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--Cancelled because possible improvements brought to light in feedback have prompted me to run through it again.--
Here's a run of Conquest of the Crystal Palace, a fun and quite difficult NES game. In this game, Prince Farron and his dog Zap must take back the Crystal Palace from the usurper Zaras. Graphically it's pretty advanced for the system, and there are countless opportunities to be hit, so I thought a run of this game would be interesting. This movie was made with FCE Ultra 0.98.15 at double the normal window size (1x). All other settings are default.
Some might recall I submitted a bad attempt at TASing this game a couple of years ago. When I made that attempt, I didn't really understand the purpose of TAS and played at full speed. I tried much harder this time and improved by nearly four minutes.
My aim was to complete the game as quickly as possible. This movie frequently takes damage to save time. In this game, if the player lands on the upper right side of an enemy, they are launched forward slightly. I use this boost to walk through obstacles I could not otherwise avoid (I would be knocked backward by damage) and a few times to get onto a platform I could not otherwise have reached with the same jump. Technically, I could jump on nearly every enemy in the game to get this boost, with only health as the limit, but it would only save a few frames each time and make the movie look bad, so I don't do this.
The hero's dog can be used as a platform; I take advantage of this to avoid waiting for some moving platforms and to climb a couple of staircases more quickly. This would be close to impossbile to do on console as I do in the movie, because during Zap's initial jump the player can only land on the dog for one frame. Whenever I do wait for a moving platform in the movie, I had tried the dog trick and it either did not save time or took longer than just taking the platform.
Some notes(times are approximate, I got them from a FCEU-generated avi):
  • 0:05 - I have to wait for the annoying text to scroll twice in order to select the jump crystal, which makes the game go much quicker for obvious reasons.
  • 1:00 - It was really difficult even with frame advance to jump through this waterfall without taking damage. I could go just as fast by getting hit, but this is more impressive.
  • 2:30 - I get hit and ignore lag here because the girl has to be avoided. If you touch her, you enter the shop, which takes an enormous emount of time.
  • 3:15 - Keep in mind that these snowball-looking things (I think they're supposed to be spirits) damage you on contact and have to be avoided.
  • 3:24 - I wait until here to recall the dog becuase it's the first point at which I can do so without wasting time, but perhaps I should have done it earlier anyway to conserve the dog's health.
  • I don't use the dog trick while going up the stairs near the end of level 2 because the dog gets stuck in the walls if you attempt to summon him here.
  • Level 4 - I collect several invincibility items here. I'm not just being lazy, being invincible is much faster than any other way.
  • 10:30, 10:38 - This area is normally very laggy, so I take the time to kill some enemies to keep things running as well as possible.
  • 12:00 - I allow myself to be hit because the spiked ceiling is normally an instant kill.
  • I don't jump down quite as soon as I can after beating the penultimate boss because doing so gets the hero lodged in the bottom of the final boss arena, causing death.
  • I call the dog at the end because it makes the ending look a little better. The fact that it delivers a hit to the boss is a nice bonus, though. This doesn't cost any time.

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Posted: 8/16/2006 6:22 PM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #1159: tim333's NES Conquest of the Crystal Palace in 13:17.28
Posted: 8/16/2006 7:54 PM
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anubis
Joined: 5/29/2006
Posts: 138
I've never played this game before, but it looks like a good game choice to me -- except for the final boss :p - he just takes way too long to kill. Your run of it was okay, but it looked to me like it could still be improved. There were times that it looked like killing some of the enemies would have been quicker than suffering the lag. There are also places where it looks like you took damage when it could have been avoided and would have been quicker. Also, some of your attacks seem to miss. If I could vote I'd be leaning between meh and no. Great game choice, but it looks improvable to me.
Posted: 8/16/2006 7:58 PM
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KDR_11k
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
I don't think constant damage boosting makes a movie look bad. Optimizing which enemies to hit for the health to last for as many boosts as possible would add strategy as well.
Posted: 8/16/2006 8:13 PM
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tim333
Joined: 6/9/2004
Posts: 17
anubis wrote:
There were times that it looked like killing some of the enemies would have been quicker than suffering the lag. There are also places where it looks like you took damage when it could have been avoided and would have been quicker. Also, some of your attacks seem to miss.
I don't think there are any places I took damage where it could have been avoided and been quicker. Every time I had to take damage I spent several dozen rerecords testing frame by frame whether a jump could get me past it. As for the missed attacks, are you referring to the enemy dog/soldier you run into twice in the game? They have wide hitboxes and I think I managed to tag them every time. You're right about the lag, though. Level 3 really slows down in some spots. About the constant damage boosting, isn't the point of these movies to watch the game played as if by a perfect player? Doing that just makes it no longer look like playing to me.
Posted: 8/16/2006 8:31 PM
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anubis
Joined: 5/29/2006
Posts: 138
tim333 wrote:
I don't think there are any places I took damage where it could have been avoided and been quicker. Every time I had to take damage I spent several dozen rerecords testing frame by frame whether a jump could get me past it. As for the missed attacks, are you referring to the enemy dog/soldier you run into twice in the game? They have wide hitboxes and I think I managed to tag them every time.
The main place that it looked like taking damage was slower was when you got hit by the lava stuff falling in the latter half of the movie. Getting hit pushed you backwards requiring you to jump across again (albeit with invincibility). I haven't tested it, but it seems like waiting for the break in the lava would be quicker. During the final boss battle there was one point where you hit the boss 4 times in one cycle instead of 3 - does that last hit get registered? I am viewing this without volume, so I'm just going on the fact that the boss doesn't flash on your 4th swing.
Posted: 8/16/2006 8:41 PM
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tim333
Joined: 6/9/2004
Posts: 17
You can't get through the gaps in that lava, I tried. The only thing I could have done besides getting hit would be to stand there and wait for all four lava flows to go by. The final boss can register only three hits every time it opens. If I did four, I messed up.
Posted: 8/16/2006 8:51 PM
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anubis
Joined: 5/29/2006
Posts: 138
Alrighty - I guess I'll trust you ;) You do swing 4 times at the final boss one time - quick fix though since it's at the end of the movie. I also think that more damage boosting would be good. There are plenty of movies on this site that use it - it doesn't look unprofessional because you can tell that it's being used to boost you forward. The goal of the run is 'fastest time possible' and it 'takes damage to save time' - If you are going to take some damage to save time, might as well take it whenever it will save time - IMO.
Posted: 8/16/2006 9:08 PM
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Twisted_Eye
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Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 636
Location: Seattle, WA
Pretty good game to pick and a decent attempt at a movie, but it really did seem quite improvable. Damage boosting is clearly faster than just walking, so using it much more often would be a good idea. It can be done in ways that don't look amateurish; the ways that you DID use it in the movie were excellent for this sort of thing, though you should try to work it out that taking damage should never send you back to the left; if you need the invulnerability, try to hit something else just previously so you can boost to the right AND be able to get through the lava flows, for example. Also, lag could really use looking into; the one point in the movie that you did, though, you literally stopped everything just to kill a couple seconds. Not cool. How does summoning the dog work? Could have just called out the dog to beat up those skeletons? I know earlier in the movie the dog was able to beat up some things, so it would've been a good idea to use the dog to wipe out lag in several points. A couple of the boss battles looked great, but some improvable. Too much time where the boss was vulnerable. When you have that fireball power, especially, you should watch one of the top notch Megaman videos to learn how to use your distance weapon to make sure that you're hitting that little brain-ball at the very first frame possible each time. You did an alright job overall, for sure, and it was a good game choice, so I'm gonna have to give a 'meh.' And I don't remember seeing him hit the guy four times at the end, but I do remember seeing the dog hitting him and it was much faster, would it be possible to use the dog to do extra damage each round? Heck, would it even be possible to voluntarily touch the boss and take damage before he opens his mouth so that when you're attacking the brain-ball you have the invulnerability so that you can avoid the fireballs it shoots and get in that fourth shot each time?
Posted: 8/17/2006 7:37 AM
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Randil
Skilled player (1828)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Allright, I just finished watching this movie, and I have some comments. I would like to start with saying that this was an overall average run, but with several things that can be improved. I'm voting Meh on this, since the game looked suited for TASing. I'll basically just repeat what Twisted Eye said, but I'll give some comments anyway. :) Basically, I agree with everthing that Twisted Eye said in his post. But I will give some in-depth comments about what I think: About damageboosting: I did some tests, and it turned out that damageboosting saves 16 frames compared to walking! 16 frames is 0,267 seconds, which means that after 4 damageboosts, you have saved more than one second. And I second what Twisted Eye said, if you are to take damage, make sure that you are pushed to the right when getting hit. Also note that taking damage doesn't make your run look sloppy, taking damage is actually something creative, and forces you to plan on how to use up your HP in the most efficient way. In the first stage, it looked like you could practically use up all your HP on damageboosts, but on level 2, it seemed like you could need some HP on the boss in order to beat him faster. Perhaps that boss can be beaten relativily fast withour taking damage too... Anyway, you should plan more on how to use your HP in the best way. I'm guessing that several seconds, at least 10-15 seconds can be saved by optimizing damageboosting. My other concern was all the lag. There were some places with serious amounts of lag. I suggest that you avoid this by killing of at least some of the enemies on the screen, say with the jump attack, as it doesn't slow you down. And as Twisted Eye said, perhaps the dog could do some of the job for you? There were some places with serious amounts of lag, so bad that perhaps you could even save time by stopping for a while and kill of the enemies, if you can't kill them on the run. Last, the boss battles looked like they could be handled a little faster, especially the first boss. Make sure you always hit them on the first frame possible. You should read the Boss Fighting Guide if you haven't done so yet. Anyway, I hope you make an improved run of this game, with these things in mind. It might be a good idea to post WIPs in the forum, so that people can give feedback on your progress. Good luck! :)
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Posted: 8/17/2006 4:32 PM
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tim333
Joined: 6/9/2004
Posts: 17
OK, you guys have convinced me that this run is a lot more improvable than I thought it was when I submitted it. I'll go ahead and cancel this submission and work on a re-run. I'll post a WIP in the NES forum when I've got the first level done.
Posted: 8/17/2006 7:12 PM
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Randil
Skilled player (1828)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Allright, good luck! :) I'll take a look at that WIP when you have it ready, and give som feedback on it then.
My own page on this site.