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Game Objectives

  • Takes no damage
  • Pacifist
  • Forgoes time-saving damage

Comments

Certain waiting phases could not be avoided because the game has not been programmed to pass many passages without killing monsters. It is thus impossible to pass these passages directly.
The choice of difficulty, all talks, password screens and banner before levels are validate at the first available frame.
I took the least amount of stars possible.
To creep stop the running animation.
The black crows and bats make damage on a part of their sprite, not on the entire sprite.

Stage by Stage Comments

Act 1 The Village:

It’s possible to stop the smurf on pools, the water throw by the smurf makes damage during some frames but at the end it’s damage less. The flying smurf doesn’t make damage on the entire of this sprite, the dodge of land balls is to a one frame.

Act 2 The Forest:

Nothing particular in the first part, in second part there are the leaf triggers and not take damage, smurf dance to spend time to able to jump on leaf.

Act 3 The Bridge:

To do very shorts jump on birds for don’t lose any speed.

Act 4 The Black Forest:

Handling behavior of black smurf, when you are in front of them, they just jump on site but if you their turn back they come and kill you. Dodge of black flies that kill you in a fatal hit. One leaf on two is necessary to pass any chasms. The carnivorous plant can be killed by putting the spring in a small area, with this setup you have just to jump at different heights for kill the boss. You must be careful to the black smurf which appears in right or left side (you can handle and changing it), after the boss death I take the key before it affects the ground.

Act 5 The Lake:

I throw some explosives gifs nearby to frogs without kill them. You can abuse to the ducks sprite because they take the smurf on a large area. I jump from a duck to another duck and again, I dodge the stars. In the second part, the ghost doesn’t do any damage at the bottom of this sprite.

Act 6 The Field:

I use the first leaf spring so as to stop the jump and take the passage. At the end if you jump too high the spiders hit you.

Act 7 The Dam:

The spring is released in jump to save time, I pick up the spring before I’m on this. I save a jump at the top of the level, with a good speed the smurf go up at the higher level.

Act 8 The Swamp:

When I can do it, I jump on the frogs as soon as possible, from they appear the smurf arrives on them but you see the smurf to sink in water but he doesn’t die. I optimize jumps lianas to lianas to whether more aesthetic and save time. The snake is killed as soon as possible and some hits are sprites contactless. I’m not really satisfied with this stage. There are some tiny mistakes that should be fixed in v2. It’s faster to avoid the last big underwater bone from the left.

Act 9 The Cave:

The jumps on detonators are small in order to save time, the smurf is directed to the best direction for restart faster. The bat dodge is easy with a hit box according to their wings and they need a lot of time to take off.

Act 10 The Mountain:

The rabbits can be passed by two ways, run under them when they jump or jump above them. The butterfly has a big hit box, bigger than this sprite. In the last part of the level you can cut this if you take a spring at the top left and put it at the right you skip the ice and save a lot of time.

Act 11 The Mine:

I’m so sorry, I have to get a 1-up, the game in hardest difficulty give you a life (Infogrames could be nice….). When you stay down 2 (or 3 for any doors) frames, 2 or 3 frames before the damage, you will not take damage, the smurf can activate the levers a few frames before or after he go ahead.

Act 12 The Volcano:

The gifts explosion can be not affect the smurf with a good timing, they are throw as soon as possible to save time and I pass through walls of rocks when it’s possible. In the second part of the level I willingly dodge a life. For the dragon boss, I find a safe area, behind the dragon, the edge of the platform and far to the dragon’s tail which make damage; the gifts have been landed with the best timing.

Act 13 The Descent:

This part doesn’t have any particularity, I jump above the rocks, the yeti doesn’t make damage if you touch him after he touch down on snow and he push you. The slay can catch up on the edges of the banks, it is possible to touch the sprite of the big snowballs but the global pattern for this level and how I played avoided me to have snowballs.

Act 14 The Cliff:

This level doesn’t include particular difficulty, trunk rotation is regular unlike enemies, the fact that enemies not all would necessarily well placed has forced me to wait for very short periods.

Act 15 Gargamel’s Manor House:

In the bubble, some spines are harmless, diagonal movements are faster than a straight line. In the second part of the level I dodged Azrael and my character was faster than him, jumps are not carried at their maximum speed to avoid being hit by plants. The black flies had a little conditioned my route in this level to lose a minimum of time, the last jump before a small plant was reduced to not go on the platform above. The part of the stairs boils down to not to be on the road of an apple or a book while jumping step by step. For the last part, the manner in which I placed my character has allowed me to send a tassel at each passage of vulture then take the key as soon as possible.
I can assure you that none smurfs were harmed during the making of this TAS, some of black Smurfs have unfortunately committed suicide themselves in the level of the Black Forest, peace to their souls.

Special Thanks

I thank very much Rayas, feos, Nahoc and many others for their help and their advice.

feos: YouTubed. Also, Judging...
feos: Before the LegacyPages/Tier system was introduced, boring movies were rejected for bad game or goal choice. After the Vault appeared, some of the boring movies got a chance, but there is still a reason a well-TASed movie can be rejected.
Any TAS that was liked by the audience can be published in the Alternative tier, even if it has an uncommon goal. The enjoyment justifies arbitrary goals. But if the TAS wasn't liked, enjoyment can not justify it's publication, and it was set so that being a speed record justifies the acceptance. And only 2 most common and sane goals were left for boring (vaultable) movies: any% (fastest completion) and 100% (full completion/best ending), with no time indulgence in both cases (otherwise it's not a time record).
That system is used, because we still need to hold the quality bar of our content high, and it would be impossible to handle an unlimited amount of publications (if boring movies were not confined in the goals). To prevent getting rejected for goal choice (to prevent picking such a goal), it is always advised to post WIPs on forums and collect the feedback from the people that would comment the submission afterwards.
I have to reject this submission for a bad feedback in the presence of an unconventional goal. This is due to the game not providing much to interest people. However, the submission with taking time-saving damage and with time-saving kills will most likely be accepted as long as it is faster than this one.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3952: coconou's SNES The Smurfs "Pacifist, No Damage" in 24:10.30
Cooljay
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I think the no damage is kind of a vague goal for a pacifist run.There looks like there was a good amount of time was lost in some places, because you wanted to avoid taking damage.I think taking some damage would be fine if it speeds up some places where waiting for danger to go away is involved. I have to vote meh for this one.
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Cooljay wrote:
I think the no damage is kind of a vague goal for a pacifist run.There looks like there was a good amount of time was lost in some places, because you wanted to avoid taking damage.I think taking some damage would be fine if it speeds up some places where waiting for danger to go away is involved. I have to vote meh for this one.
For me, I found this goal to be...not as fitting for this game. Maybe if there could be guns and loads of enemies all trying to kill you it would make it more interesting.
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I chose these goals because SAD is more interesting and hard without killing monsters by killing everything that moves. Make the game normally would have been too simple and less entertaining.
"Si le mal existe en ce monde, il se cache dans le cœur des hommes." "If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of man." Edward D. Morrison - Tales of Phantasia
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It was a neat run, and fun to watch. Yes vote.
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coconou wrote:
Make the game normally would have been too simple and less entertaining.
There's the vault tier for a reason. :P And what does "SAD" stand for? Edit: If you're going to aim for entertainment, why not go all out and make a playaround?
negative_seven
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jlun2 wrote:
If you're going to aim for entertainment, why not go all out and make a playaround?
I personally don't see anything of significant entertainment value that could be worth putting in a playaround, unless there are glitches fun tricks unseen in this run due to being too slow. Oh, and meh vote for same reason as Cooljay
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Other than saving a few frames on the selection screen, was there any advantage to not setting the language to English? I see that the author is from France.
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Yes i'm french but it wasn't the reason, it's the first language in the list. Edit: TAS not SAD ;)
"Si le mal existe en ce monde, il se cache dans le cœur des hommes." "If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of man." Edward D. Morrison - Tales of Phantasia
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I don't particularly like most platformers in terms of TAS entertainment, and this game was not an exception. The movement is so ample, the hitboxes are enormous, therefore the resulting gameplay is not particularly impressive. I am also not quite sure the restrictions were necessary, but I do think Pacifist does add something to the run. That being said, there is no run of The Smurfs on the site, so I would rather say yes than no. Bravo Coconou pour ton TAS!
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Bismuth wrote:
That being said, there is no run of The Smurfs on the site, so I would rather say yes than no. Bravo Coconou pour ton TAS!
You found this run entertaining enough to be qualified for the moon tier just because there's no existing Smurfs SNES run? ...... I....got no idea how to comment on that. :P
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The gameplay is strictly dependent on the game, this game unfortunately has no bug or glitch like a super mario bros.
"Si le mal existe en ce monde, il se cache dans le cœur des hommes." "If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of man." Edward D. Morrison - Tales of Phantasia
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I'm against the idea to put "pacifist" branch on arbitrary games and this doesn't seem to be exception. Unlike Contra, as jlun2 mentioned, it's not challenging for player to avoid enemies in this game; the branch doesn't really affect the gameplay thoroughly except hurting the pace.
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I'm a bit captious in how much does the game have to offer to interest me. This is the exact type of games I don't like at all - run right and jump all the way through. This is what I expect the Vault to be for, except... it took no damage and did no kills for some reason! I support pacifist for the games where you can get interesting damage boosts off the enemies you'd otherwise just kill and not care. I *can* understand no damage in games with billions of enemies hard to dodge. But in such games you have to do much kills to maintain the action density. Ninja Giaden pacifist no damage was one of the most boring ideas I saw implementer for a TAS. And I voted No for this submission, unexpectedly for the author I think :D The odd thing here is that Vault can not accept the runs with time tradeoffs. And this submission has the same amount of Yes and no votes so far, which can't be considered a Moons path. Will wait for more feedback though. EDIT: A funny youtube comment:
"Quick smurfs, Gargamel has kidnapped our only female... again!" "Y'know I always wondered what he does with her... Also, how is it possible that we haven't produced at least one other female yet?" "That's because she won't sleep with anyone." "...We're going to go extinct soon aren't we?" "Yyyyuuupp."
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.
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jlun2 wrote:
You found this run entertaining enough to be qualified for the moon tier just because there's no existing Smurfs SNES run?
If this was to be a separate category with "pacifist, no damage" because another run of the smurfs would have existed, it wouldn't be the same thing, and I would have voted no. This is pretty much the only TAS of the smurfs, so if one was to seek for a TAS of The Smurfs on this site, at least we would have something good to offer. Who talked about moon tier? Isn't that like some "distinction" or something, I mean, I don't know exactly all the tiers and their implications on this site but I'm pretty sure you're being uselessly sarcastic.
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Vault was introduced to host time records that are not interesting to watch. Before, such runs were merely rejected. Time record is the only excuse to host boring movies, and if it contains time/entertainment tradeoffs, it's not a time record. Movies people like go to Moons and there it doesn't matter if it's a time record or a playaround - it''s accepted. This is how it works currently. Staff wasn't too enthusiastic about making these rules obvious and noticeable for everyone, so if you don't look for this info, you won't find it. But still, one is advised to post his WIPs on forum and collect feedback to make sure his run is worth submitting without disappointment afterwards.
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.
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I don't think categories and time-entertainment tradeoffs should be equated. Usually the former follows a few, simple, well-defined rules, while the latter is vaguer and more subjective. For example, people would usually think that calling 100% vs. any% a time-entertainment tradeoff. And I think the same should apply to pacifist. A typical time-entertainment tradeoff would be "does not use jitterwalk while the spear is equipped due to the horrible flickering it induces", or "does not use pause screens to manipulate luck". Sure, it would be possible to express those as a categories, but that would be pretty different from the categories we're used to. I think any reasonable category should be able to go into the vault, not just any% and 100%. As feos says, the purpose of the vault is record keeping, and we now have a data point for how fast the Smurfs pacifist category can be completed. I am aware that that isn't how the rules work now, and I'm not asking feos to make an exception here. But I think this TAS gives an example of how our vault-rules are suboptimal.
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Bismuth wrote:
If this was to be a separate category with "pacifist, no damage" because another run of the smurfs would have existed, it wouldn't be the same thing, and I would have voted no. This is pretty much the only TAS of the smurfs, so if one was to seek for a TAS of The Smurfs on this site, at least we would have something good to offer.
Too bad this isn't exactly a "good" TAS in terms of entertainment nor speed.
Bismuth wrote:
Who talked about moon tier?
If this doesn't fit in the vault category, where else does it go?
Bismuth wrote:
Isn't that like some "distinction" or something, I mean, I don't know exactly all the tiers and their implications on this site but I'm pretty sure you're being uselessly sarcastic.
Just trying to prevent another moon submission that people may complain about it's acceptance.
amaurea wrote:
I think any reasonable category should be able to go into the vault, not just any% and 100%. As feos says, the purpose of the vault is record keeping, and we now have a data point for how fast the Smurfs pacifist category can be completed.
This run beats the same game faster by 4 minutes. =p
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I said I'm an inclusionist personally too, but this hardly affects the situation. EDIT: I added the proper info to Submission Instructions, as it only was present at the Vault wiki page. http://tasvideos.org/SubmissionInstructions.html#Tiers
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.
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I found the pacifist goal less interesting, but I can see how it made the gameplay more challenging. Some of the dodges at the end look pretty good. The game definitely gets better after you save Glasses Smurf; the stages have more variety and greater challenge after that point. I voted a weak Yes. I was glad to see the game had a little more variety than running right, such as the vertical portion of the forest and some good stage layout in the caves level. I'm not sure I really like the run's goals, but I can appreciate the difference. The main question I am curious about is: how does this compare technically to the previously mentioned submission? Can the entire 4-minute difference be explained by taking damage and killing enemies? Lastly, I'm pretty happy to see a run on Les Schtroumpfs in French, actually. I've always liked the French name better. Thank you for making the run, Coconou.
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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French is appropriate, as the Smurfs were originally written in French.
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Thank you mklip2001, I had to wait while the fact of killing the enemy would have saved me having to wait at times. The objectives make TAS more interesting than simply run through the levels.
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The sense of the rule about allowing only 2 branches for the Vault is the following: People can start making tons of movies with arbitrary goals for tons of games, like "does jump left in level 3 once" or "shoots 30 enemies in level 5" and we will not be able to reject them, if any branch is acceptable for Vault. This is about boring movies. If one is NOT boring, any goal run can have it's place in Moons or Stars, as long as people enjoy these arbitrary goals. I hope you understand that we can't allow ANYTHING boring for Vault, and this restriction isn't pointless.
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.
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I hate to be blunt, but I found this pretty slow and boring... Voting no.
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I said that before, it's the game not my tas.
"Si le mal existe en ce monde, il se cache dans le cœur des hommes." "If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of man." Edward D. Morrison - Tales of Phantasia

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