This is a Tool-Assisted speedrun of Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return. This is my first attempt at a TAS in general, so I don't have much experience. This is still a Work in Progress, as you can see by this being my only video and that it's not finished. I used PSXJin to emulate and record the game. Unfortunately the emulator only records in AVIs and splits the sound from video. Since Sony Vegas has an aneurysm whenever it tries to play an AVI file, I had to use Movie Maker. The sound isn't as good as I'd hope it would be. Idk what else to say. Enjoy what I have. If there's parts in the video where you know I can improve in I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me.
NOTES:
For my first TAS this really doesn't look bad. Then again, I don't have any experience with it so who am I to judge?
At 6:00 I think I can improve my time slightly by turning back slightly to the right in the air, then moving right while barely grabbing the fast pants so I'm running at full speed when I hit the ground. Also at 4:00 I may have to play around with this part a bit since it seems a bit slow to me. It was just hard getting the crab since he would jump up right as I reached him no matter what angle I took. Other than that I think I played perfectly.
I was too lazy to write a modified version of this, so I'll just copy and paste.
When I recorded the AVI, I used the Xvid MPEG-4 Codec compressor.
UPDATE:Link to video
Here's another WIP of my Tomba 2 TAS. It includes new speed tricks I found out myself.
YouTube description:
Sorry it took so long to get another WIP out, but I kept finding better routes and tricks along the way that made me reset the TAS a couple of times. I'd like to thank RJWaters2 for posting a speed run of the segment I show in this video. (I responded to that video too) It was from him where I got the idea to get the feathers from the treasure in the pipe area.
The most notable trick is when I use my weapon every time I jump. If you use your weapon one or two frames before you jump, you will get a massive speed boost. How did I find this out? I was dicking around with my weapon at one point when I noticed in my memory watch that I was exceeding maximum speed after jumping. After multiple tests I'm now able to use it pretty well. You will only get a speed increase if you already moving, so if you try to do this trick from an idle position you won't get any speed boost. Also, depending on the pants you're wearing you can only move a certain speed when sprinting normally, so with this trick, after you exceed the limit, your speed will periodically drop back to the limit unless you do the trick again. I'm pretty sure the speed increase is multiplicative, so I'm waiting until I get to an infinite stretch of land (e.g. the Flame Pig stage) to see what's the fastest speed I can go.
I also found out that in order to do the shortest jump you have to hold the jump button for a little more than two frames (two frames is the time it takes for the game to register an input), but I didn't find out about this until I got to the pipe area, so there's probably some parts in the first stage where I could've saved more time, like that part where I open the chest to get the turbo pants, but I don't want to be going back more than 40000 frames and doing everything over again just to fix one or two parts. Besides, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the only one TASing this game, so it doesn't matter too much right?
There are many other things I want to point out in the video that I will later on do so when I add commentary to the video. Anyway, here's my latest update of my Tomba 2 TAS. I found many new routes and tricks that help me shave off a lot of time compared to my old WIP. Since this is as far as RJWaters2 got with his speed run, I will mostly follow Chris-X's speedrun on SpeedDemosArchive from here on, but to be honest I think I'm going to do a practice run before I go any further to see if I can find anything better. I use all three feathers in this run and I don't know if I should've saved one or not, so I'll be able to find that out in a few practice runs. This means that I probably won't get this TAS done until months later. I'll be posting another WIP when I get to a general midterm in the game, but I feel that won't be until much later.
Anyway, enjoy the TAS.
Emulator used: PSXjin
Game ID: SCUS94454B
Game Region: NTSC-U
Not much else I gotta say. Like I said in the description I'll be adding commentary to the video later on, so I'll be able to explain more stuff there.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Welcome to TAS videos!
Nice to see someone picking up the project of TASing this game.
As a person who never played the game it looks like a very good first WIP and I will be looking forward to more of them.
It's usually a good idea to also include the current version of your input file with each WIP, those can be uploaded here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/
And then linked to in the discussion topic. This may help others who know more about the game to help you find improvements to your TAS.
If you post your input file, it also helps if you tell us the game ID (i.e. SCUS-94154, this ID belongs to Crash Bandicoot 2, don't just copy this one) as well as the filename of the BIOS you used, and any special settings if those are needed.
Don't worry about the video quality, it's plenty good enough for WIPs, an encoder will take care of the publish encode if you submit your TAS when it's completed and it's accepted.
I'm looking forward to a Tomba 2 TAS. A few questions:
1) Do illegal d-pad combinations (u+d, l+r, u+d+l and so on) do anything interesting? Check in every 'movement state', menu and so on.
2) Have you found the memory addresses for x/y speed and position? In some games running with the directional button held down is not the fastest way to move under TAS conditions, due to oscillating speeds you can freeze (super mario world) or acceleration/top speed being different in the air or slopes or land.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Looks very pleasant. Played that game in 1998 or something.
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.
As a person who never played the game it looks like a very good first WIP and I will be looking forward to more of them.
If you're saying I've never played the game before I've actually beaten it a couple times and have completed all missions (except for the Tomba! 1 exclusive missions). I've just never attempted to do a TAS of any game before now.
Warepire wrote:
It's usually a good idea to also include the current version of your input file with each WIP, those can be uploaded here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/
And then linked to in the discussion topic. This may help others who know more about the game to help you find improvements to your TAS.
When I upload the file will a thread be generated automatically? Also, by discussion topic do you mean the General section?
Warepire wrote:
If you post your input file, it also helps if you tell us the game ID (i.e. SCUS-94154, this ID belongs to Crash Bandicoot 2, don't just copy this one) as well as the filename of the BIOS you used, and any special settings if those are needed.
I don't know how to get the game ID, but I do know it's NTSC. Also my BIOS is scph1001.bin.
Warepire wrote:
Don't worry about the video quality, it's plenty good enough for WIPs, an encoder will take care of the publish encode if you submit your TAS when it's completed and it's accepted.
So someone else will encode both the AVI and WAV files?
Patashu wrote:
I'm looking forward to a Tomba 2 TAS. A few questions:
1) Do illegal d-pad combinations (u+d, l+r, u+d+l and so on) do anything interesting? Check in every 'movement state', menu and so on.
2) Have you found the memory addresses for x/y speed and position? In some games running with the directional button held down is not the fastest way to move under TAS conditions, due to oscillating speeds you can freeze (super mario world) or acceleration/top speed being different in the air or slopes or land.
1) Do you mean if I do an illegal d-pad combination while turning at an intersection or opening the menu, it may cause the action to go faster? I hardly know anything about TASing so I could be wrong.
2) You lost me here lol. I understand what you mean by different acceleration speeds in the air and ground. I still have to test whether I accelerate at different speeds on the ground and in the air, but so far it seems like it's the same. I do not understand what you mean by "memory addresses for x/y speed and position."
I'm looking forward to a Tomba 2 TAS. A few questions:
1) Do illegal d-pad combinations (u+d, l+r, u+d+l and so on) do anything interesting? Check in every 'movement state', menu and so on.
2) Have you found the memory addresses for x/y speed and position? In some games running with the directional button held down is not the fastest way to move under TAS conditions, due to oscillating speeds you can freeze (super mario world) or acceleration/top speed being different in the air or slopes or land.
1) Do you mean if I do an illegal d-pad combination while turning at an intersection or opening the menu, it may cause the action to go faster? I hardly know anything about TASing so I could be wrong.
I mean things like what you can do in Link to the Past. If you use items with illegal d-pad combinations then the game gets confused and writes absurd values for position and velocity:
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/GBx/LinksAwakening.html#UpDownLeftRightGlitches
So every 'different way' the game can use the value of which d-pad buttons are pushed own should be tested with illegal combinations to see if glitches occur. It's not the only way to find glitches, but a common one.
2) You lost me here lol. I understand what you mean by different acceleration speeds in the air and ground. I still have to test whether I accelerate at different speeds on the ground and in the air, but so far it seems like it's the same. I do not understand what you mean by "memory addresses for x/y speed and position."
Almost every game has a set of memory addresses, the values of which indicate the player character's x position, y position, x speed and y speed (x being horizontal, y being vertical). For example, Super Mario Bros: http://tasvideos.org/Addresses-11.html
To find such a memory address, in most emulators with memory watch there is a feature that lets you do the following:
Search memory
Move right
Ssearch memory for all values that increased since the last check, narrow possibilities
Move left
Search memory for all values that decreased since the last check, narrow possibilities
And by doing this over and over again the program narrows down all values that could be x position - until you have only one. Then you can do the same for y position, x velocity, y velocity and whatever else you can think of measuring.
And now, you can verify that methods of movement are as fast/as slow as you think they are :)
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.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
DeliciousOctorok wrote:
Warepire wrote:
As a person who never played the game it looks like a very good first WIP and I will be looking forward to more of them.
If you're saying I've never played the game before I've actually beaten it a couple times and have completed all missions (except for the Tomba! 1 exclusive missions). I've just never attempted to do a TAS of any game before now.
I meant that I never played it before.
DeliciousOctorok wrote:
Warepire wrote:
It's usually a good idea to also include the current version of your input file with each WIP, those can be uploaded here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/
And then linked to in the discussion topic. This may help others who know more about the game to help you find improvements to your TAS.
When I upload the file will a thread be generated automatically? Also, by discussion topic do you mean the General section?
No, after the upload you will get a link to the file, that link you copy and paste into the project discussion topic (this topic)
DeliciousOctorok wrote:
Warepire wrote:
If you post your input file, it also helps if you tell us the game ID (i.e. SCUS-94154, this ID belongs to Crash Bandicoot 2, don't just copy this one) as well as the filename of the BIOS you used, and any special settings if those are needed.
I don't know how to get the game ID, but I do know it's NTSC. Also my BIOS is scph1001.bin.
The ID is usually a part of the file name. Luckily there seems to be only one version of the game, and that has ID "SCUS-94454"
DeliciousOctorok wrote:
Warepire wrote:
Don't worry about the video quality, it's plenty good enough for WIPs, an encoder will take care of the publish encode if you submit your TAS when it's completed and it's accepted.
So someone else will encode both the AVI and WAV files?
Yes, for the publication when you submit the finished TAS and it's accepted. WIP encodes you will have to provide yourself, or ask the user antd, he will sometimes encode WIPs.
Almost every game has a set of memory addresses, the values of which indicate the player character's x position, y position, x speed and y speed (x being horizontal, y being vertical). For example, Super Mario Bros: http://tasvideos.org/Addresses-11.html
To find such a memory address, in most emulators with memory watch there is a feature that lets you do the following:
Search memory
Move right
Ssearch memory for all values that increased since the last check, narrow possibilities
Move left
Search memory for all values that decreased since the last check, narrow possibilities
And by doing this over and over again the program narrows down all values that could be x position - until you have only one. Then you can do the same for y position, x velocity, y velocity and whatever else you can think of measuring.
And now, you can verify that methods of movement are as fast/as slow as you think they are :)
I tried this out and I was able to find the x speed variable, and so far it's helped me out a lot! With it I was able to find out that I accelerate faster in the air than on the ground, and that jumping off a swing gives me a big speed boost.
So far I can tell that illegal d-pad combinations don't do anything special. This may be because of the adition of the analog stick, allowing users to press left on the d-pad and move the analog stick right, but this is just an assumption.
Warepire wrote:
No, after the upload you will get a link to the file, that link you copy and paste into the project discussion topic (this topic)
The ID is usually a part of the file name. Luckily there seems to be only one version of the game, and that has ID "SCUS-94454"
Yes, for the publication when you submit the finished TAS and it's accepted. WIP encodes you will have to provide yourself, or ask the user antd, he will sometimes encode WIPs.
Alright thanks for the help. I'll post the .pjm file in this thread when I get the chance.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
DeliciousOctorok wrote:
I uploaded another WIP, but I still don't know how to post the input files.
The WIP looks really nice, the speed boost trick is a really cool find!
To post the .pjm you can upload it anywhere you want really, and then post the link. If you don't want to worry about your file expiring you can most conveniently upload it to the TASvideos userfiles directory.
Here's a quick step by step on how to do that:
• Log in on TASvideos.org (Different from the forum, click the Login link on top of the homepage, use your forum username and password)
• Click on the "your own storage" link on the resulting page once you logged in.
• Click on the "Your movies" link right above the "Users with movies" list.
• Follow the form. You can ignore the Game drop-down list since this game has no previous published movies.
• You should get a link after clicking the "Create" button at the bottom, copy that link and paste it into this thread (either in a new post or by editing one of your existing posts)
I hope that cleared it up, if it didn't, I will try again.
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.
What do you mean? Do you mean it just won't play properly? I'm using PSXjin v2.0.2 with the game ID as SCUS94454B. I redownloaded the file and played that file on my computer and it's working fine.
