*bump* Here's the first Corneria run.
Nrg and Vatchern pointed out some "minor" (well, a minor thing's pretty much major in this community.. bah!) details I forgot, but I'll fix that soon enough.
Here is the movie so far!
Input is greatly appreciated. =)
1. Was it absolutely necessary to waste ~2 minutes watching the opening cutscenes and playing around on the titlescreen?
2. The run desynchs near the end of the level - just before the boss, you start colliding with enemies for no good reason, then ALL of your shots miss the boss, and finally you get killed.
* Quietust, QMT Productions
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
It desynced for me too, same place. I also think the opening cutscene should be skipped. Otherwise, it looked pretty nice, though I have a feeling it could have been even better.
I did not get a desynch, although I was using a hacked rom.
I agree about skipping the opening cutscene and the messing around on the title screen. Leaving in level openings are fine in my opinion, though I may change my mind if you do go through with playing through the game 4 times. There is only so many times you can watch the checking of the ships at the start before you go crazy.
I restarted my run again, skipped the intro this time (sorry for those who were bored by it), and have gained about 40+ more hits, which I'm quite proud of. This run so far takes no damage (well, I hit a tree, but no damage) so here it is!
Hopefully it won't desync anymore.. orz
Edit: Re-linked my movie so it's about 20+ frames faster. Thanks to Atma and Quietust for providing a much needed autofire button.
Nice Corneria run. No desynchs, and no mistakes (that I could see, at any rate).
In your final movie version, please skip the pre-flight briefing and the pre-flight dialog (both can and *should* be skipped).
Hmm, please watch ALL the videos here first before you start your TAS: http://www.superplayers.de/other/sf64/ !!
You’ve lost about 60-70 hits. Dimi’s record(without emulator) is ~300 hits at Corneria normal I think. You’ve missed ALL hidden enemy groups which you can make appear by flying through broken buildings or gates. You never knew about that? You lost some +hits from shooting enemy groups, the first time for example are the last enemy group in the water… you got Hit+4, should be Hit+5. Same for the narrow passage where you enter Corneria city… a group of 5 enemies and you just got 9 hits out of them and so on… Shoot in the ground or somewhere near the roboter and you’ll get some Hit+1. 6x Hit+1 from one roboter is possible, maybe more with frame advance. Don’t ask me why you get more and more Hit+1 there, watch a video of Solar and you’ll be completely confused. The game is buggy, there are some places where you can simply get some hidden Hit+1 just by shooting into the ground or a wall! Ah and before entering the waterfall throw a bomb in the very last moment to your left side, you’ll get at least 4 more hits or so.
That’s what I can remember out of my head, please watch Dimi’s and Darkplayer’s individual level videos first AND Dimi’s 2508 hits run because he’s playing on normal there and got a decent score of 294 hits for Corneria for example.
Sorry guys, I am just to busy to do a run myself now :/. But if something is unclear after watching the videos just ask and I’ll try to explain!
The idea of playing through the game 4 times, hmm I don’t think that somebody is really interested to watch it 4 times, that would be over 3 hours.
Can’t you just get all medals on normal while recording from the first reset BUT start your real run after that on expert mode while still recording but capturing the AVI just after you’ve beaten normal? Okay, that way we don’t have a perfect Mupen64 movie, …but who want to watch through the first 3 times on normal on Mupen64(even with 1000% speed that takes a looong time to skip) before he/she can finally watch the real high score run on expert mode!?
So just save your recording with savegame after beating normal and you could do a high score run or just individual level runs and just capture the necessary things to AVI-format.
N64 TAS simply need slightly other rules. Just think of most of the N64 racing games where you need to get access to the better cars/machines or harder tracks first before you can do a good looking TAS movie for every track.
Thanks for the information Burning, but to be honest, I watched Dimi's videos several times before I started my TAS to know what to do, and what goals to aim for. However, I only watched individual levels and not the entire playthrough, which is why I missed the gates and didn't blast the environment more often. I would've never realized that the gates really had a purpose.
This is, (although not entirely pleasant since I thought I did well) a surprise and an eye-opener hopefully providing me with a goal to work towards. The power of emulation can fix Dimi's run so that I can get at least 300+ on Corneria.
To clarify something for you, the robots can be hit several times more after they're hit since their arms and head are destroyed (and thus, you can pass through them) but their legs are not, so that's what the charged laser blasts hit, and that's where the extra +1s come from.
Thanks again for the help Burning, it's greatly appreciated.
Hm but the hidden enemies are also seen in his 314 hits run on expert mode, but okay....here is a list of scores that Dimi believe to be humanly possible, so try to beat them :D :
Corneria: 340 hits on expert
Meteo: 540 hits on expert
Fortuna: 135 hits on normal/expert
Sector X: 350 hits on normal/expert
Titania: 355 hits on expert
Bolse: 400 hits on normal/expert
Katina: 370 hits on normal/expert
Solar: 280 hits on normal/expert
MacBeth: 370 hits on expert (route to Area 6: 285 hits)
Sector Y: 390 hits on normal/expert
Aquas: 290 hits on expert
Zoness: 480 hits on expert
Sector Z: 160 hits on normal/expert
Area 6: 660 hits on expert
Venom: 360 hits on expert (route from Area 6: 290 hits)
Just a bit of an update since it's been a little more than a week of no activity.
I've redone the third run (yet again -_-) because I forgot to record, wasting about 3 minutes of effort and 500~ rerecords. I'm currently about 9+ hits ahead of Dimi's 2508 playthrough, and hope to break 310 on Corneria. I'm a little past where Falco is saved [by you] and I've destroyed the four turrets.
The problem is though, is that I'm not sure how Dimi spams laser charges so fast. I can do it moderately so (my first walkbot spam was relatively good) but my later ones against the walkbot proved to be very bad. I just managed to squeeze out one more hit than he did. Apparently, the Arwing isn't capable of shooting two charged laser blasts, so I'm forced to wait for the first one to hit before I can shoot my second charged shot. This definitely slowed me down and reduced my spamming to about 2-4 per walkbot with brakes.
My only problems now are several things:
1. How much can you kill with a bomb before the waterfall? The video shows four, but I'm pretty sure it's possible to get more than that.
2. Whilst in the waterfall, what's the optimal route for kills? (My previous run stalled them so I could start taking them out easier by shooting my charged laser blasts at the environment [ie mountains] and at Falco's arwing. However, Dimi plays this differently so I need to re-watch it several times so I can see what might be better.)
3. The tree thingies. There's 6 of them, but taking them all out before they go back into the ground seems a bit difficult, even with an emulator. I can only hope that prefiring it will do the trick.
With all this, I can hopefully break 310 on Corneria, which beats Dimi's playthrough of it by almost 15 hits. I'm sure I can optimize this run a little bit more by spamming the walkbots more, but that's probably the only optimization that can be done for Corneria. I've killed everything so far and gotten hit bonuses for most of them. Some enemies had to be shot down by regular lasers because I didn't have enough time to charge up, shoot a blast, and get bonuses for it. That, or they just weren't far enough for laser blasts to "detonate" near them.
I'll post my completed run when I finish it, which should be in about... 9 hours or so because I'm at school right now.
Edit: Forgot something.
Burning Death wrote:
The idea of playing through the game 4 times, hmm I don’t think that somebody is really interested to watch it 4 times, that would be over 3 hours.
Can’t you just get all medals on normal while recording from the first reset BUT start your real run after that on expert mode while still recording but capturing the AVI just after you’ve beaten normal? Okay, that way we don’t have a perfect Mupen64 movie, …but who want to watch through the first 3 times on normal on Mupen64(even with 1000% speed that takes a looong time to skip) before he/she can finally watch the real high score run on expert mode!?
So just save your recording with savegame after beating normal and you could do a high score run or just individual level runs and just capture the necessary things to AVI-format.
I can't do this, because Starfox doesn't save my game to the memorypak, so when I load it manually, no data is saved and all my medals for worlds are gone. One of the rules state that movie must start from the "power-on" state. Because of this, the only way for this movie to be published is if I record the whole thing. And the sad thing is, this movie might not even be published because TA runs on this are easier to reproduce than say, Mario 64.
Nice to hear you're still doing a run :D.
Here is a Corneria Normal video from DarkPlayer: http://www.superplayers.de/other/sf64/darkplayer/sf64_corneria_295_normal.wmv . Watch out for the improved strat at 1:04 in the video, can't remember if you got all extra hits there in your movie or not.
I've also uploaded a slightly improved Katina video(still way off from maximum) and I am currently uploading a new Area 6 video, both done by DarkPlayer.
It's just a matter of practice and quick fingers to do quick charged shots ;) . Try 7-8 hits for the 1st walkbot and 2-3 hits for the 2nd walkbot before the water.
6 hits are doable with a bomb before the waterfall, maybe more?
About the 4 playthroughs idea:
Well, you should know that Bisqwit will only host non-time attack runs if they are something special and very entertaining to watch for everyone who like games. So, I would guess a 3h run including 4 times through the game wouldn't fit into that.
Not too bad because I would like to host your videos on my site which is popular to the SF64 fans, though :)!
I knew that it's currently not possible to record a movie from a savegame. Again, my idea was to start a movie from reset, now get all 15 medals (normally without re-records) just to unlock expert mode. Now, while STILL recording your movie you start to do your 'real' re-recording movie and just forget about the first 3 times through the game which will not be shown in the fnal AVI version. If you save your movie+savestate after you've unlocked expert mode you could resume from the beginning of expert mode everytime you want and could also easily do some individual runs. I hope that explanation is easier to understand now, hard to explain but I hope you got it now !?
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
That was among the craziest things I've ever seen! I used to play this game a LOT (!) but I never knew that many kills where possible on the first planet alone. I got 160ish something on console and thought that was pretty good ;) I can't wait for the TAS of this.
I knew that it's currently not possible to record a movie from a savegame. Again, my idea was to start a movie from reset, now get all 15 medals (normally without re-records) just to unlock expert mode. Now, while STILL recording your movie you start to do your 'real' re-recording movie and just forget about the first 3 times through the game which will not be shown in the fnal AVI version.
If the first 3 runthroughs are done not just to unlock things, but also to be good and entertaining, that doesn't prevent an AVI of just the last run from being made. I don't see why a movie that plays through a game multiple times (out of necessity) can't be split into multiple AVIs.
Also, I've been wanting to add from-SRAM support and the ability to record reset for a while now, but (before that happens) there is still already a way to make a partial run starting with expert mode unlocked. Basically, unlock expert mode (and back up the SRAM/eeprom file at this point), then reset the game and start a from-snapshot movie on the first frame. The movie will behave exactly as the from-SRAM one would, and later when support for from-SRAM recording is implemented, the movie file can be hex-edited to start from that SRAM you saved instead of from snapshot.
Thanks for the tip Burning Death! I always had to shoot down the fast fighter from that zooms to the left, but I'll redo (*sob*) my run and add that in. I'm also trying out if I can take out the second enemy trigger (the one with the broken building before the checkpoint and the walkbots) before they come out by firing a blast there, but I've tried a lot and it doesn't seem possible. I managed to do it for the ones after the checkpoint (it took me a LOT of tries!) but I think it's almost possible to get full hit bonuses on everything in Corneria. I can break 310 DEFINITELY now, but it'll take me a long time to polish this run so it's perfect.
My only problems now is mainly the bomb before the waterfall and the birds after it. I'm not sure what order to take them out in (one of my previous runs relied on Falco's arwing which I shot to take down two firebirds near him) but there's too many birds and not enough of them go near the ground. I'm also worried about the trees, but with practice I can probably get all six before they're back in the ground. Oh, and the walkbots of course, but spamming it is hard enough as it is, so I'll just aim to get one more than what Dimi/DarkPlayer got.
So with new hopes and yet another improved run, I might actually be able to break 315 on Corneria. It'll be great if I could. =)
Kanpai! ^^
By the way, according to http://www.geocities.com/n64highscores/StarFox64.html, the records are:
Corneria - 332 (!)
Meteo - 526
Fortuna - 128
Sector X - 344
Titania - 336
Bolse - 390
Sector Y - 379
Katina - 369
Solar - 260
Macbeth - 359
Aquas - 280
Zoness - 461
Sector Z - 151
Area 6 - 630
Venom - 347
Of course, most of these are probably impossible on normal mode, but still remember that this is the maximum so far.
Yeah, I've posted some scores before which Dimi, the SF64 Champion, thinks to be possible/MAX for each planet ;).
Remember that this Mark Johnson guy from the N64 Highscore site is 99% believed to be a liar from the top players, not only in SF64. Why the site admin doesn't ban him or ask for proof?... We all don't know :/.
Corneria on expert mode has 14 more enemies (hard route), so there is a maximum of 28 more possible hits.
qqwref: Most of those scores you've posted (and I've seen these before too) are most likely impossible to reach, or are false. Having seem Dimi and DarkPlayer's ability on Corneria with 295, (and me playing through these levels), I'm fairly confident that Corneria is almost impossible for Mark to get 332. This will require (if on normal mode) a score of -at least- 304 in order to get 332 on expert since Burning Death has told me there's 14 extra enemies, which counts for a total of +28 possible hits, and 304+28=332. =)
However, 304 on corneria is hard. Very, VERY hard. My first few runs have all been restarted, but 304 on Corneria includes them having incredibly perfect accuracy, perfect manuvering with the Arwing, and VERY good spamming abilities. I can probably get close to 310 or maybe even break it if I'm lucky enough, but I'm very confident that Mark Johnson is indeed lying about his scores.
I would like video proof to confirm his "skills" if he really is legit. Almost 10 extra hits is very hard to pull off, even for me on an emulator.
I will post my Corneria run once I finish it, as it's my 6th revision on it and over 5000 rerecords put into only 1/3rd of the first level.
Very close to finishing my Corneria run now, I just need help on the waterfall part because I can't manage more than 3 hits with a bomb.
Edit: I can only manage 3. Anything higher doesn't seem likely even after trying to reproduce what DarkPlayer and Dimi did.
Edit #2: I got 3. I give up >< I've explored the enemy spawn a bit, but I don't think 4 is possible..?
At this rate (and if it's possible), I'll kill all 18 enemies after the waterfall and get all the bonuses, which will leave me with 304, and a grand total of 315 (+11 from boss) which is -TWENTY- more than DarkPlayer's video of 295!!! (Sorry, I'm just excited that I would actually get so much. Didn't think I'd break 300 by much.)
Done! This is sort of a "test" run because I aimed for 315, but I can't obtain that without a high bomb kill before the waterfall, so this is what I can do so far.
So without ado, here is the Corneria run! I would like to add a few notes to possible questions:
1. Why do you fire charged shots?
The point system in Starfox is counted by hits, and you obtain hit bonuses when you have enemies indirectly with a charged laser blast. If you fire a locked-on one, you will get 1 hit less if they're in an enemy group. I fire unlocked-charged laser blasts to maximize my score.
2. You hit trees sometimes, doesn't that count as damage?
Not necessarily. In fact, I hit trees on purpose sometimes (like to counter my barrel roll after I activate the gate enemy trigger.) Also, trees don't actually make arwings take damage. I've tried running through 10 of them, but no damage was ever taken off on my health gauge.
3. Why do you spam those walkbot thingies with laser blasts?
Upon destruction, these walkbots don't entirely blow up. Their top does, but not the legs. The legs still count as part of an enemy, so I spam it for extra +1 Hits.
4. You hit an enemy with a laser blast in the waterfall part! (Or some other mistake during that period)
I'm aware of this, and this run is just to be a "test" run since it's not the final version.
If you have any other questions, please ask and I'll try my best to explain.
great Corneria run, Vidar
you even used some tricks i haven't known yet ^^
i also tried to make a corneria run with mupen64 and i reached 323 hits
(i think a perfect score would be 328 on normal mode)
http://www.savefile.com/files.php?fid=2407504
(i hope the link works)
