Known to be one of the hardest games ever made (especially if you don't use a guide), I thought it would make a good movie. I think that I was wrong. I made the movie, but I'm not sure if its interesting enough.
www.geocities.com/highsummonerbob/deadlytowers.zip (put in url, don't click)
What do you think?
There was something that I could have done instead to make it faster. Instead of purchasing the hyper boots, I could have gotten two more orange scrolls, that let me warp directly to the flame, so I could have done that in two more places othere than the last tower. I wasn't sure what was faster.
When I tried it, it got past two of the guard enemies, went a bit further to a cave with different music, and when it exits that room the character gets stuck in a wall.
Well, then it's not a good rom but an overdump. Anyway, the movie looks good even if the game was nominated as the worst nes game ever at Seanbaby's site XD.
I've decided to improve the run of Deadly Towers. This is the biggest TAS I have ever tried (I did a short excitebike video a while ago and I've played around in some other games), but I'm getting far enough that I think I'll finish it.
I'm using FCEU so I already have a big advantage over the Famtasia run in terms of saving frames. But I think there are some major changes to the route that would help.
First, I'm getting a bunch of Orange Scrolls, which teleport you to the Bell. This saves a ton of time instead of walking down each tower (about 1 min per tower). However, getting the money for the scrolls is tricky.
Using the normal sword, I can average about 4 gold a second in certain places. The Orange Scroll costs 100 gold, so it's about 25 seconds of money-building to get one. Since they save about 1 minute each, it seems to be worth it. Also, a lot of gold can come from drops during the normal course of the game, and also from the Cup which I plan to get (worth 250 gold), so really it doesn't even cost 25 seconds per scroll.
Second, I don't think I will get the speed boots. I estimate they save less than 1 minute, but they cost 230 gold so I don't think it's worth it.
Finally, I'm only planning on getting the Dragon Sword. I'm not convinced the other items actually save any time in this sort of run. Maybe the Double Shot would help a bit, but I'm still not sure about this one. Also, I'm not grabbing any circle hearts, which boost your max HP (the previous video grabbed a few even though he never used the extra HP).
It takes BW 44 seconds to get those shoes...and it saves about 1 second even (at the most) per staircase on 8+8+9+8+9+6=48 of them. In his run, since he's going over each staircase twice, it definitely is worth it for him.
However, if you are using these scrolls to skip the down segment of the towers, this makes only 4 seconds gained (which is a rough estimate), and this money would probably be better spent on a scroll or two.
As far as other items, I don't even know what they do.
I'm excited that this run is being improved (and by quite a lot, from the sounds of it). Good luck!
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
So far, so good. I am about to enter the 3rd tower at 708. BW's movie entered the 3rd tower at 802 (going by the .avi) so that is about 54 seconds ahead! I have 5 orange scrolls going in, while he had one orange scroll and the speed boots. So, depending on exactly how you figure, that's probably another 2 minutes I will gain.
I agree, without scrolls the hyper boots are worth it. But I think getting the scrolls instead of boots will pay off. Each scroll is just 100 gold but saves 40-60 seconds.
I could get the boots too, but I'd have to raise 232 gold. That would take about 1 minute of (very boring) gold-building. But would they really save 1 minute over 5 towers? That's a tough call... maybe I will look into this more later, and compare the 3rd tower time with and without boots.
I decided against the double shot, since it takes really long to get. However, I will get the gauntlet (which makes your knives go faster) because it only takes about 10 seconds (judging by BW's movie) but will probably save that much against bosses, when you often have to make long-distance shots.
I could get the boots too, but I'd have to raise 232 gold. That would take about 1 minute of (very boring) gold-building. But would they really save 1 minute over 5 towers? That's a tough call... maybe I will look into this more later, and compare the 3rd tower time with and without boots.
BW's run gets the boots before the third tower, and so taking only half of the staircases I mentioned earlier, there's no way that it would save one minute - plus there's the time needed to actually get the boots, which is close to another minute.
You are ahead by 54 seconds, wow. This is about the same amount of time needed to get the speed boots, so that means that the time you took to get the money and buy the scrolls was pretty much gained back after only 2 towers (if you ingore the fact that you are also skipping the speed boots, which saves even more time). I would estimate even more than 2 minutes of improvement coming up, having five more towers to skip half of.
Any chance of posting your progress?
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
I'm almost done with the TAS, currently 1144 with 5k rerecords, with just 1.5 towers left and then the final boss. The final time should be around 14 minutes then.
I think the time could still be brought down more with some route tweaks. By being more aggressive with collecting gold at the beginning, I could cut down on the amount of gold-building I have to do later. There are definitely places where killing enemies and taking their gold would earn more than 4 gold/second, which is about the fastest I can get while gold-building. Plus, after comparing with the current video, it looks like the speed boots would be worth it if I get them at the beginning, so they help with all 7 towers. (The estimate of 1 second saved per staircase is actually really accurate!) Too bad I could only figure this stuff out in retrospect )
I'll submit this run when I'm done since it's such a big improvement, but I'll consider working on a second version eventually. About WIPs, I could post them on my personal webpage, but then I'd lose my anonymity ) Any suggestions for quick free webspace?
Try Webpost if you just need 1MB of space. I used to use it all the time as an image host, and actually, I still do on occasion.
I look forward to seeing this Deadly Towers run. I liked the last one quite a bit.
This looks very very good. The gold-building is (obviously) repetitive, but it's not too bad and definitely better than the repetitiveness found walking down each tower. Besides the route, this is also improving on damage taken to save time (and using health as a resource), and just cutting corners closer with more precise walking.
Luke wrote:
Plus, after comparing with the current video, it looks like the speed boots would be worth it if I get them at the beginning, so they help with all 7 towers. (The estimate of 1 second saved per staircase is actually really accurate!)
That seems doubtful to me, but you know this game better than I obviously. It would take 232/4 = 58 seconds to get enough gold, and about 10(?) to do the extra walking for one more gold-building trip (from the store and back). 7 towers + 1 final level = 66 sets of stairs. It would be a very close call (and would also make a lot more of the run gold-building).
Anyway, I'll be looking for this submission shortly :)
Edit: I also like how you gained all sorts of health to lose it on the bat boss to be closer when he dies to grab the bell (I think this is why you did it).
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
6 year old bump. This game is extremely improvable and I am sort of surprised it hasn't been. Here is a version that beats the game in 9:43 seconds which is over 5 minutes faster than the published version. Comments imply that it is a real time run but I am almost guarenteed it is a TAS because it seems pretty optimized.
Link to video
The issue with this game is that it is sort of hard to TAS due to the large number of aggressive enemies especially on the stairs.
I started working on this and in addition to the new route which can save a ton of time I found that some of the movements are suboptimal as well.
After I finish Gargoyle's Quest II I am thinking about taking up this project but if someone else wants to give it a try, and is ready for a bit of a challenge, I encourage you to try.
It's a TAS, notice the name of the channel that uploaded it.
Also, BUMP because this is a huge improvement. I was just looking at this because dragondarch was doing runs of the game, and noticed how much faster it was than the run on the site.
There's definitely some extra craziness going on in the new video. The new route uses deathwarps a few times, beats Cold Killer twice (and no other Tower bosses!) and somehow enters the final sequence anyway.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
I decided to delve into NES games and give Deadly Towers a run for its money. I'm up to the Main Hallway with all the Towers, and appear to be about 3 1/2 seconds faster than the TAS linked from YouTube.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/882610455/Deadly%20Towers%20%28USA%29.bkm
Similar to the published run from Luke, I used a lot of damage boosts to get through the beginning. I also manipulated some hearts from the second mini boss to work toward restoring my HP and getting those boots in Cold Killer's Tower. All in all, I think I can can improve the YouTube TAS down to the sub-9:00 range.
P.S. LOVE using Bizhawk! Where has that rewind feature been my whole life? :D
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
How does that route work? I thought you had to kill all the tower bosses, but somehow you can still get to the final boss beating Cold Killer twice.
P.S. Another one of Luke's runs, Super Turrican for the NES, had a (probably) big improvement suggested in its discussion forum before it was published anyway. If you're looking for old NES runs, that's something to consider, and it's less of a crappy game than this one :-)
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically.
Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.)
Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html)
Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature!
Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
Cold Killer (1) stopped dead in his tracks. Around 16 seconds saved from the current record TAS, so far!
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1815012082/Deadly%20Towers%20%28USA%29.bkm
I definitely won't be death-warping to the beginning. Scaling back down the Tower, instead, should save at least 30 seconds. From there, I'm headed to Dungeon 8 for Cold Killer, part deax.
mklip2001 wrote:
How does that route work? I thought you had to kill all the tower bosses, but somehow you can still get to the final boss beating Cold Killer twice.
P.S. Another one of Luke's runs, Super Turrican for the NES, had a (probably) big improvement suggested in its discussion forum before it was published anyway. If you're looking for old NES runs, that's something to consider, and it's less of a crappy game than this one :-)
...I'm not sure, as of yet. I could've sworn I've seen that trick before somewhere online in the past. My best guess is some type of frame-dependent input that 'resets' the bell burning animation (it'd be great to have the movie file).
Does anyone know for sure?
I've never played Super Turrican before. I'll have to check out the run!
edit: After digging around in the YouTube comments, it appears that the author is playing the Japanese version of the game, Mashou. Apparently, he's able to glitch all seven bells into his inventory after defeating Cold Killer twice. Hmm... I may have to switch over to the Japanese ROM. Hopefully, I can splice most of my progress using taseditor (be even better if I can import the whole movie).
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
I ended up changing ROMs to Mashou and started back from beginning, making various improvements toward my previous WIP:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1075725983/Mashou%20%28Japan%29%20TAS%20WIP%201.1.bkm
121 frame improvement from my last stopping point. Overall, now about 18 seconds ahead!
edit: Bad news and better news. Bad news is that you MUST death warp in order for Cold Killer's bell to appear again (otherwise, he still appears, but no bell).
Better news is that I've figured out a route change that will cut the journey from the beginning of the game to the Main Hall (at least) IN HALF. This includes every subsequent journey, due to death warps.
(meh news is that I'll have to almost start over again. :p)
edit 2: MASSIVE time savings due to new route change in the beginning. Back to Main Hall 25 seconds faster than my prior best time. I'll post a new WIP once I've completed Cold Killer Tower 1 again.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
