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Hi, Apo123!
This looks good to me, but I'm not familiar with the game, so I can't give much specific feedback. However, I noticed that wasting ammo seems to save time in the score tally screen after the level has ended. Maybe it looks bad to waste the ammo, though, and maybe the ammo is needed later.
Did you test avoiding the long fall by going right after the ladder and then walking left onto the elevators, instead of jumping immediately down to the left and getting stunned by the fall? The stun recovery time is quite long.
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Congratulations for finishing a big project, Samhain-Grim & Truncated! This is a nice run, even though the game progresses rather slow at times.
For me, the first ten minutes were average looking platforming, but the level design and monsters got quite interesting soon after the surprising upwards zip glitch. The best things seemed to happen somewhere in the middle section of the movie, the end part being more or less basic stuff again accompanied with longer boss fights. Overall, the entertainment value fluctuated steadily between 5 and 7, but the occasional glitches and funny level ending poses made me give it a 6.9 for entertainment. It looks very precisely played, so I'll give it a high technical rating.
Maybe I'll watch the spear guy version too, someday.
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Hey, here are some map leftovers from my test run. The green dots are the statues that need to be collected. The ending room is marked red. Colored squares represent doors.
Pyramid level 1
Pyramid level 2
I hope this helps somebody in the future.
Upthorn, what do you think about this game? I think it would fit your style.
Edit:
Here is the current best time for the first few screens: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/721083000/MWIV-WIP2.gmv
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upthorn wrote:
you or aqfaq.
Thanks for the compliment, upthorn! Unfortunately, my TAS activity is close to zero at the moment and it will probably remain so for some time. I have no ongoing TAS projects and my motivation is currently pointing to another direction. I'll be around here, but it is unlikely that I make any TASes in the near future.
The Ooze looks like a funny game, but I've never played it much.
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Highness wrote:
Is the concrete slabs actually speeding up the production in all facilities?
I suppose so. It's due to the better HP condition of the facility.
Highness wrote:
Also another thing I noticed which is mostly due to some random factor is that from the point when the credit hits 1000, the old run only takes 71 frames until the level completion animation takes place. While in my new test run it takes 277 frames from 1000 credits to the animation where the carryalls flies over the screen.
That is one of the many little details that require luck-manipulation. I believe the cursor movements affect it. Optimizing this would be a very suitable task for a bot. The bot would need to check when the level-end animation begins and what is the direction from where the carryalls enter the screen (because it takes them a different amount of time to fly past the screen depending on their flying direction).
Highness wrote:
I still ask the question if it's correct to make this run in a single segment, or do each level separatly by accessing it via passwords?
I'd say no for level passwords.
If you want to search RAM addresses for building/unit hitpoints, here is an easy way to do it. Let's say you want to search the hitpoints for your construction yard:
1. Look for the construction yard's maximum hitpoints ("shield values") from Ledmeister's guide.
2. Perform a search for that value ("800" in the case of the construction yard)
3. Damage the construction yard. There should be only few values that decrease. (Some of the addresses seem to fluctuate, so you want to monitor the one that is stable.)
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I suppose you haven't encountered any desynchs or sound problems at all? That's great.
Are you planning to make a full test run? That would be nice.
By the way, the old test run for the first level (linked also in the first post of this thread) is about 2000 frames faster. It can be improved further easily, because the selected-by-default concrete slab is redundantly re-selected from the construction yard.
It would be cool to have some luck-manipulation masters like DarkKobold and gia take a look at this game...
- When a starport is first placed on the battlefield, it will show a random number of units available, and each unit type will have a random price.
- Prices of units available at a starport will change every few minutes of Game Time. All unit prices will change simultaneously.
Due to good luck, the game actually ended 10 frames faster despite the input being only 3 frames faster.
I got curious and compared it to the current publication too: The AVI content of the latest record is 26 frames shorter. Not that it matters, since the movie obviously aims for the shortest input, but anyway, congratulations for being lucky, klmz!
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klmz wrote:
9 frames were saved apparently from nowhere.
To me it seemed that most (or all) of the improvements were due to you entering the wall a bit differently resulting in faster maneuvers when warping around. Maybe the last charge to the elevator was faster too? The method of movement is far from normal (the character never walks or runs in the movie), so I can believe it is hard to get it perfect.
Voting "yes" again.
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Amazingly well planned and executed run. Congratulations for finishing it, DaTeL237! Your TAS magic is far beyond the ordinary magic presented in the game.
Note: I made a savestate during playback and the movie desynched soon after loading the state. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend making a savestate at frame 126 000 and replaying the mine cart glitch a few times. It is one of the craziest things I've seen happening in a TAS. Technically, it seems like a simple TAS trick, but visually it is a brilliant magic performance.
Morrison wrote:
The pace could be slow at times, but I think the glitches more than make up for the slow parts.
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Vykan12 wrote:
I voted no on the grounds that the submission is basically hexing 99% of the work of others for a completely unnoticeable improvement.
I understand your point of view. However, improving the gameplay in this movie by 1 frame is not easy, because of how much competition there has been already. 10 frames in a name entering screen is also a quite a lot by TAS standards. It is inevitable that the movie has lots of same content as the previous one, but where would you draw the line then, if "99%" is too much? 98? 97? 96...? Copying others is one of the best things to do when TASing, because people think differently and find different tricks, so it's cool when somebody has tried her best to make a perfect movie and then somebody comes and finds an improvement. A third man will then show up with even more improvements due to the fact that he can concentrate his energy on finding new things as opposed to the earlier guys who got either exhausted or got stuck into a narrow point of view about the inner workings of the game. The obsoletion chain continues until the TAS scene dies or a movie becomes perfect.
I haven't wathced the movie yet, but one of those future "yes" votes is probably mine.
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Thanks to Raiscan for encoding!
The AVI looked mostly ok, but there were some unexpected rectangular artifacts at the ending, beginning at 19:20. Maybe it's just my media player, though.
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Congratulations for your first submission, TaoTao! I liked watching it. Everything seemed very precisely planned and executed.
Funny how the boss fights were almost copied from Rockman. Especially the final boss, which was just like Dr. Wily with his bizarre machine.
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I'm too lazy to read the older discussion right now, so I'm not sure if there was some problem with introducing a new tag for "uses # controllers".
Technically speaking, I think this is the order of priority:
1. The number of controllers used
This gives technical information about the input file content. For people who know the game, it also immediately tells how many characters were used. Thus, it is more relevant than the two others below.
2. The number of characters used
This gives information about the AVI content: There may be more than one player character doing stuff on screen. The same information is usually covered by the number of controllers used, but sometimes not. This is the most problematic case, because there is no clear way to define "player character". Are there some reasons for not replacing this tag with the number of controllers?
3. The number of authors (players)This has nothing to do with the input file content or the AVI content. It only tells the same thing that is already told when the authors of the movie are listed. In my opinion, this looks like redundant data in the tags.
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alden wrote:
Aqfaq: Thanks! I give up though, what's the theme?
eternaljwh wrote:
a-ha! I see the common Element.
You got it right eternaljwh, the list included all movies that have liquid water in the presented screenshot. It is a kind of a dull theme for movies, because it depends on the screenshots. Anyway, I hope you all like the list now that you know the theme. Oh, the list is already outdated, because the Lion King screenshot was changed.
Naturally, almost every game has some water in it. Even the short King's Bounty movie shows lots of water. I am now trying to find all published movies that don't have a single drop of water. Then we will understand the meaning of everything!
Actually, I'm already finished with Genesis games and I'm not going to continue this to the other systems, but here is the list so far, if somebody wants to expand it: Genesis movies that have no water.
Only 7 movies got to the list. Sometimes it was hard to judge whether there was water presented in the movie or not, so I used this rule: If I could imagine a well-wishing person filling a glass with the suspected substance and saying "Here, have a glass of water, my dear friend!", then I considered it water.
Here are some notes I made:
Marble Madness
Not a single drop of water! The game indeed has a dry feel throughout and I now realize it is due to the complete lack of water.
Dark Castle
The Black Knight is drinking something, but there are some aspects of his behavior that make me believe that he is not drinking water.
Contra - The Hard Corps, "secret ending"
A few drops of prehistoric monkey sweat in the ending sequence is the closest thing to water this movie has.
Prince of Persia
There was some green stuff that looked wet, coming from some pipes on the walls, but I wouldn't offer it as a drink to someone. There's also a full moon shown on the background of the intro screen, but I suppose there's no liquid water on the surface of a Persian moon.
Pit Fighter
There is a bar, but none of the bottles look like water bottles.
Flashback
Same thing here. Two bars were visited, but presumably no water was served to the customers during the movie. (I often drink water in bars myself, though.)
Gods
This is problematic. There is an item called water gem (or water crystal), but it is probably just a name for the gem. The boss HP is displayed as a liquid substance that resembles water, but probably isn't water, because it looks like it's boiling, but it never evaporates. There are also two paintings on the walls that may depict water, but since it is in the paintings, it is not real video game water. Finally, the shop screen background may have water in it, but I can't be sure, because the colors are so strange. Sunlight can sometimes make water look white, especially in video games that have limited color resources. I'd say there's no liquid water worth drinking in Gods, anyway.
Honorable mentions:
Fatal Labyrinth almost got to the list. It showed water on the background of the final battle, but nowhere before that. It was a very good use of water actually. I interpreted the partially visible river as a promise of freedom. The ending sequence shows rivers flowing on the background as the hero flies away from the fatal labyrinth. It seems like they actually put some thought into it.
Robocop won the infamous Wasting Water For Nothing prize (WWFN prize) by shooting fire hydrants and spilling water all over the city streets.
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I like you alden, so here is a consistently themed movie list for you. I got 62 movies to the list. (The correct number should be something between 60 and 64.) I'll let you figure out what the very arbitrary theme is.
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Hello, dwangoac!
I liked watching this movie. It shows impressive pinball action. There are some parts that look like they could be done faster, especially entering the helicopters, safes and the flying saucer. Anyway, it did not look bad. Voting "yes".
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RT-55J wrote:
Do you have any thoughts in particular on the Large Hadron Collider?
A few pages backwards, Bisqwit wrote:
moozooh wrote:
Ten hours left until Large Hadron Collider activation. Do you think the result will be of global importance?
No.
People are hoping for higgs bosons and fearing for earth-gobbling black holes or strangelets, but I think neither is going to happen.
Don't ask why.
Would be cool though, place a black hole in an electromagnetic container in a museum.
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pirate_sephiroth wrote:
I've been playing this double dragon and you can't make all the enemies vanish with a single player... some enemies seem to target player 2 by default.
Oh, cool! Or... is it cool or not? I mean, what do you mean?
To me, it seems that the enemies always target the player that is closest to them. Maybe I'm wrong about that?
I haven't been able to vanish all enemies either. Anyway, I have been able to annihilate ALL enemies that come from WALLS and DOORS. Also, the level 2 boss that enters from the ELEVATOR can be annihilated in the same manner, but sometimes it is hard to find the correct position for the player character. It should work for both 1-player and 2-player modes, but I can't be 100% sure at the moment.
I have never been able to annihilate enemies that enter the game sideways.
Pyramid level 2
I hope this helps somebody in the future.
Upthorn, what do you think about this game? I think it would fit your style.
Edit:
Here is the current best time for the first few screens: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/721083000/MWIV-WIP2.gmv
Kinda hot cubism, actually.