This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3420: MESHUGGAH's NES Rod Land in 07:49.39

Link to video video file (lossless 60fps) http://www.multiupload.com/J3T8GN8MRW http://www.nzbindex.nl/download/65814723/Rod-Land-by-MSHUGGAH-0749-Rod-Land-E-.part1.rar-60.63-MB.nzb

  File: Rod Land (E) [!].nes
CRC-32: 11a245a0
   MD4: 4fcb9e228fe5e0c75045c040d40bdd74
   MD5: 0ee0779ad39042e1767ff09aeafb92dd
 SHA-1: 34e755c33ef9be6ac5d2270f4d48c5a49f2365b4

The game isn't particularly entertaining to watch, but it looks well made, so i'll vote yes.

It took me a little while to understand what was going on, but I like this run. It was entertaining to me, and the luck manipulation is very impressive. Yes vote.

Multi player action? Automatic yes vote.

The run looks good, way better than I was doing up that point overall. I have a couple questions about the first enemy AI and the spawn location. Can you select any first enemy AI for a level without affecting the time of the previous level? So can you finish level one in a certain number of frames and without that number changing choose a separate 2nd level AI? Second do you understand how the spawning differences work? I was looking at it for a bit and it seems like the player and all but one of the enemies X-positions vary by less than 3 and then 1 enemy x-value can be as much as 40 (maybe more) depending on the frame as you said. Finally is it possible to easily manipulate this value?

What's with the death and use of a continue? I thought we'd already established that that was a bad idea in TASes, no matter how much time it might save, as it makes health management a lot less interesting.

Can you select any first enemy AI for a level without affecting the time of the previous level? So can you finish level one in a certain number of frames and without that number changing choose a separate 2nd level AI?

The way the AI acts at the next level depends on your previous input (mostly A B S). The strategy was finding the best solution for each scene and manipulate it to get that proper luck. This way I don't need to sacrifice frames.

Second do you understand how the spawning differences work? I was looking at it for a bit and it seems like the player and all but one of the enemies X-positions vary by less than 3 and then 1 enemy x-value can be as much as 40 (maybe more) depending on the frame as you said. Finally is it possible to easily manipulate this value?

Now this is what frame dependent. The frame I start the scene will change the spawn location of the enemies. Being slower on a scene leaded me a much better spawn for the next scene. Notice the scene I had to use the balloon -> it was manipulated by being faster on the first 3 scene and being slower (by a very few frames) on one of the scene before that part. However this isn't easy as "wait 1 frame and enemy position will be +1" it's mostly like a "different frame -> different spawn" scenario.

What's with the death and use of a continue?

As far as I know this has been discussed for games where you need to use credits (arcade games). I abused death for 3 reasons: luck manipulation (many scenes), speed advantage (boss 2) and entertainment (boss 3 game over)[/quote]

not entertaining

I recommend you to watch an unassisted speedrun of this game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMssQ8iZUaQ This way you can compare how much things I did in order to come up with this TAS (or watch the rerecord number). =)

One more note about luck/AI manipulation: notice scene 6 I obtained the multiball powerup which modified the AI to don't use the ladder, this way I could climb up with RIT and kill them faster with a rocket instead of using an S for TAM and wait a lot of frames to be able to get there to that point. The same goes for scene 20 where the monkey wouldn't get hit by the rocket/"2 side bomb" if I obtain them, not to mention the multiball hit.

Quite fast-paced, to the point where the action is almost hard to follow. Really good luck manipulation too. I'm voting Yes.

This got a little old for me, but it was impressive, and it was short enough to not get boring (unlike the "Bubble Boy" I game I remember seeing in the submission queue some time ago). I'll give this a Yes.

Pretty little game, short enough, fast enough, entertaining enough =) so yes.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1949] NES Rod Land by MESHUGGAH in 07:49.39

4K 60 FPS YouTube encode: Link to video