I listed underflow and zipping separately because of Carnival Night 1, where it looks to me like the antigravity trick with the spinner lets him initiate the underflow without zipping. If I'm wrong, then yeah, only "no zipping" needs listed.
Points are taken, marzojr. Here's an updated low-glitch list.
Does not use horizontal underflow
Does not use any form of wall zipping
Does not use vertical screen wrapping
Does not go over the top of the level
Does not pass through solid objects by scrolling them offscreen
Does not utilize anti-gravity glitches
I think not using the antigravity glitches is borderline; finding a way to use it without zipping in Flying Battery 2 would be pretty cool; same for Icecap 1.
What would running the contest entail, exactly? Depending how involved (or not) it is, I might be willing to give it a shot if Truncated doing it falls through.
EDIT: I'm equally interested in participating as well, should I not be needed for running it.
I think the best stipulations for a low-glitch run would be...
Does not use horizontal underflow
Does not use any form of wall zipping
This leaves plenty of room for both showing off the levels, and for time-saving with minor glitches.
As for this run, I've been following the WIPs since I got my computer back in September, and I am DAMN impressed. Yes vote for sure.
There's nothing wrong with small TASes; many have been published. For example, CtrlAltDestroy's Dr. Mario, which only completes a single level.
I agree with Macrokarty; even if you're not going to submit the run, could you give us the SMV?
Does the IPS patch to a (J) or a (U) ROM?
Tub wrote:
Do we need another super metroid hack? Probably not. But this run was very well done and managed to show off a lot of tricks, so I'm voting yes.
Unless I missed something, we don't have a published Super Metroid hack yet. I know Metroid Legacy had permission back when permission was required, and there was a submitted run by catnap222, but he canceled it.
I'm also having sound glitches (staticky) but it only occurs when I'm using the EPX+ renderer without a movie playing. If I'm not using the EPX+ renderer, or a movie is playing, it's fine.
Haven't done any more work (got really involved with the Cross+Channel visual novel over the past few days) but it occurs to me that a Lua script to show hitboxes would be really handy. I know absolutely nothing about Lua, though; would one of you guys be willing to give it a shot?
Thanks for that link, moozooh; I'll check them out tonight.
I should mention that I haven't actually played Einhander recently; I tried it on keyboard today, and got my head handed to me pretty badly. I'm gonna need some real-time practice before I'm ready to TAS.
I made a post on this game earlier. Not certain I agree with everything said in that post any more; particularly, the Riot is far more powerful than I gave it credit for.
If you can get a group of enemies in line, a single full charge Riot blast is generally enough to combo your score up to 17x and flashing red Combo bar. It's also a very effective way to take out Greif's engine pod for the third S.Bonus in Stage 1, since when mounted on the bottom it's angled down.
Maximizing score runs into trouble in stage 6, since it would involve waiting around until the last minute to abuse the infinitely-spawning enemies. For that matter, if the laser drones Hyperion launches (or the reflectors used by Gecko, or the shield used by Schwartzgeist, or the fighters launched by Spinne, etc.) are worth points enough to counteract the boss repulse time bonus, then you'd have to drag every one of those fights out as long as possible. Not very entertaining.
I would not find this very entertaining either, which is why I listed "Fastest time" as one of the goals I intended to aim for, but under "Maximum Score" and "All S.Bonuses" in priority.
Similarly several of the S-bonuses require waiting for a boss to use a particular move.
If you want to go for a "boutique" set of rules, I'd suggest the following:
* Every S-bonus that doesn't require wasting time waiting.
* Every boss must be fully deconstructed before dying (destroy every destructible part that doesn't actually cause the boss to die).
I don't agree with only collecting S.Bonuses that don't require waiting, but I do agree with fully disassembling all the bosses.
I agree that showing off gunpods is a good idea. The problem really comes down to whether you use the Astraea or the Endymion Mk. 2. The Astraea has incredible potential power output, but using it effectively would require rationing your gunpod use (one gunpod would probably be dedicated continuously to cannons, for example) which would limit your ability to show off the more obscure pods. Endymion can of course stock up ridiculous quantities of ammo, and could use one of its slots to play with gunpods. It just can't unload as quickly, or show off pod combinations. Personally I'm leaning towards Endymion for the playaround potential, but Astraea would do straight-up bossfights better.
I've been thinking about this. I think a run using the Astraea would be best in conjunction with save data, since that allows you to set and start with Gunpods. Also, the Unknown Fighter Mk.II, aka the Selene (unlocked by beating the game on Hard with 3 or less continues) is basically an Astraea that starts with 9999 of whatever Gunpods you start with, so maybe that would be better with save data. Don't remember if it applies to Gunpods you pick up too.
The Endymion Mk.II would probably be best for showing off all the Gunpods, since it can stock up to three and hot-swap between them; in addition, it can swing the Blade around.
I'll take a look at that.
As for what Gunpods to use when, it occurs to me that a Wasp is needed at all times, to hit enemies who aren't on the same 2D plane as you are.
For the uninitiated, Einhander is a 2D side-autoscrolling shooter by Square, from their days before the merger with Enix. To me, this is the pinnacle of the side-autoscroller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einhander
I intend to at least do a test-run of this, seeing how I still have a copy and have managed to get it running in PCSX-RR v0.1.3a. I think the best set of goals would be, in order of priority...
* Maximum Score
* All Secret Bonuses
* Fastest Time
* No Death
There are three fighters to start; the Astraea FGA MK. I, the Endymion FRS MK. II, and the Endymion FRS MK. III. The Astraea can equip two Gunpods simultaneously, the Endymion MK2 can equip one at a time (but can swap between up to three) and the Endymion MK3 can equip one, but has a dual machine gun instead of a single.
There are 12 gunpods that enemies drop, each with unique properties.
Blade - Lightsaber. FRS-type ships can swing it around.
Spreader - Fires 5 bullets in a fan pattern.
Vulcan - Rapid-fire.
Juno - Vulcan-type; higher power, lower repeat rate.
Cannon - Single shot, high power. Pierces light armor, destroys heavy armor.
Flash - Single shot, high power. Pierces anything.
Hedgehog - Fires mines straight up or down.
Wasp - Fires tracking missiles when mounted on top of your ship, unguided rockets when mounted on the bottom.
Grenade - Launches explosive projectiles in an arc.
Mosquito - Fires missiles which can be controlled by moving your ship.
Python - Launches mines on a string.
Riot - Electric arc cannon. Very powerful.
I think a good run, in addition to the criteria above, would make use of every gunpod to show the possible variety in strategy.
SDA doesn't have an Einhander run, so that's no help. I found this looking on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclRt-7p6u ...but I haven't watched it yet.
I am aware of using the manipulator arm and engine speed change flashes to kill bosses very quickly; what are your guys's opinions on doing that?
I had thought PCSX didn't support running from CD.
Had the same problem, but then I checked the readme and saw the suggestion to use an external BIOS. I did, and that worked.
I don't think it's a problem with the hack itself; there was a text file included with the IPS patch that included locations of Pokemon that can only be gotten after the endgame.
Playing the game for a few minutes after watching the movie gave me some perspective on the difficulty. You did a fine job with optimization, and it looks very good. Yes vote.
How much slower was the one-pass Mecha Sonic? If the loss wasn't significant (less than 5 seconds, I'd say), I think it'd be worth including as a speed/entertainment tradeoff.