It's time for another Dream Team Contest! I will be your host. If the term is new to you, this is a contest in which teams of players have a limited amount of time to complete a TAS of a given game. The winning team will be engraved in
Dream Team Contest history.
Rules
- You may sign up as a 3-4 person team or request to be assigned to a team. You cannot be in more than one team, and you cannot be listed in one team multiple times. Each person in a team must confirm participation via a post in this thread. Optionally, you may provide a team name and logo. Team members cannot be changed after the contest begins, but you can update the team name and logo up to 2 weeks after the contest start.
- Team sign-ups will end on Friday 2020/08/28 at 23:59 UTC.
- The game will be revealed on Saturday 2020/08/29 at 07:00 UTC, and the contest will start.
- The teams must provide their movie file to dreamteamcontest9@mail.com (note that it's not Gmail) before the deadline established below. Improvements of the run can be submitted any time before the deadline; the deadline can be extended if all teams agree.
- In the event that Arbitrary Code Execution/Memory Corruption/SRAM Glitch/Game End Glitch/Wrong Warp Glitch is discovered, judging will be performed separately for movies that do and do not exploit such a glitch.
- The team that provides the movie file that completes the game most quickly (input end) from power-on to credits wins.
- The movie should sync on BizHawk 2.4.0, but you may use whatever version you want to create it.
- The winning team will submit its movie to TASVideos, preferably with any improvements discovered by other teams, and any additional contributors will be added to the author list.
- All submissions must also abide by TASVideos rules.
Game Info
Someone on IRC complained in 2019 about newer gaming systems being neglected in the Dream Team Contest. It's time to change that. I couldn't make up my mind about which game to choose, however, so the participants will be able to vote from a list of 3 candidates. Here is the information you need about the options:
- Option 1: PSX 3-D platformer. Estimated length 15-20 minutes.
- Option 2: Sega Saturn 3-D platformer. Estimated length 25-30 minutes.
- Option 3: Other 2-D platformer. Estimated length 8-15 minutes. In case people think 3-D games might be too difficult for the contest or something. This run will require you to control 2 players at once. This game is not on any system that has been used in a DTC previously.
Due to the differences in the games, the contest deadline will be:
- Saturday 2020/10/31 at 00:00 UTC for options 1 and 2.
- Saturday 2020/10/03 at 00:00 UTC for option 3.
Voting
Contest participants may vote for their game choice after being assigned to a team. Each participant votes individually, but feel free to discuss preferences within your teams. Please PM me your choice before the sign-up deadline. If there is a tie, then I will decide the game in some way (maybe streaming something and using that game's RNG).
Here are the current sign-ups. Note that individual players have until Friday 2020/08/28 at 23:59 UTC to decide or change their team; if they don't, they will be randomly shuffled into 4-person teams. If the player amount is not divisible by 4, they will be shuffled into 2- or 3-person teams. If there is only one individual, existing teams with 3 players will be asked if they'd be willing to accept the individual into their team.
Full Teams
Team 1: Samsara, Memory, GoddessMaria, fsvgm777 - "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Frames" -
Logo
Team 2: EZGames69, Cyorter, Jules, Bloopiero - "LAZY TOWN" -
Logo
Team 3: Mittenz, g0goTBC, The8bitbeast, WarHippy - "🐻🐦"
Team 4: ThunderAxe31, RetroEdit, ViGadeomes, DrD2k9
Team 5: Really_Tall, Malleoz, TASPlasma, PerilousPeanut
Team 6: Invariel, KiwiCracker, CoolHandMike, arukAdo - "Team 5" -
Logo
Partial Teams
Individual players
The sign-up and voting period has ended. The remaining individual players have been assigned to Team 6. Remember that teams can submit name and logo updates for the next 2 weeks.
Results
Option 2: 0 votes. The game was
Ninpen Manmaru. (Contest subtitle: Pacifist)
Option 1: 1 vote. The game was
Floating Runner: Quest for the 7 Crystals. (Contest subtitle: Swarmed)
Option 3: 16 votes via PM, 6 votes in thread. The game will be revealed at the appointed time.
Other games I had considered for the contest include:
Blast Corps (Contest subtitle: Nuclear)
Duck Dodgers Starring: Daffy Duck (Contest subtitle: Spaceman)
The Lion King: Simba's Mighty Adventure (Contest subtitle: Scarred)
While you all await the game reveal, please review some
tips from previous contests:
- Divide the tasks.
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Assign your team members to work on different jobs in order to improve efficiency. This is crucial.
- Keep in contact.
Use a private and secure chat group of your choice to talk with your teammates about your progress, discoveries, and ideas and to share your files.
- Play it a lot first.
Game mechanics are easier to understand by playing the game casually, with some cheating if necessary. Start TASing when you feel that you know enough.
- Take note of everything.
Any trick or glitch may be useful in one way or another, even if it does not seem so initially. Also remember that your discoveries may be useful after the contest.
- Try anything.
Even after you've finished TASing the game, use the remaining time to try and improve the run. A sudden discovery can turn the tide of the contest.
- Don't procrastinate.
You may make mistakes, but you have the ability to fix those mistakes if you give yourself the time to do so.
- Don't give up.
There is always the chance for motivation to plummet. Try to keep at it even if you hit a roadblock.
The game
Bugz is an original 2-D platform game for the Uzebox. The goal is to guide one or two adventurers through 21 levels, collecting all of the cookies in each level (perhaps the adventurers are related to Cookie Monster?). Obstacles are standard for platform games and include death pits, fire, and enemies--bugs, in this case. The game's developer has a full playthrough of the 1-player mode on
YouTube.
Your goal in this Dream Team Contest is to complete all 21 levels in the
P1 VS P2 mode. This mode is different from the standard 2-player mode in one key mechanic that I believe allows for
the routing curse to strike more interesting route options. The button combination allowing you to skip around levels is
allowed only for a run aiming for Arbitrary Code Execution/Memory Corruption/SRAM Glitch/Game End Glitch/Wrong Warp Glitch not allowed (see
here). In the event that two or more runs tie for first place based on time, the combined final score (P1 score + P2 score on the trophy screen) will be used as a secondary determinant of rank; the higher score will have a higher ranking. I found one
WIP from several years ago; note that it uses the standard 2-player mode rather than the versus mode.
Please use the ROM in the UZE format from
here to create the TAS. It should have the following properties:
Size: 58094 bytes
CRC-32: 22c1bbe4
MD5: b62117e7c6448e266ce9f7f8d46def5a
SHA-1: d8789a9b671340c57713cf434a4b92d8e0865862
SHA-256: 5f288cd9a1c4e1e7cb5f172fa5393b041f3016cab3a0c39c164f9abef43b39f6
Remember, the contest ends on
Saturday 2020/10/03 at 00:00 UTC. That is slightly under 5 weeks from now. I wish you all the best of luck and much fun. Let the contest hereby begin!
The result
The contest is over. Here are the rankings:
#6: Team 4 in 3:03.316 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
#5: Team 6 "Team 5" in 2:57.533 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
#4: Team 2 "LAZY TOWN" in 2:55.466 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
#3: Team 1 "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Frames" in 2:54.650 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
#2: Team 5 in 2:47.366 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
#1: Team 3 "🐻🐦" in 2:46.933 -
movie file -
YouTube encode
Thank you to everyone that participated and a special congratulations to Team 3 "🐻🐦" for winning!
