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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20098347936574494
new WIP up to level 4. Currently I am 6 seconds ahead of Aglar's complete game WIP.
I opted not to use rchokler's boss 2 start as I saved more frames by getting above him quicker at the end.
I thought I would save more frames in the first section of level 3 with the gas geysers, but it seems they are only marginally useful, and since they always shoot you to the left not useful in all cases.
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Cool thanks. I went back to to the descent after the frog and saved 12 frames with a different path, so that's already 20 frames better then my WIP, thanks for taking a second look!
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Oh thanks, I didn't know you had worked on this game. I will look into those things.
I can't seem to find your WIP though, can you provide a link?
EDIT:
1. ah ok I already worked that out, thanks.
2. working on it.
3. I'll wait and see what it looks like in your WIP.
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Ok, I looked everything over and from what I can tell, the Level 1 WIP from 5 years ago is already as good as it gets. So I combined it with an updated level 2 with better routing to the boss and got the current WIP.
It is about 4.5 seconds faster then Aglar's complete game WIP to this point, mainly due to the magic strats Randil used. For comparison, Aglar's WIP was already over 1 minute faster then the published run.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20042904239016310
I don't expect too much improvement from here on, maybe a few more seconds. The route is really straight forward after getting the infinite magic glitch.
Also, thelegendarymudkip will be teaming up with me to complete this run!
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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I certainly agree that the music saves this game from being a bore.
I don't plan to do all treasures Super robin hood or Linus Spacehead. I'll be focusing on Wizards and Warriors 2, and maybe Battletoads warpless after that.
And oh yeah, in case you didn't see it in Bag of Magic Food's post in the forum thread, here are 2 versions of the ridiculous back story Camerica included with boomerang kid, pretty weird stuff.
It's a little known fact but boomerangs don't actually return when you chuck them. They were invented by the Aborigines to train kangaroo's to jump on their back legs. The concept of using the boomerang as an aeronautic yo-yo is a confidence trick invented by Bob Smith.
"I bet that I can lob this bent stick and it will return to my hand," goads Bob to his victim, in the queue to the dunny outside the pub.
I should mention that the victim is usually in such a far state of inebriation, that he doesn't see the elastic string attached to the stick. He just marvels at the sight cries "blimin' Emma" and stumps up his forfeit.
Poor Boomerang Kid, so taken in by the ruse, he spent the entire day chucking New South Wales' entire boomerang collection every where trying to copy Bob. Now the Aborigines need them all back!
Now compare it to:
Boomerang Kid was lost by his parents on a camping trip to the outback. Luckily an Aboriginees tribe found him and saved him from being a Dingo's dinner. The Aboriginees raised him as one of their own and taught him the ways of survival in the outback.
Snapping Alligators, hungry Dingos and cute Koalas, Boomerang Kid learned about all the animals in the outback and studied their movements. He also learned to find his way around the treacherous terrain that was now his home.
Now that Boomerang Kid is older he wants to repay the Aboriginees, so when their boomerang store is raided he sets out to find them, vowing not to return until he has every single one!
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I have a small suggestion. I think it would be nice to have a visual indicator if a given game in the forum threads has a published run for that game or not. Even something simple like a checkmark. That way someone could scan the forums and see at a glance where open projects might be and how much work has been done.
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Its definitely not worth submitting. This is basically just me learning about the game for now. I even used the slower PAL version so in fact the movie would be longer (in terms of play time.)
If something were worth submitting it would be aglar's complete game WIP which is well over a minute faster. If I could make that kind of improvement I would have submitted it already. : )
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I noticed this game has a very old and obsolete submission. So I figured it would make a good short project before I try to find a bigger one.
It seems this project was abandoned several times in the past, let's see if it can be completed in time for the 10 year anniversary of the original publication. (Even though being obsoleted is not much of an anniversary gift.)
I would be happy to work as a team if anyone is interested : )
If it helps add support, here is a complete game WIP which is already a 10 second improvement over the existing submission. It syncs with the (E) ! Rom and on FCEUX 2.2.2.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19872286978671407
I know it is not as fast as Randil's level 1 WIP, but for now I stuck with the 'does not take damage' tag as in the original submission.
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As I search for a more interesting project, I decided I'd look at Boomerang kid.
I looked back at RChokler's WIP and re-synced it. It turns out there are 2 faster stage choices (so far.) I also did some other minor optimizations. So far I am a few seconds ahead. Well, after the menu anyway, somehow he was able to start game input about 100 frames earlier then me, which I'm guessing is emulator or ROM differences. This is on FCEUX 2.2.2 and the !p ROM.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19826986828362588
Also I noticed this from the submission of Robin Hood:
Dwedit wrote:
According to Bootgod's NesCartDB, the ROM with the CRC32 of B89888C9 is the correct dump, and it doesn't work correctly in FCEUX. The alternate dump rearranges the banks to work around emulation errors.
FCEUX seems to be emulating mapper 232 just plain wrong. Writing 10 to 9000 should select outer bank 02, but it selects outer bank 01 instead.
edit: checked the code, it intentionally has a hack to work around bad dumps, that should be taken out.
But I'm not really sure what the implications are. Quattro Adventure seems to be a rather rare case.
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Alright new WIP, got down to 4:57.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19629482226888684
NOTE: I tried using the [!] ROM but when I did it loaded boomerang kid instead of Robin hood, so... I think I will just stick with my current [!p] ROM for now.
I looked at the secrets again, and they are mapped also to 0661 and 0662, there doesn't seem to be room for another secret since 0662 starts at 'I'.
I also looked at the new enemy killing secret but it doesn't seem to impact anything higher in memory, which from what I can tell means it only effects the current room, even though I don't know exactly how.
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Oh, nice thanks for making that video!
The run continues to get shorter bit by bit I saved another 100 frames.
I also found a glitch that saves some lag, whereby you pick up a treasure one frame before getting hit by an enemy (in this case an arrow.) With enough actions on screen the damage animation of the hearts doesn't occur, its helpful only once but stops a lot of lag.
EDIT: I finished the key map above. If there is another warp similar to 'C' then it is the fourth bit in 064A. I also found a new 'hidden key' (XX, the 3rd bit of 0642) but as yet I don't know what it does. It is located in the same room as 'F' near the bottom of the chains. Actually, it is activated when you kill the red enemy near where the 'F' path opens up. Although I can't yet determine why this one enemy triggers this bit or what effect it has.
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Well I can't seem to find the perfect [!] ROM, I guess I fail at the internet.
But in the mean time I got down to just under 5 minutes thanks to some better use of damage and hitting a platform timing.
WIP V2:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19519483698146179
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Oh so that is what that 'p' means, ok I will get the right ROM.
I tried looking over the secrets and how they are mapped. I found one that was way out of the others range:
064X
:::: 7 : 6 : 5 : 4 : 3 : 2 : 1 : 0
0 :: 00 00 01 02 02 03 04 05
1 :: 07 07 06 06 06 08 09 10
2 :: 10 11 XX 13 13 14 12 15
3 :: 16 17 18 20 20 21 21 19
4 :: 19 22 23 23 24 24 25 25
5 :: J 26 27 26 29 29 30 30
6 :: 32 32 33 40 34 34 31 35
7 :: 35 39 39 37 37 38 38 36
8 :: E 15 12 G F 28 28 Q
9 :: P A B D O N L M
A :: K C I ? 0 0 0 0
So far that J is the only one I found so low in the memory.
Normal keys start at 0640, but clearly there are only 40 of them. I noticed some of them effect 2 bits, so might have to look at it a bit more closely, maybe more secrets need to be found? Normal keys seem to be scattered throughout all the addresses.
I will complete this list to see if any secrets should still remain.
It seems that secret H does not effect any of the flags in these addresses, it could be dealt with differently
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Ahhh ok thanks I get the idea now.
Well with some fairly obvious optimizing so far I am all the way down to 5:13 using the same route.
With the reset added in should be down to 5:10
hmmmm wonder if I can find another 10 seconds to get below 5 minutes...
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Ok I got a WIP together of the entire game. This was a fun game to TAS, short, action filled, and visually nice.
It was much faster then I thought it would be, under 5:30.
Of course, most of the credit goes to klmz and Bag of Food for finding all the relevant tricks.
Now I will go back and optimize, any suggestions are welcome, this is a first pass.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19470000730123155
Oh yeah, one thing I don't get, Bag of Food mentioned something about 'inserting a reset' to skip the intro screen. I downloaded klmz's run and it worked but I can't figure out how to recreate it. Can someone more knowledgeable point me in the right direction?
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I looked over my whole run again and came up with another 5 seconds worth of savings (mostly due to going the right direction in level 6.)
Also doing the ending correctly.
Hmmm if I had one more decent trick I could get under 24 minutes.
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
I'm referring to the bit around 13:50 in Plex's encode. You take the long way around some containers instead of taking the path between them.
OTL
Ahh good catch, I completely overlooked that when I changed the route, I guess I watched it too many times.
Please CANCEL this submission. Maybe I'll take another look at it.
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Ahhh my mistake ending it wrong sorry about that. Will fix it when I get the chance.
Lets see...
The boxes in the long hallway in level 6 can't actually be destroyed (assuming you mean with soldier's bomb) so you can't go straight through them.
The soldier's bullets only stay on screen as long as he is on screen, so i don't think its possible to actually open the cell doors any quicker by switching to him.
I think I would need to at least destroy the top robot arm to get the switch as fast as possible.... Surely my next run will have no autoscrollers.
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Samsara wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
I think that message was added by whoever made the rom, as I've seen the live run didn't have it.
What's the filename of the ROM you're using? Is it a perfect dump ([!] at the end of the filename)? If the ROM was altered, it might be rejected just because of that.
Hmmm... I looked around and didn't see one with a [!]
But I did double check and the live run didn't have the first screen (only the start screen) so maybe i was just mistaken.
Also I saved 100+ frames so far optimizing, glad I looked over it again.
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SoulCal wrote:
Good job on the ninja boss getting him to fall in a hole you created. That's quite a bit of time saved from just that.
I also find it amusing that they have a notice at the beginning of the game saying that this game is prohibited from public display...I guess they didn't expect something like youtube or twitch to exist back in 1990. :p
Thanks for giving me the idea, I honestly didn't consider it.
I think I'll give the run one more complete look before submitting it.
I think that message was added by whoever made the rom, as I've seen the live run didn't have it.
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feos wrote:
I asked, because that game interested me, I tried to make maps for it (but this thread has a better version of them anyway), then I wanted to do reversing for how unknown things work, and also noticed Bag already figured them out. But if you have a question regarding game's behavior, post right away. I'll dig into anything that's not known yet.
Cool thanks. Yeah I noticed there was a lot of available data but somehow no complete TAS. Seems like a fun one to run so I think I'll give it a try.
