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Stick Simulator Z is a game with pretty decent RNG.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.4
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses death to save time
  • Major glitch abuse
  • Heavy 'luck' manipulation
Download the game here. [dead link removed]

Route

Cave of Serenity

Get the axe.

Secluded Forest

On the way to the shop, our goal is to get enough gems to afford money for the shop trip, which we fulfill by getting 3 gems. On the way, start getting sticks for the campfire. We use the weapon recovery glitch here: getting hit while attacking cuts the recovery of the axe in half.

Town of Braintree

Go to the shop. Sell 3 gems to the liquor seller for 105$, then buy coffee. Get 1 healing kit (this was a mistake) and 1 fuel can for campfire.

Dead Wood

Our goal is to get the sniper rifle, which is gotten by killing the 6th horde. Once that is done, get killed by the laser sharks to deathwarp to Town of Braintree.

Town of Braintree (revisit)

Deathwarp here to get to Gold Rush Mines.

Braintree Forest

Gather some needed sticks on the way.

Gold Rush Mines

Get to second floor, then craft campfire, equip sniper rifle and execute campfire glitch by dying. Since we create a campfire underground (which fixes our spawn point) we get respawned upwards, into..

I.N.I.T Laboratory

Get respawned out of bounds in the final boss room. Since we are out of bounds, we have to use the sniper rifle to kill him. Since the sniper rifle shoots through wall, we can kill him easily and end the game.

Comments

This submission is probably going to get beaten very quickly. Putting it up is not the best decision, as it is simply the raw winner movie.
Samsara: Setting this to delayed while the frame wars are underway.

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Posted: 1/11/2016 8:29 PM
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rchokler
Player (145)
Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
WIP 1: User movie #28152796309310233
Posted: 1/11/2016 8:31 PM
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Tompa
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Editor, Expert player (2141)
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Posts: 1934
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
NES TAS of 2018 SNES TASer of 2017 SNES TAS of 2017 NES TAS of 2014 GBA TASer of 2011 GBA TAS of 2011 SNES TASer of 2010
8 frames can be saved on the name select by using Start and not go down to Done.
Posted: 1/11/2016 9:27 PM
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rchokler
Player (145)
Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
Tompa wrote:
8 frames can be saved on the name select by using Start and not go down to Done.
Thank's Tompa, I will make that adjuatment.
Posted: 1/12/2016 5:33 AM
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brunovalads
Editor, Player (163)
Joined: 4/7/2015
Posts: 330
Location: Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
For now, this movie is just a prototype. We had 4 hours to read, figure out stuff, write scripts, etc. So the frame war had to start somewhere. It's here, more than anything, for documenting this race. Let it be here. Now we have all the time we want. I'd love to finnish my current works and start improving the script, maybe find new glitches or improve the current known ones. This game is cool, it deserves a shot.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math. My things: YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
Posted: 1/12/2016 5:53 AM
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rchokler
Player (145)
Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
I am nearly back to square one with my attempt to improve the run. It turns out that I overlooked a crucial detail about the game mechanic. The detail being that which enemies are killed and in which order, also affects the item drops. I noticed it when on entering the store, the "sell" menu showed only one gem and a few pieces of cloth instead of three gems. As a result, along the current route, we pretty much must kill the zombies in the same order as in the winning AGDQ run, even though it sacrifices many frames relative to killing zombies in a different order.
Posted: 1/12/2016 5:57 AM
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link_7777
Experienced player (852)
Joined: 11/15/2010
Posts: 267
I think before we dive too deep into optimizing we need to settle on a route. This submission is the campfire route of course, but I think the ACE route can be faster. It works for sure, but I would need to do a little more optimizing to make sure it is faster. ais523 also proposed a save-corruption glitch which I don't really understand the details of. Probably the save corruption would be shortest if it works and if not it will be between the other two
Posted: 1/12/2016 6:01 AM
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ALAKTORN
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Joined: 10/19/2009
Posts: 2527
Location: Italy
DS TAS of 2012
rchokler wrote:
As a result, along the current route, we pretty much must kill the zombies in the same order as in the winning AGDQ run, even though it sacrifices many frames relative to killing zombies in a different order.
If it’s decided that the TAS should be made on the original unmodified version then your TAS may still be applicable to it. AGDQ version’s RNG was changed to be RTA-friendly.
Posted: 1/12/2016 6:09 AM
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rchokler
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Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
link_7777 wrote:
I think before we dive too deep into optimizing we need to settle on a route. This submission is the campfire route of course, but I think the ACE route can be faster. It works for sure, but I would need to do a little more optimizing to make sure it is faster. ais523 also proposed a save-corruption glitch which I don't really understand the details of. Probably the save corruption would be shortest if it works and if not it will be between the other two
I agree. Let's try both, of these alternatives. At least one must be better than the campfire. Either way, it would be particularly cool to watch a "game-end glitch" edition of such a game. This one will ultimately be an "any %" run. I also would like to see a separate movie under the "100%" category, which would open all chests, collect all 6 keys, and enter the final boss area legitimately. But that would be for later on.
ALAKTORN wrote:
rchokler wrote:
As a result, along the current route, we pretty much must kill the zombies in the same order as in the winning AGDQ run, even though it sacrifices many frames relative to killing zombies in a different order.
If it’s decided that the TAS should be made on the original unmodified version then your TAS may still be applicable to it. AGDQ version’s RNG was changed to be RTA-friendly.
That's good to know. I will keep that in mind.
Posted: 1/18/2016 4:37 PM
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link_7777
Experienced player (852)
Joined: 11/15/2010
Posts: 267
I wanted to bring this thread up to date quick. I was able to get the ACE route to work. My unoptimized run was a bit slower. I think an optimized version would be faster than the campfire route, but it would be close, you'd need to optimize both to be sure. It is somewhat moot though since with some brute forcing I was able to get ais523's save corruption route to work and it is definitely faster. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/download/28266011834849095
Posted: 1/18/2016 9:02 PM
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BrunoVisnadi
Editor, Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 12/28/2013
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Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
SNES TAS of 2020 TAS of 2015 SNES TAS of 2015
I could get to the place in which the reset will happen about 700 frames sooner, but I still didn't optimize the zombie boost routing. I'll probably do that tomorrow, and then I send the movie file.
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVoUfT49xN9TU-gDMHv57sw Projects: SMW 96 exit. SDW any%, with Amaraticando. SMA2 SMW small only Kaizo Mario World 3
Posted: 1/19/2016 6:06 PM
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rchokler
Player (145)
Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
link_7777 wrote:
I wanted to bring this thread up to date quick. I was able to get the ACE route to work. My unoptimized run was a bit slower. I think an optimized version would be faster than the campfire route, but it would be close, you'd need to optimize both to be sure. It is somewhat moot though since with some brute forcing I was able to get ais523's save corruption route to work and it is definitely faster. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/download/28266011834849095
I notice that in most rooms, you go through in a noticeably sub-optimal time. Is that part of your attempt to corrupt RAM, or is only the the last room you entered used for RAM corruption?
Posted: 1/20/2016 4:52 PM
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link_7777
Experienced player (852)
Joined: 11/15/2010
Posts: 267
Only the last room is involved in the save corruption. The route is intentionally sub-optimal because my focus was on creating a script to brute force the crc to demo that it would work. I know BrunoVisnadi has been working on a more optimized route to that room. Once we settle on an optimized route we can run the brute forcing again
Posted: 1/20/2016 4:59 PM
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BrunoVisnadi
Editor, Skilled player (1410)
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Posts: 396
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
SNES TAS of 2020 TAS of 2015 SNES TAS of 2015
I'm currently noting how many frames each of the zombie boosts saves. Then, I'll test how many we can do with the given amount of life, so that only the worse boosts are avoided. When I finish it I put here the link for the WIP.
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVoUfT49xN9TU-gDMHv57sw Projects: SMW 96 exit. SDW any%, with Amaraticando. SMA2 SMW small only Kaizo Mario World 3
Posted: 1/21/2016 9:03 AM
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True
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Joined: 1/18/2008
Posts: 663
rchokler wrote:
I am nearly back to square one with my attempt to improve the run. It turns out that I overlooked a crucial detail about the game mechanic. The detail being that which enemies are killed and in which order, also affects the item drops. I noticed it when on entering the store, the "sell" menu showed only one gem and a few pieces of cloth instead of three gems.
Yes, I wrote a script that shows you what will be dropped (incl qty) in the future depending on kill order.
rchokler wrote:
As a result, along the current route, we pretty much must kill the zombies in the same order as in the winning AGDQ run, even though it sacrifices many frames relative to killing zombies in a different order.
Routeplan with my script. It's posted in the main PAZ thread. It might come in handy for other routes if you need items.
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Posted: 1/21/2016 3:20 PM
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rchokler
Player (145)
Joined: 11/14/2011
Posts: 68
Location: Brookline, MA
I can look at that. For now, the save - state corruption is the leading route, however, in case multiple completion methods wind up submitted for publication, I can finish the optimized version of the AGDQ run. Also, the boss fight in the save - state corruption route should be interesting, provided we don't wind up with a TAS that skips it straight to the credits. Based on the available demo, it reminds me of the final fight in Ironsword, which is comparable in complexity, but for a somewhat different reason. EDIT: I analyzed the campfire route using the LUA script. Based on the RTA friendliness of the AGDQ version of the game, and the fact that there are too few rooms with zombies at good positions, the pickup lineups displayed by the script shows that it is not worth it to changing the order of the kills over the winning TAS. Things would be different on the original version of the game that has the unmodified RNG though. So we should just stick to the save-state corruption route for now.
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
I'm currently noting how many frames each of the zombie boosts saves. Then, I'll test how many we can do with the given amount of life, so that only the worse boosts are avoided. When I finish it I put here the link for the WIP.
I would like to give a crack at the boss fight once you post the next WIP.
Posted: 1/24/2016 7:29 PM
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TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... 'twas dry
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