This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5837: donnaken15's A2600 Yars' Revenge "100%" in 13:52.47

WE GOT A LOOP! Temp Encode: Link to video

what

So, again, you might want to consult with the community before putting a lot of effort into a run that's going to be rejected. First, what makes this a 100% run? It looks like you decided to go to 500,000 points. Why? As far as I know, gameplay stops changing at 230,000 points. Of course, it's easy to edit the TAS to stop after 230,000, so that's not a major concern. The bigger problem is that this almost has to be improvable. You get 1000 points for killing the Qotile, but you get 2000 for killing after it becomes the Swirl, and 6000 for killing it while its attacking. A lot of the time -- especially near the beginning -- you kill it as the Qotile. Was it really going to take so long to attack that it was faster to kill it immediately for only 1/6th the points? If so, is there no way to manipulate the RNG to make it attack faster? The other obvious improvement is that you didn't play the game on the most difficult level: Game 6. Besides usually being required, Game 6 would have been faster. Your run is slowed down by the fact that Yar always has to fly up and eat a piece of the shield before it can fire the cannon. In Game 6, you get one "TRON" for every piece of the shield that you eat and two for touching the Qotile, and you can store up to 255 TRONs. The downside is that you need at least 5 TRONs, and you have to touch the left side of the screen to set up the Zorlon Cannon, but you can then use the extra TRONs to attack immediately on every subsequent round. And since the Qotile attacks way more often in Mode 6, this means that you can clear a ton of levels in a row in under a second. It took you about 7:30 to get to 230,000 points, but I suspect it could be done in less than half that time in Game 6. You should only need about 38 rounds if you grab the full 6000 points every time. I can't seem to find any information on how many TRONs it costs to fire the cannon, but if it's only 5, that means that you could store enough TRONs to fire immediately 51 rounds in a row. You only need 38. I suspect that a perfect game looks like this: through a combination of eating the shield and touching the Qotile, you acquire 190 TRONs in the first round, then smoke the Swirl while attacking 37 rounds in a row.

I can't seem to find any information on how many TRONs it costs to fire the cannon

The manual itself says the minimum you need is five TRONs at first, otherwise the cannon won't appear at all when you try to make it appear. That doesn't answer how much you actually spend to fire the cannon, but simple testing or locating the memory address that stores the number of TRONs would be able to answer that question easily. Even if the game was played on Game 6, I would still vote No for precisely the reason hopper is giving - a TASer has to look for unconventional strategies that might be faster overall than standard gameplay, and this does not seem to have been done at all. In fact, I suspect based on Spikestuff's comment there wasn't much effort beyond copy-paste duplication of a round's worth of inputs until a certain score in the game was reached. Before making another attempt at TASing this game, I would HIGHLY recommend that the memory address for the number of TRONs be located, so that the strategy hopper recommends can be followed easily. (Probably also the RNG address as well, considering it would have at least some utility here.)

I suspect that a perfect game looks like this: through a combination of eating the shield and touching the Qotile, you acquire 190 TRONs in the first round, then smoke the Swirl while attacking 37 rounds in a row.

You might actually be able to get away with fewer rounds than that. Don't forget that when a Yar eats a cell, that earns 169 points (69 points for a destroyed cell + 100 bonus, according to the manual) by itself. Eating 36 cells gets roughly the same amount of points as hitting a Swirl in mid-air, which ought to be able to shave a round or two off the total.

Yeah, I was too lazy to look for the memory address myself. I don't think you can save much time reducing the number of rounds by eating cells, given how long it takes to eat each one for only 169 points each. You have to eat 36 cells to avoid one round (36 * 169 = 6,084), and I just don't think you can do that faster than you can take out a Swirl that attacks instantly in Game 6. Let's assume, for now, that you use up 5 TRONs each time you fire the Zorlon Cannon. If you get all of them from eating the shield (none from touching the Qotile), you could eat 170 cells for 28,730 points. Then score 6000 * 34 = 204,000 for a final score of 232,730. Potential problem: are there 170 cells in the first shield? My big question is: can you collect two TRONs repeatedly by touching the Qotile multiple times? If you could, for instance, touch the Qotile every other frame 195 times, you could blow a hole through the shield on your way there, load up on TRONs for 390 frames (6.5 seconds), spend 2-3 seconds returning to the left wall, and then take out the attacking Swirl 39 times for 234,000 points, plus 69 * ~4 for initially blowing a hole through the shield. Those 39 kills would be about a second each, so you would have 48 seconds worth of gameplay and 38 level transitions of about 4 seconds each = 152 seconds, so an approximate completion time of 3:20.

Those are all very interesting questions you have hopper. I wonder if it's time to make a specific thread for the game over in the Atari Games board and continue the conversation there? (It doesn't seem to have one yet...)

Okay, the TRONs are stored in 0x70, and the answer is: yes, it costs 5 TRONs to fire the Zorlon Cannon. More good news: The TRON count increases by 2 per frame when the Yar is touching the Qotile. You don't have to exit and re-enter; you can just sit on the Qotile for 95 frames to get the 190 TRONs.

It looks like you decided to go to 500,000 points. Why? As far as I know, gameplay stops changing at 230,000 points. Of course, it's easy to edit the TAS to stop after 230,000, so that's not a major concern.

You mentioned the whole brown and yellow thing in the last TAS post.

I've figured out most of the useful memory addresses, but I haven't figured out how to manipulate the RNG yet. I'll start working on a WIP tomorrow and post what I've learned in a new thread.

Yar always has to fly up and eat a piece of the shield before it can fire the cannon.

I had to have keep moving back and forward because the cursor kept getting in the way of me killing it.

Yar always has to fly up and eat a piece of the shield before it can fire the cannon.

I had to have keep moving back and forward because the cursor kept getting in the way of me killing it.

Right, but in Game 6 you can put Yar on top of the Qotile and get 2 TRONs per frame, to a maximum of 255 TRONs, and then you could fire the cannon 51 times without having to cross the screen to eat a piece of the shield.

This video looks less about beating the game as ASAP as possible and more about pulling off fancy tricks. While I'm down for watching fancy tricks, I have to also wonder what is meant by "100%." It clearly can't mean completing the game as fast as possible, or else those faster tricks would have murdered the qotile faster.

This video looks less about beating the game as ASAP as possible and more about pulling off fancy tricks. While I'm down for watching fancy tricks, I have to also wonder what is meant by "100%." It clearly can't mean completing the game as fast as possible, or else those faster tricks would have murdered the qotile faster.

I am trying to beat it as fast as possible. It's just that the cursor keeps getting closer so I have to wrap around the screen to avoid losing.

You have the TAS movie, why don't you just cut off the movie where it should because I don't exactly know still when it should finish. I stopped at the brown part Spike told me to, but you keep talking about all this "MEH INCOMPLETE" "GAME 6" "TRON 1982 255" "WHATS 100%" "WHATS ANY%," YOU TELL ME WHAT BRANCH THIS IS BECAUSE IF IT'S NONE OF THOSE, THEN I DON'T KNOW, YOU CHOOSE IT YOURSELF!

Your previous run was deemed incomplete, so you played it longer. You ignored or didn't understand the advice to use Game 6, which is accomplished by using the Game Select switch (default "S" in BizHawk). I proposed a strategy for Game 6 which you didn't use. I opened the ROM in BizHawk and spent many hours learning what all of the addresses in memory do and determined that the strategy works. Having done that, I've been very tempted to make my own Yars' Revenge run, but I didn't want to step on the toes of someone who was already working on a Yars' run. Here's what I think is the problem. When you wrote:

I am trying to beat it as fast as possible. It's just that the cursor keeps getting closer so I have to wrap around the screen to avoid losing.

That's not a TASer's answer. What this tells me is that you're just playing the game and responding to what happens. A TASer figures out what makes things happen and then manipulates that information to his or her advantage. That includes figuring out what's going on in memory, as I have done, but it also includes figuring out the RNG (Random Number Generation). Why does the Qotile sometimes not attack for a couple of minutes, and other times it attacks as soon as the level starts? Because the attack time is random. But computers can't pick random numbers! They choose their "random" numbers by performing some kind of math, usually based on the current time (which is never the same twice). Since the Atari 2600 doesn't have a Real Time Clock, any random behavior is calculated mathematically based on something that's unlikely to be the same twice, like your score, or the Yar's x and y positions, or something like that. To truly TAS the game, you have to figure out how the game works so that you don't have to make concessions. Instead of responding to what the game does, make the game do what you want it to do. So, here's what I've decided. I'm going to post my findings here. If you're willing to learn the craft and make a high quality TAS with that information, you can make your run and have the glory of having the first published Yars' Revenge TAS. The clock will be ticking, though. If you're unwilling or unable to make a TAS to this site's standards, I'm going to start working on mine very soon.

More good news! First I thought you only got 2 TRONs for each time you touched the Qotile, so I figured that you could only get 2 TRONs every other frame. Then I found out that you get 2 TRONs for each frame you touch the Qotile, so that cuts your Qotile time in half. Well, guess what? You can collect TRONs during the level transition/explosion by touching the "Ghost of Yars", the black vertical line where the Qotile died. You get 2 TRONs every second frame, which is enough time to collect 218 TRONs! So, in fact, you only need to collect 5 TRONs during the first level, and then you can collect all the TRONs you need for an unlimited number of instant kills between levels.

More good news! First I thought you only got 2 TRONs for each time you touched the Qotile, so I figured that you could only get 2 TRONs every other frame. Then I found out that you get 2 TRONs for each frame you touch the Qotile, so that cuts your Qotile time in half. Well, guess what? You can collect TRONs during the level transition/explosion by touching the "Ghost of Yars", the black vertical line where the Qotile died. You get 2 TRONs every second frame, which is enough time to collect 218 TRONs! So, in fact, you only need to collect 5 TRONs during the first level, and then you can collect all the TRONs you need for an unlimited number of instant kills between levels.

I still don't understand the whole TRON thing and apparently I can't get the cannon easier on Game 6. I'm attempting a Game 6 TAS now, but I can only get the cannon doing the same shield eating type of thing.

You need 5 TRONs to use the Cannon. You get 1 for each cell of the shield that you eat, and 2 for each frame that Yar touches the Qotile. We should discuss your progress in the Yars' Revenge thread I created.

We should discuss your progress in the Yars' Revenge thread I created.

alright then

Couple questions. 1. How is the increasing difficulty even measured (once you've picked the difficulty setting)? Just by the speed of destroyer missile? 2. Can easter egg be achieved right in the first level?

At 70,000 points (when the shield turns purple), the Swirl attacks three times as frequently. At 150,000 points (grey shield), the Swirl launches toward you, stops, and then launches again at your new location, but attack frequency returns to normal. At 230,000 points (pink shield), double attack and triple frequency are both on. Yes, you can get the Easter Egg on the first level. I'm thinking about submitting such a run as a "fastest ending" run. I can do it with a final input of about 4 seconds.

That sounds like a great april fools candidate.

om, nom, nom... want more!