The final ingame time is 1:35:14.
Description:
- Emulator: Dolphin 3.0-389
- DualCore and Idle Skipping off
- Skip Gamecube BIOS
- DSP LLE Recompiler
TAS Objectives:
- Aims for fastest time
- Takes damage and misses bullets to save time by lowering enemy health and the game difficulty
- Manipulates gratuitous amounts of hand grenades
Comments:
A tool-assisted speedrun of Resident Evil 4 (Biohazard 4 in Japan) for the Nintendo Gamecube. Unlike the most common speedruns for this game (called load game, or new game+), this one does NOT load a save file to begin with all special weapons (Infinite Rocket Launcher, PRL, Chicago Typewriter, etc) and uses no memory card or saves. This means Leon begins with nothing other than his handgun, and his stylish leather jacket, and must collect weapons and money as the run progresses.
The Japanese version is almost identical to all other Gamecube versions of the game. The JPN and PAL versions are nearly identical, and have a speed trick used in Chapter 4-2, where Leon can blow up the boulder with a Rocket Launcher instead of the Dynamite. This trick cannot be done on the North American Gamecube version, but can be done on the XBOX360 and PS3 HD versions. The TMP glitch used in Chapter 3-2 is only possible on the Gamecube versions. The Japanese version was used due to it being a 60Hz version instead of using the emulator in PAL60 mode, and some visual effects such as the Ashley section. Fortunately, all cutscenes are in English and with Japanese subtitles.
Manipulating enemies to drop certain items is almost entirely a trial and error process. Using the Joystick, C-stick, D-pad, A, B, L, R, X (when Ashley is with you), or any combination thereof manipulates enemy AI and the items they drop. A combination of button presses 1 frame before the item is dropped could mean the difference between 9,900 pesetas or just 10 handgun ammo. Sometimes hours were spent loadstating to obtain only 1 hand grenade. An HD encode with annotations discussing common questions and gameplay strategies can be viewed
here.
I started this run back in July of 2011 as an attempt to help other users with some strategies. Turns out I was extremely lucky when I began running on the Japanese version of the game, as I was able to obtain a 9,900 pesetas drop, and everything went great from then on. This was an on/off project for many months until I nearly gave up. After events explained here [dead link removed], I began working on the TAS again fulltime, and ended up with a very satisfied result. I couldn't have done it without all the help and critique from the fellow users on the 4 Resident Evil thread, as well as some pro speedrunners like Derek Taylor or Magnum66 who dominate the console scene for this game.
feos: It was an easy decision, but hard to provide. First of all, this movie can't be played back on 32-bit Dolphin builds. Lack of testing by other people during movie creation (and the overall mess with this young emulator) led to verifying sync only on 64-bit machines. I installed 64-bit Windows 7 and got all running, but then it synced only up to 20k frames.
But 2 trusted people other than the author confirmed full sync. One was RGamma who makes Dolphin encodes for publications (and ran in on Linux). Another was RachelB, who needs no introduction (Windows 7 x64). I can blame my computer specifications, it already happened that I get rather different behavior on modern games emulators than other people using them, and my computer is old (from 2009) and weak.
I'm accepting this movie to Moons. The author requested his own encode to be used, posted on his own YT channel. Well, TVC got a time limit just on time to make that option the only one available!
