Posts for Chef_Stef

Posted: 2/21/2017 12:40 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Level 6 done in the regular any% run: Link to video BizHawk movie file

Posted: 2/15/2017 1:40 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Very nice run! I like how because of the goal choice you get to see so much of each level that would be skipped in a normal run. It makes it feel like you're showcasing the game itself instead of putting so much focus on the speedrun part of it. I also found this TAS oddly relaxing to watch - not sure if it was the slower pace or what but that was great too. Voting yes!

Posted: 2/4/2017 10:44 PM

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Chef_Stef

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So... with zip-glitching now a thing in Crash games, things just got complicated. First, a testrun I threw together: Link to video This is already about 20 seconds faster than the any% I was working on. The practical stuff: 100+ speed is possible with a long enough setup, but if you get too far ahead of the camera Crash will fall through the ground because hitboxes aren't loaded yet. So it's only necessary to increase speed until Crash is moving slightly faster than the camera can keep up. The main challenge when TASing will be optimizing exactly how much time to spend charging up at the start to make the camera move at that max speed. Overall this will save a lot of time in every level. Now, the big question is how to handle this from a branching / goals perspective. The glitch pretty much destroys normal Crash gameplay so a TAS using it will look very different from the one I was working on. Do we use the glitch or forgo it?

Posted: 2/1/2017 4:30 AM

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Chef_Stef

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It doesn't actually lose any time to do that, since the dance still finishes on the same frame compared to staying put on the ground. Certain actions do delay the dance but that wasn't one of them.

Posted: 1/31/2017 4:36 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Done with level 5 and the boss. Thanks Spikestuff for the tip about sliding on edges. Level 5 has some nice straight ones where the extra speed really adds up. Link to video BizHawk movie file

Posted: 1/11/2017 5:35 AM

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I tried a bunch of strats in Hang Eight and this was the fastest one I found. The angle was necessary to get the full wallboosting speedups. There are a few sections where the level geometry sticks out, causing slowdown for a few frames, but it's outweighed by the extra speed. I generally minimized those by angling the stick away for a few frames. For The Pits, the maximum boost from spinning birds is only marginally faster than the average spin-slide speed, and since it delays the next possible spin it's pretty situational. The double-bird sequence was the only place I was able to save time with it, and that was only because it let me glitch through the second bird. But I'll double-check the other places too. Edit: I confirmed that boosting is slower due to the set-up involved to make it work. The speed improvement gets cancelled out by either having to jump higher over the bird (to have enough time for a second spin), or having to wait frames for the spin to finish after the boost is over (the boost only lasts 6 frames). In an RTA the trick probably saves time because it's actually a good bit faster than Crash's normal speed, but in the TAS we get much better speed from abusing analog input, so the boost isn't as meaningful.

Posted: 1/11/2017 4:21 AM

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Levels 3 and 4 done for the no-GO-abuse run: Link to video BizHawk movie file

Posted: 12/22/2016 4:20 PM

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Chef_Stef

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Hmm, that's actually a good point. Pirohiko's 100% run finishes the level and regains control in the warp room in about 32 seconds. PAL any% will be faster by a few seconds. My run regains control in the warp room 29.5 seconds after collecting the crystal... and there's still another ~2 seconds that have to be spent turning in the crystal later on. So at first glance it looks close and probably in favor of just finishing the level normally. This is the sort of thing I was hoping to work out with the no-death run for comparison but I didn't expect it to be a possibility so early. Prioritizing the no-death run seems like a good idea now so we can properly route-plan the GO-abuse warp room.

Posted: 12/22/2016 4:52 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Finished level 5: Link to video Bizhawk movie file Running the numbers against the NTSC version, level 5 is 2.8 seconds or about 11% faster in PAL. But that includes a lot of time from faster loading during the deaths at the end, so if we exclude that, PAL is 1.5 seconds or about 5% faster. I also started the no-game-over-abuse run and finished level 2. (Level 1 is identical to the GO-abuse run.) Link to video Bizhawk movie file

Posted: 12/22/2016 12:43 AM

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Chef_Stef

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These are fun to go through. Do you need translations for the non-prototype ones too? I haven't played Squeak Squad, is the ghost ability something where you leave your body behind to become a ghost? If that's the case it seems reasonable. Fire ファイアァー！！あつい！これはあついねぇ。 Fiiire! Hot! Yes, this is hot. Ice てきをこおらせてふっとばせ！おーさむ。。 Freeze enemies and fling them away! Ohhh, COLD. Burn 炎をまとってたいあたり！止まらない！止まらないったら！ Flame-wrapped body slam! Can't stop! Just can't stop! Wheel サーキットの風になれ。はやい。はやすぎるぜっ。 Become the wind of the race course. Fast. Way too fast. Parasol ひがさしてパラソルさしてさんぽしててきをふせげてふわふわおちて The sun shines The parasol thrusts Go for a walk Protect from enemies Float as you fall * This one is structured as poetry, with the first three lines forming a haiku. The first two lines also play on さして being the verb for both sun rays beaming down and pointing or thrusting something. Beam むちのようにしなるビーム！とにかくビーム！ビーム！ビーム！ビィィーム！ The beam that bends like a whip! Anyway, beam! Beam! Beam! Beeeam! Throw てきをまっすぐなげてみる！でなげるむきをかえよう！ Try throwing the enemy immediately! Change the throwing direction! Laser 光学兵器搭載サカにあてるとむきがかわるってウワサですわよ。 Optical weapon loaded There's a rumor that if you hit a slope, the direction changes. UFO これをコピーできたあなたはラッキ～～！ボタンをおす長さでかわる４つのわざをつかいこなせ！ You are ~lucky~ to have been able to copy this! Learn to use four abilities that are based on how long you hold the button! Spark * Onomatopoeia for electricity or sparks repeated over and over. The word あそれ is mixed in, and I actually don't know what it means and couldn't find it in any dictionaries. It could be a variant of あそーれ which is a bit like "heave ho", used to signal when you're tossing something. Not sure about this one. Tornado まわってます。まわってます。まわってまわってまわってうわあああ！！ Spin. Spin. Spin spin spin Uwaaa! Smash 炸裂！スマブラ拳！ Explosion! Smash brothers fist! Crash 最終兵器取扱注意！ Warning: final weapon in control! Master おまけです This is an extra Edit: yoshifan, thanks for correcting the stone description. Using your wikia tip I was able to confirm a bit I couldn't read out of the laser description too. I appreciate it!

Posted: 12/21/2016 6:49 PM

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Chef_Stef

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Here are transliterations for each of the ones you posted. I took a stab at translating them too.

げだつ（ポア）やっぱりムリだった.. 何かでた Escaped (killed) I knew it was impossible.. Something came out * The first bit is hard to translate. げだつ (kanji: 解脱) means to escape one's bonds or pull through a situation, and ポア is "Phowa", a Buddhist concept of transferring consciousness that can be associated with death. Overall it's a fancy way of describing Kirby dying... which seems to be in line with the picture.

てきをすいこんでしゃがむとあいてのワザをコピーできる！いろんなてきをのみこんで、さまざまなワザをつかいこなそう！ Suck in an enemy, duck down, and you're able to copy their ability! Suck in different enemies, and learn how to use all the different abilities!

カッターブーメラン！ Cutter boomerang!

石になったらほらムテキ。上からおしてぶ[unreadable]ちやってほらステキ。 If you become a stone, see, you're invincible. [Strike and] push from above, see, you're lovely. * There's one character I can't make out so I'm not sure about the translation of the second sentence. I bracketed the bit that could be wrong.

ヒュルルルル..... ドカーン！カーンカーン Whoooooooosh..... Kabooom! boom boom [echo]

うまい！うまいったろ！体にいいものつくります。 Delicious! Surely delicious! Cook something good for you.

ガツンガツンといく！クイもうてるし、ハンマーでしかこわせないところも。 Go with a bam-bam! You can hit posts too, and areas you can't destroy except with a hammer. * The first bit is onomatopoeia for striking something.

墜落天使参上！ The fallen angel arrives!

パワーショット！ムーンサルトライジングアッパー！！キックメガパワーショット！！ Power shot! Moonsalto! Rising upper!! Kick Mega power shot!! * Moonsalto seems to be a particular gymnastics technique. The term comes from Moon + salto (a gymnastics flip). Japanese Wikipedia entry, English Wikipedia equivalent.

きてます。ハンドパワーです。 ...１回しかやりませんよ。 Here it is. Hand Power. ...You can only do it once.

あらふじぎ。ちいさくなってほそいつうろもだいじょうぶ！ Oh that's strange. Become small, and thin passages are no problem!

わたしどこまでだっておいかけていきます！！ドカーン！ Wherever I am I'll chase it down!! Kabooom! * The first bit could also be "Wherever you are I'll chase you down", there's no subject specified.

Posted: 12/18/2016 4:03 PM

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Chef_Stef

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Short and sweet, I liked it. Nice to see such big timesavers in a game as simple as this. Voting yes!

Posted: 12/13/2016 2:15 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Warepire: I'm considering just doing both at once since there's so much overlap. If that's doable I'll be slightly prioritizing the no-deaths run, since having full-level runs as a baseline will help plan where game overs actually save time in the GO-abuse run. Though I suppose we could just figure that out with enough testing beforehand.

Posted: 12/10/2016 3:27 AM

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Chef_Stef

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I'd prefer 100% too but it seemed daunting to follow up on pirohiko's amazing WIP. I figured I'd start with a shorter run first. Anyway, thanks all for getting me to try the PAL version again. Level 1: Link to video Bizhawk movie file In-level time for NTSC was 2380 frames, and in PAL it's 1880 frames (equivalent to 2256 NTSC frames). So the PAL version of level 1 is at least 2 seconds or 5% faster than NTSC. One nice thing in PAL was that the extra speed let me just barely clear the mud pits in one slide, versus the NTSC version where you catch the edge and have to jump out. I was able to slide past all three in the level. On the flip side, there was one (regular) pit that's slide-able in NTSC but wasn't slide-able in the PAL run. The NTSC run relies on lag frame abuse to cover more distance, but the PAL version doesn't have lag frames there. Another interesting note is that Crash's movement is more finicky in the PAL version. But in practice there's more leeway to do stuff and still keep top speed. For example, NTSC's top sliding speed of 18.43 is only possible when zig-zagging directly along the level axis, whereas in PAL you can go maybe 10 degrees off-axis and still keep the optimal 22.53 speed.

Posted: 12/6/2016 5:44 AM

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Chef_Stef

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My reading of the TASVideos rule is that speed differences can be attributed to inexact (improper) conversion to PAL format, and therefore the PAL format is not preferred for cases where speed is the only difference. But you do make some good points. I focused on slidespin gains being only marginally better in PAL but overlooked the larger jump speed difference, which will probably add up to a lot over a full run. Another argument is that a game-over-abuse run is focusing on speed over all else already and should therefore use the PAL version for the extra time savings. Let me give the PAL version another shot - If I can at least match my results from the NTSC version (trick-wise, not time-wise, we all agree PAL is faster) I'll feel better about switching.

Posted: 12/6/2016 4:32 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Sheesh, I guess I've offended you somehow, Spikestuff. I never said PAL was slower, I'm saying I found its particulars more of a headache to deal with and decided the speed-up wasn't worth it. You're right - I didn't think hard about the version choice at the beginning, I started with NTSC because it's the version I play and it's where I did all my sandbox testing prior to starting the run. I thought I was making a reasonable decision sticking with NTSC but it sounds like it's a bigger deal to you than I thought. I will clarify that I don't like the idea of using PAL on the basis of speed alone, especially when it's on the order of a few % rather than 25+%. If there are actual tricks that can only be done in the PAL version I think the argument is much stronger. Otherwise I'd argue the PAL version is at the very least discouraged under TASVideo's version rules. I'd also like to single out this point:

As I've pointed out to you. Your movement is lacking quite a bit of wiggling which will save you a lot of time in the long run.

I brought this up before but didn't get an answer. Where exactly have I failed to do this? I'm doing this on every single slide and I'm pretty sure I'm doing it optimally. If you're convinced that's not the case, can you please demonstrate with a movie so I can improve my run? I'm not doing this TAS in a vacuum, I've done a lot of research on Crash's movement behaviors to make sure I'm doing things correctly. There's a reason it's taken me 25k rerecords to do two levels. Edit:

I have no name wrote:

Missing speed variables: Walking, air speed. (If PAL is faster here, load times or lag would be the only way NTSC would be better overall... and it's known that NTSC is laggier?) How zigzagging affects this. (RTA runs primarily use PAL... but I honestly don't know how TAS level zigzag would affect this)

Thanks for slicing the numbers. The ones I posted were with zigzagging and analog sticks, so I believe those are maxed out (assuming I didn't miss something). Walk speed is 7.51 in NTSC, 9.56 in PAL. Air speed is 9.56 in NTSC, 13.65 in PAL (both including wiggling). All of these numbers assume that you're travelling optimally in a given direction. Travelling off-axis from the level, for example, will reduce Crash's overall speed to varying degrees. Of course, there are special cases like sliding on ice or wall-clipping where the speed values will differ too. I've also noticed that the game compensates for lag frames sometimes by increasing the slide or spin distance by 1.5x for a frame. I imagine this is the same in both versions.

Posted: 12/6/2016 3:15 AM

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Chef_Stef

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After messing with the PAL version for a weekend I've decided to continue the run on the NTSC version. Once you take into account the framerate differences (50 vs. 60 FPS) the speed increase in PAL is much more modest than I suggested in my earlier post. The increased fall speed gets in the way of tricks like sliding across pits, and overall it's harder to achieve the same level of precision in PAL due to differences in how movement angling works. Don't get me wrong, I think a properly-optimized PAL version would ultimately be faster, I just don't see as huge a benefit to a version change as I thought at first. Also, I want to make sure I don't kill my motivation on this TAS in the first place! So with all that said, onward to level 4 - I'll post another video once I've made some progress.

Posted: 12/1/2016 2:30 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Interesting. I think that only works on PAL - holding right in NTSC isn't enough to escape the load trigger. You have to actually slide to get far enough away. I experimented a bit on PAL and here are some hard numbers on the speed differences between versions: -- NTSC: 9 frames of sliding at 18.43 speed, 12 frames of spinning at 12.29 speed = 14.92 speed per frame -- PAL: 8 frames of sliding at 22.53 speed, 9 frames of spinning at 15.02 speed = 18.55 speed per frame So movement in PAL is about 25% faster. Crash also jumps higher and falls faster. Sounds like a winner to me. I'll start a PAL version and see how it goes. Opinions seem split on game over abuse vs. no game over abuse. I'm a fan of fastest-time-at-all-costs as a concept but no-death would show off more of the game. I can defer the decision until after level 1 so if anyone else feels strongly please chime in.

Posted: 11/30/2016 2:55 PM

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Chef_Stef

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Spikestuff wrote:

Skipping the opening Cortex was eh... there are other workarounds in a voiding it, such as jump+spinning+triangle. Entering first level seems slow. Lack of wiggling. Sliding along the edges might be faster than going through the level without using it. (No one has confirmed/denied this)

I'm skipping the loading screen so I have to slide out of the way. Jump+spin+triangle didn't work there because the loading screen cancels it if you're in range. I'll double-check the level entry but I'm pretty sure it's optimal given the starting position (next to the load area). Not sure what you mean by lack of wiggling, I use it constantly.

OH GOD IT'S GAME OVER ABUSE! Use the PAL version for Crash 2. It's faster in terms of movement for the long run compared to the NTSC version.

I can do non GO-abuse if you prefer, that's why I posted the WIP so early :D I was on the fence about NTSC vs. PAL but if everyone prefers PAL I can switch. Edit: Oh, and what do you mean about sliding on the edges?

Posted: 11/30/2016 5:38 AM

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Chef_Stef

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Here's my attempt at the first two levels of any any% run with Game Over abuse. Based on recent RTA runs and what's been posted in this thread, the optimal warp room 1 sequence seems to be: Level 1 (complete it normally), levels 5, 4, and 3 (game over abuse in all of them), level 2 (get 0 lives for warp room 2), beat the boss. This movie finishes levels 1 and 5. Bizhawk movie file Encode: Link to video I'd love to try a 100% run but it's daunting to even think of picking it up yet. This game is seriously hard to optimize. I figured I'd get my feet wet with an any% run first.

Posted: 10/5/2016 3:12 AM

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Chef_Stef

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That was an extremely exciting watch. My hat's off to you for sticking through and completing one of the most anticipated TASes of the decade! A super-big yes vote from me.

Posted: 9/18/2016 3:41 PM

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Chef_Stef

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The amount of thought and effort that went into this improvement is impressive. I enjoyed the entertainment bits too (however infrequent they may have been, gotta keep moving after all!). Lots of stuff to like, but if I had to pick a favorite it'd be whenever you killed a strong enemy without slowing down. This happened a lot during the run but I never got tired of it! Voting yes!

Posted: 1/10/2016 9:49 PM

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Chef_Stef

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It's been awhile but I'm still here! World 2 was a breeze so I decided to do world 3 while I was at it... and got stuck on a couple of levels. Then I took a long break for the holidays. Oh well. At any rate, here's the WIP through the end of world 3. In world 2 I realized that vine-boosting can be done for each vine in a group by repeatedly grabbing and letting go. Vine boosts are about a 5-frame savings per use so it's nice to be able to exploit these even further, and it looks great as Mario zooms across the vines. The most obvious usage is during the boss battle. I'm thinking this trick can be done in some levels of the other run to save a few frames. World 3 was annoying because most levels were about obstacle navigation and there wasn't much room to shorten things. In multiple places I was forced to make the mini wait or else it would hit a fireball. Thanks to the usual tricks the boss is nice and quick, at least.

Posted: 12/27/2015 4:51 PM

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I liked this a lot! Another great movie in the series. This one was super fast-paced since you start out with an army so often. I'll probably never get tired of seeing units dance back and forth in combat. Yes vote from me. (FOR THE HORDE)

Posted: 11/15/2015 11:30 PM

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Chef_Stef

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Plus worlds go! World 1 finished. I'm starting from SRAM but it'd be pretty easy to attach this to the end of the other movie if we want to just have a combined TAS. Manipulating the mini properly is a huge challenge sometimes but otherwise these levels are more straightforward than the normal ones. I'm not convinced I've found the fastest strategies yet, but this is a good start. Progress is pretty smooth now that I have a lot of experience with Mario's mechanics, although there are new tricks I'm finding thanks to the different format of levels in the plus worlds. It turns out Mario's placement in front of the key door is very important - the farther away he is, the longer the ending animation takes. And of course there are a lot of small tricks for escorting the mini around. The highlight for me is 1-1+, where I got the mini out of the starting area without having to go through the shyguys. It still looks kinda slow but I couldn't get the mini to jump up any faster. 1-6+ was a bit frustrating because the brick cycle was off both times but that aside the level turned out pretty well. 1-DK+ was fun figuring out how to do the trash-can-reuse trick as early as possible.