In my latest run, I died about three times and still managed to get 50. In fact, the only way I can pull of 48 minutes is if I don't get hit at all and play through the whole thing perfectly, which has only happened a couple of times. So yes, I'm confident that 48 is unbeatable, and unless I can pull of a 47 minute run any time soon, I'll just go ahead with that.
...unless Penev knows some good time saving strategies. I was going to ask him but then I forgot all about it, so if he's online tonight I'll try to remember.
just found another way to save 5-10 seconds in what I find to be the hardest level: Poison Pond. It's extremely risky though. Also, I found a way to get past the last mincer quickly without getting hit on purpose. So that's another few seconds.
unless Penev knows some good time saving strategies.
He should stop by this forum some time. I probably know some strategies he hasn't thought of as well. We may even come up with some new ones.
just found another way to save 5-10 seconds in what I find to be the hardest level: Poison Pond. It's extremely risky though. Also, I found a way to get past the last mincer quickly without getting hit on purpose. So that's another few seconds.
I know that, but I think the speed can be very much increased by doing a rerecordable time attack. But if he wants the speed for some kind of real competition, of course he should do it non-assisted.
I'm interested about how fast it's possible to make it though. It would also be interesting to see how fast it's possible to do the game by just running through it without getting 101% btw.
It would also be interesting to see how fast it's possible to do the game by just running through it without getting 101% btw.
the fastest route would be to use the warp glitch right after beating Jungle Hijinx. You may still have to use a few bonus rooms though, since some of them save time. Not as entertaning, but you're probably looking at something around 30%-40% completion finishing the game as fast as possible.
I know that, but I think the speed can be very much increased by doing a rerecordable time attack.
using rerecords, the time would be a couple of minutes faster than the legit run using the DKC timer.
Edit: Just did another run of the game and got 00:48 with three hits and zero deaths. My time just before Platform Perils was 00:43.
Hi, I see some familiar names here.
The 28 minutes on TG is either a typo (ie, 48), or uses the warp glitch (I see that it's already been mentioned here). With the warp glitch, you can beat K Rool in under 30 mintues, with about 25% total (you'd skip pretty much all bonuses, but there's at least one in the misty mine that seems to help).
For 46 minutes (ZSNESed, lots of saves), I did make use of the warp glitch. There's 3 places you can warp (three bends in the dotted road to mash the button... you must have only 1 kong though, so you have to kill off Donkey). One of them leads to the middle of orangutan gang, not far from the expresso crate. In a 101% run you would reach up to orangutan gang so that you create the dotted path, but not enter it - you enter it via the warp and start about half way, saving a fair bit of time.
Anything under 50 minutes without saves is pretty crazy, nice work! Admittedly, I learnt a few tricks from Snap's 50 minute run.. one was a barrel in Barrel Cannon Canyon that I didn't know about (skips all those up-down barrels near the zingers, maybe 10 seconds worth). The other two were the locations of Enguarge in one of the water levels, and Enguarge in Poison Pond as well (perhaps another 10 seconds each).
For extra tricks, hmm.. what Derek did was pretty much all you can do. Of course, with save states you can use a lot of extra risky roll jumps, especially on those trick trak levels, and Platform perils.
Michael has just directed me to a newer version of snes9x that can rerecord from save states, making it possible to make a video. I'll probably give that a shot; I'm a newbie when it comes to making any form of movies (be it VHS or computer), but hopefully I'll manage.
Michael has just directed me to a newer version of snes9x that can rerecord from save states, making it possible to make a video. I'll probably give that a shot
I'll be looking forward to it :). I had to plan out some shortcuts and tricks in my run get it under SnapDragon's 00:50, with time most notably saved in Oil Drum Alley and Platform Perils. I'll make a full list of them once my run is ready for download. I know now that with only EXTEREMELY precise movements it is possible to get 00:47 without saving. Thanks for your input Michael and Alex, I'll start recording on VHS for my final version now.
I got a :45, it's a smv file that's about 400k. I've watched it twice and it doesn't screw up anywhere (Michael said sometimes the button presses can mess up.. go out of sync or something).
What do I do with it?
I got a :45, it's a smv file that's about 400k. I've watched it twice and it doesn't screw up anywhere (Michael said sometimes the button presses can mess up.. go out of sync or something).
What do I do with it?
Well, you can submit it so we can view it as well. :)
Is anyone interested in competing with me in the DKC competition cartridge? I just downloaded the rom and tried it out and I got 2466 points on my first try without save states. I know it's not so great, but at least I didn't die at all.
Edit: I tried a second time and got 2855, but it could have been a lot better because I died twice.
Here are all the DKC roms that exist:
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.0) [!]
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.0) [f1]
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.0) [f1][t1]
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.0) [f2]
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.0) [h1]
Donkey Kong Country (E) (V1.1) [!]
Donkey Kong Country (U) (V1.0) [!]
Donkey Kong Country (U) (V1.1)
Donkey Kong Country (U) (V1.2) [!]
from my experience the PAL and NTSC have a few timing differences. In Barrel Cannon Canyon you can launch Diddy out of the horizontal Auto-Barrel much faster than in NTSC and make him move almost off screen. You can also getting a greater jump by bouncing off the enemies in PAL: in Bouncy Bonanza, after you finish the first bonus room, you can use the Kremling to launch yourself past the lone Zinger, you'll get hit trying the same thing on NTSC. Overall, I think a faster time can be pulled off in PAL.
Alex and I spent a few good hours on the nesvideos IRC channel discussing and planning this game, and determined that in order to get a sub-45 run we need to save another 20-25 seconds or so. One thing we've looked is finding more ways to abuse the start-select method.
Is that aside from the normal PAL/NTSC differences, or was the game's code changed to account for that difference (if imperfectly)?
I'm not sure what's causing the differences, but they are subtle. They seem to slightly affect the rolling and jumping timings.
I'm doing one on the NTSC version now and I've spotted a few differences already.. sometimes I _just_ can't get far enough from some bounces on certain enemies and have to stall for a bit.. not a big problem, but it just doesn't look as smooth.
It seems I'm also finding something different to do in almost every level. I wonder if it can possibly add up to 20 seconds overall.
The one I just finished for NTSC ended up being 43 minutes (around 43:50, to be more precise).
I'm not sure why.. there were some disadvantages to this version (NTSC v1.0 US) with several shortcuts that I couldn't do because diddy couldn't roll far enough (or just the timing of the platforms was different) - and they worked in the PAL v1.0 European version. I made up for most of those disadvantages with extra tricks in most of the other levels, but nowhere near 2 minutes worth. Must be something fishy with the rom/version itself, because both the duration and frame count seem larger than the 45-minute one (it's 57min vs 51min for length, and 207k vs 185k for frames).
(this run didn't use the warp glitch).
I predicted that ntsc would be a harder version to get a faster time, but this has got me baffled. Maybe the game timer is different in both versions? It could be that the PAL timer runs slower than on NTSC. I don't think the ntsc rom is bad, because I've done pure speedruns with it and my best time has still been 00:48 on emulator. Maybe in run we should stop the movie just before each Candy's savepoint to see how the times added up?
Candy Savepoints from PAL Version:
Kongo Jungle:
14% 0:04
Monkey Mines
23% 0:07
Vine Valley:
40% 0:14
Gorilla Glacier:
62% 0:23
Kremkroc Industries Inc.:
77% 0:30
Chimp Caverns:
97% 0:40
Gang-plank Galleon:
101% 0:45
