I have been a Jaws speedrunner for almost two years, and have been TASing the game since then. The goal of TASing has always been to quickly experiment with different RNG manipulations for the purposes of finding better routes for humans to run. It was never about making an optimal TAS. But this morning I decided to try to see what was possible when I stopped worrying about people being able to run the route.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX v2.3.0
  • Kill Jaws

Stage by stage comments

Starting Overworld Segment.

Pretty simple. I just leave port and then do 12 consecutive frame perfect "shimmies" to get into the first encounter ASAP.

First Encounter

Using RNG control, I get 4 shells as quickly as I can and then die. This is a frame perfect execution of what we do in WR speedruns. When you die, you don't "complete" the encounter that you were in. That way the next encounter you get into will still be the same encounter. This will allow us to get 13 shells (enough for lvl 3) without having to go through the lengthy bonus scene.

Overworld Segment Between The Encounters

This one is a bit trickier. You might not notice when watching in full speed, but there are some quick shimmies here and there to control Jaws' movement. Then we get into the second encounter exactly where we want to.

Second Encounter

Once again, RNG control to get the shells we want. Frame perfect execution of what we do in WR speedruns. Brings us up to 13 shells. Also collect 3 crabs to get the maximum speed bonus.

Last Overworld Segment

Mostly straight forward here. Swim from port to port to level up. There's one shimmy to control Jaws' movement. Then wait for Jaws to hit you.

Jaws Encounter/Final Charge

Frame perfect Jaws Fight. He has i-frames. Each shot is timed exactly right to damage him ASAP. And then stab him with the boat at the end.

Other comments

Time By RTA Speedrun Rules: 2:58.605
I never considered it for human speedruns, but I think I might be able to find a way to get 12 shells out of the second encounter with some TAS shenanigans. Then I would be able to get only 2 shells before dying, cutting off some time. I'll work on it at some point if there's interest.

Acknowledgements

I wanted to make sure I gave credit where credit was due. SlushFilter and ThreeCreepio are the ones who disassembled the game's code and figured out the RNG and other mechanics. Without them I would not have had the knowledge necessary to craft this route.

Samsara: Jawdging.
Samsara: File replaced with a version truncated to last input.
Samsara: Well, this is a lovely thing to see on the workbench, isn't it? It's the perfect example of my absolute favorite thing to judge: Someone new to the community (welcome, by the way!) coming in with a hot new TAS of a game with a long, long history on the site. I've seen it happen for games like Kid Icarus and Ghosts with a generous helping of Goblins and I hope to keep seeing it in the years to come. The incredible thing here is shaving off 30 entire seconds of a game that's already well below 5 minutes to begin with, optimizing this game further and further and further with new routing and strategies over several years of work and several different TASers and RTA runners putting in the effort to understand it. This is what I love about TASing, about speedrunning as a whole: Jaws isn't exactly the most popular game out there, it's no Super Mario, or Super Mario, or even Super Mario. Heck, it isn't even Super Mario. Despite that, though, it's been disassembled, dissected, and analyzed in the exact same way. It's almost like art to me, strange yet ethereally beautiful. Put that quote on the box for the repro cart.
Needless to say, I am absolutely looking forward to future runs of yours! Until then, though, I think this is a very safe acceptance over the published run. Excellent work!
EZGames69: Processing

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7212: SpaceColonizer's NES Jaws in 03:05.15
Samsara
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Heck, I overwrote your edit when replacing the file and I can't see what changed in your revision. Feel free to edit it back in, I won't be touching the submission text for a while.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Hey all. So I let the TAS run into the ending credits. If it stopped on the frame where we stop timing for speedruns than the final frame would be 11131. Should i re-submit with a movie truncated to that point? just looked at the rules again. it says "must reach and ending screen" and "it should end with the last input". these seem like contradictory rules. please advise. EDIT: oh. looks like samsara took care of it for me. i will submit runs that end at "last input" from now on.
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Samsara wrote:
Heck, I overwrote your edit when replacing the file and I can't see what changed in your revision. Feel free to edit it back in, I won't be touching the submission text for a while.
my edit was removing my real name from the submission. I thought that was going to be hidden from public view when i was filling out the submission. whatever change you made did not undo that edit.
Samsara
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SpaceColonizer wrote:
just looked at the rules again. it says "must reach and ending screen" and "it should end with the last input". these seem like contradictory rules.
To be more specific, it's the last input needed for the game to automatically advance to the ending. The ending doesn't need to be reached within the input file, it just needs to be reached with no further input.
my edit was removing my real name from the submission. I thought that was going to be hidden from public view when i was filling out the submission. whatever change you made did not undo that edit.
Alright, cool. Good to know I didn't mess anything up.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
MESHUGGAH
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Congrats on your first TAS! Regarding the movie rules: It means the final input which required to beat the game and reach an ending screen should be the end of your submission file.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
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Link to video Nice run. This TAS forgoes the mini-sub unlike previous TASes including those by Chambers_N. Are the previous TASes on your channel (the 3:03 and and TAS history video) intended to be human theory or just less optimised versions of this?
nymx
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According to your submission, RNG control is key. So, I noticed that your route was not designed to get straight to the area where you hit something (from 0:29 to 0:36). Forgive my ignorance, but I saw the same thing in your WR run. I suppose that is how you finish that segment ASAP? Appears that your speed running has paid off in this run. Your recent WR gives good support to the creation of this. Great job and Yes vote.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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Randomno wrote:
Nice run. This TAS forgoes the mini-sub unlike previous TASes including those by Chambers_N. Are the previous TASes on your channel (the 3:03 and and TAS history video) intended to be human theory or just less optimised versions of this?
those are for humans. although not just theory. they have been run. the history video shows which WR uses the routes from those TAses. and i just got a PB using v4 last night. the v3 TAS clocked in at about 3:01.5 RTA, and the fastest time with that route was 3:11.75. the main gap between TAS and human possibility is the Jaws fight. you have to hit Jaws 146 times (assuming you get the optimal 14 cannonballs). so if you're one frame off on your shots on average you're losing over 2 seconds vs. perfection.
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nymx wrote:
According to your submission, RNG control is key. So, I noticed that your route was not designed to get straight to the area where you hit something (from 0:29 to 0:36). Forgive my ignorance, but I saw the same thing in your WR run. I suppose that is how you finish that segment ASAP? Appears that your speed running has paid off in this run. Your recent WR gives good support to the creation of this. Great job and Yes vote.
yeah. the newest version of the human TAS actually does have a direct path, but when i made this non-human tas i had to do something different. one of the hugest difference between the routes is doing the 12 consecutive frame-perfect shimmies at the beginning to get the quick 1st encounter. that causes jaws to be in a different spot then he would be normally. it's also what caused jaws to appear during the encounter, which i totally forgot about when writing my comments on the run. i was pretty surprised by that. luckily i was able to swim around him without any time loss. the main issue with controlling the overworld is "where is jaws and where is he going?". if i had taken the direct path, jaws would have moved NW instead of W at a critical moment. i'm also trying to hit a particular encounter trigger to get the encounter rng i'm looking for.
nymx
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SpaceColonizer wrote:
yeah. the newest version of the human TAS actually does have a direct path, but when i made this non-human tas i had to do something different. one of the hugest difference between the routes is doing the 12 consecutive frame-perfect shimmies at the beginning to get the quick 1st encounter. that causes jaws to be in a different spot then he would be normally. it's also what caused jaws to appear during the encounter, which i totally forgot about when writing my comments on the run. i was pretty surprised by that. luckily i was able to swim around him without any time loss. the main issue with controlling the overworld is "where is jaws and where is he going?". if i had taken the direct path, jaws would have moved NW instead of W at a critical moment. i'm also trying to hit a particular encounter trigger to get the encounter rng i'm looking for.
Excellent. What looks unoptimal to non-speed runners, turns out to be lots of studying to makes things faster. Well, I have to say this was interesting enough to comment on. I love how TASes, like this one, show that extra time savings that gives hope for future WR's.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
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I'm amazed people put this amount of work into this game still. It's gone a long ways since adelikat's first TAS submission on this game. Nice job!
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.
Samsara
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I never considered it for human speedruns, but I think I might be able to find a way to get 12 shells out of the second encounter with some TAS shenanigans. Then I would be able to get only 2 shells before dying, cutting off some time. I'll work on it at some point if there's interest.
Quick question: How much time would be saved, and how much time would it take to test the viability of this strategy?
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You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Samsara wrote:
Quick question: How much time would be saved, and how much time would it take to test the viability of this strategy?
hmm.... hard to say. the death encounter would get a few seconds shorter, but not sure if the main encounter would get any longer. as far as how long would it take to figure out, don't know. maybe an afternoon of dedicated focus? i'm doing jaws speedruns right now. learning MTPO afterwards. was planning on submitting TASes for other games before working on Jaws again.
Post subject: Movie published
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4520] NES Jaws by SpaceColonizer in 03:05.15
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The movie description is outdated
30,000 points are needed to get the mini-sub which has double attack power. Because of this, a regular encounter is substituted for a Jaws encounter, so that Jaws can be hit for more points.
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"Anyone up for some fishing? In this TAS of Jaws, the attack level is upgraded to 3, which is the minimum required to kill Jaws in a single encounter. Luck manipulation is used to get encounters in the shortest time, and a purposeful death is used to avoid a bonus scene. This movie is a 31.03 sec improvement over the previous one. " I don't know who wrote this little blurb that's attached to the published run page, but it's not true that lvl 3 is the minimum required to kill jaws in a single encounter. I have an old RTA route where I killed him with just LVL 2. (and I was buttom mashing back then, instead of the far more efficient paced attacking). That was back when "subless" was a separate category, because nobody thought a subless route could get any% WR. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/595907377
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Copy pasted from the old run it seems. The publisher will no doubt fix it.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Updated, please check.
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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Nice run. If you can get the sub, you can save like 15 seconds. That's probably enough time that doing some kind of modification to the route is possible. You can see my TAS of the boss fight with the sub here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTVxBbBU7sU Sync the videos so they both start at "POWER LEVEL RAISED", and you can see that my TAS using the sub gains about 15 seconds on this run. (unfortunately, I started about a minute behind because I had to do the bonus game).