This is a very laggy sidescroller for the Gameboy, the first in a series of 3 Ninja Turtles games. It has big and detailed sprites, but is otherwise short and unremarkable. The primary optimization challenge is lag reduction, which turns out to be very complicated. Different enemies will spawn depending on when you kill the ones on screen, and it's not obvious which choice is the best long term. It basically comes down to guess and check. Fortunately the RTA times are already very good, so provide a good baseline. The present TAS also improves on Memory's WIP, with every area except 1-1 and 1-3 (which are tied) seeing at least a few frames improvement.
Here is a console verification video:

feos: Even though I improved one part of this run by a little bit, the rest of the run would need to be resynced, which may take a while and may also lose more time than I saved. No interest in doing this was shown by other people, and the author may not do it soon, so I think I can just accept this run for now, because overall it is faster (or equal) than the existing WIP in every section, aside from this Baxter fight.
Zinfidel: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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EZGames69
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The system ID has been changed but can you remember to set the GBC flag to false whenever you make dmgcgb movies created in gbhawk?
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Post subject: Re: #7222: Alyosha's GB Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan in 11:50.56
Memory
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Submission text wrote:
The present TAS also improves on Memory's WIP, with every area except 1-1 and 1-3 (which are tied) seeing at least a few frames improvement.
Out of curiosity, do you have a table of improvements (preferably with proper frame rules displayed)? I'm curious to see how much I missed. Also nice work getting a TAS done of this. It's a rather annoying game to squeeze frames out of.
[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
Alyosha
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EZGames69 wrote:
The system ID has been changed but can you remember to set the GBC flag to false whenever you make dmgcgb movies created in gbhawk?
Hmm, I thought these type of issues were resolved some time ago. I'll look into it.
Memory wrote:
Submission text wrote:
The present TAS also improves on Memory's WIP, with every area except 1-1 and 1-3 (which are tied) seeing at least a few frames improvement.
Out of curiosity, do you have a table of improvements (preferably with proper frame rules displayed)? I'm curious to see how much I missed. Also nice work getting a TAS done of this. It's a rather annoying game to squeeze frames out of.
Not sure what proper frame rules you mean, but this table is timed from start of one section to start of next: 1-1 2022 2022 0 1-2 2449 2416 -33 1-3 2304 2304 0 1-4 2928 2904 -14 2-1 3013 3007 -6 2-2 3138 3129 -9 3-1 3742 3722 -20 4-1 4067 4002 -65 4-2 3128 2115 -13
Memory
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iirc I was timing to something that operated on a framerule of 4? I forget, been a while
[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
Alyosha
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Memory wrote:
iirc I was timing to something that operated on a framerule of 4? I forget, been a while
I sometimes got improvements of only one or two frames if I remember right (I don't actually know how this game works, I just iterated over the levels a bunch a times.)
Memory
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I think I timed to whatever the RTA players used for auto splitting.
[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
Challenger
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Great work optimizing this game. That was surprising, considering how lag requires a lot of patience and testing.
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CoolHandMike
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Going with a Meh. While this is a good example of TAS playing the levels and bosses all feel very samey. Also the game is excessively slow and laggy.
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I played the hell out of this game back in the day. I was able to beat the game without losing a turtle. Shredder is so predictable, I would beat him without taking damage. I have no idea how you beat Krang so fast, though!
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Why is the Baxter fight 18 frames longer?
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.
Alyosha
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feos wrote:
Why is the Baxter fight 18 frames longer?
Not sure (I just assumed bosses were always hit on the first frame possible and never bothered checking.) Probably lag, but this is already the best fight I could get while trying to hit all the projectiles to reduce lag,
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10 frames faster Baxter. The rest of the movie desyncs tho so I trimmed it. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/74959448847256187
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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So I guess resyncing in this game is not really a thing with this amount of changing lag?
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.
Alyosha
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feos wrote:
So I guess resyncing in this game is not really a thing with this amount of changing lag?
In past iterations, level 5 has worked out ok, but level 4 will probably need a lot of work. I haven't had a chance to look at this yet, and might not for a while, I'll gladly add a co-author if someone can fix it up with feos' improved fight.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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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. ---- [4544] GB Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan by Alyosha in 11:50.56