlisted the help of Sonikkustar and said Truncated to record this movie.

Obsoletion

Since the previous movie also uses the warp glitch (although sparingly), this movie should replace that one. A new warp-less movie can be made if there is any interest (probably not...)

New tricks

Warp

The finding of this trick is the reason that Aqfaq started making this movie. By having no input on the first input frame of a new level, and a straigh-up jump on the second input frame, Taz is teleported to the coordinates he had when the previous level ended. Taz also has to be on the ground when the previous level ends. In the previous movie, there were warps in Temple 1 and Temple 3. In those cases the warp was activated by taking damage on the second input frame.
Depending on the layout of the previous level none, some or all of the next level can be skipped. If you teleport to coordinates which are outside the level boundaries, bad things (death) or not so bad things (walk into level from the right side) happen. If the ground hasn't been set as lethal you can drop through the bottom and wrap around to the top, but that takes a lot of time (65000 pixels to fall through).

Higher max speed

The usual max speed is ~9 pixels/frame. If you turn around while still spinning, the max speed rises to ~12 pixels/frame. For this reason you will see us double back pretty often. If you exit the spin, or lose contact with the ground, the max speed will go back to ~9 pixels/frame.

Go through corners

This is only used in Caves 2. You don't need to bring the level-operated elevators all the way down. If you build up some speed by revving you can go through corners that are impassable if walking or spinning at start-up speed.

Level notes

Stage Gained Ahead
Intro 5 5
Desert 1 -35 -30
Desert 2 1218 1188
Desert Boss 26 1214
Factory 1 907 2121
Factory 2 1019 3140
Ice 542 3682
Jungle 1 867 4549
Jungle 2 858 5407
River 1 1062 6469
Caves 1 13 6482
Caves 2 428 6910
River 2 183 7093
Plant boss 8 7101
Temple 1 224 7325
Temple 2 139 7464
Temple 3 285 7749
Final boss 419 8168

Desert 1

Bam, the warp glitch is used at once. How can this be, when there is no previous level? Actually there is a previous level. The intro where Taz zooms in and eats the S of SEGA uses the same coordinates for Taz as the gameplay.
The level is the same as before except for the turn-around trick and the ending. Touching the goal is delayed so that we can stand on the geysers, giving us a good position for the next level.

Desert 2

Warp glitch to the end next plz.

Desert Boss

The fastest way to kill the boss is with the bomb. The closest starting position found was a bit above the bomb.

Factory 1

This level is warped past except for three platforms at the end.

Factory 2

Half of this level is skipped. As in the previous movie, we take damage to pass the assembly line quickly.

Ice

Half of this level is skipped. Unfortunately we start over icy waters.

Jungle 1

All of this level is skipped. Sadly we don't eat a bomb. :(

Jungle 2 / The tree / Jungle boss

We start at the boss instead of at the bottom of the tree. The boss can be played with except for the last few hits, which is needed to set up the boss for a jump out of the boss area. The object is to get as far right as possible before the level fades.

River 1

Start at the goal post!

Caves 1

It is possible to start way ahead in this level, but the level does not appear to end unless you are in the cart.

Caves 2

Due to the cart-riding this level cannot be warped through and has to be played in full. If you are interested in improving this movie, here is where you should start: write a bot which tries the gazillions of combinations of jumping patterns for the second rubber elevator. Downward acceleration is 200 subpixels/frame^2 when not holding jump, and 76 subpixels/frame^2 when holding jump. For one jump of 40 frames, that's 2^40=1,099,511,627,776 possible jumping patterns... not including the spin, which sets your upward speed to 1.5 pixels if it is greater than that. Have fun!

River 2

Dieing here was the fastest way. The end of the previous level is too low to survive. It is still faster than playing the whole level regularly.

Oversized carnivourous plant boss

Since the previous level is so long, warping here would start us way outside of the level to the right. It is better to start in the regular position. The no-weed bags do 2 damage to the boss, spinning and jumping does 1.

Temple 1

This level was warped in the previous version too, from pretty much the same location.

Temple 2

We start outside the stage, to the right. When you touch the right wall, you are zipped to the left. Because of this you can jump before you touch the right wall and end up one floor higher. This level was redone twice to include small improvements of 2-4 frames.

Temple 3 (Clone Boss)

This level was warped in the previous version too. In this version we get a better starting position, in the boss room, on top of the boss. :)
The object at the start of the boss fight is to take damage as soon as possible, because Taz is locked in the "holding sign" pose for a good while when he lands. The fastest way to take damage was the bat. The boss does not give damage before he starts spinning, and the flame on the right has a very long damage animation.

Final Boss

Again we start outside the level to the right. The object is to make the boss use the shortest attack animation (claws instead of wings) as often as possible. Sonikkustar found a good pattern for this.

Personal comments

Aqfaq

TBA

Sonikkustar

Well this certaintly was interesting to do. It started out as a request from Aqfaq, but I didnt really have time in my life to TAS at the time. I was also still a pretty new TASer at the time so I didnt understand all the concepts of TASing that much as I do now. As a result, I didnt really do that much work on the movie. Due to several other complications, we lost interest in mid 2010 and stopped all work.
TODO: More Comments

Truncated

This took its sweet time, as usual when I'm TASing. The oldest movie I have of this (a proof-of-concept wip by Aqfaq) is from May 2009. It has been on hold several times, the longest one being for the elevators in Caves 2.
I probably tased the least of this movie of the three of us. The portions I can remember doing are the tree boss, the second half of Caves 2 (after the bat stomps), the end of River 2, the plant boss, and Temple 2 (together with Sonikkustar). I wrote most of the script for tracking movement (position, speed, acceleration) and identifying "real" lag frames.
I'd like to give a big thank you to my partners; Aqfaq for figuring out this glitch and letting us join his project and Sonikku for recording a very good movie, letting no frame get away.

Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Accepting as an improvement to the currently published run.
OmnipotentEntity: Encoding.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3267: Aqfaq, Sonikkustar, Truncated's Genesis Taz Mania in 06:36.37
Player (116)
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I remember this game! I have it for the SNES!
[19:16] <scrimpy> silly portuguese [19:16] <scrimpy> it's like spanish, only less cool
Post subject: taz mania: youtube + video file
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ALAKTORN
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bad game choice in my opinion…
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Fast enough to ignore the SFX. Voting Yes
NitroGenesis
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ALAKTORN wrote:
bad game choice in my opinion…
You're strange. A run of this game is already published.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
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Plenty of WTF moments, nice to see such a big improvement. Yes vote is obvious.
Mitjitsu
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This is one of these TASes you can't appreaciate unless you've played the game (like me). Definite yes vote.
mklip2001
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Nice! I was hoping someone would be able to put more warps into this run, after Aqfaq posted in the current movie's submission thread. Couldn't you also skip the first stage, by delaying when you leave the title screen? I vaguely recall somebody saying that was possible. Unfortunately, this was less entertaining than the current run, since this one spends a larger percentage of time in stage transitions. But at least you still go through Caves 2, so we get at least a semblance of the platforming you're supposed to do. Also, really nice job with the final boss. Yes vote.
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.
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ALAKTORN wrote:
bad game choice in my opinion…
My exact words to my mom when she bought this for me with my Sega. Having played the game to death regardless, I can actually watch the movie and appreciate it!
Jungon
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I had this game and I even finished it once on hard mode... =P of course never tried to pull out a jump before the beginning of a level, so this is all very WTFy to me... XD I almost voted Meh for you guys not eat a bomb, but instead, voted Yes, it's a fast game, mostly known by its bad sfx that can be humorous (when not annoying) >.> But really, how come you didn't eat a bomb??
*Jungon*/*Johnnyz* smilie weirdo =P ^^ o.o @__@ +D
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Is the warping glitch possible in the SNES version? Those Genesis sounds are horrible... Other than that: good run, yes vote.
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Thanks antd for the very quick encode! mklip2001> Couldn't you also skip the first stage, by delaying when you leave the title screen? I vaguely recall somebody saying that was possible. We jump ahead a short bit in the first stage, but it's not possible to skip all of it. If anyone found that, it would have been Aqfaq, and he improved many of the early levels several times. The game is pretty hex-edit friendly. >Also, really nice job with the final boss. Yes vote. You can thank Sonikkustar for the last boss. :) Jungon> I almost voted Meh for you guys not eat a bomb, but instead, voted Yes, it's a fast game, mostly known by its bad sfx that can be humorous (when not annoying) >.> I apologize for this run's lack of bomb-eating. Needing to set up the warp for the next stage decreases the possibility to play around at the end of the stages. Spinal> Is the warping glitch possible in the SNES version? I haven't tried, perhaps I should... I checked now, the SNES Taz mania is a completely different game about running on a road and eating birds.
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Thanks for the encode, antd. I've never played this game and I didn't watch the published movie, but this is very fast and a good improvement. Voting Yes.
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Truncated wrote:
Spinal> Is the warping glitch possible in the SNES version? I haven't tried, perhaps I should... I checked now, the SNES Taz mania is a completely different game about running on a road and eating birds.
Ah, okay, didn't know that. I figured when funnyhair said "I remember this game! I have it for the SNES!" that they would be the same.
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How come this is still in the Workbench when its published?
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1869] Genesis Taz-Mania by Aqfaq, Sonikkustar, Truncated in 06:36.37
PCachu
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Taz-Mania is one of the unfortunate games demonstrating the holes in Gens's sound emulation. If you want to hear what it's supposed to sound like, you'll have to break out Kega. (Though that just graduates the sound from "irritating" to "underwhelming".)
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Spinal wrote:
Truncated wrote:
Spinal> Is the warping glitch possible in the SNES version? I haven't tried, perhaps I should... I checked now, the SNES Taz mania is a completely different game about running on a road and eating birds.
Ah, okay, didn't know that. I figured when funnyhair said "I remember this game! I have it for the SNES!" that they would be the same.
There's a Game Boy version too, which is a platformer like this one, but still is a different game (different levels, no color, etc.).
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This is a great video, as is the one it obsoleted, and I think this game is a good example of one that needs a separate published run for avoiding a specific glitch. Hi everyone :)
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Console verified: Link to video No loader program or manual input modifications were needed. More info: http://notaz.gp2x.de/md/verification/
Pokota
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Bluh. Does not sync in Bizhawk 1.8.4, so I can't do an encode with the intended drum sound sound effects. Seriously, why is the drum sound screwy in the older Genesis emulators? Compare the YT Encode with the Console Verification video.
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Pokota wrote:
Seriously, why is the drum sound screwy in the older Genesis emulators? Compare the YT Encode with the Console Verification video.
It's an issue with phase counter overflow in YM2612, which wasn't known at the time Gens was developed (although Snake probably knew it and had it right in Fusion). The Genesis/MD GEMS sound driver happened to have an instrument that made use of this "feature", so there are quite a few games affected.
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Pokota wrote:
Bluh. Does not sync in Bizhawk 1.8.4, so I can't do an encode with the intended drum sound sound effects.
Try this: http://notaz.gp2x.de/md/verification/aqfaq,sonikkustar,truncated1-tazmania_genplusgx_resync.bkm (only tested on raw genplus-gx, Bizhawk is not fun to get going on Linux..)
Pokota
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Crashes when ran through Bizhawk, probably due to no header. Exception text below. I finagled it into running in Bizhawk; recorded a blank movie to get a header, adjusted the input log to match the current format (for each line, notaz' file was missing the reset button field and had an extra pipe at the end) and merged it all together. The info in the file doesn't match the official stats, though - Bizhawk reported only 1 rerecord when I played it back, and I'm sure there are other header shenanigans that will need to be adjusted. Here's the BK2 file for those interested.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?