Skilled player (1416)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Well that was quick. I'm liking what I see.
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.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Man, it's almost shameful how much faster you complete the levels than I do when I play this game. Goes to show what you can get done if you're willing to get hit along the way...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Stage 7 is done, but I'm not gonna post it just yet. I'm most of the way through Stage 8, but Balder is being a pain. Ornah wasn't much to write home about though, once you know his pattern. His body is the main target- once that is dead, Balder is beat. However, it regenerates to max health every so often, and for the life of me I cannot figure a way to do enough damage (65535 HP) in time. So, in order to stop that I need to beat all his other parts, but only in a set order. First off, the right cannon and the head need to be beat before the other parts are vunerable, and the head is not easy to reach, requiring me to stand at a distance, fire normal Thunder attack and manipulate Dragon Frye attacks to hit it (Boomerang Lizard can also be used, but it won't do as much damage, even though it is easier to manipulate). Rolling Thunder gets 3 frames damage at most, so it is faster to attack with normal Thunder. Once the head and cannon are beat, Balder flies to the right side of the stage. Now the rest of his parts are vunerable, the left cannon and two legs have low health, and this just leaves the body itself. I'm not sure if all three remaining parts here have to be beat before the regeneration stops, but thankfully I can beat these parts a lot faster because I can actually reach them with Rolling Thunder. I'm going away for a couple of days, but once I'm back I can finish this pain in the rear off and finally call this done. Stay tuned! EDIT: So I've been working on this the past few days now, and I've come to discover the true nature of this abomination known as Balder. Not only does he look like a Lovecraftian wet dream as it is, he's also a glutton for punishment. There are six distinct parts, the right arm cannon, and the head, both of which must be destroyed before the rest of the parts are vunerable. Then there is the left arm, both legs and the heart. The body is also a target, but it regenerates constantly and bringing it to below 0 health doesn't kill Balder or impair him in any way. The way to kill him is to destroy the heart, no less than 25 times. Yes you read that right. The heart itself has a mere 256 health, which can be killed in one frame of L8 Rolling Thunder, 15 frames of normal Thunder, 6 frames of Boomerang Lizard's attack, and 1 frame of Dragon Frye's attack (3 frames of Ball-Of-Fire too, but I won't be using it here). 32 frames after the heart dies, it regenerates to full health, and then I need to kill it again. This makes optimising this fight a huge pain. Not only is Balder constantly moving, which makes him hard to hit on every frame (using normal attack sometimes hits the body, and there are the feathers that fall off that take a few frames of attack to beat), you can't stay in the optimal position for long without taking a heavy beating from his attacks, and the summons fare even worse. Thankfully, I do have a saving grace - I don't need to destroy the other parts besides the heart once the head and cannon is destroyed, but it would be a good idea to get the left arm and left leg out the way ASAP so it doesn't distract my regular attack. Boomerang Lizard has the fastest recharge and doesn't need incredibly careful positioning unlike Dragon Frye (but it still needs to be placed in a somewhat optimal position to be effective), so for this phase of the fight BL will be my summon of choice. I might have to use Dragon Frye to get rid of the left arm and leg though, which it can do in the second shot easily, but I'm having trouble positioning so the first shot can destroy all 3 parts (or at least the arm, since that is out of reach and has relatively high health). I know what I'm doing now, all I have to do now is do it.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
I am contemplating revisiting this game, but with a new category - a minimalist run. The levels would go by very quickly compared to the regular run, and the bosses would be slower but have some creative summon use. For sanity's sake I plan to do this on Normal difficulty rather than Hard - L1 Thunder is pathetic on the later bosses and this would look more entertaining than a lot of waiting around for Rolling Thunder recharges. For fun I will not level up the summons at all to make it a true minimalist run. I have been considering this for a while, and now I am just wondering if there will be much support for a second category. It will be very different to the regular run, and show off more summon capabilities, which can only be a good thing.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I think I'd need to see a level or two of a test run before I could say how interesting it'd be. It's certainly true that the current run bests most of the bosses impressively quickly, but on the other hand, how interesting would it be to draw those fights out longer, even granted more creative summoning use?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Post subject: Stage 1 minimalist: now with encode!
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Stage 1: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/253898946/Alisia%20Dragoon%20minimalist%20-%20Stage%201%20WIP.gmv Encode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne0V4p8gAZc Ok, I think I'm finally done with Stage 1 here. I switched to the (JU) rom since it appears that there is less lag than the (JUE) rom. This allowed me to get through 1-1 without any lag being generated, rather than the 1 frame I had to accept last time. I also managed to include the damage boost in 1-2 as in the any% version. I had to delay moving forward a bit so I could kill the first enemy, allowing me to damage boost of the second on that second staircase set. The levels go by pretty quickly through 1-2 and 1-3 since I'm not going out the way to get Thunder Level Ups. On to the boss, and interestingly, since on Normal the bosses have less health, they take almost exactly the same time to kill (100 frames vs 99 in the published run) as in the Hard mode version with L3 Thunder. Later bosses are naturally going to run slower, but I'll have some fun with the summons, and the faster levels will sort of balance that out. I'll throw an encode out shortly.
Player (246)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Awesome, you know how much I liked the first run, I'll be looking forward to this!
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Objection! You picked up powerups! Specifically, health restores. :p So far, looking pretty similar to the existing run minus some detours. Of course it'll start deviating more significantly pretty shortly. Nice work.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Stage 2: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/260080903/Alisia%20Dragoon%20minimalist%20-%20Stage%202%20WIP.gmv Encode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jys7F91CqGQ The lack of Thunder Levels Up are already becoming noticeable. I take damage on the miniboss in order to get more frames of the Thunder charge to hit as I turn around. Since regardless of when I kill it on the first phase, I have to wait another 2 rounds for it to die completely, it doesn't actually waste time when I kill it on the first phase, as long as I manage it by then. Since bringing out the summon causes lag, as well as whenever it takes damage, I wait until where the summon Level Up item is before I bring out Boomerang Lizard. This is the most optimal summon for this boss (Dragon Frye would be if it could do damage on the boss, but it has the armoured property, which BL doesn't care about). BL has the fastest attack so he gets more damage in overall than other summons. Also, since I'm avoiding lag here the Ball of Fire wouldn't be the best option. Anyway the boss needs two Thunder charges to finish off, so Alisia needs to avoid damage, and I avoid damage on the summon so it doesn't generate lag.
Joined: 8/31/2008
Posts: 56
Probably unrelated to your run, but is there a rule for using the PSG "improvement" option in Gens for encoding? It completely destroys the music for this game.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
So, I finally decided to revisit this game, and improve the any% run. Minimalist will be on hold for a bit longer. I'm so far 23 frames ahead after Stage 1-1, but that's 22 from skipping the cutscene earlier after pressing Start, and finally got rid of that lag frame at the end of the stage, looks uglier but whatever. I'll have some actual improvement in 1-2 for sure.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkQKoy-Oxlk Improvement started with earnest. Stage 1-1: I ditch the Dragon Frye straight away. Not only does this remove the lag at the end of the stage, it means I have less summon switches to do in 1-2. Stage 1-2: I discovered I don't need to level up Ball of Fire, so I can skip the summon level ups for him. With no BoF however, I cannot damage boost in the second staircase set, so I just proceed to take damage while jumping, which doesn't delay me. Collect first Thunder Level Up and HP Up as normal. Stage 1-3: I discovered that, on the enemies with extending polearms, I can jump as to avoid the damage hitboxes of both the enemy and his weapon. Other than that, there's very little in the way of improvement here. BoF comes out to keep me from damage from behind, and to speed up the boss fight. Total improvement: 382 frames
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Looks good. :) Any idea how much of that improvement is from improved precision vs. from skipping powerups?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Skilled player (1325)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 1354
Location: U.S.
Nice improvement Toothy! I can definitely see some more precision in the stage. In 1-2 though, When you graab the powerup, you turn around on the ground. Isnt it faster to turn in mid air? Anyways, keep up the work! I look foward to this improvement.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Sonikkustar wrote:
In 1-2 though, When you graab the powerup, you turn around on the ground. Isnt it faster to turn in mid air?
There's actually no difference between turning in mid-air and turning on the ground. Most of this stage is actually based around how well I can control the Thunder attacks and Rolling Thunder, and you can see a lot of precision based attacks in this stage. Stage 2 will have less of that, but it will be almost no different to the previous version.
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/14626472743665583 Stage 3: So, I did a lot wrong with this stage last time. First of all, I can wait until Stage 7 to improve the Boomerang Lizard there, which is all well and good. Second, I can use the Blue Fairy ability to optimal capacity, getting along the floating platforms at the top of the stage without stopping once, which was marvellous. The boss fight went basically the same plan as before, including a switch to the Thunder Raven to help damage the right most of the three enemies and allow for enough of a charge by the time I get to destroying the left most. Overall, I have saved 763 frames compared to the previous version up to this point, which is marvellous. Wonder how much more I can push out of this game, but I suspect a lot more can come off the time :)
Post subject: Stages 1-4: now with encode
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/14852875168525118 Lazy encode for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y73SRMzWzm4 Stage 4: I managed to figure out a big improvement, by avoiding the Blue Fairy completely, saves a delay there, and the biggest improvement comes from managing the boss with a single Rolling Thunder attack. I always knew I could do enough damage with one RT, but I never did enough testing until now to find the optimal method of executing this. Turns out I can abuse taking damage, as it delays the RT frames of attack while the mouth is closed enough for me to get the remainder of the RT to finish the boss off. So, taking a hit from the boss not only saved time but allowed for this strategy to work. Total improvement on this stage was a mere 16 frames, meaning 779 total frames of improvement, which I wasn't expecting more than half a dozen like Stage 2, so I'm very glad of this. Stage 5 will have a lot more for sure to save, so stay tuned!
Active player (279)
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Posts: 791
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/16774700777169018 Stage 5: Lazy encode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66zcEbwpx48 Once again health management was the key factor in clearing this stage fast, compounded by the fact I had one less HP Up to take advantage of so I had to be even more tight with the damage I took, having to pause for more potions and even waiting to get a good pattern with the flame jets in the second half of the stage. I had to take an entirely new approach for finishing the boss quickly too. Without a powered up Dragon Frye I lost a significant amount of damage (getting 1500 dmg/frame is a huge amount) and it wasn't worth bringing him out for 500/frame at L1, given the huge problems in positioning the shots as well as the RT positioning, not worth it in terms of DPS. Decided to use Boomerang Lizard here, again for the fact his shots aim so I don't need to worry about it, so he contributes nicely while I wait on RT to charge up. Speaking of the RT positioning, given how he moves across the arena I have to get to the back of the boss hitbox and move along with the back part of the boss you can damage, would have lost too much damage if I tried from the front because he gets past the RT point halfway through and you lose too much of the damage if you have to turn around mid-attack, especially since you only have 40 frames of invincibility after being hit and the RT takes up 33, and turning around takes up about 10 or so, not to mention even further positioning problems with that particular move as your jump will come out of the boss's damage-taking section in order to get the right height to maintain all this. So, I had to wait for the boss to come part-way out, jump through and turn around after getting hit, and do a full RT in the air, hitting with all the frames while moving along with the boss. The RT in the middle was a lot easier to pull off, as you actually walk at the damage section's level on that platform, but I have to do the same manoeuvre for the final RT, and finish the boss off with some regular damage as I finish about 700 points short even with the perfect RT positioning and BL's contribution. Overall, I do lose 519 frames in the boss fight due to all these changes, but overall I still come out ahead, with a total improvement of 1295 frames! That's the most difficult stage out of the way, so now we get to work on some of the shorter and easier ones. Hoping the last three stages go a lot quicker.
Editor, Expert player (2478)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
It is a sunny day outside, so I can't bother to watch the WIP, but this seems nice!
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
So, a quick update, I managed to make a mistake somewhere in Stage 6, and ended up 27 frames slower compared to the old run (4040 vs 4067 total stage frames). 5 of that was having a bad RNG based on when the elevator stops after the boss (556 vs 561 frames after the boss dies), but this will mean I need to redo Stage 6 more carefully to see where I went wrong. It's a short stage so shouldn't take too long, and the boss is easy enough now that it is fresh in my mind. Expect a WIP shortly :)
Active player (279)
Joined: 4/30/2009
Posts: 791
Ok, so I've left this alone for a while, but it's about time I actually went ahead and actually got this out of the way so I can move on to better and brighter things. Restarting on BizHawk, I manage to save a couple of frames in the intro sequence so that's already a positive sign. I'll give more of an update for when I get to the end of the first stage. For now, I plan to stream regular with most of my TASing progress, leaving the more intensive trial-and-error work for off-camera, the aim being to be informative without being too boring. You can find my stream at http://twitch.tv/toothache42, where I do TASing on a Tuesday from 5 pm GMT, usually for 1 1/2 hours or so.