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hanzou wrote:
When the timing is right and Leeper is on his way to the bottom you can move that block away and trap Don if you like, but technically you don't need to trap him (and for the sake of the TAS's entertainment I recommend we do not) since Lolo can safely hide out in half of the rightmost heart in the worst case. I also don't see what this has to do with Snakey reappearing since there is another emerald block there and you have plenty of time to move it onto Snakey's spot.
I finally managed this trick. Here was the problem: Emerald block used to block snakey = emerald block used to block medusa Emerald block used to block Don Medusa = emerald block used to block leeper In the time it takes to block Don Medusa, push the emerald block from snakey's old position to in front of medusa, grab that heart, and head for the exit, leeper's back and in your face. However, things got much simpler when I realized that there's another emerald block at the very end which you can push up 1/2 a square to block leeper from following you to the treasure chest. Now, you bring up the possibility of not blocking Don Medusa at all. I'll try that out now.
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Here's stage 4-3 done somewhat faster, more exactly 128 frames faster, thanks to hanzou's tips and some other changes I made: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/new4-3.zip
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http://www.samus.co.uk/cad/me2.fcm Good news: it worked. Bad news: it's a bajillion times slower. It's slower only because leeper was timed just about the worst possible way he could have been timed. If I could somehow optimize leeper, this level could be done a bajillion times faster.
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Maybe it's possible to go out and turn the leeper into an egg after you have picked up all the hearts, and after you have turned him into an egg you could perhaps time him to cover the statue. Although that would probably still be slower than my current strategy in my run. I hope you come up with something that's a bajillion times faster :)
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Yup Randil, that was exactly the trick. 8 seconds faster. This hasn't been frame-optimized, so maybe CAD you could refine this a bit? =) -hanzou
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http://www.samus.co.uk/cad/me3.fcm That saves 280 frames from the original movie. Is that any better than hanzou's movie? I can't tell.
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Randil wrote:
About 3-4... You are talking about exploiting rocky twice in your improvements-list, hanzou. I've played around with 3-4 a little while now, and I think that doing that is not possible, or at least very, very hard. You see, if you pass the center using the the rocky as a shield, he will immediately turn up and then turn right, after you have passed the statue. The only way to use him as a shield twice would be to on some way manipulate him to walk differently.
Well, yeah Rocky does turn around (due to hitting an emerald block) after you cross the divider in your latest demo. However, that demo uses an emerald block to cross the divider but it's also possible to use Rocky directly for that part in order to bring him along to the left side. Food has had this (the strategy of exploiting Rocky twice) in mind as well, although I can't say for sure it would be faster if we got it to work. -hanzou
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I got 5-4 248 frames faster: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload4/5-4.zip Comments are as usual very welcome. I think I'll leave 3-4 up to Bag then, there are many other levels I'd like to try out. I hope it turns out to be faster. And what is this "Rocky walks through Lolo" trick? You mention it on what can be improved on 6-4.
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Great job on 5-4! As for the Rocky glitch, Food explained this trick to me when we were talking on IRC about the game's bugs. If you push an emerald block horizontally against a wtwall and Rocky runs at you vertically, he'll wobble up and down through you as long as you can continue holding the sideways direction. Possibly you could use it to prevent Rocky from trapping you or quickly summon him to to help shield from some hazard like Don Medusa. Level 6-4 involves Rocky and a whole lot of emerald blocks, so it seems like the best candidate level to exploit the glitch. The glitch also works with pushing eggs, so 5-4 is a possibility although it doesn't seem likely given how fast your new strategy is. edit: Come to think of it, on level 6-4 if you exploit Don Medusa to grab the left two hearts and use Rocky to deal with the top Medusa, you can complete this level using just three (edit: two would be quite a challenge =) emerald blocks instead of five. Since it takes a few seconds to fetch each of those blocks, this would significantly speed up completion of the level. Too bad this makes it unlikely you'll find use for the glitch here. Here is a list of tricks in Lolo 2 which could be classified as true glitches: - Rocky walks through Lolo - Gol fire prevention (so far seen only on PROD) - Use egg + enemy to half-walk on water - Use egg + egg to sit on water (e.g. level 7-3) Probably only the first one, if any, could be applied at some point to save time on the regular 50 levels. -hanzou
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Here's a small update: I have saved 86 frames on 7-3 by pushing the egg into the river one more square downstream. Not much else to comment on this level. And about 6-4. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have done that stage now isong only three emerald blocks, and letting Rocky block Don Medusas fire. The bad news is that this actually turned out slower than my previous version. This was more like a testrun to see how it could be done, but let me know if you find something on this stage that can be done better. Here are the fcm's for 7-4 and 6-4: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload0/7-3_and_6-4.zip
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I didn't expect more than a half-second gain on 7-3, so 86 frames sounds great. As for 6-4, your movie is amazing! It must have been quite a challenge to leave the horizontal Don Medusa free running like that, and the funniest part was when Rocky started bashing him in. Anyway, the reason this path is much slower is that you've ended up having to wait for both Rocky and Don Medusa at various points. You should instead use an emerald block to trap Don on the left side as soon as you've picked up the heart at the mid-left of the screen. Once he's bouncing over on the left, the timing becomes convenient to quickly pick up the bottom-left heart. As for using Rocky, what I had in mind was that that he would help near the end as you have to pass the top Medusa three times. This could be faster than using a fourth emerald block, depending on whether Rocky is in the right spot as you approach the end of the level. Keep up the good work! -hanzou
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I've been playing around some more with 6-4, and I've got it 690 frames (11,5s) faster. Here: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload9/6-4_v2.zip
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hanzou wrote:
Here is a list of tricks in Lolo 2 which could be classified as true glitches: - Rocky walks through Lolo - Gol fire prevention (so far seen only on PROD) - Use egg + enemy to half-walk on water - Use egg + egg to sit on water (e.g. level 7-3) Probably only the first one, if any, could be applied at some point to save time on the regular 50 levels.
Isn't the "Medusa safe spot" from the previous games still there? Somebody should check. I'm pretty sure I used Rocky twice in 3-4 in the Famtasia movie I made once. If I get some more free time, I'll try to remake the 3-4 strategy.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Randil, excellent job on 6-4!
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Isn't the "Medusa safe spot" from the previous games still there? Somebody should check.
Bag of Magic Food in the Eggerland thread wrote:
I also noticed Baxter took advantage of a spot in the Adventures of Lolo levels where the Medusas don't kill you, but I couldn't find a spot like that in Eggerland. Oh well.
I have never seen anything like this in Lolo 2. How many such spots are known to exist in Lolo 1? And if not Eggerland, what other Lolo game has it? -hanzou
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I think it worked in Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu.
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I just thought of something for C-5. What if there was some crazy way to make leeper block the 2nd medusa statue, allowing you to kill snakey immediately when entering the room? Either there should be a way to lure him into that second part of the level, or to use your extra shot to egg him and push him to block the statue. I'll experiment around with this. If it doesn't work, I'll frame-perfect hanzou's technique and tell you how many frames it saves.
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Yoyo! I contacted Sivak Drac (creator of the hack Challenging Lolo) and he gave me tips on how to make that Lala graphics hack I've been wanting. Here's Baxter kicking butt with Lala on PROD. Lala defeats the great devil and rescues her boyfriend only to find him somewhat unusually dressed. Too bad I chose the Lolo 3 style of Lala's ribbon on her left (viewer's right) instead of the Lolo 2 ending style of it on the other side, because otherwise I actually could have prevented Lolo from looking so fruity.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I think it worked in Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu.
And now it seems this bug you're referring to doesn't really exist in Lolo 1, right? If not that or the original Eggerland, then it would have to be limited to Eggerland Meikyuu no Fukkatsu. As for 4matsy's trick, as shown in his screenshot below, I tried it as he described and indeed it works. For Lolo 2, I don't think the game has any Dons that are horizontally moving, guard a heart on the left, and aren't directly at the top or bottom of the screen. Also we probably wouldn't see the same quirk even if we tried patching our way to that situation because the Dons in Lolo 2 already have stricter shooting mechanics. -hanzou
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Hmm, that just might work, CtrlAltDestroy. It should save quite some time if it does. Anyway, good luck with C-5! Whatever technique you find to be the fastest, frameperfect it and post it here, it would be nice if you calculate how many frames faster it is, this way I don't have to do it. :)
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CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
I just thought of something for C-5. What if there was some crazy way to make leeper block the 2nd medusa statue,
Ingenious! I'm confident something like this could be very fast, but trying out all the timing combinations will be more challenging than what we were doing before. Good luck! =) This won't allow you to kill the Snakey immediately though. You still need to first use the egg to grab the top heart. What your idea will allow you to do later is to avoid waiting for Snakey to reappear, which as we've seen is the number #1 timewaster on many levels. The work that you're trying to parallelize (and hence the amount of potential time to save) while waiting for Snakey is that of fetching the Medusa-guarded heart and walking over to the point where Snakey will or will have appeared. You can use this as a guideline to judge what your break-even point would be. edit: With clever luring and proper use of that shot, you could grab the heart quickly and also use Leeper to obstruct Don Medusa, which would allow you to shoot Snakey away sooner. First things first though =), no benefit in killing the egg any earlier until we know if you can actually get everything done before it reappears. -hanzou
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I wonder what would happen (if this is even possible) if you blocked snakey's spawn point with an emerald box, and blocked his second spawn point with leeper (either asleep or in egg form) ... would snakey reappear next to the first medusa? O_o
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Here's 7-4 done 12 frames faster: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload3/7-4.zip As always, comments are very welcome! In your first post hanzou, you mention that this level could be improved. Was this what you meant, or did I miss something? EDIT: Here's 8-3 done 59 frames faster: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/8-3.zip
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CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
... would snakey reappear next to the first medusa? O_o
Probably not. Each level's auxiliary spawn spots are purposely set by the designers. They rarely design spawn points that the player has no chance of using, and once you've blocked all of them the enemy just gets destroyed. If you'd like to test this idea quickly, put in some cheat codes so you don't need to expend too much effort with careful timing to create this setup.
Randil wrote:
Here's 7-4 done 12 frames faster: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload3/7-4.zip Was this what you meant, or did I miss something?
Hey man, that zip file is empty! Either way, I'm pretty sure the improvement should be more than 12 frames. Take a look at this screenshot and see how it compares to what you're currently doing. -hanzou
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hanzou wrote:
Hey man, that zip file is empty!
Sorry about that, it's just that on the site that I upload my files you can only upload certain filetypes, and .fcm files are not allowed... therefor I have to zip them before uploading them, and sometimes I tend to umm, forget putting the fcm in the zipfile :) And yeah, I see what you mean now. That speeded up things a bit. Although it was actaully 5 frames faster to pick up the middle top heart before you pick up the bottom right heart. Even though a skeleton blocks your way a little if you pick up the middle top heart last (you'll notice this in this movie) it doesn't waste much time. If I pick up the lower right heart last, one of the skeletons will block my way once I've reached the chest, thus slowing me down a few frames. I could prevent the skeleton to block my path by blocking him with an emerald block, but moving the emerald block into place wastes some time, and I won't reach the top middle heart as fast as possible in that case. Umm, anyway, I found it faster to pick up the top middle heart last, a whole 5 frames faster! :) Oh yeah, the fcm. Here it is (the fcm is in the zip file now, I'm sure of it :) ) http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload3/7-4.zip EDIT: I forgot to tell you, this is 79 frames faster than in the full run. Umm, enjoy!
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Interesting! I never considered that enemies in the process of vaporizing could still get in the way of Lolo. Okay, well I tested a bit just now to try fixing this and I found a path that gets the bottom-right heart last, is faster, and yet still looks cooler. Bad part is that it's probably only a couple frames faster because even when half a square away the vaporizing skull still gets in the way! I'm sure there's a better solution. edit: Significantly better-looking and faster strategy that could maybe even be frame-optimized a little. Grab top-right heart last then do as shown in the pictures, saves about two squares of walking! -hanzou
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Well, I can't say I didn't try. http://www.samus.co.uk/cad/c5leeper.fcm Here's the result of testing out the "use leeper to block second statue" strategy. As you can see, everything seemed to time itself out pretty perfectly. However, this only saves 500-something frames from the original submission, so I think that hanzou's movie still beats this. :(