Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Some general information about the game (for the U.S. version, but some things might carry over to the J. version):
(Note that everything here is subject to suspicion until sufficient variation of experiments and tests involving different objects, events, states or combinations of these have happened.)
- - -
It seems the only buttons that have any effect are Left, Right, Up, Down, A, B, Start. Or in other words, Select, X, Y, L, R (so far) seem to not have any influence on anything within the game, which might greatly reduce the size of the relevant state space of possible input patterns.
Other than this, it seems that in general, every 2nd frame is a lag frame (making this essentially a (roughly) 30 fps game, considering that it technically runs at (roughly) 60 fps, which might be the reason for why the stability of this game for keeping input future input script parts synchronizing upon changing earlier parts is very high, and seems to allow to optimize every stage separately and then just chain those partial scripts together.
On top of this, the game apparently shows no ''RNG behavior'', which makes it seem like an ideal (since still not too simple) game to get practiced in lsnes TASing a platformer game ^_^.
- - -
Passwords for Level Warps:
000 -> 1-1
732 -> 2-1
354 -> 3-1
116 -> 4-1
988 -> 5-1
470 -> 6-1
- - -
Spanky's attacks:
Blue Bubble - Baseball
Green Bubble - Soccer Ball
Yellow Bubble - Volley Ball
Orange Bubble - Basket Ball
- - -
In the following there are listed: The number of ''naturally'' existing (visible) keys per stage (outside of bonus stages), and the number of exits (which apparently is always either 1 or 2, depending on if there is an exit leading to a bonus stage or not) together with how many keys that they individually, apparently unavoidably cost (and their costs seem to be fixed, as opposed to the bonus stages' key costs), for all the 50 required stages.
Bonus stage exits cost 0 keys if one has 0 or 1 keys at the point of entering a bonus stage, and costs 1 key if one has 2 or 3 keys (which should cover most scenarios, but the general rule is to cut your key count in half and round downwards to determine the key costs). So mostly, one either might want to take 0 keys and has 0 afterwards, or one takes 1 key and has 1 afterwards (since taking 2 keys would lead to 1 key afterwards aswell, but should take longer), or takes 3 keys and has 2 afterwards.
I currently assume there exist no invisible or otherwise hard to detect (bonus) exits triggerable somewhere within stages (it seems an out of bounds area of stages either doesn't exist or hasn't been found to be accessible as of yet), and that every exit carries the player over to either the very next stage or next bonus stage (provided such exists), instead of ''wrong-warping'' the player to another place. The nomenclature for the bonus stages is something that I just made up for consistency and a way to refer to them individually.
1-1: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
1-2: 3 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 1-2.5)
1-3: 1 key, 1-key exit, -
1-4: 1 key, 1-key exit, -
1-5: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
1-6: 1 key, 1-key exit, -
1-7: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
1-8: 2 keys, 2-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 1-8.5)
1-9: 1 key, 1-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 1-9.5)
1-10: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
Apple boss stage. [17 keys in total, and 17 forced key costs in total, for this section.]
2-1: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
2-2: 1 key, 1-key exit, -
2-3: 3 keys, 2-key exit, - [first stage (among 8 stages) to have a different number (i.e. 1 more) of keys than needed for its regular exit]
2-4: 3 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 2-4.5)
2-5: 4 keys, 4-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 2-5.5)
2-6: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
2-7: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
2-8: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
2-9: 4 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 2-9.5)
2-10: 5 keys, 5-key exit, -
Pineapple boss stage. [31 keys in total, and 29 forced key costs in total, for this section.]
3-1: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
3-2: 3 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 3-2.5)
3-3: 4 keys, 4-key exit, -
3-4: 4 keys, 4-key exit, -
3-5: 4 keys, 4-key exit, -
3-6: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
3-7: 4 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 3-7.5)
3-8: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
3-9: 4 keys, 4-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 3-9.5)
3-10: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
Melon boss stage. [35 keys in total, and 34 forced key costs in total, for this section.]
4-1: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
4-2: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
4-3: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
4-4: 4 keys, 3-key exit, -
4-5: 6 keys, 5-key exit, -
4-6: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
4-7: 3 keys, 2-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 4-7.5)
4-8: 4 keys, 4-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 4-8.5)
4-9: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
4-10: 4 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 4-10.5)
Peach boss stage. [34 keys in total, and 30 forced key costs in total, for this section.]
5-1: 4 keys, 4-key exit, -
5-2: 2 keys, 2-key exit, -
5-3: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
5-4: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
5-5: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
5-6: 4 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 5-6.5)
5-7: 5 keys, 5-key exit, -
5-8: 3 keys, 3-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 5-8.5)
5-9: 4 keys, 4-key exit, 1 bonus exit
(Optional bonus stage 5-9.5)
5-10: 3 keys, 3-key exit, -
Grape boss stage. [34 keys in total, and 33 forced key costs in total, for this section.]
Apple boss stage.
Pineapple boss stage.
Melon boss stage.
Peach boss stage.
Grape boss stage.
Witch boss stage.
Credits. [151 available keys in total, and 143 forced key costs in total.]
- - -
Somewhat structured (and more or less ordered by an expected relevance in each section) memory address information (in few cases, there possibly might maybe have happened an incorrect interpretation of what memory addresses' behaviors represent) with notes, and my current RAM Watch: (Thanks to Lioran for introducing me into the memory search process, and feos (and possible other, previous editors) for further information on this page: http://tasvideos.org/MemorySearch.html )
(Values below mostly refer to the hexadecimal expression, the parts with an initial ''!'' are added to the RAM Watch.)
*Spanky's stats:
!7E1129 is Spanky's screen position dependent X position.
-> It seems that during free sideways movement, Spanky's X speed when walking is constantly 3 while it is constantly 2 during jumps or when falling.
!7E10A9 is Spanky's screen-position dependent Y position.
-> Spanky's Y position (screen-dependent) seems to develope during (full) jumps like this: -(6,5,5,5,4,5,3,4,3,3,2,3,2,1,2,1,0,1,0), +(1,0,1,1,2,...)
!7E1029 keeps track of the direction Spanky is facing (it is 01 if Spanky faces left, and 02 if Spanky faces right).
*Projectiles:
!7E1022, 7E1023, 7E1024, 7E1025, 7E1026 keep track of Spanky's projectile existences, from the first to the 5th. Their values are 00 if the corresponding projectile doesn't exit, and are 03 if it exists. The 1st memory address keeps track of bubbles, and when bubbles burst, all 5 memory addresses will be 03 and keep track of their respective projectile in the soccerball attack and basketball attack case, and in the volleyball attack's case, only the 1st to 4th memory addresses are used and are 03 if they exist.
-> If a baseball exists, then the 2nd memory address will slowly switch between the values 03 and 18 to keep track of its existence.
!7E1122, 7E1123, 7E1124, 7E1125, 7E1126 are the screen-position dependent X positions of Spanky's 5 projectiles (the 1st keeps track of bubbles, the 2nd keeps track of the baseball).
!7E1122 is the bubble's screen-position dependent X position (and when a bubble leaves the screen and vanishes, the value gets stuck at its last value before vanishing, and the value jumps/gets updated when a new bubble is created).
!7E10A2 is the bubble's (or rather 1st projectile's) screen-position dependent Y position (the lower in the screen, the higher the value, and when it leaves the screen through the bottom, the value wraps around from FF to 00), and when Spanky gets hit while a bubble is out, or when a bubble bursts or when it leaves the screen, its last Y position value stays in the memory address.
!7E10A3 keeps track of the baseball's (or rather 2nd projectile's) screen-position dependent Y position the same way.
!7E10A4, 7E10A5, 7E10A6 keep track of the screen-position dependent Y positions for the 3rd to 5th Spanky projectiles the same way (for soccerballs, volleyballs and basketballs).
!7E10A0 is 00 and updates to the screen-dependent Y position at which a bubble bursts (and is then stuck at that value unless it updates again due to another bursting bubble).
*Enemies:
!7E1138, 7E1139, 7E113A, 7E113B, 7E113C and 7E113D are definitely the X positions of enemies relative to the screen position (range is in hexadecimal from 00 at the left end of the screen to FF at the right end of the screen, if enemies go beyond that, there will be jumps between 00 and FF), and they work as 1 byte each.
-> Memory addresses near these might not be used in the first level but might be X positions of other enemies.
-> Once an enemy dies, the corresponding memory address value gets stuck at its last value before the enemy died (and probably is updated again once a new level is loaded).
-> It seems the apple boss (consisting of the eyes possibly tracked by 7E1138 and the fruit tracked by 7E1139) and pineapple boss (consisting of the glasses possibly tracked by 7E1138 and the fruit possibly tracked by 7E1139) use the first 2 of these memory addresses aswell (and hence, the bosses probably consist of multiple enemies).
-> The small Witch uses the memory address 7E113D for its X position aswell.
!7E113E is the screen-position dependent X position of the Witch (for at least her 1st form) and the Melon, Peach and Grape (and here, 7E113D seems to keep track of the Peach aswell but apparently updates only during phases when it gets hurt), and it seems the first small peach's X position is being kept track of by 7E1138, and the 2nd one's by 7E1139 (and it might go on like this).
!7E10B8, 7E10B9, 7E10BA, 7E10BB, 7E10BC, 7E10BD keep track of the screen-position dependent Y positions of the top left, top right, center left, center right, bottom left, and bottom right enemy (respectively, and in this order) in 1-1.
-> Memory addresses nearby might keep track of Y positions of other/more enemies.
-> It seems the apple boss (consisting of the eyes tracked by 7E10B8 and the fruit tracked by 7E10B9) and pineapple boss (consisting of the glasses possibly tracked by 7E10B8 and the fruit possibly tracked by 7E10B9) use the first 2 of these memory addresses aswell (and hence, the bosses probably consist of multiple enemies).
-> The small Witch uses the memory address 7E10BD for its Y position aswell.
!7E10BE is the screen-position dependent Y position of the Witch (for at least her 1st form) and the Melon, Peach and Grape (and here, 7E10BD seems to keep track of the Peach aswell but apparently updates only during phases when it gets hurt), and it seems the first small peach's Y position is being kept track of by 7E10B8, and the 2nd one's by 7E10B9 (and it might go on like this).
!7E100B seems to be 04 at the beginning of a level, and increases by 01 each time an enemy is killed and its death animation finished.
-> Its behavior is not quite understood yet, and it seems 7E100A keeps track of the same or something related/similar, or the highscore is actually being kept track of?
7E11B0 and 7E11B5 (which also probably correspond to the enemy numbers, so it should work the same way for 7E11B1, 7E11B2, 7E11B3, 7E11B4) have the value 00 until the top left or bottom right enemy grabs a key (or maybe also other objects), and reset when a new level loads.
-> Nearby memory addresses probably have similar function.
7E1030 and 7E1035 jump from 00 to 31 when the top or bottom enemy in 1-1 grab a key, and jump back to 00 the moment they die and lose the key.
-> For other enemy numbers the memory addresses nearby probably keep track of the same.
-> Maybe there is different values for different things that enemies can carry, aswell.
7E1038, 7E1039, 7E103A, 7E103B, 7E103C, 7E103D seem to keep track of enemy behavior, for the 6 enemies in 1-1, and if the corresponding enemy dies, the value jumps back to 00.
The 1st value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the top left, the 2nd value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the top right.
The 3rd value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the center left, the 4th value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the center right.
The 5th value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the bottom left, the 6th value corresponds to the enemy that is initially at the bottom right.
-> When an enemy walks to the right, the values slowly switch from 71 to 6D then to 6F, then to 6D and then loop back to 71 where it repeats; for enemies walking to the left, the same happens, except with the values 70, then 6C, then 6E, then 6C, and then looping back to 70 and repeating.
-> At the beginning of 1-1, the left facing enemies have the value 7A, and the right facing ones 7B during their pose with the closed eyes, which is the same animation as when they land after falling.
-> When the top enemy grabs the key, the value jumps to 73 then 7D for the key grab animation (while facing right).
-> Memory addresses nearby might have similar functions assigned to them for more/other enemies.
-> When a left facing enemy falls, the value is 78, and for right facing enemies it is 79.
7E10AA changes when a lot of enemies are killed (with e.g. basketballs), and might be related to the score or multi-kill bonus stuff?
*Bosses:
!7E1AB9 (1 byte) seems to show all bosses' health except for the boss rush part.
For the boss rush part, the health of the bosses seem to be given by the following memory addresses:
!1st boss (Apple): 7E1AB9
!2nd boss (Pineapple): 7E1ABA
!3rd boss (Melon): 7E1ABB
!4th boss (Peach): 7E1ABC
!5th boss (Grape): 7E1ABD
!6th boss (Witch): 7E1ABE
The memory address 8263775 seems to be a delay timer whose value jumps from 0 to 160 (or A0 in hexadecimal) as soon as a boss' X and Y positions stop being updated (which is also close to the time when the boss coins start appearing) after it was killed, and then counts down to 0 with stepsize of 1 every 2 frames, and as soon as it reaches 0, Spanky's victory dance animation starts.
*Other objects:
!7E115F is the exit's screen-position dependent X position.
!7E1015 seems to be 04 at the beginning of a level, and increases by 01 each time Spanky touches/collects a key, and the value resets back to 00 when a new level is loaded and then jumps to a new value (it probably reduces the amount of keys depending on the previous level's exit key costs).
7E1160 and 7E1161 are the screen-position dependent X positions of the bottom and top key (and further memory addresses probably correspond to further keys/items) when such is flying towards Spanky in 1-1.
7E1130, 7E1135 are the screen position dependent X position values of the upper and the lower key in 1-1, and their values stay at their corresponding screen-position dependent x positions 90 and 00 until an enemy picks them up from which point on their X position is kept track of (including when the enemy is stunned) until the enemy that carries it is killed, from where on the value gets stuck at the last value it had before the enemy was killed.
7E1060, and 7E1061 have the value 31 as long as the upper and lower key (respectively) in 1-1 are neither collected by Spanky nor carried by enemies, otherwise their value is 00.
The memory addresses from 7E1081 to 7E1086 are 00 at the beginning of a level and all jump to 60 (and stay there until the end of a level) as soon as the game is paused.
7E10DF, 7E10E0, 7E10E1 keep track of (in this order:) the screen-position dependent Y positions of the exit, the upper key, and the lower key in 1-5 (and further memory addresses probably have similar functions for other/more objects).
-> Nearby memory addresses might keep track of similar objects' Y positions.
-> It seems when a level starts, the keys bounce a bit up and down at the beginning when they are placed.
The memory addresses from 7E1101 to 7E1106 are always 00 at the beginning of a level, until the game is paused, which lets them jump to 70, 78, 80, 88, 90, and 98, respectively.
7E117D is 00, but jumps to 58 for a short while as soon as an exit is entered.
7E1194 is usually at 04, but starts cycling from 00 through 0E with step-size 02 once the number of keys required for a level are collected, until the next level starts.
The memory address 8257649 seems to be some kind of game time frame counter since it increases from 0 by 1 every 2 frames of which 1 frame is a lag frame and loops back to 0 after reaching 255, and because it seems to not count up during load times.
- - -
Resources:
A guide on GameFAQs:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588677-spankys-quest/faqs/10178
The currently published TAS with its submission text and discussion:
http://tasvideos.org/1798M.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/3122S.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11120
(VGMaps, http://www.vgmaps.com/ , seems to not have maps for the stages of this game.)
The current speedrun WR by Lioran, who's Spanky's Quest runs introduced me into this game. His boss fight strategies (which basically consist of spamming baseballs due to their high damage output per second rather than slowly charging up bubbles for ''stronger'' attacks) and route differences turned out to be far superior to what the TAS does.
https://www.twitch.tv/lioran/v/43444409
If one adapts the timing methods to each other (Lioran's run with the clock starting when inputs start being capable of moving Spanky around in 1-1, and cutting off this time with the usual TAS-timing method determined by the last input, one arrives at roughly 20:47.7, and adding the initial time from power on to when the clock starts, i.e. roughly 1:40, makes it 22:27.7, which is roughly 1 minute and 5 seconds faster than 23:32.78, which is the time of the currently published TAS. And of course, this discrepancy screams for a change.
Benchmarks (in frame counts, together with the relevant inputs at those frames, and frame count differences in brackets between them) from the currently published TAS:
[Start-up phase and title screen]
(336)
337: Start [title screen updating]
(4)
341: Start [triggering the intro]
(5842)
6183: Up [1-1 ends]
(859)
7042: Up [1-2 ends]
(418)
7460: Up [bonus stage 1-2.5 ends]
(629)
8089: Up [1-3 ends]
(755)
8844: Up [1-4 ends]
(369)
9213: Up [1-5 ends]
(530)
9743: Up [1-6 ends]
(634)
10377: Up [1-7 ends]
(655)
11032: Up [1-8 ends]
(510)
11542: Up [1-9 ends]
(804)
12346: Up [1-10 ends]
(2623)
14969: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(982)
15951: Up [2-1 ends]
(686)
16637: Up [2-2 ends]
(1649)
18286: Up [2-3 ends]
(764)
19050: Up [2-4 ends]
(829)
19879: Up [2-5 ends]
(428)
20307: Up [bonus stage 2-5.5 ends]
(785)
21092: Up [2-6 ends]
(1121)
22213: Up [2-7 ends]
(732)
22945: Up [2-8 ends]
(718)
23663: Up [2-9 ends]
(427)
24090: Up [bonus stage 2-9.5 ends]
(1050)
25140: Up [2-10 ends]
(2653)
27793: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1065)
28858: Up [3-1 ends]
(584)
29442: Up [3-2 ends]
(429)
29871: Up [bonus stage 3-2.5 ends]
(773)
30644: Up [3-3 ends]
(769)
31413: Up [3-4 ends]
(790)
32203: Up [3-5 ends]
(1110)
33313: Up [3-6 ends]
(597)
33910: Up [3-7 ends]
(429)
34339: Up [bonus stage 3-7.5 ends]
(784)
35123: Up [3-8 ends]
(889)
36012: Up [3-9 ends]
(428)
36440: Up [bonus stage 3-9.5 ends]
(1378)
37818: Up [3-10 ends]
(2642)
40460: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1071)
41531: Up [4-1 ends]
(1020)
42551: Up [4-2 ends]
(445)
42996: Up [4-3 ends]
(1129)
44125: Up [4-4 ends]
(1257)
45382: Up [4-5 ends]
(697)
46079: Up [4-6 ends]
(634)
46713: Up [4-7 ends]
(997)
47710: Up [4-8 ends]
(427)
48137: Up [bonus stage 4-8.5 ends]
(1047)
49184: Up [4-9 ends]
(1026)
50210: Up [4-10 ends]
(2774)
52984: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1659)
54643: Up [5-1 ends]
(400)
55043: Up [5-2 ends]
(1234)
56277: Up [5-3 ends]
(769)
57046: Up [5-4 ends]
(656)
57702: Up [5-5 ends]
(1154)
58856: Up [5-6 ends]
(423)
59279: Up [bonus stage 5-6.5 ends]
(1011)
60290: Up [5-7 ends]
(832)
61122: Up [5-8 ends]
(423)
61545: Up [bonus stage 5-8.5 ends]
(725)
62270: Up [5-9 ends]
(423)
62693: Up [bonus stage 5-9.5 ends]
(899)
63592: Up [5-10 ends]
(2661)
66253: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(2904)
69157: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(2765)
71922: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(2876)
74798: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(3027)
77825: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(2921)
80746: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance
(4019)
84765: [frame of last input]
- - -
About the any% branch TASing process:
- - -
Bosses:
I made separate lsnes movies (provided below) to somewhat optimized boss fights (of which I assume that mostly a few frames can be further shaved off, provided one keeps a similar strategy, but it still remains to look into different approaches entirely) using the input editor, and the following is the current results:
Every boss except the Witch is fought (at least) twice during the progress towards the credits, and the exact same input segments should work out for both boss battles in all of the 5 cases.
(Note that the corresponding boss fight optimization movies only are optimized for the corresponding boss but nothing that comes before that, in each case.)
Apple boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 13242
First frame of apple boss visually entering death animation: 14050
Time difference in frames: 808
Pineapple boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 25838
First frame of pineapple boss visually entering death animation: 26562
Time difference in frames: 724
Melon boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 38167
First frame of melon boss visually entering death animation: 38933
Time difference in frames: 766
Peach boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 50681
First frame of peach boss viually entering death animation: 51565
Time difference in frames: 884
-> As soon as the Peach reached a certain low height, the ''static'' (currently) fastest baseball macro can be applied against it, so (outside of possibly a faster initiation and final-hit procedure) one wants it to sink down as soon as possible (at some corner in the room).
Grape boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 64601
First frame of grape boss visually entering death animation: 65431
Time difference in frames: 830
Witch boss fight optimization movie:
First frame of Spanky appearing in the room: 78265
Last frame with input: 79644
Time difference in frames: 1479
- - -
Comparison of corresponding benchmarks (from the current state of my Test-TAS and the currently published TAS):
Benchmarks (in frame counts, together with the relevant inputs at those frames, and frame count differences in brackets between them, in which the right component displays the local frame difference between the 2 TASes, where negative integers correspond to the Test-TAS locally being faster) from my current Test-TAS:
[Start-up phase and title screen]
(338|+1)
338: Start [title screen updating]
(4|+0)
342: Start [intro triggering] [Intro]
(5823|-19)
6165: Up [1-1 ends]
(836|-23)
7001: Up [1-2 ends]
(414|-4)
7415: Up [bonus stage 1-2.5 ends]
(622|-7)
8037: Up [1-3 ends]
(751|-4)
8788: Up [1-4 ends]
(366|-3)
9154: Up [1-5 ends]
(522|-8)
9676: Up [1-6 ends]
(594|-40)
10270: Up [1-7 ends]
(634|-21)
10904: Up [1-8 ends]
(527|-1)
11431: Up [1-9 ends]
(478|-326)
11891: Up [1-10 ends]
(1543|-1080)
13434: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1131|+149)
14565: Up [2-1 ends]
(667|-19)
15232: Up [2-2 ends]
(1615|-34)
16847: Up [2-3 ends]
(691|-73)
17538: Up [2-4 ends]
(825|-4)
18363: Up [2-5 ends]
(425|-3)
18788: Up [bonus stage 2-5.5 ends]
(692|-93)
19480: Up [2-6 ends]
(1100|-21)
20580: Up [2-7 ends]
(637|-95)
21217: Up [2-8 ends]
(676|-42)
21893: Up [2-9 ends]
(425|-2)
22318: Up [bonus stage 2-9.5 ends]
(1129|+79)
23447: Up [2-10 ends]
(1449|-1204)
24896: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(806|-259)
25702: Up [3-1 ends]
(499|-85)
26201: Up [3-2 ends]
(430|+1)
26631: Up [bonus stage 3-2.5 ends]
(639|-134)
27270: Up [3-3 ends]
(895|+126)
28165: Up [3-4 ends]
(628|-162)
28793: Up [3-5 ends]
(1025|-85)
29818: Up [3-6 ends]
(565|-32)
30383: Up [3-7 ends]
(429|-0)
30812: Up [bonus stage 3-7.5 ends]
(741|-43)
31553: Up [3-8 ends]
(821|-68)
32374: Up [3-9 ends]
(429|+1)
32803: Up [bonus stage 3-9.5 ends]
(1015|-363)
33818: Up [3-10 ends]
(1406|-1236)
35224: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1055|-16)
36279: Up [4-1 ends]
(877|-143)
37156: Up [4-2 ends]
(446|+1)
37602: Up [4-3 ends]
(1014|-115)
38616: Up [4-4 ends]
(1422|+165)
40038: Up [4-5 ends]
(669|-28)
40707: Up [4-6 ends]
(735|+101)
41442: Up [4-7 ends]
(428|+428)
41870: Up [bonus stage 4-7.5 ends]
(746|-251)
42616: Up [4-8 ends]
(966|-427-81)
43582: Up [4-9 ends]
(917|-109)
44499: Up [4-10 ends]
(428|+428)
44927: Up [bonus stage 4-10.5 ends]
(1627|-1147)
46554: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1619|-40)
48173: Up [5-1 ends]
(395|-5)
48568: Up [5-2 ends]
(1119|-35)
49767: Up [5-3 ends]
(760|-9)
50527: Up [5-4 ends]
(618|-38)
51145: Up [5-5 ends]
(1110|-44)
52255: Up [5-6 ends]
(424|+1)
52679: Up [bonus stage 5-6.5 ends]
(726|-285)
53405: Up [5-7 ends]
(525|-307)
53930: Up [5-8 ends]
(423|-0)
54353: Up [bonus stage 5-8.5 ends]
(622|-103)
54975: Up [5-9 ends]
(424|+1)
55399: Up [bonus stage 5-9.5 ends]
(968|+69)
56367: Up [5-10 ends]
(1571|-1090)
57938: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1801|-1103)
59739: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1626|-1139)
61365: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1653|-1223)
63018: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1870|-1157)
64888: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1846|-1075)
66734: [Spanky's 1st frame of the victory dance]
(1825|-2194)
68559: [frame of last input]
- - -
Optional additional inputs (paired with numbers representing frame counts) for turning off the HUD (of which Lioran mentioned that it seems to reduce lag in a few late game stages, but might not reduce enough lag to be worth it):
340: Up [switching to enter the Options screen]
474: Down
476: Select
478: Down
480: Left
482: Down
484: Select
486: Start
629: Start [triggering the intro]
-> Thus, locally, turning off the HUD currently costs 629-342=287 frames, so the first input for 1-1 starts at 5999+287=6286.
-> Turning off the HUD and adding 287 frames into the input script before the 1-1 inputs seems to not desynchronize any future parts, and apparently keeps the same amount of lag, and hence doesn't save any frames so far.
- - -
Optional additional inputs for skipping the intro via 000 password:
340: Down [switching to enter the Password screen]
480: Start [confirmation of the password 000 and start 1-1, skipping the intro]
-> The first 1-1 input starts at 717 instead of 5999, and hence the password would save 5999-717=5282 frames, and the inputs for 1-1 and further on synchronize so far.
- - -
Material (the movies should be the correct ones):
Savestated Spanky's Quest (U.S. version) run: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266088235562113
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Apple boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266122172548833
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Pineapple boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266137101013976
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Melon boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266145904011077
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Peach boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266161116260242
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Grape boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266177438302231
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Witch boss fight optimization: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266186296103550
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), incomplete Test-TAS: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266203994152062
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), finished Test-TAS: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/38388593543282053
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), Test-TAS #3 http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/38612040279654834
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), HUD off alternative: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266278694828075
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), intro skip alternative with password: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36266295272162044
Spanky's Quest (U.S. version), TAS that uses the password to the last area: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/38612178302913449
My updated RAM Watch: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/306902246795378689/lsnes_ram_watch.lwch
Currently, 84765-68559=16206 frames (which is around 4 minutes and 30 seconds) are saved over the published TAS.
Here is a video of the test TAS:
Link to video
Any kind of help from interested people is of course appreciated. I don't have much of a schedule for this TASing progress, but rather slow/calm progress is to be expected (I did just carry most things into this post that accumulated over time, since I thought it'd be a good start).
Edit: I searched for an already existing Spanky's Quest thread, but couldn't find such among all pages under the SNES Games topic.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Yes it does.
Edit: Sorry, I couldn't resist. I hope it doesn't bother anyone, and it shouldn't be against the rules. I was just searching if there existed a Spanky's Quest thread already, and apparently it doesn't (but there is like 10 of each: Alttp, SMW, and SM threads, and maybe similar situations for other games).
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Voted for Super Metroid low% with its double-obsoletion, and Soul Blazer.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
To break a crumble block in a ceiling, a ceiling-CF is good enough, but from what I know, Grapple would additionally be needed to not just clip into but also push Samus upwards past the speed-block to get the R-Tank in Bowling room that way.
Dan's route actually isn't far off from Sniq's routing, but a lot of things would still need to be timed or estimated for comparisons.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
It is more of a short-cut or minor route change than a skip, I guess. But it allows on the way towards Springball to take the lower path instead of going around the hill like Cpadolf does in his 100% TAS, at about 43:15 in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqIZbZZeQQ
A sidenote on Game-Time SM TASes:
Even if the Pause Abuse trick to survive at 00 health level (which freezes the IGT at its current value, as long as Samus stays at 00 health) isn't involved, any truely optimized SM IGT TAS would be unwatchable. In order to give an idea as to why this would be the case, I'll gather a few facts:
1. As long as the game is paused, the IGT stops, but RNG still changes, which would mean that the game would be paused whenever a frame-delay due to inappropriate RNG would otherwise be unavoidable.
2. Pausing allows to let the game-play stop while frames keep passing, which allows to buffer inputs that can help to speed up movement. An example would be the following: Normally if one wants to climb some wall via walljumps, the Jump button needs to be released for at least 1 (game-play) frame (which would count towards IGT) in order to be able to start the next walljump, but pausing allows to skip such frames to effectively wall-climb faster IGT-wise.
3. Movement like walljumps happens pretty much everywhere.
Combining those few things (and possibly more that I didn't list), it should demonstrate how ugly and RTA-wise long a movie would be if it would be optimized for IGT, since the game would repeatedly be paused all over the place.
I guess one could add some rules that allow to fix issues of this kind, like a ban of the Start button or just banning pausing, but a rule like this would come with its own restrictions again.
Thus, I conclude optimizing a Super Metroid TAS for I(n) G(ame) T(ime) should be avoided, provided it is meant to be watchable or short, and isn't just meant as proof of concept.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here is an mp4 demonstrating a faster method for the 100% TAS branch to get to Springball using some idea of which Reeve suggested to Sniq to test it, since apparently it had been tested by Kriole (and maybe others, I'd assume Cpadolf) before but failed by a few subpixels. Sniq managed to make it work for NTSC using the speed-keep knowledge when bombs are involved in the Grapple-hanging procedure: http://puu.sh/sPmzM/f2c1245300.mp4
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
There is an error, since the Notable Improvements tag is missing. Someone please fix that. (It would spare me an essay)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Regarding ball pump / soft bounce / bouncekiller:
This effect should always occur when Samus is in the morphing ball state (and not in an on-going animation anymore like the morphing animation), and an input happens that would normally cause to unmorph Samus (i.e. Up, aswell as pressing Jump unless Springball is turned on), and Samus is prevented from unmorphing due to the game's collision checks above and below Samus' bodybox detecting solid pixels / parts of solid blocks (in the normal case). This normalization of the y subpixel value to the largest value (= lowest y subpixel position within the pixel) can also be applied while entering a tunnel with (not too large) upwards speed to prevent the ball from bonking the tunnel's ceiling so early to e.g. keep and carry speed echoes deeper into/through tunnels.
This (vertical) collision detection subpixel normalization mechanic is similar to the (horizontal) walljump-check mechanic where Samus' x subpixel is normalized to 65535 during the walljump-check pose for walljump-checking solid pixels to the right, and 0 for solid pixels to her left (which though doesn't occur if solid/frozen enemies are used to enter the walljump-check pose, which for the case of spinjumping towards the right with not too large x speeds can allow to inverse cwj off of the left side of a solid or frozen enemy's top left corner and pass over it without bonking, which was something Sniq successfully tested in pre-Phantoon's room for the case of getting echoes while exclusively running on the platform below the central door, then spinjump to the right, inverse cwj off of the left top corner of the inactive work robot with speed echoes and then speedball into the tunnel to break the bomb block, which though ended up being slower by a bit).
- - -
Prerequisites for the perfect soft unmorph/slopekiller:
Unmorphing while approaching a solid/frozen enemy or solid ground or a ground slope from above (or basically: while approaching an object underneath Samus that can prevent the unmorph animation from continuing past the crouched pose to the falling mid-air pose or standing pose) with a proper sequence of pixel heights above them, such that the unmorph animation ends (as in: reaches the fully crouched pose) at the same time as Samus' bottom part of her bodybox pixel-perfectly aligns with the ground.
There are a bunch of indicators from Saturn's TASes (including the Grandprix 1&2 hack TASes) that lead to think that he probably knew about the perfect soft unmorph's application on slopes long ago, since apparently he used it at some points, but didn't use it everywhere (to maybe keep it secret or allow later TASes by himself to have further improvements, which wouldn't surprise me at all, knowing he has done such before). But yes, the mechanic like this had never been mentioned before on any forum (anyone can feel free to try to prove me wrong on this), and only Cpadolf mentioning the effect for treadmills in his 100% TAS when Nymx was asking how he managed to avoid the treadmills' sideways shifting effect lead to the further investigation of Samus' state in which the vertical speed value is stored / not reset when landing via perfectly vertically aligned unmorphing.
Most (if not all) instances during the 13% TAS at which Samus enters the soft unmorph state:
On the way to the first E-Tank in Crateria, in the previous room (Parlor) while laying bombs to destroy the bomb wall, a perfect soft unmorph is set up (due to the many diagonal slopes in the E-Tank's room, which otherwise mess in strange and annoying to optimize patterns with Samus' x subpixel value when moving along the slopes).
Twice in the Kago room (while clipping into them, followed by unmorphing) in Crateria before the elevator room down to Green Brinstar (but these two for some reason were already part of previous TASes).
When pre-Speedbooster room is entered from the left, the jump height is adapted and unmorph timing, to prevent the vertical speed value reset for the dozens of slopes in that room (it was not done on the way out, since the absolute effect that it provides is relatively small in the case of approaching higher speeds and less contact time with slopes, as opposed to running without Speedbooster, and due to setup time that then would be required).
Then, as Overfiendvip already mentioned, unmorphing after the shinespark that kills 2 Ki-Hunters in the room after Amphitheatre did provide slopekiller.
The next place it is executed is in the first Wrecked Ship room that is entered, right after charging the spark, when unmorphing after rolling off a stepping stone.
For the long running part through Landing Site, slopekiller was also set up via the long running jump past the moat to the left of the Western Wrecked Ship ocean room.
And finally, it is set up during the Tourian escape, when going over the hill in the room before entering Landing Site.
- - -
Another somewhat similar idea to Nymx's ball pump that I recently had is the following:
Concept/General idea: Redundant/Repetitive action triggering, i.e. mashing the (or related) inputs that triggered a currently already and still on-going animation while it is happening.
Example: Mashing Down/Up/Left/Right inputs during 1 of the following animations:
Morphing animation, unmorphing animation (on ground or mid-air), crouching animation, stand-up animation, crouched turnaround animation, standing turnaround animation, mid-air turnaround animations in falling/jumping state (and others maybe that I can't think of right now).
Instances where some effect if at all might be notice-able: In suitless situations within fluids, on slopes, within enemies that push Samus out of them (and more?).
Possibly expected effect to RAM-watch out for: x and y (sub-)pixel changes relative to their usual behavior.
I asked Sniq to test these, but even though I agree that those probably have low chances to do anything, they aren't tested yet, and one never knows with this game.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
(So the SM people ''silenced''/convinced me in regards to my above post to take it out, since they expected/feared it to potentially give rise to some flamewar/shitstorm, which I definitely want to avoid, and since I consider Sniq a dear friend of mine, I did not want to risk any harm to his submission. But the reason as to why I wanted to invite people to a certain place was due to a bunch of seemingly valid arguments/statements being accumulated (at least in my possibly biased opinion) regarding different to this submission relevant aspects of which I thought they should be transfered to this thread. Maybe I can do so later on.)
Invariel said:
Aran, I assure you that every judge on the site is familiar with the requirements for a movie to be published to Moons or promoted to Stars. You don't need to repeat them here.
Thank you very much for this educated guess statement, Invariel. But please check, mate!
(And now I could claim that this was all planned out, but obviously it isn't, but is just the result of a few lucky coincidences and me carefully reading through some pages.)
[joke]Let epsilon be larger than zero.[/joke]
Surely the set of judges is a super-set of the starmen, and in regards to those is the following:
Let me quote a part of Nach's Starman Guidelines page ( http://tasvideos.org/StarmanGuidelines.html ) from 2013-10-27 11:31:22, under ''Diversity of starred movies'':
No single game deserves to have two different runs starred.
(On a quick sidenote, one might want to change this statement to '' two or more different...'', provided this is what he meant, instead of just ruling out the number 2)
However, a quick search allowed to find something strange which maybe someone can explain to me:
There is 2 starred Super Metroid TASes (RBO & 100%)
There is 2 starred SM 64 TASes (120 Stars & 0 Stars)
There is 2 starred (Genesis) Sonic 3 & Knuckles TASes (*Knuckles, Ring Attack & *any%)
There is 2 starred (NES) Super Mario Bros. 3 TASes (*ACE & Warps)
There is 2 starred (SNES) Super Mario World TASes (*Warps & 96 Exits)
Among those listed, exactly the ones with a ''*'' attached to it can be found as being published past 2013-10-27 11:31:22, so one might think that Nach's suggestions should have applied to publications after that date. So, maybe I'm not that good in math, but isn't there something special about 5 games with 10 Stars?
Oh right, I remember! This means at least 1 of the games has more than 1 starred TAS. In this case however, all 5 games do so. (#Pigeonhole Principle)
Furthermore (since one could argue this rule to be just part of some guideline to just cover the average cases), it is to note that it seems Nach was very strict about this 1 Star per game statement, especially considering one will notice (if one reads thoroughly through the page) that at other places, he uses a lot of ''should'', ''(re)consider'', and ''expect'', which is missing from that sentence.
So let me be a friend, and allow me to remind of the tier definitions:
Notable Improvement tier definition ( http://tasvideos.org/NotableImprovements.html ) (quote):
'' These movies are notable improvements over their predecessors. These include massive improvements, brand new routes, new glitches, significantly improved entertainment throughout or something else fresh and surprising.
The intent of this distinction is to inform viewers of a significant change and not just minor optimizations. A significant distinction is not always obvious from looking at the movie times. When seeing this label on a movie, viewers who saw the prior movie know there is fresh play available. This will attract those who don't watch improvements that are merely frame optimizations. ''
- - -
Moon tier definition ( http://tasvideos.org/Moons.html ) (quote):
'' "Moons" represent the middle publication tier at TASVideos. It includes movies of high technical quality and entertainment value.
Overview
Aims to fulfill the site's goal of being entertainment based and provide impressive and high quality TAS movies to the audience.
Entertainment requirements
The dominant criteria here is entertainment value to the users. This will be assessed via votes, comments, and views.
These movies must be impressive, attempt to entertain the audience even when it does not save time.
Speed/entertainment trade-offs are acceptable.
Technical requirements
Must be perceived to be well optimized, and show competence in TAS techniques.
Game and goal choice
Game choice is a strong factor. The game must be one that facilitates entertainment value when tool-assistance is applied.
Goal choice is not too important in this tier: esoteric and unorthodox goals are acceptable as long as they make for entertaining movies.
However the goal choices should be clear, so it's understood what needs to be accomplished in order to obsolete it.
Arbitrary goal choices need to offer new TAS material to be accepted. Choices which have no goal other than to create a new game branch are rejected.''
- - -
Star tier definition ( http://tasvideos.org/Stars.html ) (quote):
'' "Stars" represent the highest publication tier at TASVideos. Starred movies are the premium/popular/unique movies on this site, of incredibly high quality and entertainment value.
Overview
This is the highest tier with the strictest publication requirements.
The aim of this tier is to be approximately 5-10% of size of the Moon tier.
Aims to fulfill the site's goal of exposing as many people as possible to Tool-assisted Speedrun/Superplay movies as an art form.
Entertainment requirements
Audience engagement is the largest factor (large number of voters, viewers, comments).
Also requires approval of one or more admin dedicated to maintaining the Star list (starman role).
Technical requirements
The TAS itself must be perceived as of highest quality.
Shining example of entertaining the audience, being impressive, showing a mastery of TAS techniques, using unexpected/seemingly impossible ideas, expertise of the game.
Game and goal choice
Game choice is a very large factor. The game must be one that engages the audience easily, and does not depend on prior knowledge of Tool-assisted literature; easily grabs attention. (A natural consequence is that game popularity will play a role here, since familiarity of the game increases audience engagement).
Game choice must be one that allows for a variety of TAS techniques, strategies, and ideas. In other words, it must be difficult to make an optimized TAS.
Goal choice must be one that is easily understood and clear to the audience.
Goal choices must not be too esoteric. It must cater to the average user rather than the TAS experts of the given game.''
Together with this, I want to note that this going over definitions was NOT in any manner to inform judges about how to do their job (as Invariel apparently assumed), but just tried to inform the general audience on that topic, and to possibly allow for a constructive discussion about the therein contained points, if that is already too much asked for. So don't get me wrong, I do not want to call anyone out or ''bash the system'' (what ever that would include or mean anyways).
So, in order to maybe come back literally to a ''Nach equilibrium'', here is a mere suggestion (NOT MORE, though not less):
One possibly could increase Nach's Star limit to 2 instead of 1 (to avoid any shitstorm going from those other 4 game's communities if Stars were to be removed, aswell as possibly outcries from game communities maybe for less popular games that then would have had the chance to have more starred movies etc.), and apply the Star substitution/exchange suggested by Nach (under ''When''),
There should generally be a change to the starred list approximately every 50 movie publications. These changes should either be new stars added for new material from the recently published runs, or replacement of a star from an old run with something more fitting, or perhaps fresher.
(and I'm pretty sure there have been at least 50 further publications past the RBO TAS), and switch RBO to Moon (it would still attract attention anyways due to the ''Recommended for Newcomers'' symbol attached to it), and ONLY if there still shall be 2 Stars for the game SM (I'm very well aware that the removal of a Star for 1 TAS and promotion to Star tier for another TAS is 2 different things that can be independent of each other), rank the 13% TAS as Star tier.
(Yeah, this in fact is a rather not so humble suggestion, indeed >_>)
Though the base line of all this is is that I'm not sure what the Star tier quota currently is (and maybe the exceeding of Nach's Star limit is due to fleshing out this quota some more), and I assume it is below 5%, shall I check? I wonder what else could be found if one would dig further, but I rather want to stay out of this whole maintenance issue, since this is not my business.
Special thanks to Nach for being such an awesome foresightful person.
[joke]EZ argumentation via exclusively TASVideos' own statements/guidelines/rules only was EZ.[/joke]
But of course, in the case that I'm mistaken, and Nach just did a typo there (1 instead of 2), or if just the link on the Guidelines page for the Star tier to the Starman Guidelines page wasn't updated (in case there actually is a new page), then I sincerely apologize.
And hey, one can accuse me of anything, but one cannot accuse me of not trying to understand and thoroughly go through various (related) pages on the site to accurately inform myself as it might be expected for more in-depth members of the site.
- - -
I also have some further idea:
What if this TAS submission is delayed (similarly to what happened to the recent SM 64 TAS a few times by now), and the entertainment aspect is worked over and fleshed out more in order to satisfy a larger audience's wishes (provided Sniq agrees with such a procedure), since a ''finished'' TAS isn't an unchange-able entity anyways, but can keep a small flexibility?
Edit:
4n6, the suggested screenshot (from what I know) is meant to be this thumbnail showing 2 Samus-es at Phantoon with a barely connecting Missile shot that also makes it look like Samus is shooting herself. Sniq thought this screenshot would dazzle a layman and induce to ask oneself what is happening there.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
(edited)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Yeah, I understand. So things are fine =)
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Invariel, a flow low% option's TAS can be made in the future aswell. If one then would want to submit such to TASVideos (or some other site like TASVideos, if such exist) possibly for the purpose of obsoleting this 13% TAS which doesn't use that specific flow of a certain kind, and provided such new TAS might then also need to be finished in less time in order to obsolete this TAS, this can all be discussed in the future, if such happens.
As stated above though, people back then when the 14% TASes were made were not aware of the existence of this flow (potentially outside of the instance of Crystal Flashing right before Rainbow beam to let some ammo values flow towards unexpectedly high values in a similar way). Thus, the following question arises:
If the people back then that made the currently still published 14% TASes would have known about this flow, would they have allowed it (and possibly have made different TASes on their own) or would they have banned it and kept doing what they did?
In order to truely make sure that those 2 14% TASes are obsoleted ''once and forever'', a safe way was taken (to also not get into any conflicts/arguments in case that Saturn or Namespoofer would show up here and try to claim that this is an illegitimate pseudo-obsoletion) by avoiding the allowance of said flow (and for other reasons, but this is 1 part of it). I mean, try to think about it from Sniq's perspective for once, i.e. if you had to make this TAS and decide, while keeping in mind the previous TASers and their work.
Regarding the name:
(1) Well, Sniq found this trick where ammunition counts change in some unexpected way, and he (since he found said trick) gave it a name of which he thought it would make sense (which it wouldn't even need to), and in the attributes section, he just refers to this name which is absolutely fine.
(2) Independent of any computer science precedences and common uses though, my mind allows to let the phrase ''underflow'' makes sense to me, so I'm not sure why there even seems to be a problem.
(3) I'm pretty sure there must be a mass of trick names for other games aswell that might not properly give an idea of what the trick itself entails, so why argue over such a non issue. For example, in mathematics one can take any name for objects and only the objects' properties are relevant, so if there is some trick's name, its properties certainly will not change depending on the name it is given. And I really think you shouldn't worry so much about this. Surely the overflow terminology makes some sense in some scientific field, and I could imagine you maybe want others to understand this to avoid potential mis-understandings, but so far, I haven't seen a single post concerning the Draygon Underflow that expressed someone's confusion about its name, and as long as this isn't the case, I would like this naming topic to stay irrelevant.
''Underflow is a precise term in computer science, as is overflow, and overflow is the term that describes the exact circumstance. ''
Then why not let this simply be a second apparently 3rd ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/underflow ), different kind of underflow, as there are already many words existing that have multiple meanings that can depend on their context.
''Forgoing "it makes the game easier" as a result of gameplay is a decision that only serves to make your movie longer''
One cannot logically deny the fact that even if this was partially the reason, it would not necessarily be the only one.
Proof: ''Showcasing of the tricks that can exclusively only be used in this option that doesn't use the Draygon Underflow'' is a (valid) different available reason, among many more.
''item choice is a routing decision, not a branching decision''
Where the concept of branching stops and at what point route-variations start being a thing, is that fixed on TASVideos in some formal and well-defined way so far, at least for Super Metroid? I never found such, and take this as an indicator to think there isn't yet, but feel free to provide such source that determines where ''branch'' and ''route'' individually apply and/or mutually exclude each other.
''(well, low%, which will hopefully obsolete all of the 14% branches which, in my opinion, shouldn't exist, because item choice is a routing decision, not a branching decision, regardless of what other sites claim)''
By taking the very existance of those 2 14% TASes published at TASVideos, one can successfully claim that at that long ago time, when those were taken into TASVideos' list of published TASes, the general consent must have decided for and not against them, at least. And this submission just carries on from there, I suppose.
But please, for the sake of keeping things calm, I really don't want to argue (and or risk worse) about these aspects, if that is a realizable option.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
There are 5 different item combinations that in total provide 13% of the items, of which the item combination that the 13% TAS uses is the only one that does not require to (possibly) ''widen up'' a bit the rule-sets existing for the previous 14% TASes. All other 4 options require something that we call ''Draygon Ammo Underflow'' (an explanation can be found on a page from the Wiki: http://deanyd.net/sm/index.php?title=Yellow_Suit_Glitch ), which seemed further off from the spirit in which the 14% TASes were made. So we didn't want to look like we needed an excuse (namely allowing said underflow trick) to out-smart the previous low% TASes by reducing 1%. I am going to write a probably few thousand words long post later on to clarify and address a bunch of things, but I want to take my time for that.
As reference, here the page where those 5 options are listed (first post of the page): http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=550&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=5350
On later pages, I already provided some educated guess on route and strategy concepts/ideas for 2 of the other item combination options (in the hope that someone might actually catch on to that and TAS them, independent of publications of them on any site whatsoever).
And by the way, a bunch of results from mostly Sniq's and my (I'm mostly known as ''ED'' in the SM community) research on lowering the percentage as far as possible (and other unrelated research) can be found on this page, at my ''mega-post'': http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=550&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=5450
So we certainly did spend a long time trying to ensure 12% would either be found by us or would be very unlikely to be found anymore via remaining not yet exhausted tests and experimentation.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Well, knowing that the Ridley and Mother Brain 2 fights in both previously published 14% TASes are objectively far worse optimized (even though they used Snes9x v.1.43) and even more repetitive (anyone who doubts it can just actually watch those fights to re-assure that fact), the entertainment value of those 2 obsolete TASes provides a strict lower bound for this TAS's evaluation/estimation of those fights' entertainment value. So at the very least that was improved over the previous low% TASes, without a doubt.
Yes vote (for various reasons). El Psy Congroo
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Ah! Now things make sense. Seems I have a larger view over the picture now regarding the age-old Saturn pride issue. Makes sense why I don't get his Super Metroid hack TAS input files either for which I asked few days ago via personal message. He even used the same video excuse pseudo-argument.
Just so you know, Saturn, that attitude of yours is much against scientific consensus, and the teamworking communities will in the end always turn out being far superior. Universities would not accept this either, and I'll make sure to have at least all your known SM original/hack TASes obsoleted by the community, if that is what you wish by not joining the general evolving symbiotic community.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
I estimate this new strange thing is worth double-posting for. Suggested names for it might be perma- or rapidfire-(spark-)echoe technique/mechanic.
So, Overfiendvip observed this strange effect initially and mentioned it to Sniq who couldnt't test it, so I researched its properties somewhat and seem to have found the requirements/criterias for producing and keeping it.
SNES9X 1.53 (version 7) movie for demonstration:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/98929157894836224/232334554399113218/quickmet_landing_site_perma-echoes_1.smv
And here is an mp4 by Overfiendvip that shows the effect (with a spikespark, but a normal spark would do the same):
http://puu.sh/rvvq1.mp4
Basically, if one manages to keep a shinespark crash-echoe long enough from despawning (by letting it traverse a large portion of the screen and using its large size to keep it in the screen), then after despawning, it will respawn at Samus and will move onwards the same direction as before and continues doing so over and over until the first time the echoe (as projectile) manages to despawn fast enough in relation to the frame when it spawned, in which case the effect is cancelled. Interesting sidenote in regards to this might also be that the movement of the projectile can be influenced by Samus' movement which will be added to its permanent drift speed, which might allow to shift it around or keep it in the screen (potentially with Moonwalk to keep the screen away or a spark to let the echoe quickly travel against its drift direction) to let it hit some object that isn't as close to a potential place where the effect can be kept infinitely, and it is not just a graphical effect, but a real spark-echoe that interacts with enemies (and as somewhat known, it deals 4096 damage to enemies vulnerable to it, for every contact-frame, which is an insane amount considering this trick allows to cast a shower of attacks upon foes, so this might have applications in special cases and or hack TASes, since it can be an extremely powerful attack).
Regarding the stability properties and combinations with other mechanics (at least among the so far tested things):
Starting an SBA or Crystal Flash, or shooting with beams or Grapple, or laying (power-)bombs or X-Raying all doesn't cancel the effect. The effect seems to stay infinitely in a static case where Samus isn't moved around (or at least after fast-forwarding for a while, the effect did stay). Pausing, switching icons on the HUD, switching any items in the equipment screen (including Speedbooster) doesn't cancel the effect either. Entering a new room seems to not allow even just a single echoe to occur in the next room anymore (as expected from any projectile), and cancels the effect.
I assume there is some memory address that simulates or behaves like a timer that starts at some nonzero initial value when the echoe spawns and decreases and reaches 0 at some point. If it reaches 0 before the echoe despawns/goes far enough off-screen, the game seems to not delete the projectile or prevent it from respawning, and otherwise it will do so (similarly to the spikespark case that produces a flashsuit, where one has to wait until some timer runs out).
The rapidfire-echoe might aswell allow for a shorter next spark crash-animation, which I haven't tested yet.
Edit:
If the spark crash echoe that is fired to the right side (the asymmetry is probably due to projectile indexing that the game does) is in the constantly respawning state, then activating an SBA will cause it to get stuck in the place that it is when the SBA is started, and allows to shorten the next spark crash animation in the same room at any different place. The hitbox is then not active anymore (i.e. cannot damage enemies anymore) after it gets stuck in place (so in that case it is just graphical remnants). Other known places where such spark-echoes can get stuck is at Draygon and the Ninja Pirates. So far, I haven't managed to create a rapidfire-echoe for a horizontal spark (and thus vertically moving echoes), but diagonal and vertical sparks can work, but then again, the screen is just 14 tiles high but 16 tiles wide and the top 2 block rows are behind the HUD. Even though the actual in-screen area that keeps projectiles from despawning seems to be larger than what one sees on screen, it might be a rectangle but might not be a square. And the spark echoes (in general) keep moving while reserves refill.
Funfact: It seems this happened to Namespoofer long ago, but he didn't notice it or pay attention to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgR7cQuyUOA
2nd edit:
Since spark-echoes continue moving during a Reserve refill (provided those projectiles did spawn before the refill starts), it is possible to let 1 rapidfire-echoe appear at places where they normally cannot:
For example in the case of sparking diagonally at a corner in the ceiling of the room/screen to eject a spark-echoe towards the screen's center while Samus has 00 health and Pause Abuse is done (with well-timed pausing in relation to when the spark's crash-animation ends), and having manual Reserve energy that shall be switched to ''Auto'' to let the Reserves kick in shortly after the spark's crash-echoes spawned, if the refill just takes so long until the echoe towards the screen's center is about to despawn, then Samus will stay up there in the air close to the ceiling to allow another echoe to spawn whereas otherwise Samus would fall down and cannot (in general room-structure cases) jump back up quickly enough afterwards to be at the same place that allows such rapidfire-echoe to spawn.
Alternatively to the general Pause Abuse option, a heated room or acid/lava/enemy/enemy-projectile could also be used depending on what a room can provide, in order to do this.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Yes, there is a few options:
(1): Using a spark up there to kill Ki-Hunters (for future powerbomb lag reduction) or not.
The more powerbombs used, the more the shinespark could help reducing lag (since it reduces the number of off-screen moving enemies in the room), and the shinespark allows to get 2 manipulated additional drops which also has some weight, but skipping the shinespark allows skipping the otherwise required short charge pattern in the previous room to enter the Ki-Hunter room a bit earlier and to get to the bottom of the Ki-Hunter room earlier. But 1 powerbomb has to be used anyways to open the yellow shell.
The diagonal amphitheatre spark will leave Samus with 29 health, plus a 20 hp drop from the by the spark killed yellow pirate. So this is the initial state that cannot be changed unless one would refill more Reserve energy manually to let Samus bonk the ceiling and end up with more E-Tank energy (but less energy in total), but would locally be slower and would cost important Reserve energy of which he needs all of it later in Maridia (for the spark in Everest room), and if the Reserves don´t stay full (or wouldn´t be filled yet), then he´d need to refill them somehow later in Lower Norfair for which he needs filled E-Tank energy in the first place, instead of being able to trade E-Tank energy for faster room strategies in all of Norfair (since his Reserves need to be full in Maridia, but he needs low E-Tank energy in Everest room anyways). The Ki-Hunter room spark allows him to get another 20 hp drop and 1 powerbomb drop on the way down. Then 16 damage is taken at the hot steam in the Desgeega room to quickly get to the tunnel and use the invincibility frames for a short mockball started on spikes. Then he gets another fast, crucial 20 hp drop from the last Desgeega (73 hp at that point) to be able to quickly skip through both spike-platforms and not having to wait for either of them, for which 2 spike-hits are required. He has 13 hp left afterwards, which means no 20 hp drop could be skipped (if one wants to keep the Reserves intact), and at most, the 1 powerbomb drop could be changed to a 20 hp drop, which then would mean he´d have 0 powerbombs after the spike-platforms (if he keeps the 2 powerbombs strategy for the Ki-Hunter room) and would need to farm even 1 more Viola in pre-Ridley room which is quite a time-loss. Not using a spark in the Ki-Hunter room would prevent both, the 20 hp drop and the powerbomb drop, so the spark will be kept.
(2): Using 2 powerbombs for the tunnel; Or using a bombspread + 1 bomb to destroy 2 bomb-blocks + 1 more bomb-block and adding 1 powerbomb for the final bomb-block plus opening the yellow shell.
Using only 1 powerbomb in combination with a bombspread beforehand would allow to skip collecting the slowest of the collected powerbomb drops from a Viola in the pre-Ridley room, which actually might be a viable option, but it would be close to the current strategy. I told Sniq about this alternative to the 2 powerbombs strategy in Ki-Hunter room, but at that point, he didn´t go back to test this option anymore.
The TAS is currently past Botwoon and roughly 2 minutes and 20 seconds ahead (8193 frames ahead) of the Test-TAS.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
In this pastebin are some thoughts and critique on the lack of provided tests and input files (for e.g. alternate room strategies or late improvements that didn´t make it into TASes anymore) outside of the final TAS product when TASes are submitted on TASVideos. This basically came up during a conversation, but the problem seems to exist for years at least for this game. I didn´t want to have to rewrite all of this in a better form, so I´d kindly ask to read through it (mostly the bottom parts, since the upper stuff just introduces into that) and understand my point:
http://pastebin.com/ufG9ZuQt
I´m generally against this old, obsolete-able fashion where people in the past actively kept some of their resources back/in secret, and it´d be nice if some concept of providing more than just the resulting TAS (in case there exist further resources that are deemed to be potentially useful or promising) could become a new (though I don´t know if this is done for TASes of other games in general already or not) standard for TAS submissions in general (if resources aren´t provided in posts already anyways). At least I could imagine that the TASing community as a whole would benefit from it.
- - -
Here is some routing analysis for 13%PB-Ice that uses the trick at Draygon where ammunition gets reduced and the time-dependent count with respect to positive direction of time pretty much continues to flow "downwards" (with negative derivative) past the value 0, where it jumps back to the maximum (the word underflow makes so much more sense from a numerical/mathematical perspective, no matter what anyone says ;P):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/218520158963105792/221437313522204673/004.jpg
Regarding upcoming room names, I mainly refer to this list of rooms with their corresponding names: http://deanyd.net/sm/index.php?title=List_of_Rooms
One would turn Moonwalk on (for example due to the amount of movement suitless within water), Ridley cannot be done before the thing that I call Underflow happens (due to lack of ammunition), and other Powerbombs than the 2 Red Brinstar ones mentioned in the linked picture should all be way too slow to get.
Route A does Wrecked Ship late, B if it works should be the fastest route (and does Phantoon early), and if route B doesn´t work, then route C which uses early Wrecked Ship remains to be compared with route A.
(In PAL, by the way, after taking Varia and Ice and then the 2 PB packs, it´d also be possible to use the Red Brinstar GGG to enter Maridia from further up.)
For climbing frozen enemies (such as crabs) in general, instead of doing what Saturn does in his RBO TAS (which is turning Ice off and then on again, which without Highjump obviously would need to be done much more often), one could use Ice-less Ice-SBAs, i.e. starting an Ice-SBA, then turning Ice off so that all the 4 particles individually freeze a crab only for a few frames anymore (to just stun it shortly) which allows Samus to spin-/Flatley-jump off of it once per particle without the need of menuing as long as one has particles left to time landing on the crab right after hitting it with a particle.
Technically, in all cases, one could probably get Ice, then Varia and possibly the Kraid-E.T. (in this order), but I estimated that this would just be slower than vice versa.
The asterisk (*) in the picture (in the NTSC case, only) for route B means that 1 part is not confirmed possible (and could thus be impossible). This part consists of climbing up the right Cacattack Alley room. In PAL, it suffices to Flatley-spinjump off of the bottom, static, frozen Cacattack to start wall-climbing. For NTSC, my suggestion would be to try it like this: Lure the ceiling Cacattack to the far right, have an Ice-SBA´s last particle prepared, with frozen bottom Cacattack and shortly beforehand gained invulnerability frames such that a started Flatley-spinjump to the right allows Samus to go through the ceiling Cacattack without knockback, and the remaining Ice-SBA shall freeze the ceiling Cacattack immediately afterwards (so that one doesn´t need to freeze it manually which would lead to breaking out of spin, and freezing it that far to the right initially wouldn´t allow to move through it), then Samus while still rising a bit during the spinjump shall align to the frozen Cacattack to gain more height quickly and at the latest possible point in time, one should move away from the ceiling Cacattack to hope that the remaining upwards speed allows Samus to "catch/grab" the wall to start wall-climbing. If this doesn´t work, then I guess this part is impossible and route B cannot be used.
One probably only wants to underflow Missiles and Super Missiles, but not Powerbombs, since those will not work/explode as long as their count exceeds 65536/2 from what I know (except that Kejardon said that there should still exist a few values above 65536/2 that allow layed Powerbombs to explode). And the free spark gained via the Underflow needs to be used to escape pre-Draygon room.
In case A, after Draygon, I estimated that it wouldn´t make sense to go to Phantoon and then to Ridley, just to then go back up again, due to backtracking, so this option is left out.
Regarding the "fastest way to Tourian", there would be the Red Brinstar route, Blue Brinstar route, and Green Brinstar route available (but I didn´t bother estimating which one is the fastest in this scenario).
Regarding the "fastest way to Norfair", there would be the route including the Maridian Tube, the route through Snail-room and the bottom sand room, aswell as a route through Botwoon and pre-Botwoon room and Everest room available. In the last 2 cases, one could also pick up the Botwoon-E.T. meanwhile. In case B, Botwoon though will still be alive.
In Lower Norfair, even though one could use Ice to clip through the ceiling in Mickey Mouse room (after luring 1 certain Multiviola 4 times back to the right side so it can travel upwards), it should be faster to go through the Pillars room and WRITG. Otherwise, within Norfair, the path towards and away from Ridley should be clear. For Tourian, Ice for Metroids and the extreme amounts of Missiles/Super Missiles for Mother Brain´s room can be used.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
It doesn´t even work the way you described it, franpa. Not sure if you either play the game somewhat regularly or still remember how it works, but if you mean selecting items such that they will be turned off automatically after first usage, then that is known for years and works by holding Cancel while selecting the item, instead of how you described it.
And yes, the Game Resources page for SM on TASVideos is lacking a mass of things, even much more major stuff, and Moozooh once wanted to update it until beginning of the year 2016, but apparently he hasn´t been logged in for months, since otherwise he´d seen my personal message.
On another note, Sniq´s 13% Speed-Charge TAS is already at Ridley in Norfair, so progress is done really fast even though the degree of optimization breaks through previous limits in almost every room (the new TAS is about 25 charged shots ahead of the test-TAS at Norfair Ridley, too), and he wanted to put some video in here that shows the current WIP, but it seems he hasn´t finished editing the comparison video properly yet.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Here is some routing for 13%PB-X-Ray, which is likely the fastest option among the 13% options that use a Crystal Flash during Draygon´s grab:
Regarding upcoming room names, I mainly refer to this list of rooms with their corresponding names: http://deanyd.net/sm/index.php?title=List_of_Rooms
The beginning would basically be like Taco´s early game inputs (including Moonwalk) for the new any% TAS (or even better, if possible), up to early Super Missiles, except that the Terminator E-Tank might be skipped.
If one takes the Terminator E-Tank, then one will have more energy for Maridia (without Varia) and shinesparks (which will be explained later on), but if the E-Tank is taken, then one will have to refill more energy (which means more drops being required) until Reserves get partially filled which is required for G-/R-Mode setups in Maridia.
Then the Brinstar R-Tank is gotten, since it is the fastest R-Tank, and at least one is required, and existing TASes indicate that getting the R-Tank after the early Super Missiles would be faster than vice versa.
From here on, one could get Spore Spawn´s Super Missiles, which seems only useful in the case that one doesn´t go to Wrecked Ship early on (to get the quicker, left Super Missile there), gets X-Ray, and enters Maridia from the top of Red Brinstar using G-Mode, or if on does some R-Mode CF-Flashsuit setup (roughly like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGJUP_0iWI&index=18&list=PL5If8zSOO37bcgBr6XeWNtZMrxHn6fARx ) near Kraid´s lair to travel through Maridia starting from the GlassTube by chaining sparks (using tricks showcased in the movies from one of my previous posts), but the latter one is not an option, since this map here of all places in which the R-Mode CF-Flashsuit setup can technically be done ( http://i.imgur.com/Xo4Lb8E.png ; in the green rooms, the room state does not matter for the setup; for the orange rooms, those rooms have to be in a certain state in order to allow the FlashSuit setup) shows that in Kraid´s lair no such room exists to do so, because one additionally would have at most 10 powerbombs for the CF and would hence need a quick PB drop during the setup. The only reasonable place to do such R-Mode CF-Flashsuit setup at all seems to be the activated central shaft room in Wrecked Ship (note that spark enemies in WS could also rapidly hurt Samus during a CF, but they don´t allow to gain Reserve energy during the CF inside those beforehand, since one cannot control the energy drain by switching suits during the CF, if one doesn´t have suits).
Note that Draygon needs to be killed before Ridley, since without Charge, one doesn´t have enough ammunition to kill Ridley beforehand, so it makes sense to avoid Norfair early on (and also Kraid´s lair, which means no Varia for Maridia) because of elevator rides and backtracking if one would go down there, due to the fast option to enter Maridia via G-Mode in Red Brinstar from above Everest room.
Furthermore, if one unpauses the game without having Speedbooster, then Bluesuit is lost if one had it before, so for a few things like adapting Reserve energy (to 4, 3, 2 or 1) for (fast) G-Mode setups, one would need to be careful in that case.
Now, the early Powerbombs are collected, and then X-Ray and/or the upper Red Brinstar Powerbombs (in any order), or skipping both, to afterwards continue towards Phantoon and getting Moat-Missiles on the way. In the case that one decided to not get the Moat-Missiles, not kill Phantoon and not collect the left WS Super Missiles, and instead chose to get Spore Spawn´s Super Missiles (since they should still be faster than Maridia Mainstreet Super Missiles, due to the detour after getting them to set up the JesusWalk for which I linked a movie in a previous post, especially since no sparks could be used), and probably the Missiles near Charge, and X-Ray to then immediately enter Maridia from the top left, Phantoon would preferably be killed last (on the way to Tourian), and no sparks could be used to speed up Maridia up to Draygon, because of the lack of near/close R-Mode CF-Flashsuit setup places.
In the early WS case (which I deem faster), one could get the Flashsuit with the above mentioned method, and would in any case go back to Red Brinstar (since Forgotten Highway is a far too long detour towards Draygon), and switch Flashsuit to Bluesuit via Crystal-Spark ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKCn8nD-crQ ) probably in the nomnom-plant room (due to quick drops) from where the G-Mode can be set up (with 2 quick elevator rides), in case it isn´t faster to let a worm crawl to the door to the savestation room to enter the Green Gate room in indirect G-Mode. In the case of having a Flashsuit, it probably is slower to instead continue towards the GlassTube to start travelling up from there via Flashsuit producing sparks (for which either Reserves or speed-echoes seem to be needed in the water) or Bluesuit producing Superjumps set up via Slope-X-Mode.
Having arrived at Everest room, if one doesn´t have Bluesuit, the JesusWalk method needs to be applied, which is somewhat slow. Otherwise one could of course spark to the right door or use Slope-X-Mode for a Superjump to get to the same place, just with a Bluesuit additionally (and another option would be to do a Flashsuit producing Slopespark using the speed-echoes from the Bluesuit).
Now in snail room, one could do some short inbounds X-Ray-Climb (which works with Bluesuit aswell) and potentially fire a Super Missile at proper time meanwhile to enrage the off-screen moving snail crawling on the left Grapple-block wall so that it quickly meets Samus at the end of the climb for the R-Mode Force-Stand clip setup in pre-Botwoon room ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_S75DqLOaw&index=20&list=PL5If8zSOO37bcgBr6XeWNtZMrxHn6fARx ) if one doesn´t have Flashsuit which would get cancelled if one uses X-Ray in a non X-Mode-starting manner; or one could go the normal way and do some catnap222 strategy ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Ij1D7bx5M ).
In the Bluesuit case, no Force-Stand clip setup is required towards Botwoon (which is nice, and I think the early time-loss if one generates the first Flashsuit in WS should be worth it, provided using Flashsuit-/Bluesuit-techniques efficiently, and makes for fine entertainment aswell ;P). And it is to note that even though having enough ammunition for a ceiling-CF clip past the crumble-blocks in pre-Botwoon room, since there is no way to exit Botwoon´s room right after entering it (in order to refill the due to the CF lost, required ammunition), one could not continue that way, because of the missing Charge beam (even if one would farm all 6-1=5 (since 1 enemy needs to be used for a PB drop) slowly out of the CF´s powerbomb explosion area lured enemies before Botwoon).
Botwoon´s E-Tank seems useful in any case, and (except if another G-Mode setup is used, as it is demonstrated in 1 of the movies that I posted previously), together with traversing its tunnel, unavoidable without a spark. Otherwise, one can (get the E-Tank anyways and) either spark through the speed-blocks (and potentially farm the sandpit bugs), or walk through the speed-blocks in Bluesuit´s case (to e.g. spark up in pre-Colosseum room or past Colosseum), or one can use 1 of the red worms for Slope-X-Mode and spark in X-Mode through the speed-blocks to aswell have a Bluesuit afterwards.
For pre-Colosseum room, if one has Bluesuit, it should be possible to lure 1 of the sandpit farm bugs in the E-Tank room to the door to the right to charge a spark and do the JesusWalk setup that allows to enter X-Mode in the closing door-shell in pre-Colosseum room for a Superjump up this room (releasing Samus with yet another Bluesuit on top). Otherwise one has to slowly climb or spark up in pre-Colosseum room. Afterwards, one can potentially spark past Colosseum room (since the upcoming Draygon CF for which ammunition needs to be prepared will get one a Flashsuit anyways), if BlueSuit was kept until this point. Technically one could carry a Bluesuit into the Draygon fight, but I don´t see an advantage of doing so.
At Draygon, the Draygon-grab-CF probably wants to be executed early on, so that one gets a Flashsuit that together with (from there on almost unlimited) ammunition counts can be used to quickly get rid of the boss and exit the room with Bluesuit similarly to the RBO TAS (to either do slow inbounds X-Ray-Climb or spark up in pre-Draygon room). Sniq mentioned that it might be possible to enter X-Mode late at the Draygon fight (probably using Draygon´s body for knockback) and spark diagonally up to the right where the high platform is, in order to store a Superjump (and meanwhile, beforehand or afterwards kill Draygon), so that the in pre-Draygon room unleashed Superjump carries Samus to the top with a remaining Bluesuit.
So from here on, ammunition management is more or less trivialized and one can concentrate on health drops. On the way back, in the case of having a prepared spark, it of course could be used for Colosseum room or Botwoon E-Tank room to go down the left sandpits faster (and possibly using some method like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rk3NiVlHGY&index=14&list=PL5If8zSOO37bcgBr6XeWNtZMrxHn6fARx ), towards Varia before Norfair. I don´t think that the route involving the long vertical Maridian tube would be faster in any case. One could keep the spark even past Maridia, but I´m not sure how useful it would be for the further sections, and rather doubt that it helps, but maybe the Beetom speed-hall in Upper Norfair could then be used. And yet another R-Mode CF-Flashsuit setup from there on seems to just waste time aswell (but I´ll mention those things anyways, just for the sake of not missing ideas).
If one still doesn´t have 3 Tanks yet (which I doubt), there´d be Kraid´s E-Tank on the way, obviously. Then, the fast reverse Lower Norfair G-Mode setup is most likely applied, followed by fast Ninja-Pirates and a very fast Ridley fight (with Super Missiles, I assume).
Then out of Norfair towards Tourian (possibly with a detour in the delayed Phantoon fight case), using the Green-, Red- or Blue-Brinstar route (whatever is fastest), and finally powerbombing Metroids (without much trouble, I guess, because of the 10 Powerbombs cap), getting past the big Metroid, and finishing up MB´s room without Zebetite-skip and Stand-up glitch, followed by the Tourian escape.
- - -
For anyone (or any team) that wants to tackle a TAS of this thing, I would recommend testing many of the possibly relevant tricks (regarding ammunition/health/farming consequences and requirements, time costs and gains depending on what combination of tricks are used, etc.) and/or making some test-TAS before starting a serious TAS of this.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
"Is it possible in the room before Botwoon to release the Pancake Enemy, shoot half the pillar, jump into it to get stuck in the Ceiling/Floor and get a flash suit from it?"
In short: We had this idea long ago already, and Sniq tried to get stuck deeper into the shot-block to make use of this, but it didn´t work.
If you have Bluesuit of Flashsuit already, even in the suitless case (with Reserves), then yes, one could get into the ground a bit on top of the lowest of the 3 shot-blocks (but not into the bottom ground, because annoyingly none of those shot-block walls allow to just shoot out the lower 2 shot-blocks while the upper one is kept in order to get a bit into the ground), and then one can get hit by such red worm and extend knockback frames for a Flashsuit, so yes, a Flashsuit can be gotten, but it wouldn´t help much. Reason is that the Flashsuit producing (preferably horizontal) spark with which one wants to break the speed-block wall (and still have another Flashsuit left for Draygon) is initially positioned too high up, such that the horizontal spark would immediately at the beginning hit some solid pixels in the ceiling and stop right away.
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 10/29/2014
Posts: 176
Location: Bavaria, Germany
Since Sniq´s impression is that there aren´t any TASers in here (anymore) that would work on future SM TASes (that would use the newer tech) other than Taco and the few people that get all the stuff from Sniq already, and thus doesn´t really want to post most of his testing results and discoveries (the stuff that he actually posted was just the tip of the iceberg) at this place (especially since he isn´t happy about how his discoveries are handled in here, since
collect, analyse, categorise.
"Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;)
Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on.
1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans.
2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai.
(last updated: 18.03.2018)
