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Posted: 10/13/2011 7:00 AM
Post subject: Armored Core
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Tanooki_Teabag
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I'm kind of surprised that nobody has made a topic about Armored Core yet. I'm thinking about giving it a shot once I'm done with my current run of Layla. There are two major challenges that I can foresee: route planning and part selection. It's been a while since I played it, so I'm going to play it through once or twice to jog my memory and then start figuring out the fastest way to get through it. I have the feeling that the best AC to use would be a light and fast one with a good generator and boosters, a good laserblade, and a one or two powerful solid-round weapons (as not to take power away from the boosters). Getting the plus upgrades will take much too long, so most of the back weapons are out (I can't remember if you can use the hidden large rockets without crouching... I'll have to test that one out). Anyway, if anyone has any ideas on routes, parts, et cetera for this run, let me know... this is going to be a very complex game to run. EDIT: I played it a little bit and it looks like the Large Rocket is going to be one of the more useful weapons in the game: you can use it on the run and it does massive amounts of damage. The only drawback is that it can't lock on, which makes it highly inaccurate in real-time play... but with tools, I suspect that this is going to be a beast!
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Posted: 10/13/2011 12:24 PM
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skychase
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There's a speedrun you might find interresting here. http://youtu.be/kv-V13BqwOM Honnestly I think it's kinda boring to skip missions to save time, (less entertainement) but the choice is yours ^^. There's so many categories possible with this game Any%, 100%, Sword only, Plus (from a savestate), 4 legged AC, Tank AC, Lightweight AC... Can't wait for the first WIPs D
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Posted: 1/17/2012 5:11 PM
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immortal_butler_Jeeves
Joined: 12/30/2011
Posts: 3
Given the nature of the game, I'm not sure if pure speed will be the most entertaining. . . depending on how long it takes. . . maybe a 100% completion?? I would also think that varying the equipment would be more entertaining than using just the reverse joint/machine gun arm set from that video.
Posted: 3/28/2014 4:26 PM
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The_Brookman
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yo. I started this game yo. no #$%s given http://imgur.com/dVID92u here's a teaser
Posted: 11/22/2019 4:20 AM
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Zinfidel
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I revisited Armored Core recently for a bit of nostalgia, and after completing it, I realized I'd very much like to see a TAS of the game. There aren't any publications on this site for the game, but I did find a TAS on nicovideo.jp by JAX, split into 4 parts:
  1. https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16482924
  2. https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16590860
  3. https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17077051
  4. https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm17273631
I think the TASer was having desync issues based on some terrible Google translations of the subtitles, which is why they had to do four movies, starting from a save file. I was thinking about doing a TAS for this game too since I think there's a lot of potential, but I have some reservations about the game choice. The fastest possible route through the game involves repeatedly aborting missions as soon as they start to cause the game story to advance. Then you just finish 3 missions and you're done. That would be acceptable for a Vault submission, but it's pretty boring. An entertaining speedrun falls into the "No abort/fail" category, which means we're in Moon territory now. What does everyone (anyone?) think about what would constitute an entertaining run of this game? The Japanese player linked above spends a lot of time changing his AC configuration and finishing missions in slow/non-optimal ways in the name of entertainment. He also chose some particularly slow missions to finish that he didn't have to. Before I discovered JAX's speedrun, I was thinking of trying to record a TAS that still aimed for being as fast as possible, but without using traditional speedrun loadouts, like the gatling gun arms, and instead use weapons that are much harder to use normally like rockets, mines, and laser blades. The gatling gun arms are so ludicrously powerful that even with perfect rocket aim, the gatling guns are still faster at killing in general, just not very interesting to watch. After watching JAX's TAS though, I wonder if an AC TAS wouldn't be interesting enough without a lot of playing around like he did. Something else that concerns me about a TAS for the game is that it would be hard to determine what "optimal" actually is in this game since there's so much latitude in the approaches you can take to finish missions. For reference, here's the world record (??) any% no fail speedrun of the game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/246088235 Just to test the waters, I managed to finish the qualifier mission in under 10 seconds by using a lot of AI and luck manipulation to get the Storks to land right next to each other, and to get large critical multipliers on laser blade swings. It's not too unorthodox but it is certainly much faster than I've ever seen it done.
Posted: 11/22/2019 6:05 AM
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CoolHandMike
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Doing a Playaround Any% Without Abort could be the category. Aborting to the end sounds boring. Watching that TAS do things in different ways made things more entertaining. Liked the sniping with rockets, weaving in and out of enemies barely dodging bullets/rockets, and using the sword, that kind of stuff.
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Posted: 11/22/2019 3:38 PM
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ThunderAxe31
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Zinfidel wrote:
What does everyone (anyone?) think about what would constitute an entertaining run of this game?
I think that it would be a good idea to follow what the speedrunning community does: "no fail missions/no OoB". However I'm not completely sure about the "no OoB" part. Why do they forbid OoBs? Are these too much overpowered? Regarding the playaround idea, I think it would be harder to make and less likely to be entertaining, so be careful.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Posted: 11/22/2019 6:17 PM
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Zinfidel
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Doing a Playaround Any% Without Abort could be the category. Aborting to the end sounds boring. Watching that TAS do things in different ways made things more entertaining. Liked the sniping with rockets, weaving in and out of enemies barely dodging bullets/rockets, and using the sword, that kind of stuff.
Aborting through the game is definitely boring. Here's a speedrun showcasing that strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VX9AJrlIRs. The run's time is quite good of course, but nothing worth watching happens until 21 minutes into the run. Also, you don't get to fight the giant robot!
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
I think that it would be a good idea to follow what the speedrunning community does: "no fail missions/no OoB". However I'm not completely sure about the "no OoB" part. Why do they forbid OoBs? Are these too much overpowered? Regarding the playaround idea, I think it would be harder to make and less likely to be entertaining, so be careful.
For Armored Core, OoB = Out-of-Bounds, referring to a glitch where you can clip out of the level geometry by running into polygon boundaries in a certain way. You can complete several levels much faster than normal by using the glitch to fall into the last area of the map to finish the objective. You can watch JAX do this at about 5:10 in the third TAS video I linked above. I agree that following the standard template for AC speedruns is a good idea. Gives a baseline for comparison. It is a little unfortunate though because the OoB glitches can be fairly amusing to watch, or quite surprising even. As for a playaround, I definitely would prefer to do a speed-oriented run with entertainment trade-offs for sure. JAX already did a pretty good job with his run showing off various facets of the game, and there are so many ways to complete a mission that I feel like a playaround could spiral out of control very quickly. So I guess I'm thinking of a TAS that lies somewhere between what JAX did and a Vault run where you abort to the end of the game - standard speedrun route through the game, but with more interesting loadouts. I haven't done enough research to see if there are alternate routes that could be used that are faster for a TAS yet. There are some fun secrets in the game that could be employed heavily too. There are codes for switching the camera to first-person and fixed modes that could make for some highly entertaining sequences. Stuff like completing objectives off-screen or even from the perspective of the enemy!
Posted: 11/22/2019 6:21 PM
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Memory
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Zinfidel wrote:
I agree that following the standard template for AC speedruns is a good idea. Gives a baseline for comparison. It is a little unfortunate though because the OoB glitches can be fairly amusing to watch, or quite surprising even.
You don't necessarily have to follow the exact ruleset of the RTA community if a more entertaining TAS could be created by following a different one that allows OOB.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Posted: 11/23/2019 11:22 AM
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ThunderAxe31
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Now that I think about, what about figuring out a possible full-completion definition for this game? That could be a better way to showcase more that the game has to offer. Something like "maximum score" or "all parts unlocked". Note that full-completion can also be accepted for Vault.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Posted: 11/24/2019 1:47 AM
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Zinfidel
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Memory wrote:
You don't necessarily have to follow the exact ruleset of the RTA community if a more entertaining TAS could be created by following a different one that allows OOB.
An any% glitched run is good to consider then, as it's several minutes faster, and the mission objectives that can be circumvented this way are pretty boring to begin with!
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Now that I think about, what about figuring out a possible full-completion definition for this game? That could be a better way to showcase more that the game has to offer. Something like "maximum score" or "all parts unlocked". Note that full-completion can also be accepted for Vault.
"Full-completion" for AC would be a bit strange. One of the most obvious criterion for this category would be completing all missions, but that isn't possible to do before completing the game. The game allows for specific missions routes, where certain missions are mutually exclusive because they represent picking a side between warring corporations. After you finish the game, the missions list becomes "unlocked" and then you could finish the ones you missed, one-by-one, until you were done. So 100% completion actually requires completing the story, then returning for more. All secret parts found would actually require failing a mission - collecting the secret radar part is actually a "breach of contract" mission failure. You can then go and complete the mission later, but the mission fail does occur. Getting to the top of the ranking could be another criterion, and that would involve defeating each other Raven in the missions that they appear rather than running from them or ignoring them. This would be natural part of completing all missions if you were aiming for full-completion anyway. I can't be sure of course because it hasn't been done, but I am guessing that a full-completion run of this game would be several hours long at least.
Posted: 12/9/2019 3:16 AM
(Edited: 5/27/2020 6:48 AM)
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Zinfidel
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I've written several scripts for Armored Core that provide useful tools, especially for TASing. There is a radar script that draws a large, customizable radar form, a speedometer script that shows you your current speed/acceleration and maximum speed, and a wallhack script that does what it sounds like it does: Link to video Link to video Here are all of the scripts on Github: https://gist.github.com/Zinfidel/d47287cec638f0f915c3d99bccef3a7d UPDATED 5-26-20: adding all of my script work to this post as a sort of "repo" on the forums.
Posted: 12/10/2019 12:30 AM
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Alyosha
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Posted: 12/10/2019 8:51 AM
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Zinfidel
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I've taken quite a few stabs at the intro mission and I've come up with the following results: Link to video Lots of AI and luck manipulation here. The rifle shots are timed exactly to cause the first Stork's boosters to bug out so it doesn't take off. The rifle shots also stun it so that it can't start a boost. The first laser blade strike is manipulated to be a 6x critical strike. The pathing I took to the first Stork is not arbitrary either. The movements were chosen because (for whatever reason) these exact movements caused the second Stork to come down off of its ledge and join the fight fairly close to the first Stork, which is great, because I can fly directly to it and kill it rather than having to hunt it down. There's an interesting effect where if you use your laser blade as you're descending, while fairly close to the ground, the boost effect of the laser blade homing will cause you to "bounce" off the ground, which is extremely favorable, because it allows you to land and ground boost immediately, rather than waiting for a landing animation. The second laser blade strike is manipulated so that it actually hits twice, owing to strange hitboxes. Each hit is luck manipulated to do about 3x damage, which combined with the single missile hit, kills the second Stork.
Posted: 12/26/2019 9:11 PM
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skychase
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Hyped, this game is in serious need of a tas. So many weapons and setups to mess with, risky strats, AI abuse. Just wondering though, would a no-hit run be even possible? Enemies can be so aggresive, i have Project Phantasma arena ptsd.
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Posted: 12/27/2019 7:20 AM
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Zinfidel
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skychase wrote:
Hyped, this game is in serious need of a tas. So many weapons and setups to mess with, risky strats, AI abuse. Just wondering though, would a no-hit run be even possible? Enemies can be so aggresive, i have Project Phantasma arena ptsd.
I'm glad to hear you're still interested in a TAS for this game. My immediate goals have shifted to an any% run for the game, with aborting missions and everything. It's not the interesting, loadout-swapping run you are describing, but there will still necessarily be some exciting fights and maneuvering at the beginning and end of the run. Also lots of exploits. I think that a no-hit run is definitely possible. If you watch JAX's TAS, you will find that he avoids taking any damage in most (all?) missions. Most impressively, he takes no damage when dealing with the cluster****s in the Destroy Floating Mine mission.
Posted: 1/27/2020 7:06 PM
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Zinfidel
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Here's an update on the progress: I decided some time ago that I would do an any% run for this game, even though others and I agreed it would be a more boring run than a no Abort/OoB run. The reason for this is scale: the goals and route of the any% run are much more definable, and achievable, than a run that would necessary contain huge amounts of entertainment tradeoffs and difficult to answer routing questions. A no abort/OoB run would be an absolutely enormous undertaking, so I want to start with something more manageable. With that said, the route I've chosen (after a LOT of investigation, believe me) is one such that, after the Ravens' Test, 34 missions are skipped and the Chrome mission path is selected. This is because the Destroy "Justice" mission (the Chrome finale) has an exploit that allows it to be completed very quickly. Then the last two required missions will be finished by heavily abusing out-of-bounds glitching. I am past the Ravens' test and am now undertaking the most monotonous and tedious part of this run which is menuing and skipping 34 missions in a row. In the meantime, if anyone wants to take a stab at optomizing the Ravens' Test, please find my movie here: User movie #60310243168691604 I've spent enough time trying to optimize the Ravens' Test and am not getting anywhere, and I have a strong suspicion that it will just take someone thinking outside of the box that my brain is in to find major improvements. I'm happy to do co-authorship of the movie as well if someone can help substantially with improvements. I have a currently-13-page document I can share with anyone interested in my research on the game so far!
Posted: 2/3/2020 5:39 PM
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Zinfidel
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I finally made it through the mission aborting part of the game after weeks of research on mission routing, and now I can finally do the fun parts of the game. Here's the Destroy "Justice" mission that I just got done optimizing. Doing the full 180 degrees turn while also moving backward in a straight line was the main target of the optimization. Being able to perform the maneuver without ever turning the boosters off was a little tricky but doable and yielded nice improvements. This mission is amusing because it is finished using an exploit, so I don't even bother letting the intro radio transmission finish before I've already finished the level. Link to video
Posted: 2/24/2020 9:17 AM
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Zinfidel
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I just got done spending a couple days optimizing the second melee in Destroy Floating Mines. The input that I finally came up with is a few seconds faster than JAX's input. I came up with many alternate branches for this melee though, and a few of them were visually interesting. Here's an "outtake" from the TAS. This particular input is nearly 6 seconds slower than JAX's TAS but its got a lot more swag than the solution I settled on. Link to video
Posted: 3/5/2020 7:12 PM
(Edited: 3/5/2020 7:25 PM)
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The_Brookman
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I had started an AC tas back in 2014 but it was on my friend's PC and I lost the file and never restarted. the most interesting thing I had been able to do was literally FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR. this would be kinda useful in some maps but it was hard to reproduce and may or may not be applicable on maps where it would have function. (edit: after reading the discussion more thoroughly, it seems this is well documented.) I HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME and I may take interest in TAS again at this time and AC would DEFINITELY be on the list. I would personally aim for more of a "super play" than a "fastest completion" for this game, since. . . .as discussed, aborting missions is kinda just boring. I'll keep this in mind and try to check back occasionally. edit: THAT DESTROY JUSTICE VIDEO WAS HILARIOUS. edit edit: oh hey, i just found my comment at the top of the thread. lol :D
Posted: 3/5/2020 7:24 PM
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Zinfidel
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The Brookman wrote:
I had started an AC tas back in 2014 but it was on my friend's PC and I lost the file and never restarted. the most interesting thing I had been able to do was literally FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR. this would be kinda useful in some maps but it was extremely hard to reproduce and may or may not be applicable on maps where it would have function. anyway, I'll be lookin forward to a submission.
Oh boy, clipping is definitely a big part of this run. It's actually a major feature of the category, that is, allowing out-of-bounds movements. I use clipping to completely bypass most of the final 2 missions. As for how to do it, it occurs with a specific combination of equipment that causes a very specific walk-speed cadence. LN-501 legs, the XCA-00 core, and either AN-3001 or ANKS-1A46J arms. When strafing left or right with this combination, pressed down to walk backward at specific times during the animation will cause the walking animation to bug out and send you through the floor. Now, the big mystery here is how to do this without that combination of equipment. In JAX's TAS he does it with different equipment, but I've never been able to reproduce it. I contacted him directly and he couldn't remember how he did it either, stating that it might have just been an emulator innacuracy for PSXjin. Anyway, glad you're interested. It'll be submitted pretty soon hopefully. I'm just trying to wrap up all of the post-production stuff like commentary/encoding/etc. EDIT
The Brookman wrote:
I HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME and I may take interest in TAS again at this time and AC would DEFINITELY be on the list. I would personally aim for more of a "super play" than a "fastest completion" for this game, since. . . .as discussed, aborting missions is kinda just boring. I'll keep this in mind and try to check back occasionally.
I plan on detailed submission notes, and I am going to ask to edit the game resources page for Armored Core after this to dump the huge amount of research I've done on the game as well as all of my scripts and tools and stuff. If you do get back into TASing and want to do Armored Core, there will hopefully be lots for you to work off and I'd be happy to help with questions etc. :)
Posted: 3/5/2020 7:42 PM
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The_Brookman
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wow, uncharacteristically fast response for this forum :D I hadn't read the entire thread when i made my most recent reply and I didn't realize you have a nearly completed submission! That's awesome, definitely looking forward to it! I'm torn on the aborting missions cause after having played through 100% of the game a few weeks ago I know a lot of the missions are fairly boring on their own too, so I can a see some merit in skipping most of them :p (unless 100% requires all missions completed, honestly, I forget) I think a 100% play through could be a good balance. You can skip some of the more boring missions and complete the ones that have hidden parts/AC's to fight.
Posted: 3/5/2020 7:55 PM
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Zinfidel
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I am apparently the kind of weirdo who actively checks, reads, and responds to his email, so I try to respond when I get the topic notifications! I think any playaround for this game could be a real blast to watch, even with a non-standard goal where you skip around. I would be careful with deciding when and how to skip though. Crushing a bunch of missions then suddenly skipping a few would be disappointing for sure. Having said that, the reason I chose any% instead of the a playaround is because once I started actually TASing the game, the full scope of a playaround of this game came into view and I backed off really quickly. I knew that I wanted to complete a TAS for this game, but a playaround will be an enormous undertaking. Aborting to the end is boring and is going to get the TAS put in the Vault category, but I chose between a TAS that I could realistically complete and an ideal TAS I would never finish. You should jump back in by just TASing individual missions and see if you've got the desire still. I haven't tested it too extensively, but I am pretty sure the RNG resets at the beginning of each mission, so if you have fun with specific missions, you could create a full TAS from your individual level inputs.
Posted: 3/8/2020 6:15 AM
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Zinfidel
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And the run has finally been submitted! #6649: Zinfidel's PSX Armored Core in 28:04.38
Posted: 3/8/2020 9:16 AM
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ThunderAxe31
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I watched the encode with the time lapse. Now I see just how powerful the OoBs can be. At this point I think that "no fail missions/no OoB" would be a great for an entertaining movie. Note that the "no OoB" part may result subjective, so it could be more effective to define it as "no clipping glitch".
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
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