This is an improved run of Deadly Towers. This beats the previous Famtasia run by approximately 3:26. This game is somewhat Zelda-like, but notoriously difficult and considered poorly designed. However it makes for an interesting TAS.
To obtain this improvement, I revised the route. Right away, I build up enough gold (actually called Ludder in this game) to purchase two Orange Scrolls, which teleport you back to the Holy Flame. I then do two towers, picking up the Dragon Sword (for increased damage) and the Cup (worth 250 gold). The Orange Scrolls let me skip coming back down the towers, a huge timesaver. Then, I go back to the dungeon and purchase 5 more orange scrolls. I finish the 5 remaining towers, again using the scrolls to skip the walk down the towers. The only other item I get is the Gauntlet, which increases the speed of your knives. This makes it much easier to kill enemies quickly, and is especially helpful in boss fights, where long-distance shots are necessary.
Minor improvements include better health management, frame optimizations, and cutting corners closer (especially on ladders). There is a tremendous amount of luck manipulation in this game. Enemy movement and their drops are random, and randomness is affected by what buttons you push and when you push them. If you see me hesitate or miss with a knife, it is because I am manipulating luck. I tried to avoid missing with knives since it looks bad, but sometimes this was the only reasonable way to manipulate luck as needed.
I anticipate up to 30 seconds of improvement is possible by being more aggressive about grabbing gold early in the game, and buying the hyper boots at the beginning. I might attempt to make another run at some point in the future.
  • FCEU 0.98.13 nitsuja
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses death as a shortcut
  • Manipulates luck

Truncated: The powers that be seems to have agreed that in this case, accepting a submission which has known improvements is okay since
  1. it's a big improvement, and
  2. it obsoletes a Famtasia run.
Therefore, accepting this submission and putting it in queue for encoding.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #979: Luke's NES Deadly Towers (USA) in 15:20.27
adelikat
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I anticipate up to 30 seconds of improvement is possible
then why aren't you improving it?
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Then again, there have been cases (Nitsujas Kabuki run, FractalFusion's X2? run etc) where a submission been accepted even though the author stated that it could be improved by X seconds.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
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Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
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It's still annoying, though... It tends to ruin the movie before I even watch it.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
adelikat
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yeah what bag said. Doesn't make me want to watch it when you say its improvable before I even watch it. EDIT Angerfist: in most cases that it is published it is because the improvments are small. 30 sec in not a small margin on any standard.
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This movie looked very good in my opinion, so I'm voting Yes. A 3:26 improvement is really amazing... Great job for a first movie! :) I hope you take on version 2 of this run soon.
JXQ
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I think this looks great. Very well played. Personally I don't see how getting the speed boots will save you 30 seconds, no matter how aggressive you build your gold early. And to the naysaysers...what about the big movement on the site to improve Famtasia runs? This is definitely a substantial improvement over one of them. A possible estimated improvement due to a radical route change (as opposed to optimization in movements) shouldn't stop this from being published. Otherwise we wouldn't have seventeen thousand Dragon Warrior runs. I vote an emphatic yes.
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Wow guys, you are harsh, he did 3:26 faster than precendent run. He just finished the game, he wants a break before redoing that game I guess.
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Phil wrote:
Wow guys, you are harsh, he did 3:26 faster than precendent run. He just finished the game, he wants a break before redoing that game I guess.
Agreed in this case.
adelikat
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wow, I've been accused of being harsh by Phil :p 3:26 is a big improvement and I'm impressed by your work (and I did link to this from the famtasia challenge thread) It just urks me to read about how a run can be improved before I even watch. You are certainly not the only one to do it, but it just urks me every time someone does that. The problem is instead of watching the run for its great improvements, I am watching for the imperfections in it. That is a let down for me and certainly affects the way people view this run.
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JXQ
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I think it's a good policy myself. If you make a run and you let the possible improvements be known publicly, at least it's honest. There are probably many more movies submitted with improvements known by the author, but not mentioned because they don't want to jeopardize their chances of being published.
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well atleast he was honest about it being possible to improve it, some posters claim they have done it perfectly and then someone comes along and makes another run being much faster sometimes to newly found bugs and somtimes as stated by a radical route change edit: woo my first step towards not being a lurker..
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adelikat wrote:
You are certainly not the only one to do it, but it just urks me every time someone does that.
You are certainly not the only one to do it, but it also irks me when people misspell words like "irk" or "lose" or "staring" with "urk" or "loose" or "starring". (voting yes, anyway)
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Yes, that really urkels me too...
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Just watched this run and I like it. The game however is one of the most horrible games I've ever seen. I applaud you for making a big improvement over the previous run and for playing this run so well, dispite the game being as bad as it is. I'm voting yes on this, it's very well played. Good job! The only thing I liked about the game was the funny names they made for the bosses. "Cold Killer", "Death Bear", "Centipede" lol.
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...or "dispite" instead of "despite"... The game really makes me wonder why they didn't bother to have any kind of introduction or story developments during the game. They were obviously capable of it, as the ending text and scenes demonstrate. Maybe the rest of it wouldn't seem so horrible if it gave some motivation to beat it... probably not, though. later edit: And even if there's a nice introduction in the manual, not only do many people not read that, but... well, even Super Mario Bros. had more story development during the game than this does.
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Was it all in the manual?
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Yeah, it does bug me too that I know it's still improvable. The improvements are at the beginning of the run (getting more gold and buying boots), but I couldn't figure this out until I had nearly finished the run. It wasn't very clear how much time the boots would save, and I also didn't know ahead of time how fast I'd be able to get gold. Finding a good route for this run is pretty tricky since it's very non-linear! I admit 30 seconds is a bit optimistic for improvement, but that's why I said "up to" ) I think 10-20 seconds could come from getting the boots at the very beginning, and then maybe a little here and there from smaller optimizations. In particular, it's really hard to decide which bad guys are worth killing for their gold, but now with a decent run to compare to, it should be easier to figure out in the future. Anyway, I totally understand if you want to wait on publishing this. I just don't know when I'll have the time and motivation to do a version 2, so I thought I should submit this long-overdue improvement of a famtasia video.
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adelikat
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the 10-20 sec sounds a little more realistic. Whether the run gets published or not it accomplishes the more important goal. Now anyone wishing to do a run of this game doesn't have deal with famtasia ;)
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Ok, it's been 7 days since this was uploaded. Nobody has voted no, and 6 people have voted yes. Why has this not yet been published? (I'm not picking on him, but...) Sami's DKC movie's were published not 2 days after submission!
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Today, I judged the last movie submission from 2004. As I'm sure you've seen we have about one and half page of unjudged submissions in the Workbench forum. A week of waiting is nothing. Also, 6 yes votes isn't all that much, but it depends on the game. Since this is an improvement to an existing movie, it should be easier to judge, though.
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But what makes this hard to judge is that author already found a way to improve this by 10-30 seconds.
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The preferred course of action would of course be to cancel this and start making a new version.
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And now it is 7 people. It is an improvement and the previous version is Famtasia. Yes.
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I'm sure it's a nice movie, and without question better than the existing one, but I don't know... 10-30 seconds is quite significant. If I were the author, I would want to improve this before someone else does. (didnt vote because I haven't watched)