(Link to video)
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In this game you must collect sea shells in order to upgrade your weapons and kill Jaws.

Movie Summary:

This saves about 4 seconds over the previous run. Not much else to say. I take roughly the same strategy as the previous movie by Adelikat, though I have some better RNG manipulation, and better controls in some places. Battles are generally fixed time, and there aren't really tricks for moving faster on the overworld either.

Tricks used:

As in the previous run, it turns out it is very difficult to manipulate the item drops. But it is not impossible. The drops are affected by one or more of the following: points, position of player/enemies/items, killing enemies in a different order. With this knowledge, it's not too hard to get enough shells and stars so that diverting to fight Jaws as the second fight isn't necessary (we easily have 30,000 points after the bonus game).
The boat moves on the world map one tile every 16 frames. However, if you are moving Right or Left, you can move in the opposite direction to change course mid-tile. This makes avoiding fights take only a few frames instead of needing to wait periodically as in the previous run.
Jaws can only be hit once per 25 frames, and has 5120 health. This means he takes quite a while and really no room for much improvement on the boss fight as a result.

Tricks not used:

I did try manipulating item drops so that I could get the mini sub and power level 3. However this only deals 96 damage, compared to 64 with power level 2 and the sub. Traversing the map takes too long to make this worth it.
You can kill approximately 24 enemies in the first encounter. If somehow, someone could perfectly manipulate drops, arguably there might be room to get 13 shells, and 30k points within the first fight. However, I tried all sorts of things, but the only reliable way to change the item drops was killing enemies in a different order, which seems to indicate that this is not a possible strategy.
During my play, I found a glitched encounter with Jaws. Video can be found at https://youtu.be/WiMXOpjHf5w Movie file can be found at Userfiles/Info/37638661301592657 I think it has something to do with jaws temporarily cutting a corner, and thus not being within a legal grid space when the battle started. (At first I avoided this by LRLR a few times before the fight, to delay it so jaws could get in a legal space). If someone tried this game in the future, I might recommend investigating if any useful glitches can be found this way (maybe code execution?).

feos: The author of the existing tool-assisted record posted his movie file, so I was able to compare the movies side-by-side. The strats are different, and it's not exactly clear what causes the different outcome (whose randomness DonkeyKongGenius puts in doubt, saying how similar gameplay actions result in similar events), but in every section his run is faster than this one (about 00:04.99 seconds difference, ignoring the differences in emulation). .
Even though the Vault rules allow to publish an improvement that's known to be improvable, even Vault doesn't let in movies that can't beat existing records. In this case, the TAS record was simply missed, but in future, the knowledge base DonkeyKongGenius has and his movie can serve as a great basis for making a new submission, which won't only be faster than the published run, but it'll also be fully optimal. Good luck with the improvement, Meerkov!
I should note that QuickNES isn't the most accurate core for TASing, and since DonkeyKongGenius's movie was made on FCEUX, I suggest to either use FCEUX for precise measurements, or switch to NESHawk for maximum accuracy.
Rejecting this one.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5413: Meerkov's NES Jaws in 03:32.52
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Nice improvement, voting yes.
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Wow. Somehow I had a feeling that when you were attacking old adelikat runs, you might get around to this. Adelikat warned that he pitied the soul who tried wrestling with the luck manipulation here, but it seems like you succeeded. I voted Yes here, though honestly, it's not a terribly entertaining game to watch. But I found it interesting knowing how well-manipulated this was, and there is some good shooting in the two encounters you get into.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
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Good job on the improvement. My vote is No however. In terms of entertainment.
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Has anyone ever tried just killing Jaws on level 1? In other words, don't use time getting the transceiver, level 2, level 3, or the sub. Skip the bonus shell scene. Just fight Jaws (perhaps 3 times) immediately and skip the other stuff. Is this even possible? If so, has it been tested for time?
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Does getting slightly less than perfect speed up the bonus round?
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Hi Everyone, thanks for the encouragement! Let me reply to a few comments:
Somehow I had a feeling that when you were attacking old adelikat runs, you might get around to this.
:) Yeah I took a look at this run, realized right away I could trim about 9 frames off the end of the movie by timing the boat ram better, and decided it was reasonable to try for some savings.
Has anyone ever tried just killing Jaws on level 1?
Short answer: yep it doesn't work. Level 1 attack does 8, where as I am doing 64. If you only do 12.5% of his life per battle, you won't outpace his healing (25% of his bar after every fight). If you can RNG manipulate 13 shells from the first fight of 24 enemies (more than half the enemies!) then you could power up to 32 damage, which is enough to outpace the healing, and could maybe let you deal some partial damage while you build up enough points to earn the Sub. I couldn't figure out a way, though.
Does getting slightly less than perfect speed up the bonus round?
Unfortunately it's sort of like Gradius. If you don't kill the enemies, they will dance around for a few seconds before exiting the screen. You always get 30 enemies to kill so it would take longer to not kill them.
Alyosha
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Pretty impressive you mananged to improve this. Nice Work!
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During my play, I found a glitched encounter with Jaws. The effect was: The screen was blue, contained glitched background images (including letters, like "QR"), the boat was on the very bottom of the screen with stringrays going back and forth above. Pausing the game would result in freezing. This was triggered by heading East along the very top of the Green Island to the left of the 2nd port. Jaws attacked my ship by heading North-West along the coast of the island. I think it has something to do with jaws temporarily cutting a corner, and thus not being within a legal grid space when the battle started. (At first I avoided this by LRLR a few times before the fight, to delay it so jaws could get in a legal space). If someone tried this game in the future, I might recommend investigating if any useful glitches can be found this way (maybe code execution?).
Can you please post a video/input file of this? I'm really curious about it.
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Is your run any faster than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Leu-_YFsg_0 I hope he won't mind me sharing the link to it.
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Can you please post a video/input file of this? I'm really curious about it.
Yep I updated the submission so it now has a video and movie file associated with the bug (movie file is worth a thousand words).
Is your run any faster than this
Aw man you're killing me. I didn't realize this guy already had a TAS of this game ( watched his RT run while researching this game). Yeah his does look faster than mine. Not sure what the policy is here. Clearly I have room for improvement still, but my run is faster than the site record. I can try to reach out to them and see if I can get a copy of the movie file...
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This as well, from the same guy, along with a number of iterative improvements from 3:23 to 3:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqN8BMQdLfY This seems of particular note. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggd_dx7VpNM&t=92s
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Meerkov wrote:
Yeah his does look faster than mine. Not sure what the policy is here. Clearly I have room for improvement still, but my run is faster than the site record. I can try to reach out to them and see if I can get a copy of the movie file...
Vault tier Technical requirements wrote:
Must beat all known unassisted records and beat or match all known tool-assisted records. In rare cases, there will be a sloppier movie that is faster than a more optimized movie due to the use of a major skip discovery. In this case, the faster of the two movies is preferred.
So if your movie was faster than all known records, but not optimized to maximum, it could've been accepted to Vault, where this game belongs. But your run isn't a speed record it seems. So yeah, reach out to the guy.
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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Meerkov, any news on this?
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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I like the older one but this is better!! YES!... YES!... YEEEEEEEES (kidding) Yes from me
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My question is, why isn't DonkeyKongGenius's TAS on TASVideos? I mean, why make a TAS and not bring it here?
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c-square wrote:
My question is, why isn't DonkeyKongGenius's TAS on TASVideos? I mean, why make a TAS and not bring it here?
There are lots of reasons: -It takes time and effort to figure out how to submit to TASVideos, including documentation, writing notes and assembling supporting material. -Some people don't even know TASVideos exists, or if they do, or what the submission process involves. -There may be a language or cultural barrier. -You may not be stopped by any of the above, but for personal reasons or due to a dispute not wish to submit to or support the site. -You may not consider the TAS worthy of the site, or want it to stand on its own/'just for fun'.
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Judging from his posts on YouTube, it seems he wants to try and improve his record first before submitting here... or something like that.
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ruadath wrote:
Judging from his posts on YouTube, it seems he wants to try and improve his record first before submitting here... or something like that.
He says that it was never his intention to have this be a WR TAS, and he was just using the tool to help inform strategies for a RTA. He doesn't consider himself a TASser and feels that Meerkov can probably squeeze some more frames out of it.
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For the record I don't intend to spend another second looking at Jaws. I didn't realize we reject videos that are improvements to the current record on the site, even when they have positive audience response...
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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.