This is a TAS of a GBA game "Elevator Action - Old & New", which was only sold in Japan and never made it to Europe and USA. This is my first tool assisted speedrun. The Youtube video shown on the left is just a Stage 1 preview (because I can't do the 2 step verification). You can download the .bk2 file to see the entire speedrun. I may not be very fast, but at least I tried. I use Berry as my character because the stats say she is fast, which is good for speedrunning, and can jump high, high that i just have to use timing to dodge the bullets with it. The only downside, is that she has low health, so I have to use them wisely, otherwise, I die which slows my progress more. I use savestates, rewind, and slowdowns in this game.
Darkman425: Input file replaced with one that truncates 6429 frames of unnecessary input at the end of the file to better represent the TAS time of the submission.
I do have some history with this game, mostly from the fact that I've given this out as part of a mystery race so I have an idea of what it should take to optimally finish the game quickly. The problem with this submission is that there's a lot of suboptimal play and obvious mistakes throughout. The major ones that were easily spotted was a menuing mistake for selecting one of the levels and a number of late game levels where it seemed like you didn't have a preplanned route and did a lot of unnecessary backtracking through the level.
I wanted to test this game myself so I made an independent input that completes Stages 1 & 2 which ended up 4663 frames ahead of this submission. Here's a few things I did that helped out a lot:
I reduced a lot of unnecessary jumping if there was a door or escalator that needed to be reached so I don't get stuck in the air.
I manipulated elevator movements to adjust their cycles when possible, either to make sure they're available after going back to it or out of the way when I need to get through.
I ignore most enemies if I don't need to wait since only the zombie vomit and robots have contact damage.
Shooting down lights gives temporary invulnerability and causes enemies to ignore you for a short time, which is mainly helpful with stopping guards from noticing the player.
Even with my testing that isn't even optimal since Acmlm independently made an even faster input of the same segment through the use of more aggressive damage boosting, better routing thanks to the damage boosting, and not having doors used by enemies block the way.
I have a few suggestions of what you can do to improve your future submissions:
Be sure to understand the game enough, either by playing the game yourself or studying other people's playthroughs, to have at least a rough outline of what to look for when completing the game quickly. Making a map or writing down notes cuts down on potential routing errors immensely.
There's a lot of other tools in BizHawk beyond the basic save state/rewind/slowdown. TAStudio is the most obvious one where you can view a piano roll of inputs on every frame, which makes making adjustments a lot easier and makes it easier to make inputs on the first frame possible.
Even without TAStudio, there's also the ever helpful emulation pause and frame advance hotkey inputs that also allow you to make precisely timed inputs.
If there are any available, study other people's inputs for the same game to see exactly how they approached a level and maybe find ways to optimize further from there.
If you're unsure about if your work is optimal to the level you like, be sure to ask the community for feedback, either on TASVideos forum or on the TASVideos Discord.
I have to reject this submission on optimization issues. However, don't be discouraged by this rejection. We all had to start somewhere with making TASes and I believe anyone willing to learn and improve can make a great TAS. I hope to see you improve your skills!
The run looks like fun. faerie9987, can you say more about the game and the optimization? What is the goal in each level? What do the different NPCs do (security guards and secret agents)? It looks like you need to open certain doors to collect pages and then get to the bottom floor—how did you decide the route to visit the necessary doors? How do you decide when to take damage to save time? What do the bullet and grenade items do, and do you have to do anything to conserve items?
The goal is to enter every red door (3 per area, up to 5 in late stages) then reach the exit, there's 8 stages with 4 areas each.
Any door can be entered (for a longer time) to hide from enemies, blue doors have random powerups (which last until you die, and everything resets after stage clear) that can be manipulated by waiting:
- Burger: +1 life (also refilled on area clear)
- Bottle(?): +1 max life, no refill
- Bullet: +20 shots
- Rifle: faster gun with 99 shots (separate)
- Watch: +10 timer
- Grenade +1 (drop/roll one on the floor, explodes after 3 seconds with a half screen wide hitbox that also hits you)
- Sunglasses: disguise as enemy for a limited time or until you take damage, enemies ignore you
The guards don't attack you but call an alert on sight so agents come out of doors (who then try to shoot you), eventually later stages introduce more enemy types who seem to take more hits or block the way (?). You can also shoot the lights so enemies don't see you for a while, but they're already harmless most of the time.
Optimization seems to be mostly about cutting elevator cycles (waiting) as much as possible and taking fall damage (from 1 full floor, any higher kills you) where it helps the most, jumping can be abused slightly too.
I got curious after watching this and tried it a bit myself, it's a fun run but really can be optimized a lot more:
First 2 stages in 5:51 (1:22 ahead of this submission, saved 20 seconds in 2-4 alone)
Link to video
