Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
It seems that if I have another window active, the Gens on the background is still affected by my hotkeys. I have frame advance assigned to "Q", so when I write "Aqfaq" here on the forum, 2 frames are advanced in Gens.
upthorn wrote:
Savestate upgrades for all Gens platforms.
So, does this mean that some Genesis games that previously desynched might work properly now?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
I found another bug: Climb to the large tree and exit the screen to the right. You then maintain the climb position indefinitely and you can go through some obstacles. Haha!
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
BZero wrote:
I'm definitely interested in improving my run. :)
Awesome! Then maybe I'll leave all the precise frame shaving to you and concentrate on finding new ways to do things. I'm not sure if the route is perfect yet. I can't quite decide when to get the bowl and the dagger.
Did you know that you can escape the castle moat by jumping at a certain moment? There are many other places where jumping can be used for some minor strangeness, but I haven't found anything useful (except the walk-on-water trick, which is not used on the new route).
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
I deviced a route that is about 2000 frames faster compared to the published run. Carrot and cheese are skipped items and no eagle flight is used.
1. Get bowl
2. Get pebbles
3. Get mushroom
4. Get key (from the gnome)
5. Unlock door - Open door
6. Look at hole - Get slingshot
7. Use slingshot (to kill the giant)
8. Get chest
9. Push rock - Look at hole - Get dagger
10. Cut rope - Get bucket - Lower rope - Climb
11. Swim - Fill bucket
12. Throw water (to bypass the dragon)
13. Get mirror
14. Give bowl - Fill bowl - Get fiddle
15. Eat mushroom (to enter the cave)
16. Use fiddle (to bypass the leprachauns)
17. Get shield
18. Open castle door.
19. Talk to the king
I'll post an unoptimized route demo later.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Oh, I just found a way to bypass the trolls without the goat:
Let the eagle take you away. Then walk down at the lower right corner of the screen and then immediately right to get to the gnome. Got it? There is a frame of opportunity, so you can leave the screen before falling to the deadly water. After getting the key from the gnome, just walk down. If you get stuck inside the troll, just jump to get released.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Hey, BZero:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/424074340/kq-improvement-demo.mmv
This movie shows 71 frames faster method to travel a certain section of the game (before the eagle flight). I used your movie to test things, so fast-forward to 9500 frames (when leaving the woodsman's house).
The trick is to exit and re-enter a certain type of screen that forces your position change due to impenetrable obstacles. I re-enter the witch cabin screen from left to get automatically to the front of the cabin, thus saving walking time to the eagle screen. Watch in slow-motion to see what happens.
Note: I'm not sure if the walk-on-water-zip trick saved any time here, because the zipping direction is wrong (downwards), but I demonstrated it here too. The walk-on-water trick works in any swimmable water by jumping before falling to the water. Occasionally, you get zipped fast while walking on the water.
Your (BZero) recently published movie is very precise and you know a lot about the game, so would you consider improving the movie? I would be glad to help in any way I can, because I really enjoy this type of games. Basically, we would need to find more places where exiting and re-entering the screen might shorten the walking distances. I'm sure more new tricks could emerge in the process.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Too bad the intro takes so long, more than 1/3 of the movie. Anyway, this is a really nice performance, especially as I watched the seemingly not-so-improvable previous movie recently. I can see now that behind the ordinary nickname "mike89" hides a talented TASer.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Alter wrote:
I think every pressed frame should count, not only "new" presses.
I like that concept too. Actually, I like all of these.
Let's see...
MIP
Minimal Presses - That is what this topic is about.
MAP
Maximal Presses - Opposite to minimal presses. Hint: Use autofire. (To avoid infinitely long movies, a movie could be considered failed, if the total frame count exceeds the corresponding MIP movie.)
MIC
Minimal Changes - Count how many times the input changes. Lower value wins! (This was Blublu's idea.)
MAC
Maximal Changes - Count how many times the input changes. Higher value wins!
MII
Minimal Input - Count all active frames. Lower value wins! (I suppose this is what Alter suggested.)
MAI
Maximal Input - Count all active frames. Higher value wins! (Boring... because most games can be completed with 0 idle frames.)
PMI
Purist Minimal Input - All buttons per frame are taken into consideration, so that pressing two buttons on a frame costs more than pressing just one button. This is my personal favorite.
PMS
Not TAS related.
For experienced TASers, all of those challenges can be extended with these additional game modes:
AHN-LV6
"Auto-Hold Nightmare Level 6" - Press at least 6 buttons on every frame!
BCN
"Broken Controller Nightmare" - Only 1 button works at a time!
Oh, sorry, it's getting silly!
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Wulf wrote:
I'm not very familiar with Gens, but is there any way to automate this jump-attack-jump-attack input? If so, doing this in a run would be much easier.
As far as I can tell, there's no macro support for Gens (yet). Anyway, I have noticed that when you get used to frame advancing, such repetitions will become easy to do very quickly by hand.
Nice trick discovery.
Also, congratulations for your first post, Wulf.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
DarkKobold wrote:
For this run, I like to think of the King as being a forgetful, paranoid, senile old fart.
'Evil Wizards have stolen my scepter!'
'No, actually, you dropped it outside, on your last walk. Here you go.'
Heh, good one. It is always hilarious when a TAS gets to a point where a viewer needs to explicate the events like that. This movie indeed looks really strange, when you consider the plot of the game, so some speculations on "what really happened" are reasonable.
Oh, by the way: It takes 10 days to search for the sceptre, so one square might represent a quite a large area in reality. The sceptre seems to be close to the castle, but it might actually be miles away from it. The concept of distance is usually one of the most poorly constructed elements in most fantasy worlds anyway.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
I've got to respect our judges who have the patience to review even the movies that are boring to them. I sincerely hope you enjoy being a judge as much as I enjoy recording the occasional (crappy) movies for you to judge. :D
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2460)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
gia wrote:
Rerecords says 58, should edit that xD
Yeah, heh. I can't tell where that figure comes from exactly, but I suppose it is the number of rerecords I used to create the optimal base input file for the bot plus the rerecords wasted on the 16 gameplay frames. It could be edited to include the bot rerecords, but I suppose it would disturb the movie statistics page quite a bit and... uh, I don't even know what the exact number of bot rerecords is. I suppose the rerecord count for this movie is doomed to be inaccurate, even though the movie itself is more or less very accurate.
