(Link to video)

Game objectives

  • Emulator: Gens Rerecording v11c
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses easiest difficulty
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors

About the Game

The game is based on the 1940 Walt Disney's animated musical fantasy film, based on the children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is story about anthropomorphic piece of wood which dreamed to become a real boy.

About graphics

Graphics is so beautiful.

About the Run

I never played this game earlier, but when i saw it in workbench two weeks ago i immediately loved it. After few days of research/testing i found that many things can be improved and soon decided do my own TAS instead of helping to previous author.
This movie is 1 minute and 33 seconds (5598 frames) faster over last (rejected) submission by gamerretro2. Improvements come thanks to better routes planning, sequence breaks, small shortcuts, usage of damage boots and heavy luck manipulation (a lot of luck manipulation), besides many time was saved just thanks to more precise optimization.
Unfortunately in this game still there are two long sections - dancing sequence, and auto scroller level at the end, these two sections nearly identical unassisted gameplay. But despite of these disadvantages, i hope this run still can be entertaining enough, because all others levels are quite interesting for speed run (particularly for tas), at least i enjoyed optimise them.

Stage by stage

Road to school

Jiminy Cricket

All butterflies have random generated starting position. I focused on the first butterfly. (How soon you be able to do first hit). Between best and worst first butterfly pattern about 40 frames difference. I used input of first level to set up the best pattern.
After getting damage butterfly become invulnerable for some time and fly fast in opposite direction. Butterflies choose fly to right/left (depend from which side you strike them) usually with negligibly small vertical component ~+/-15 degrees. However possible to manipulate and force butterfly to fly up/down, it allowed to kill the first 2HP butterfly faster.
Second butterfly 3HP is enough straightforward. Level have fixed end point, no matter where you finish level, shortly after you kill last butterfly you lost control and game will auto-walking to this point. So at fight with the last 4HP butterfly is significant to finish as close to end point to minimise time of traveling to it.

The Puppet Theatre

Pleasure Island 1

Balloons are a bit random, so it is possible to manipulate them and get (a bit) more lucky sequence for jumping. Also color of first ball can be different. I choosed red.

Pleasure Island 2

At railway i found two time saving shortcuts one big = 13 seconds and one small about 2 seconds. Small shortcut is easy to execute, but big one is enough tricky. Problem is that if Pinocchio is fall down during some, soon time dark screen will kill him even if he reach another wagon. But if while falling Pinocchio will collide with obstacle Deadline of "dark screen of death" will be extended and it this extended time is enough to reach another wagon before dark screen and to do sequence break. At firework i saved a lot of time (even more than on railway). Goal of battle at firework is to collect 6 items as soon as possible. After each fireworks exploded item can appear or not appear. Obviously with luck manipulation 100% result with 6/6 success can be done, it not hard for TAS; Real problems start when you try to choose WHICH 6/6 pattern is the best? Between ultra-super-mega-lucky 6/6 pattern and average 6/6 pattern a few hundreds of frames difference. It was real nightmare to choose best one. Besides guy below also can't be ignored, his behavior is random as well and this bastard can extend end of level up to 100 frames if he decide to start new animation cycle when all 6 items was collected (do not be worry, he not did it).

Pride Rock

New route to reach the top faster. Last hit to boss should be done while standing not while jump ~10 frames to decrease auto walk distance to the precipice. (During rotation while standing on the ground Pinocchio is moving forward without input when control on him is lost.)

Underwater 1

Quite interesting level. When Pinocchio will collect 5 seashells he will fall to the bottom. Seashells are random so tas-player can choose where strategically best to do it (or not do it at all). Upper route is the fastest almost to the very end of level.

Underwater 2

Inside sea monster

Escape

Pinocchio paradox

Pinocchio says: "My nose grows now".

Suggested screenshots

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Honorable mention


feos: There is a guideline about selecting the hardest difficulty, and for this run, it is indeed applicable, but it can be bended in a positive way, just like the cheat restriction guideline can be. So, while the Ninja Gaiden 3 run done on an easier (Japanese) version got bad feedback and was rejected, Gunstar Heroes was done on easy and then obsoleted by a hard difficulty version. This is what I'm doing here, since the audience didn't have a real problem with using easy, but the next run for this game (if it's done) should be on the hardest difficulty, and would obsolete this one.
Accepting to Vault.
sheela901: Processing...

Player (142)
Joined: 7/16/2009
Posts: 686
Mothrayas wrote:
While I agree with the judging verdict for this movie in general [...]
Might I ask why? While I don't disagree with the concept (accept lower difficulty, for later obsoletion by higher difficulty) per se, in this case most people who were aware of the lower difficulty (and accompanying level skips) reacted negatively. Reading through the thread gives me a very strong impression against publication. EDIT:
Samsara wrote:
Tangent wrote:
I'M BEING A NITPICKY ELITIST FUCK AGAIN, IGNORE ME
Oh shush, he's raising a perfectly valid point.
Samsara
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Scepheo wrote:
I'M BEING A NITPICKY ELITIST FUCK AGAIN, IGNORE ME
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Noxxa
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Scepheo wrote:
Might I ask why? While I don't disagree with the concept (accept lower difficulty, for later obsoletion by higher difficulty) per se, in this case most people who were aware of the lower difficulty (and accompanying level skips) reacted negatively. Reading through the thread gives me a very strong impression against publication.
It's true, and I did consider whether this run should be rejected for a while. Ultimately though, I don't think the reception against the difficulty is bad enough to warrant outright rejection. There were only really two or three people who were particularly vocal about the chosen difficulty and had it influence their opinion on whether the run should be published. Samsara: I see your stance, but I am very sure you could be much more mature about it.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Mothrayas wrote:
There were only really two or three people who were particularly vocal about the chosen difficulty and had it influence their opinion on whether the run should be published.
On the other side, there were no people that explicitly said they were okay with the difficulty. I'd wager that very few of the people who were pro publication were aware of the effects of selecting easy. But if you are taking their posts as direct counterweight (so to speak) to the "but easy" posts, I can see how you'd decide in favor of publication.
Noxxa
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I am not taking the pro-publication posts that do not mention difficulty as "direct counterweight" to the anti-easy-difficulty posts. It is just that the latter group wasn't sizable enough to convince me this run should be rejected for violating a site preference/guideline.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Samsara
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Immaturity aside... Sure, it's a valid point, but the problem I see with it is that Tangent decided to restart the argument after the movie's publication, which makes absolutely no sense to me since publication automatically invalidates the point. If it was a big deal, then why wait? Or is this not nearly as big of a deal as that elevator button in the Duke Nukem run?
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Samsara wrote:
Sure, it's a valid point, but the problem I see with it is that Tangent
If Tangent didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him. Btw i forgot to say that i was inspired to addin Game objectives from your Treasure Master submission.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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Are you asking why I didn't make multiple identical posts repeatedly restating my argument against its publication when there was nobody engaging what I had said except the author making smarmy posts about not being able to please everyone? I would hope the answer to that would have been self-evident. Edit: And maybe that's the core problem here. This issue was brought up and went completely ignored by everyone except the author, whose only explanation was "The previous extremely suboptimal rejected run did it," and that was it.
Post subject: We interupt this important discussion for a bit of merriment
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I've got no hands To slow me down, To trip me up, look like a clown. I could use hands; That's not for me. It's tool-assisted, see? Hi-ho the meri-oh, Savestates are the way to go. I want the world to know Death traps do not worry me. I don't have eyes To hide from me The things that are just off the screen. You all use eyes. You all use hands. But that's no good for me.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Samsara
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Tangent wrote:
Are you asking why I didn't make multiple identical posts repeatedly restating my argument against its publication when there was nobody engaging what I had said except the author making smarmy posts about not being able to please everyone? I would hope the answer to that would have been self-evident.
I am absolutely shocked that people ignored you, given your usual attitude in submission threads. In all seriousness, the fact that nobody engaged what you said was telling enough. It was there and people still chose either not to acknowledge it, or they just didn't care in the first place. And if you want to get technical, you did make an identical post restating your argument against its publication. You just did it after its publication, and now it's absolutely certain that it won't be unpublished. My question isn't really why you didn't make those posts before, it's why you chose to do it now when there's no reason to.
Archanfel wrote:
Btw i forgot to say that i was inspired to addin Game objectives from your Treasure Master submission.
Heh, I saw that. I wanted to comment on it but I didn't want to be wrong and look more like an egotist than I already do in most of my posts.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 3/9/2009
Posts: 530
I didn't make a post directly addressing the reasons given for the judge's decision before the judge's decision because I am a slave to the wheel of time. It's a failing of mine that I've had for years. Is there anything else about my temporal shortcomings that you'd like me to clarify? I also don't care that it's published. That's hardly an excuse not to clarify why the decision was made and/or discuss it further. I really don't like the precedent this sets and I don't see the examples given so far as even close to similar to the difficulty difference found in this game. There are a ton of games that end prematurely on the lowest difficulty. Are we just going to accept any of those runs now if the entertainment value is good enough for... the Vault? And are you really taking offense, in this thread, that in a completely different thread, I expected a cogent and sensical answer to a question I had? Or is it that I don't automatically accept the first answer given when I ask a question as the word of God? Edit: Off-topic, but I had the thought as I was going through games with big differences in difficulties in my mind that because of the setup (and glitchiness) of Valkyrie Profile's Easy mode, it's actually ironically the hardest difficulty by far, and for a number of mechanic reasons, Hard mode is arguably easier than Normal. Now that'd be an interesting quagmire.
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Tangent wrote:
There are a ton of games that end prematurely on the lowest difficulty. Are we just going to accept any of those runs now if the entertainment value is good enough for... the Vault?
I would love to read a continuing discussion of this, the core question. Please note that feos said 'enjoyment' and not 'entertainment'. Your edit does not seem off-topic to me; this all ties into a greater theme of difficulty choice, what it means, what replaces, what coexists.
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DRybes wrote:
Please note that feos said 'enjoyment' and not 'entertainment'.
They're synonyms and I don't see any difference in usage here.
Your edit does not seem off-topic to me; this all ties into a greater theme of difficulty choice, what it means, what replaces, what coexists.
After a little more thinking about it and checking the finer details of some mechanics, VP's simpler than I had thought, so it's not a good example for much of anything. Hard-B and Hard-A (geared much more to 100% and/or an SG run) are probably the only two runs I'd consider worth existing, although Easy-B would be shorter than Hard-B (shorter mandatory first dungeon). They'd be extremely different runs as A requires actually playing much of the game while B can abuse some weird mechanics to 'skip' to the final dungeon, bypassing pretty much all the things over the course of the game that make Easy/Normal more difficult in some ways (as well as supposedly easier) than Hard. I think it may be arguable that Normal-A is more difficult than Hard-A though since it screws you out of the CP characters need, but I don't know how much is needed later in the game when it screws you the hardest. I suspect not much though. ANYWAY
Dimon12321
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Mothrayas wrote:
The same issue also seems to appear in the encodes for [2700] Genesis Duke Nukem 3D by Dimon12321 in 20:03.75 and [2708] NES Shinobi by MESHUGGAH in 07:36.41.
Hah! Nice discovery. I hadn't noticed this though I watched the publication about 3 times :-)
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
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Tangent wrote:
And if you're going to cite entertainment as a reason for its acceptance over a run that completes the entire game, then why did you put it in the Vault where "Entertainment value has little to no significance"?
I didn't say "entertainment", but "enjoyment" for a reason. Entertainment is serious business, a trend, we divide the site content into tiers basing on it. Enjoyment is way more global and vague. Guidelines reflect traditional preference of the community. People prefer high difficulty, for obvious reasons. Using it is not a rule (thanks Moth), but using it without a good reason is a bad taste. So it does reduce enjoyment here. And it does not kill it, like it happened with the NG3 run I linked. Notice the difference. Why do we still prefer something that increases enjoyment, even in Vault? No idea. Maybe because we don't want to absolute relative things, in order to keep making sense.
Tangent wrote:
Should I add "lol i win" and a hilarious picture of a cat now, or would you find that condescending?
Do it as soon as you actually win that argument :)
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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feos wrote:
Tangent wrote:
And if you're going to cite entertainment as a reason for its acceptance over a run that completes the entire game, then why did you put it in the Vault where "Entertainment value has little to no significance"?
I didn't say "entertainment", but "enjoyment" for a reason. Entertainment is serious business, a trend, we divide the site content into tiers basing on it. Enjoyment is way more global and vague. Guidelines reflect traditional preference of the community. People prefer high difficulty, for obvious reasons. Using it is not a rule (thanks Moth), but using it without a good reason is a bad taste. So it does reduce enjoyment here. And it does not kill it, like it happened with the NG3 run I linked. Notice the difference. Why do we still prefer something that increases enjoyment, even in Vault? No idea. Maybe because we don't want to absolute relative things, in order to keep making sense.
So to see if I understand this correctly, you're saying that this run is enjoyable enough to meet the enjoyability threshold for the Vault, which is apparently a thing that exists, but not entertaining enough to meet the entertainment threshold for not being in the Vault?
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Yeah, good enough (given its goal-set) to not be rejected, but not good enough to be a moon.
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.