Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CslkOUAPk-k This is nothing more than a proof of concept at the moment, just trying out the faster RTA strategy for the first level and figuring out whether or not I actually want to tackle this. EDIT: Saved another second off of the above video and I'm sure more can come off. I actually kinda really like TASing this, it's a janky game but it's fun to make that jankiness work. I'll give the first stage the ol' razzle dazzle and see what it ends up looking like after serious optimization/planning. EDIT2: gfycat of the improved section. There isn't a single part of this that doesn't make sense and I love every minute of it. I love video games. EDIT3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKZN32OHk0U Full test of the first stage that's about 7 seconds faster than the published run, but it needs some more work. Last hit on the boss is delayed to get a better boulder pattern that saves 100 frames over my second best attempt without said pattern.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Art. If you catch the very bottom of a climbable wall, you can mash B to climb up into it for some sweet upward... zipping? I can't even really tell what it is. It's not zipping because you get caught at a certain point and have to jump to continue going up, and eventually you get trapped in the wall and crushed to near death (which is why I escape and do the usual ridiculous wallclimb). I think I love this game.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Sweet stuff, didn't expect this game to become fun.
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.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
It's a blast, really. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkmE2IG8Fs Stage 2 happened. It's ridiculously laggy. There are a couple sloppy sections so I'll probably give it another shot later tonight or tomorrow.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
If the rest of the game is anything like that first level, this is going to be an amazing TAS. Good luck! Does swinging the whip while the boss is exploding cause any extra lag?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Derakon wrote:
Does swinging the whip while the boss is exploding cause any extra lag?
Yep, every other frame is lag when swinging the whip during the second boss's explosion, so I just scroll it offscreen. Published run does it too, likely for the same reason. Same thing happens at the falling bridge if I'm over to the right too far, it's actually half a second faster to land on the very left edge and drop down from there because moving farther to the right when on the bridge causes lag every other frame.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Oh, I misunderstood when the boss actually dies. Carry on!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 10/23/2009
Posts: 545
Location: Where?
Derakon wrote:
If the rest of the game is anything like that first level, this is going to be an amazing TAS. Good luck!
Exactly what I had to say.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Derakon wrote:
Oh, I misunderstood when the boss actually dies. Carry on!
Oh, yeah. In case anyone else is confused, the boss has two forms: The head part I'm attacking is meant to separate from the body but I end up killing it before it can separate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8aT6_x-vnA Here, have a 34 frame faster Stage 2, featuring a better falling bridge section and a better boss fight, and a preview of Stage 3 alongside it for actual new content.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Link to video All levels so far. I'm not too happy with how stages 3 and 4 turned out, though, so I might go back and redo them.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Link to video Redone, smoother stage 3, about a second and a half faster (though ~30 frames are lost due to extra lag). This was basically the result of squeezing out a ridiculous amount of frames in the earlier sections to make an earlier spinning platform cycle, and then figuring out a way to actually go through that spinning platform using a careful combination of ducking, standing, and jumping. I'm pretty proud of this. EDIT: Stage 4 is also looking to be around a second faster than the posted version. It's gonna be great to finally move on to walking across a train.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
I've said things on IRC, but I just want to post that I'm loving this TAS. You are doing good work. Keep it up! I remember having fun TASing this game. It seems that you are as well.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Link to video Final version of Stage 4 and preliminary drafts of Stages 5-8. Very short stages, not very fun to TAS. Boss hitboxes are a pain, lag management is even more of a pain. EDIT: Apologies for the graphical glitches around 1:53, those aren't in the game, just me being an idiot with codecs. EDIT2: Link to video I found this while working on Stage 9. Despite the fact that it looks like I'm flying over half the stage, the boss that's normally supposed to be at the end doesn't spawn until you kill the miniboss, and the miniboss is just after this part, so it's basically useless. But it's still fun to watch! I guess! Even if it's a huge disappointment...
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Slowly working through this, made it up through Stage 10 recently (it helps that Stage 10 is broken and thus only about 2-3 seconds long). I decided to go through and check exactly how far ahead of the published run I am, which was far more number crunching than I ever needed in my life due to how the game "handles" lag. I'll throw all the data into the submission text, but I'll just say that at the end of Stage 10, I'm 903 frames ahead of the published run when directly comparing: 1001 gameplay frames ahead, but 98 more lag frames. The lag has been rising and dropping drastically over the course of the run, I improve it in some stages and in others it unavoidably shoots up by nearly a full second. It's extra bad in Stage 5, where it lags drastically during the boss fight (when it doesn't in the published run) and doesn't lag at all when the plane takes off (when it does in the published run). This actually loses me gameplay frames, but it's only 32 so I'm not worried about it. Every other stage has gameplay improvements, with Stages 1 and 9 accounting for 10 seconds of improvement alone using strategies from the RTA run. Out of every stage with gameplay improvements, only Stage 8 has more lag than improvements, leading to an overall realtime loss. I don't have an estimate on when I'll finish/submit because Stage 11 (the fish boss) is going to be a pain to optimize, but once I finish that fight, the rest of the run shouldn't take much longer.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
EZGames69
He/They
Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4460)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2761
I saved about half a second in stage 1, instead of going to the left on the swing upward, I go to the right. I didnt do the boss since it hard: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64729848373964354
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing