Simon takes another shot at this castle, but he felt horrible for all the destruction he caused last time. So now he tries to be nice to Dracula and leave the place untouched (even if his intention is to kill the count...). This ends up being quite a stealthy run without subweapons and only using the leather whip.
Goals of this run:
don't break the furniture. Candles and walls are left intact.
don't kill or even whip any enemy. But go mad in boss battles, they deserve to die.
aims for fastest time
don't pick up items. They can indeed still drop from projectiles for example.
The other things I do:
take damage to save time
die to save time
Tricks
The biggest glitch used here is the "critical hit" on bosses.
In certain conditions, attacking while taking damage causes Simon to strike behind him and greatly damage an enemy. Also known as "damage transfer" (or something like that).
Damage boost is a huge time saver too. It's just the fact of being hit by an enemy/projectile in the air to gain extra height or extend a jump horizontally.
There was a lot of enemy manipulation too, and some epic fights against lag.
What was hard?
After realizing that bats and ravens die when Simon just touches them, I had to rethink the approach in some places. It meant no more damage boosts in stage 2, 6 and 10; and stage 7-8-9 became harder with the ravens swarming me.
But it all ended well.
Noxxa: It appears Castlevania is well suited for a pacifist run like this, as the end result is a quite entertaining run. The run is a clear display of superhuman ability in avoiding enemies and passing by them without needing to whip anything. Viewer response was very well as a result. Accepting for publication.
Hmm, I see no reason to not pick items that appear due to reasons beyond the player's control. I don't know where that kind of thing would happen, but the submission message says:
don't pick up items. They can indeed still drop from projectiles for example.
Hmm, I see no reason to not pick items that appear due to reasons beyond the player's control. I don't know where that kind of thing would happen, but the submission message says:
don't pick up items. They can indeed still drop from projectiles for example.
Technically, anything that happens in a TAS should be in the player's control.
Anyway, I'm 99% sure that no item spawns in that run, but just in case, I had that in mind: "if an item appears, don't pick it up".
It could happen for example on my test run, when I still used bats as platforms (it killed them).
Edit: talking about projectiles...
When hitting Death (the boss) at one time, I hit a scythe too. It didn't drop anything here, but it could have.
And to answer another question in advance: I didn't consider boss's projectiles as enemies for the pacifist aspect, but I still tried to avoid hitting them as much as possible without losing time, for style.
In fact I had that mini-rule in mind: "don't hit projectiles unless you are attacking (whipping) the boss and it is in the way", in other words: the boss must be hit at the same time.
I'm uploading an encode while writing this. But the quality will be the same as my test run (on the Castlevania board).
If a good encoder (not like me ^^) can do something about the framerate it would be nice. I'm mostly talking about when Simon gets hit, youtube destroys the "blinking" because of their 30fps.
By the way, the category "minimalist pacifist" was chosen by default because I can't find a more fitting name according to the rules of the run...
If someone has a better idea for a name, don't hesitate ;)
Basically, it's "don't destroy or hit furniture and enemies except if it is a boss battle" (I still avoid candles and wall breaking there).
The part about items is to make sure it is as "minimalist" as possible.
I have one concern before I make my vote: Was there no way to damage boost around the downstairs segment in Stage 02? Or did you need the health for the critical hit glitch at the boss?
The only possible damage boost in 02 is off of a bat, and the bat would die, which violates the "pacifist" rule.
I'm looking forward to watching this as soon as an encode becomes available. The test run was great; I'm sure the optimized one will be even better!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I have one concern before I make my vote: Was there no way to damage boost around the downstairs segment in Stage 02? Or did you need the health for the critical hit glitch at the boss?
Derakon explained it all about the damage boost, but I'd like to add an interesting fact about the critical glitch.
In the battle with that giant bat, this glitch is kind of enhanced by the stairs, that's weird.
If you try a critical by jumping at the bat, it will only empty about half of its HP, but standing on the stairs allows you to OHKO it.
I suppose it has to do with the fact that Simon won't be ejected and it maybe adds more "critical frames" (when doing a critical, the enemy HP doesn't drop immediately, more like a little amont per frame for some frames).
While testing, I still managed to not kill the bat with one critical on the stairs, there was like 1 HP left after the hit.
It's a weird glitch...
Heh, so sad to see a Castlevania run with so little action, but you get to enjoy the awesome OST more! Liked the problems created with the pacifist goal on Level 3. It's been years since I saw the underground part of Level 1. Yes vote.
Thanks for the encode, Grincevent! This was a great run, as I'd expected. The playing with enemies was excellent (particularly the crows and Fleamen), and the bossfights were impressively quick. The run is also very different from our existing Castlevania 1 run -- that one racks up a massive body count through heavy subweapon use, while this one attempts to cause as little damage as possible.
My going hypothesis is that Simon wants to take over the castle for himself, so a) he doesn't want the servants to turn against him, and b) he wants to cause as little property damage as possible. :)
Easy yes vote, and a great start to your career as a TASer. Welcome!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Why did you seemingly randomly whip the air throughout the run? Luck manipulation?
There was no luck manipulation using the whip, but I used it to gain time in a few places, the rest is for entertainment or "choregraphy".
Every time I jump from a high place and whip at the air before landing, it's for saving time; if I don't use the whip, Simon crouches after the jump and it costs time.
There are parts when I'm chased by hunchbacks, and it was quite boring to watch the character just jump back again and again... Without much options, I decided to feint whipping them. "Get off me! Go away!" Simon says...
Ok, it's not extremely funny, but just a little better than just jumping I think :p
Simon is not very expressive, which is sad.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
This ended up being a lot quicker than I thought it would be. I especially liked all the bird dodging in Stages 7 through 9, and I thought Stage 11 was really funny with you jumping away from the hunchbacks the whole time. The deaths in Stages 15 and 18 are a bit distracting, but they're not too bad and are ultimately necessary to save time.
I love how this run made it look much easier to dodge enemies than it really is when playing real time.
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.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I'd make all encodes, but I need to know if that branch will be published as is.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I had a lot of fun watching that. Yes vote for entertainment, whipping to the music, playing with the Fleamen, crazy jumps, and all around enjoyment.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Voting no because you made a skeleton commit suicide at the end of the "Stage 07" area.
Seriously, though, this was great. The final boss fight was particularly memorable, because of all the candles potentially in the way, throttling your options considerably. Voting yes.
The run was a pleasant surprise. I like to see pacifist runs and the way you handled it was wonderful. Too bad the Dracula fight takes a while on the 2nd form, but it wasn't enough to make me go BLEH.
Voting yes.
Let the spirit of odd Castlevania goal choices live on. Great run, I love how tightly optimized it is now. The greatest surprise for me was Stage 11, the strategy for keeping the hunchbacks in check was wondeful. I don't remember whehter you already used it in your first run, but it was new to me. Yes vote on this one.
Pacifist goals are great for unassisted runs, but rarely translate well into TASes and this is no exception. The main reason for voting no is that it doesn't show any interesting strategies that haven't been shown in currently published TAS.
I liked this one alot. After watching this one, I just wanted more and more see Trevor only CV3 run. There isn't much common there, but stilll... Anyway, I think the best part is boss fights. They just look very smooth even though there is no sub weapons. Oh yeah, for this run.
