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So I.Q Final has been a long term project of mine. I have done Any% speedruns of it in the past, but there has been another objective that has been of interest to me which is doing a high I.Q ending speedrun. In short, when you clear the Final Stage with an I.Q of 500, this triggers the Tectonics mode to occur which can then be cleared to achieve the high I.Q ending. In theory, I can calculate my I.Q as the run progresses by entering pertinent data into a spreadsheet and use that to tabulate my current progress as well as determine the minimum required score from the last level to ensure that I achieve the 500 I.Q objective.
The reason I am posting on here is to see if anyone in the TAS community could assist me with this, specifically, determining the equation for I.Q. I will now proceed with detailing what information I have determined about the equation for I.Q to summarize the results of my current investigation and show how my current knowledge incomplete.
The first thing to know is that the equation for I.Q is not the same in I.Q Final as it is in the original Intelligent Qube. The original I.Q equation from Intelligent Qube is documented here:
http://blog.airesoft.co.uk/2015/08/how-to-be-a-genius-intelligent-qubes-iq-algorithm/
To summarize his findings:
Stage 1 IQ = 0.06% of multiplied stage score
Stage 2 IQ = 0.055% of multiplied stage score
Stage 3 IQ = 0.05% of multiplied stage score
Stage 4 IQ = 0.045% of multiplied stage score
Stage 5 IQ = 0.04% of multiplied stage score
Stage 6 IQ = 0.035% of multiplied stage score
Stage 7 IQ = 0.03% of multiplied stage score
Stage 8 IQ = 0.025% of multiplied stage score
Final Stage IQ = 0.02% of multiplied stage score
The sum of each Stage IQ produces the final IQ value in the original Intelligent Qube game. There is a rounding error in the math that makes the fringe cases inconsistently round up/down, but this is sufficiently accurate for most purposes. Here is an example of this in a practical use setting:
Link to video
It should be noted the person who put that information together gave up on determining the equation of I.Q in I.Q Final.
For I.Q Final, I gathered a large volume of data to analyze and attempt to experimentally determine I.Q. Initially, I did this for just Stage 1, but once I determined a fitting model for calculating I.Q. I did this for each stage independently. This is achievable because in I.Q Final you can choose your starting stage so each stage could be tested independently in the exact same format. This initially was started on console, but moved onto BizHawk monitoring the Ram in order to monitor parameters live as well as ensure accuracy. That research produced the following equation:
IQ = Dx(A+B(y+z))
D = Difficulty Factor [Normal = 1.0, Ultra Hard = 1.2] (Didn't solve for Hard or Super Hard)
x = Stage Score
A = Stage Point Value (Converts points to I.Q similar to seen above for the original I.Q)
B = Stage Perfect Value (A new factor similar to the Stage Point Value but gives additional IQ for Perfects* & Excellents**)
y = # of Perfects*
z = # of Excellents**
*A perfect is when you solve a puzzle matching the estimated # of rolls required.
**An Excellent is when you solve a puzzle under the estimated # of rolls required, aka. a super optimal solution.
The values for A & B were experimentally determined for each stage to be the following :
A B (Notes)
1 0.0005 0.00003 Stage 1
2 0.00048 0.0000288
3 0.00025 0.000015
4 0.000235 0.0000141
5 0.00022 0.0000132
6 0.000205 0.0000184
7 0.000185 0.0000111
8 0.000165 0.0000149 Stage 8
F 0.000155 0.0000069 Final Phase
T 0.00016 0.00001 Tectonics Phase (Not particularly relevant to the stated objective)
This equation produces accurate calculations for I.Q on a per stage basis with exception of some fringe cases which were assumed to be comparable to the rounding errors noted to be present in the original Intelligent Qube I.Q calculations.
The issue is, when you do a run with multiple stages done in succession, the I.Q from the game no longer matches the predictions. That is to say, the first stage matches the prediction, but the stages after the first stage have been observed to have substantial error.
Let me provide two independent runs that show this:
St Sc Gr Pe Ex To IQ Difficulty Prediction Delta %Error
1 119400 0 4 4 9 88 Normal 88.4 0.4 0%
2 24000 0 4 4 9 14 Normal 17.0 3.0 18%
2 133500 0 3 5 8 98 Normal 94.8 -3.2 -3%
3 189800 0 5 4 9 74 Normal 73.1 -0.9 -1%
4 200200 2 0 7 9 64 Normal 66.8 2.8 4%
5 161800 1 4 1 9 44 Normal 46.3 2.3 5%
6 150500 0 4 2 6 48 Normal 47.5 -0.5 -1%
7 225800 1 4 4 9 61 Normal 61.8 0.8 1%
8 138800 2 2 1 6 30 Normal 29.1 -0.9 -3%
F 148600 1 0 4 6 29 Normal 27.1 -1.9 -7%
T 254200 1 1 4 15 46 Normal 53.4 7.4 14%
1 138700 1 1 7 9 102 Normal 102.6 0.6 1%
2 170500 0 4 5 9 126 Normal 126.0 0.0 0%
3 204300 0 2 7 9 79 Normal 78.7 -0.3 0%
4 201900 0 1 7 9 70 Normal 70.2 0.2 0%
5 187100 0 4 3 9 59 Normal 58.5 -0.5 -1%
6 136400 0 1 3 6 35 Normal 38.0 3.0 8%
7 220500 1 2 6 9 61 Normal 60.4 -0.6 -1%
8 168600 0 3 2 6 41 Normal 40.4 -0.6 -2%
F 141800 0 2 2 6 28 Normal 25.9 -2.1 -8%
As you can see, there is an error of up to 7.4 I.Q points in the provided runs with the deviations not exclusively in the same stages.
After reaching this point, I asked Nitrofski for help, and he had me open I.Q Final through ghidra in order to attempt to reverse engineer the equation but I failed to produce meaningful results through this method.
tl;dr: I am posting here to document my findings to this point as well as seek help in potentially solving this problem. This may not be directly for a TAS project, but would be useful for expanding the community knowledge as well as helping me create what I think would be a very cool run to watch. It does overlap with TASing in the tools being used thus far.
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First thing to note: the videos are the English version & the Japanese version, for anyone who was wondering.
As far as the game play, I have questions/comments.
The goal, it seems, is effectively to not let the time run out, so you have to set off a chain fast enough to keep the timer going. At the end, the timer has lots of extra time. So strategically, it would make sense to me that there should have been chains that were extended that weren't. Extending lets you go up in chain length farther during the opening so you can get to 15 chains faster, and after you hit the 15 chain spawn cap, you can still go up in length to gain more points.
I'm not sure what in this run really required tool assistance other than the luck.
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Just wanted to make a note of this here
In Bow Wow Revenge, I rode the swan around to get the orange frog, but there's no barriers or anything blocking you on the ground so you can just hop around to get it. So that would save time on that frog and potentially allow for an alternate level route to save time overall.
Also for Big Boulder Alley, you can go towards the blue frog and hop down to where the bird loops up this eliminating a bunch of junk.
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niamek wrote:
On the topic, CaneoofPacci, I liked what I saw of the run(Just watched the retro and the first level). It looks confusing the first level after the retro. :O Will watch the rest when I'll get the time.
The game itself after the Retro Zone can be quite overwhelming for someone new to the game. Each level is different, and although some levels are remixed levels from earlier in the zone, routing can be quite difficult as you don't know where anything is without exploration, which is difficult because the time limit. If you're confused about the time being sacked on the score screen there are two reasons for that. The first being that some cycles don't simulate on the score screen which allows you to manipulate those to line up better with other cycles. (Such as the bird in the 1st level in the Lily Pad Zone or the only balloon that is used in the 2nd level of that zone.) Other than that some time is sacked on that screen simply to reduce in game time as seen here:
Link to video
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So I finally got around to finishing my 100% TAS of this game.
Link to video
My final times for each level are as follows:
- Zone 1 - Retro Zone
Level 1-1 - Retro Level 1 - 24
Level 1-2 - Retro Level 2 - 26
Level 1-3 - Retro Level 3 - 28
Level 1-4 - Retro Level 4 - 29
Level 1-5 - Retro Level 5* - 34
- Zone 2 - Lily Pad Zone
Level 2-1 - Lily Islands - 91
Level 2-2 - Bow Wow Falls - 57
Level 2-3 - Mower Mania - 66
Level 2-4 - Spinning Lilies* - 122
Level 2-5 - Bow Wow Revenge - 67
- Zone 3 - Tree Zone
Level 3-1 - Honey Bee Hollow - 40
Level 3-2 - Canopy Capers* - 64
- Zone 4 - Machinery Zone
Level 4-1 - Scorching Switches* - 44
Level 4-2 - Platform Madness - 42
Level 4-3 - Lava Crush - 53
- Zone 5 - Bat Zone
Level 5-1 - Dark Dark Cavern - 37
Level 5-2 - Frogger Goes Skiing - 92
Level 5-3 - Webs Cavern* - 53
- Zone 6 - Cloud Zone
Level 6-1 - Looney Balloons - 80
Level 6-2 - Time Flies - 267
Level 6-3 - Loonier Balloons - 71
Level 6-4 - Airshow Antics* - 54
- Zone 7 - Sewer Zone
Level 7-1 - Bang Bang Barrel - 93
Level 7-2 - Slime Sliding - 45
Level 7-3 - Uncanny Crusher* - 69
Level 7-4 - Boom Boom Barrel - 91
Level 7-5 - Reservoir Frogs - 67
- Zone 8 - Desert Zone
Level 8-1 - Cactus Point - 69
Level 8-2 - Boulder Alley - 103
Level 8-3 - Tumbling Alley - 38
Level 8-4 - Crumbled Point* - 65
Level 8-5 - Big Boulder Alley - 119
- Zone 9 - Tropical Zone
Level 9-1 - Tropical Trouble* - 85
Total in game time: 2285 seconds
Final time: 47:55.80
Rerecords: 17612
That is 483 in game seconds faster than the cumulative total of my IL times and is about 30 minutes faster than my RTA run of this category (I finished two runs total). I'll be submitting this, just wanted to post here as well.
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That's the one thing I'm not sure is possible. I couldn't replicate the original clip (with minimal effor) so I didn't bother trying going the other way.
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For the Tiny fight, the lions spawn in waves. There will be an infinite amount of waves of lions as long as neither Crash nor Tiny die. So you can preserve your bounce count w/ spinning, spin-crouching, etc. until the next wave arrives and bounce on more lions.
For the Cortex button to appear you need 25 crystals, not just the last 5. This one myself and TotoZigemm have done by duping in Flaming Passion. Similarly at 20 crystals the N. Gin button appears in warp room 4, then at 21 crystals it goes to the 6 button layout.
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So this topic came up in my stream the other day and I think I've devised a route for a glitched Crash 3 any% run that would both be optimal as well as doable with psxjin in its current state.
1) Use the gate clip to get into warp room 3 imediately
2) Go to flaming passion
A) There is a spot with 4 enemies after a vertical section such that you could dupe 4 crystals here without dying. Do this as well as grabbing the level crystal to get 5. Then proceed to clip back out of the warp area and then chain 22x tigers in the Tiny fight to get 25 crystals. (very stylish)
B) Obtain 25 crystals in flaming passion. (very boring, lots of deaths)
3) At this point the Cortex fight is available, you just need to clip through the barrier.
Now of course this is highly dependent on figuring out both how to replicate the barrier clip as well as how to clip back through the barrier. Still it would be cool to see a TAS of this game.
Not sure if this has been posted here yet so I'll post it. (Barrier Clip)
Link to video
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I made a WIP for anyone interested.
Link to video
This is from start up through Dark Dark Caverns.
The in game times I have achieved on each level are:
- Zone 1 - Retro Zone
Level 1-1 - Retro Level 1 - 24
Level 1-2 - Retro Level 2 - 26
Level 1-3 - Retro Level 3 - 28
Level 1-4 - Retro Level 4 - 29
Level 1-5 - Retro Level 5* - 34
- Zone 2 - Lily Pad Zone
Level 2-1 - Lily Islands - 91
Level 2-2 - Bow Wow Falls - 57
Level 2-3 - Mower Mania - 66
Level 2-4 - Spinning Lilies* - 122
Level 2-5 - Bow Wow Revenge - 67
- Zone 3 - Tree Zone
Level 3-1 - Honey Bee Hollow - 40
Level 3-2 - Canopy Capers* - 64
- Zone 4 - Machinery Zone
Level 4-1 - Scorching Switches* - 44
Level 4-2 - Platform Madness - 42
Level 4-3 - Lava Crush - 53
- Zone 5 - Bat Zone
Level 5-1 - Dark Dark Cavern - 37
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I decided that I was happy with my Retro Zone and decided to continue on and do a 100% TAS of this game. I wanted to make a post about some of the different strategies for achieving the best possible level times. Since this is a full game TAS I am prioritizing real time over in-game time, although there are things that I'm doing to improve in-game time that cost no real time.
So Spikestuff helped me put together this video comparing basically 2 different routes, but it ends up being 4 different routes for the level Bow Wow Falls:
Link to video
In-game times achieved:
57 seconds, 61 seconds
68 seconds, 69 seconds
In real time from the start of the video, each route can achieve a real time of 1:17.69 but the in-game times range from 57 seconds to 69 seconds. I originally wanted to compare these routes because I had a 68 and a 69 for in game times and that's not close enough to be confident which is faster real time, but they ended up both being the same length to the frame (because of the some cycles that couldn't be improved).
The difference between the 57 and the 68 on the other hand is that I drain time on the score counting scene until the last possible second to hit the necessary cycles. Mashing through the score scene faster allows you to move sooner but cause you to waist time in the level itself. The reason this works is because in the score sceen, most aspects of the level simulate 1 frame per frame.
In this level (Bow Wow Falls) the lawn mowers and the balloons simulate slower (<1 frame per frame) but that didn't really matter for the most part. On the blue frog in the route for the top left video I had to sack more time than I originally anticipated to get the balloon in place but that's not a bad thing. In Lily Islands (the level before this one) there are bird cycles that don't simulate 1 to 1 but on the whole, most obstacles aren't affected by draining time on the clock.
Also a similar technique was used on the purple frog in Retro Zone 5 where a the jump to the frog was delayed by several frames. This cause the back row gator to be slightly ahead of where it would have been in its cycle, which allowed the jump on the edge of the screen to be made. I don't really understand why this slightly desynced the cycles but this happens all over Retro Zone. The purple frog in RZ5 was the only place where it really mattered in that zone though.
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I've been working on this game for RTA speedruns. Up until this point I was routing on console which can get tedious for a game like this so I decided to try my hand at making a TAS. This is my first time making a TAS but I'm very experienced with this game so I think its going to turn out well. I took some time to work on it today to TAS the first zone (Retro Zone) and uploaded end product.
Link to video
I managed to make improvements on all five levels over Sir VG's times with:
Level 1-1 - Retro Level 1 - 24s
Level 1-2 - Retro Level 2 - 26s
Level 1-3 - Retro Level 3 - 28s
Level 1-4 - Retro Level 4 - 29s
Level 1-5 - Retro Level 5* - 34s
The only thing I'm not too happy about is in Retro Zone 2 I had an alternate route that I felt had the potential of being 25s or less. (The main reason I wanted to do this was so that all my times beat the best human in game times) Unfortunately the RNG gator spawned on the purple frog frames before I could get to the frog. I don't understand how to manipulate the RNG in this game so there is not much I could do about it. I think the RNG might be seed based from the menus and it affects both where the gator will spawn and the duration at which it will stay there. That being said SSBMstuff's route for the level probably is the same amount of time and avoided the gator in this configuration. The RNG in this game only affects Retro Zones 2, 3, & 4 for speedrunning as well as TASing purposes. Considering my RZ 3 and 4 were not interrupted at all by the gator I would say overall this is a near perfect gator pattern.
The only other place where RNG affects anything is if and when the dogs will trip in the Lily Island Zone but I've routed out any real affect that could possibly have so with how good this Retro Zone turned out I may just not worry about it. I don't know if there is anyone who would be interested into looking into it but it might be handy to know though, particularly since we do this RTA that would be my main motivation for finding out how the RNG works.
Either way I figured I'd just make a post about me starting this project. Since I plan on speedrunning the longer categories of this game a TAS of it will be pretty handy to have.
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If I'm not mistaken Pirohiko did his WIPs on the NTSC version. I was just curious if we know how much faster PAL is at a TAS level since it gives you 5 less frames per second to zigzag slide/jump.
Also a reminder that in Road to Ruin and Ruination you can go through the fire (don't know if this would actually be used but if its possible, it'd be a nice addition.
Link to video
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lapogne36 wrote:
PeteThePlayer wrote:
For Crash 1, the NTSC-J is still not confirmed to be the fastest in Any%. In 100% it is without a doubt though. But in Any%, it might not because you always HAVE to face a box screen whereas you can bypass it by dying in other versions. Maybe the time will add up and the NTSC-J version might turn out to be a second or two slower than the regular versions. As for PAL vs NTSC-U, we cannot really tell. Frame perfect zigzagging on NTSC might be faster than it is on PAL. Due to the difference of Crash's running speed there are also different cycles in levels, you have to face, thus making all of this hardly comparable.
The NTSC-J must be the fastest in Any% thanks to the green gem location, as I think the box screen only gives a slight advantage to NTSC-U (1 or 2 seconds faster at each death abuse level, but 18 frames slower per extra box in the other levels according to the old TAS comments).
On top of that half of 'The High Road' is missing in the Japanese version.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Question can you Double Jump that hole?
Executed well but not at complete potential.
If the hole in question is the one between the starting platform and the exit portal, they put an invisible wall there. If not you could just do a zig-zagged normal jump to cross the gap.
Link to video
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So I screwed up in a run the other day and found a new strat for Pinstripe. It saves 1 to 1.5 seconds (1.42 in the comparison I made) in my RTA runs.
Link to video
I really need to start paying attention again to this game XD
We just recently made a leader board!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhkCyoaiK2XmdFZsRVZFTlVjUjdiUnJKZURfS0hpYlE#gid=16
There are tabs at the bottom to switch between games but we have Spyro 1-5, Crash 1-5, CTR, and Crash Bash (someone told me to include that game but no one we know who plays it has completed a run of it).
Because its rather new its not a complete list (specifically Crash 2 and 3) so if you know of stuff that needs to be added then let us know. Also I beat both of Samura1man's times. I've gotten Any% down to 48:39 and 100% down to 1:21:25.
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So over the past few months while grinding out 100% SS attempts I noticed some odd variations that would occur while I would go for the Exit Portal Skip in 'The Great Gate.' I thought they were interesting so I made a few highlights that compares what normally happens to a few possibilities of what can happen. I think these are really just related to the slipping effect that can occur and less to do with that I was on an exit portal; it just so happens that the exit portal is the only place I intentionally go for it.
(Mute the audio; these are highlighted from my live stream.)
So here is what a normal jump looks like:
Link to video
In this one I get a bit of the slipping effect but it doesn't effect my second jump at all.
In this one I get a boosted jump that is much higher than a normal jump:
Link to video
I almost clear the top of the exit portal sparkle dust which is pretty tall.
In this one I get kind of reflected of the exit portal:
Link to video
In this one I get slightly pushed backwards at the start of my second jump.
So this was just something interesting that I was noticing occurred from time to time. Perhaps you all will be able to find a good use for it. (I'm still crossing my fingers that you all finally manage to make the jump in Up The Creek in order to get the gem in 1 pass.)
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[quote="Warepire"]That was absolutely incredible. The Koala Kong fight was hilarious and Heavy Machinery was obliterated.[/quote]
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. This is outstanding.
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Hello guys, I think the stuff you all are doing is awesome ).
I was just looking at Pirohiko's WIP. I was thinking about his double spin jumping technique (?). I'm honestly not even certain what exactly is going on there but I was noticing on the creek levels he seemed to get an extra jump to go between leaves.
The reason I'm posting is because I thought there could be an interesting application of this towards 100% that might allow a TASer to get the gem for Up The Creek on the first pass. This could be quite difficult because there are the two secret areas you have to break boxes in, but my limited knowledge on what exactly Pirohiko is doing leaves me quite optomistic.
(Sorry about the wonky pics, I downloaded an emulator for the first time today and this is how they came out)
The first box lies beneath the log here http://i.imgur.com/UiLAh.png
The thing about it is the box is located on the right side of the log. So if it were possible to spin off the right side of the log and hop back up this box might be obtainable.
The next area is the section behind the exit portal. I hoped over the exit portal in a similar fashion as in The Great Gate and this is a pic of the leaf at its closest point http://imgur.com/a/3j4v1
Now for me on console I would say this is an unachievable jump but perhaps for the skilled TASer it could be quite doable. Another thing I noticed was when I was standing on the back rim of the platform I could not move left or right. It acted like there were walls there but I could hop and land to the left and right, but when I stood on the right side of the platform I could move freely http://i.imgur.com/tpfYC.png
So as I said I have very limited knowledge on what Pirohiko is doing, but I would be interested in seeing if this can be another level eliminated from being revisited during Crash Bandicoot 100% (at least for TAS lol). So if anyone could give me help or tips on doing that, then I would appreciate it.
