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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest | MinimumBananas% (glitchless) by Cetlan
  • Game description: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest is a 2D side-scrolling platformer in which the player controls either Diddy Kong or his childhood friend Dixie Kong through 52 varying levels over eight different worlds. The main objective of the game is to rescue Donkey Kong from King K. Rool.
  • Objective: complete the game with the least amount of bananas
  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8.0
  • Rom used: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest (USA) (En,Fr) (Rev 1).sfc
Important notes:
  • Game breaking glitches and glitches in general are avoided
  • Programming errors are avoided
  • Hits are taken to boost speed, get to places, skip bananas
  • 0 deaths
  • No saves and/or restarts
Reason for doing this movie I found a channel doing this challenge to complete the game with the least amount of bananas in DKC2, so I decided to make my first TAS based on this challenge to see how much I could optimize his strats and final result. Check his video out 👍
This TAS took me around five days to complete:

ikuyo: Claiming for judging.
ikuyo: First off, we apologize for the delay on judging this submission.
To the point, however, this submission has several problems. For starters, no definition of "glitchless" is provided for this game, and no definition exists within the larger DKC2 speedrunning community. As the author of this movie, you're expected to provide as much information and context for judges as possible.
Regardless, a look at this movie reveals several instances of suboptimal play, both in terms of gameplay execution and goal-related planning. With some research (DKC2 is one of the best documented speedgames out there, thanks to an active speedrunning community and several publications on this site among others), this movie can be greatly improved both in terms of overall movement and goal. Most critically, Kannon's Klaim can be beaten with one less banana by using a strategy similar to the one done in any% RTA runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4CGLNlu5g8
Rejecting for suboptimal play.

TASVideoAgent
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TheKDX7
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After observing the first two levels I noticed that some portions could be faster. Like climbing vines in the second level. Donkey Kong Country 2 and the other games in the series have achieved such a level of precision and have developed such techniques over the years that five days of TASing seems a bit short for such a game and objective. the category is interesting and I think that a lot of challenges like this should emerge at TASvideo in order to give a new freshness to the site but the optimization must be worked more. Meh vote
ikuyo
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For clarity's sake, what do you define as a glitch in this run? I ask this because in Kannon's Klaim, there's a well known Team Throw Super Jump that not only would have made the level faster, it would have saved you one banana by removing the need to enter one of the cannons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4CGLNlu5g8
Joined: 11/20/2007
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The concept is cool; I would also love to see a version that doesn't forego glitches. Right now I'm having a hard time judging how optimised it is. I enjoyed seeing the route being executed, but (and I could be wrong about this) it looks to me more like a LOTAD than a TAS. I notice that "aims for fastest time" isn't also one of the goals, so this may be intentional, but you specifically said "TAS" several times, so I'm left uncertain. I'm going to assume the intention was a speedrun, so I'm voting as such - "meh" for a combination of enjoyable route, but unenjoyable apparent optimisation level.
ikuyo
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Hi Cetlan, and welcome to TASVideos! I'll be reviewing your work today. For starters, I want to point out that while the goal of minimum banana collection is perfectly acceptable for Alternative, there are some complications with how the movie is defined, specifically when it comes to "Glitchless". Unlike DKC1, DKC2 doesn't have a definition for glitchless, since all major glitches can be plainly avoided by aiming for the warpless category, but your specific goal would benefit from warps and your movie actually uses them. Neither you nor the video you link (which is not linked properly on the embed) provide an adequate definition for glitchless for this category. We can easily rule out things like wrong warps, but stuff like Team Throw Super Jumps, which would be benefitial for this category in several levels, is arguable either way and in my opinion would contribute to the stated goal. The submission text lacks any info on this, and as the author we expect you to be as informative as possible, especially when making decisions not seen in prior work. More worringly however, this movie has serious optimization issues. One is immediately apparent in Pirate Panic: you don't have to grab all crates and barrels while rolling. They can be bypassed by releasing the Y button for a couple frames. This is a very well known technique, used in TAS and RTA runs alike. You're also forced to grab a barrel anyway, and you do to obtain Dixie, but you throw away the barrel in a slow manner. It's possible to throw the barrel offscreen in a way that removes the slow animation of the other Kong jumping towards you. In Mainbrace Mayhem, you miss many optimizations. For one, you only need to crouch for a total of two frames to avoid the first banana, as Diddy still has its lower hitbox until he fully finishes uncrouching. Two, you can cancel your roll into a team up, which greatly diminishes momentum and would eliminate the need to walk back to get to position for the first team throw. Third, you can actually use a strategy similar to the one seen in the 102% published movie and do your second Team Throw close to the letter K. With proper positioning, Dixie will land near the banana coin and then you can jump over the six bananas nearby without collecting any. (I tested all of this myself on a simple improvement movie, but due to unforseeable issues it was corrupted and I cannot recover it) There's a general lack of care in several parts, such as bonking into corners during Lockjaw's Locker, not jumping out of ropes which is much faster than climbing them, or even just not switching from Dixie to Diddy when applicable. I'm not sure how much research you did before committing to a submission, but i assure you, there's plenty more to do and learn for this. Under those conditions, I cannot recommend for a judge to accept this movie. I can see you put a decent amount of effort on the movie itself (judging by the amount of rerecords), so I believe this to be a lack of research. Don't be afraid to step in the shoulders of those before you! DKC2 has a large speedrunning community and several beautiful movies published on this site, which are under Creative Commons and you can download and use (with proper credit). Use them! Research your game as far as you can go, join communities that you think can help you, be curious and try things. You can do a lot better than this, and I'm looking forward to you doing so.
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