Posts for Aaron_Haynes

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Posted: 4/18/2006 2:56 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
It is, the last WIP finishes the game, but two or three levels have some noticable rough spots that I was hoping to go back and fix before submitting. I have no idea how complicated hex editing is, though, so I'll decide what to do when I take a look at it. One way or another I'd like to tweak and perfect this, even if it means redoing the run (apart from the Puppy Love levels, I wouldn't mind, it was a lot of fun).
Posted: 4/18/2006 1:53 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Sorry, I'm still around, I just haven't had much time to really sit down and hammer this out. School's been killing me. I may have a chance sometime this week, though.
Posted: 4/1/2006 1:38 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
A custom track full of speed-boosting ramps might make a really fun concept speedrun, of the "just how badly can we break this game" variety. Great stuff.
Posted: 3/15/2006 11:58 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Purely for entertainment. It's skippable, but it's also a pretty hard room to navigate quickly, so I did it because I thought it'd be fun to watch. Also because EWJ2 fans will know about it and might want to see it.
Posted: 3/15/2006 5:20 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Finished! http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2rough.smv I'm going to go back and hexedit it to redo Blind Sally and Flyin' King before I submit it as I mentioned, and See Jim Run has a moment where I pause before a jump by accident that I'll go back and fix, but other than that this is the complete run. Oh, and the movie end is in a weird spot because I skipped past the last cow image out of habit, I'll fix that too. Comes out to be 41:08 with 148105 frames and 9132 rerecords. A few things of note: In Udderly Abducted there's a few spots where I jump/whip for seemingly no reason, it's to stop the UFOs from lifting the cow so I can pick it back up. And in the fight with Flamin' Yawn at the end of Level Ate it might look like I missed, but I actually went through it a couple of times to be sure of the number of shots needed to kill him, so I'm still connecting. I tried to avoid taking damage where I could, but I'm a little inconsistent on where I shoot for best time and where I try to make it look better by avoiding it. Level Ate especially is a little weird about this with the eggs on the frier. Let me know what you think, the full submission should be ready pretty soon.
Posted: 3/14/2006 1:29 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Thanks for the comments, everyone. atro city: I've actually used frameadvance for the whole movie, it's just insanely difficult to optimize that level because the physics for the balloon are so retarded. It has a lot of natural resistance to you hitting it and a lot of times will simply go in the direction it feels like regardless of what you do. You basically have to wait for it to stop moving sometimes. I'll try out hex editing when the rest of the run is finished though. KDR: EWJ2 has a charming no-time-loss feature when you take damage in midair or on the rocket, so sometimes I'll simply take the hit without rerecording back to see if I can avoid it without losing frames. When I redo that level I'll see if I can avoid it more. I get down to about 25% health in Udderly Abducted simply because I'd have to drop the cow or seriously slow down to fight back, but for the most part it looks a lot more professional than Flyin' King did. Zer0: Blind Sally has a few rough spots, but those sheep-bubble enemies often fly directly in your path, are impossible to easily avoid, and slow you down tremendously when they attach to you. As an added bonuse they're ridiculously difficult to hit, and shooting while ascending slows you down. I did my best to optimize the paths I took, but sometimes I really couldn't figure out a fast one-frame way of killing them. The bumpers don't offer as many opportunities as you might think either. Will consider running through it again though. Udderly Abducted, Inflated Head, and ISO 9000 are all nearly frame-perfect since I actually started doing frame comparisons, and probably the most entertaining part of the run so far as far as I'm concerned. I'm really looking forward to the final level, since the whole idea is to speedrun it in the first place. :)
Posted: 3/11/2006 3:35 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Finished Udderly Abducted, Inflated Head, and ISO 9000 tonight. Saw that the next one was Puppy Love 3, so it could be a while before I work on this bastard again. Anyone check out my WIP file?
Posted: 3/8/2006 6:35 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Oh, and I took the Hard route on Villi People despite Easy probably being faster because, really, no amount of justification could make taking the easy route look good in a speedrun. ;)
Posted: 3/8/2006 6:32 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/WIPamhaynes-ewj2.smv First two levels I'm pretty pleased with, the two Puppy Loves are hard to make extremely interesting but I did my best (lots of diving, nearly missing, trying to make Jim do doubletakes and have him look half-incompetent while still not missing a puppy). Villi People could probably be done slightly better, and I'm really not sure about Flyin' King; the collision detection on that stupid balloon makes no sense whatsoever, so I went with the fastest route I was able to mange (lining it up to get hit by those rockets is ridiculously hard, especially near the end). I remember being able to send it flying to the end of the level before, so I may take another shot at this before submitting (but I'll need to read up on how to rerecord parts of the movie without losing what comes after). It ends about 1/3-halfway through Udderly Abducted.
Posted: 3/8/2006 5:19 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
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Gah. I think the last puppy-throw-out of Puppy Love Part II, Round 5 forces you to sacrifice one. I've been trying to save all of them for the past ten minutes and I'm starting to doubt it's possible. http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/ewj2puppylove2-5.smv
Posted: 2/7/2006 12:39 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Actually, I was thinking that would be the most fun to play/watch, since after struggling with it endlessly in normal playthroughs, we'll finally have a chance to see it done in like forty seconds. :)
Posted: 2/6/2006 6:50 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
That's what I was thinking. I remember playing it alright a long time ago, but even then I vaguely remember there being something flaky about it.
Posted: 2/6/2006 6:29 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
So you tried all the other emulators already?
Well, 9x, GENS, and ZSNES. It would barely even run on ZSNES for me, and almost always froze up on the first two levels. I think the sound was a little better, but still nowhere near SNES-quality. The reason I picked the SNES version, apart from simply preferring the platform over the Genesis, was that the Genesis version doesn't have a weapon-switch command, which could make things annoying in later levels. The better sound quality is nice, but it does weird graphical things with some levels, and doesn't look nearly as good. What did you mean by waiting for ZSNES to fix it?
Posted: 2/5/2006 8:07 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Was this all caused by that volume envelope height thing?
I don't think so. The rom itself seems to do a pretty poor job with the sound regardless of what settings I use. Increasing the buffer length helps a little, but not much, it still cuts out halfway through ABT and Lorenzo's Soil still completely dies not far in. Any regular runs I've done through the rom sound terrible as well. Lorenzo's Soil Y-Tapping: It seems to help with both the speed and timing of the level; tapping Y allows me to cancel the fire animation when changing firing directions and while jumping, and hits the individual dirt chunks at the moment when it's possible to do so. For small dirt-short areas it's essential, but for longer ones it may be possible to allow the animation to play normally; I haven't researched far enough to tell exactly how it works in a frame-specific sense. From what I can tell, chunks of dirt higher than the one at the edge aren't shootable for a few frames, so I pretty much just cancel and reshoot until they are. There could be faster paths than the one I used -- I tried a few different things and ultimately just went with the one that seemed to work best. Puppy Love on Difficult lasts almost six minutes for the full five rounds. I don't really have the patience for luck manipulation, so between that and the level-leaving animation I may end up with some extra time. Doing everything I can observe to save time, though. Up to Blind Sally/Villi People now (level 4). May be taking a break to finish a project for another community, but will check in with updates sometime in the near future. Thanks a ton for the comments, everyone. :)
Posted: 2/4/2006 10:26 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Thanks. :) The snot swing tends to not be incredibly useful for covering ground fast, as most of the areas you can use it require it to clear some pit or obstacle anyway. Apart from the last level, about all you can do is maximize your speed gain. And if you think that level's weird, wait until you see....well, pretty much any of the others. The first level is pretty much the only normal one.
Posted: 2/4/2006 6:45 AM
Post subject: Earthworm Jim 2
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Long time watcher, first time speedrunner here. Messed around with the first level of an EWJ2 speedrun in my friend's room after we watched a couple, and was surprised at how much fun it was. Now, after that practice run and two or three irritating desyncs that forced me to start over, I think I'm getting the hang of it. While watching M.T.'s EWJ video, I realized that EWJ2 is much more suited for speedrunning; Andy Asteroids are gone, no long force-scrolling segments like the one in Level 5, and the recurring Puppy Love levels are a good bit easier to watch (and I'm considering trying something fun like syncing the marshmallow swivels and dives to the music). Lorenzo's Soil offers a hugely cool viewing experience with the potential for shooting down just the dirt necessary to get by. Most of the levels, while utterly bizarre, don't put obvious boundaries on the speed of player, again with the exception of Puppy Love. So I've started my run on Difficult, and have the first two levels beat with a time of 4:27, 16006 frames and 1621 rerecords. Basically aiming for the fastest possible time, but I'm also wondering what you guys would like to see as far as some of the neat little bonus things in this game: i.e. the quiz show and memory game in Blind Sally and whether or not it's worth doing Totally Forked. It'll probably extend the total time by about three or four minutes, but it could make the video more entertaining; this is an insanely weird and imaginative game, and just flying past many of its charms and quirks might not be as much fun. Thoughts/preferences? I can upload the .smv as well if anyone wants to see what I've done so far. Edit: Actually, probably a good idea to just include it, since I'm so new here. http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2b.smv
Posted: 2/4/2006 3:53 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Seems to be working, at least so far. Will start experiencing cautious optimism upon reaching Puppy Love Part 1.
Posted: 2/4/2006 2:26 AM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
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Alright, thanks, I'll give it a shot. Snes9x has terrible sound quality on this comp anyway :P
Posted: 2/3/2006 9:47 PM
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Aaron_Haynes
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Joined: 2/3/2006
Posts: 69
Having severe problems trying to do an Earthworm Jim 2 speedrun. It consistently desyncs at a point in level 2 when I'm making a jump; using the workarounds only made the desync occur a little farther ahead. It's never once made it to the boss, which was the last thing I did before trying to view the movie a while back. http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2.smv Took another shot at it today, this time it doesn't even it make it past the first level (desyncs when jumping over the cat in the pond; I used frameadvance to have Jim jump at the precise moment he could make it without being knocked back, but one frame off and it ruins the entire run). http://www.lockntoad.com/homyguyz/amhaynes-ewj2b.smv These are my second and third speedrun attempts, respectively (the first accidentally got deleted, but it was basically practice anyway). EWJ2 is the only game I've tried to speedrun thus far, and having it desync so easily is kind of discouraging. :/
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