(Link to video)

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Luck manipulation
  • Glitch abuse
  • Wrong Warps

Comments

Here's an improved Journey To Silius TAS. I managed to save 4603 frames (roughly 74 seconds) thanks to the wrong warps which were discovered by BadBrakes and Chambers_N has made some videos on them which helped me greatly.

Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 5

These stages remain unchanged, I tried to improve them but it wasn't worth the hassle, those stages are solid already.

Stage 3 & Stage 4

Here's where all the time saves are. Around 5 years ago it was discovered that you could trick the game into thinking you went past a certain screen, thus triggering a checkpoint. By making the player walk very slowly at the end of an elevator you can make the current screen value (017E) increment if the X micro frame value (0031) is greater than zero, for each increment the X micro frame value will decrement. Using this trick and some damage boosts to get killed right after the manipulation I was able to save roughly 75 seconds.

Stage 5's First Boss

Due to the player placement right after the second wrong warp I had to use some extra ammo to beat the last enemy before stage 4's boss fight. Which meant that the game would automatically switch me back to the default weapon. So I had to lose 100 frames there.

Useful memory addresses

  • 0506 - X Position (Cam) ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 0500 - X Position ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 0501 - X Position (Sub) ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 0507 - Y Position (Cam) ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 0504 - X-Speed ; Signed 1 bit
  • 001F - Boss HP ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 00B0 - Player HP ; Unsigned 1 bit
  • 00B1 - Player Ammo ; Unsigned 1 bit

Thanks to:

  • Zakem66 for his TAS which this is based off, other than not having the wrong warps it is perfect.
  • BadBrakes for first reporting on this discovery.
  • Chambers_N for the videos he's made about this trick.

feos: Claiming for judging.

EZGames69: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7639: Riyan & Zakem66's NES Journey to Silius in 07:36.27
MrTASer
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Wow ! What a good mix of platforming and shooting... YES Vote
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I remember TASing this. I never expected 74 seconds saved to be even possible. Nice work! Any other ideas for potential saves? No way to warp in stage 2?
Riyan
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jlun2 wrote:
I remember TASing this. I never expected 74 seconds saved to be even possible. Nice work! Any other ideas for potential saves? No way to warp in stage 2?
Thing is you only get three lives, so even if it was possible you wouldn't save as much time compared to the next two stages.
Challenger
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These new skips are insane! Great work ;)
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This is a great looking NES TAS and a very impressive improvement, "yes" vote!
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J.Y
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Wow! What an awesome submission. A yes vote from me!
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Very nice, great to see an improvement that uses the latest discoveries in this game.
Riyan wrote:
Thing is you only get three lives, so even if it was possible you wouldn't save as much time compared to the next two stages.
I assume there is a reason the RTA-runs only death warp in stages 3 and 4. However, since there are continues in this game, it's not obvious how the number of lives would matter for this decision. It seems like the time it would take e.g. to fall into a pit at the beginning of stage 3 and force a game over could be weighed up by additional skips. Are there no suitable places for death warps in stages 1 and 2? Finally, I'd like to add a few comments about this trick. I think it's correct that Chambers was the person who figured out the game mechanics behind the skips and worked on finding setups for doing them in RTA-runs. However, I believe 'badbrakes' was the first* person to report getting a death warp (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/journey_to_silius_21.html# ). I'm not familiar with the history between badbrakes' initial discovery and Chambers finding the explanation and setups, but I'm pretty sure it was a "known unknown" among speedrunners of the game, so Chambers knew what he was looking for. Not that this diminishes Chambers' work in any way, but thought it was still worth mentioning. * To my understanding, the requirements for this trick are quite specific, but it's still a trick you can stumble upon by accident when playing normally (I think this is what badbrakes did). So it's not too unlikely to imagine that others have done it in the past too, just never reporting it publically.
Riyan
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ktwo wrote:
Very nice, great to see an improvement that uses the latest discoveries in this game.
Riyan wrote:
Thing is you only get three lives, so even if it was possible you wouldn't save as much time compared to the next two stages.
I assume there is a reason the RTA-runs only death warp in stages 3 and 4. However, since there are continues in this game, it's not obvious how the number of lives would matter for this decision. It seems like the time it would take e.g. to fall into a pit at the beginning of stage 3 and force a game over could be weighed up by additional skips. Are there no suitable places for death warps in stages 1 and 2? Finally, I'd like to add a few comments about this trick. I think it's correct that Chambers was the person who figured out the game mechanics behind the skips and worked on finding setups for doing them in RTA-runs. However, I believe 'badbrakes' was the first* person to report getting a death warp (https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/journey_to_silius_21.html# ). I'm not familiar with the history between badbrakes' initial discovery and Chambers finding the explanation and setups, but I'm pretty sure it was a "known unknown" among speedrunners of the game, so Chambers knew what he was looking for. Not that this diminishes Chambers' work in any way, but thought it was still worth mentioning. * To my understanding, the requirements for this trick are quite specific, but it's still a trick you can stumble upon by accident when playing normally (I think this is what badbrakes did). So it's not too unlikely to imagine that others have done it in the past too, just never reporting it publically.
I did some testing and it seems like this trick only works when the screen scrolls to the left, which it never does in the first two stages. Also thanks for clarifying who discovered the trick. I'll go change that in the notes.
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Very nice improvement, seeing the deathwarps was very cool. Yes vote.
aiqiyou
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I didn't expect this game to improve so much. I was deeply impressed and checked it in the emulator. I saved 2 lag in stage 1, but unable to synchronize in boss battle. I haven't done much research. I guess it is caused by the remnants of the enemy coordinate subpixels or bullet coordinate subpixels. https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637970092690059628
Riyan
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aiqiyou wrote:
I didn't expect this game to improve so much. I was deeply impressed and checked it in the emulator. I saved 2 lag in stage 1, but unable to synchronize in boss battle. I haven't done much research. I guess it is caused by the remnants of the enemy coordinate subpixels or bullet coordinate subpixels. https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637970092690059628
I tried to improve stage 1 as well but gave up for the same reason. And then there's the frame perfect trick during the boss battle which I couldn't get after saving some frames.
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aiqiyou wrote:
I didn't expect this game to improve so much. I was deeply impressed and checked it in the emulator. I saved 2 lag in stage 1, but unable to synchronize in boss battle. I haven't done much research. I guess it is caused by the remnants of the enemy coordinate subpixels or bullet coordinate subpixels. https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637970092690059628
Were you planning to look for further improvements or is this run safe to judge?
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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. ---- [4826] NES Journey to Silius by Riyan & Zakem66 in 07:36.27