Posts for Comicalflop


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Yes vote for the Headless Horsem- I mean Dynamite Headdy.
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(moozooh beat me to it. and yes, mupen automatically displays input and frame counter.) You also might want to be a little careful with smb2 FDS.... when doing LoZ FDS I ran into some problems where the FDS ROM was not deleting the SRAM correctly, meaning I had to delete it every time I wanted to watch from the beginning or start recording. Just a little thing to watch out for.
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Flagitious is absolutely right, technically all movies can be theoretically improved. While yes improvements can be made to this, claiming to know for a fact that it's very improvable is out of place. In answer to Flag's question: The way that the rest of the course is 'played normally' by driving around the course is done with long boosts. However, in that course there are no walls with which to long boost off of, except the other drivers. So Huffers drove around in circles, which was the fastest to do given that he was unable to long boost off of anything, and as soon as the CPU's came around, he long boosted off of them for faster laps.
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Deign wrote:
After watching your video, I'm positive that your score can be beat with either better placement of pieces or if luck manipulation can be controlled.
I should have listened :-P you beat my score by 634,955. That is FAR greater than what I had beaten the WR by. Awesome job! I am very pleased that my original submission has spurred competition. When I downloaded the game I just knew that it was a worthy game to fight over, with many different modes and variations on strategy to perfect scores. This definitely motivates me to make another submission of this game at a later point in time, whether it be 1 minute challenge or a different mode.
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When holding down A, the pieces really do fall too fast. It was a bitch getting the items to spawn in different areas, and holding down A they don't even make it 1/3rd across the board when trying to go from one end to another. Setting this to canceled, Deign managed through luck to get two rainbows when playing around in 1 minute mode, and raped my score with 700,000+.
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Beauteous. ++ awesomeness = win.
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With mentions of improvements available from a restart, it would probably be a pertinent time to point out that there's corner boosts and going through walls present in this game... now only to poke Arne enough to get him to post about them in here.... *poke poke*.
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VANDAL wrote:
Chances are, with comicalflop also working on this, there will be much more progress than before.
I bet if DK64MASTER were reading this, he'd raise an eyebrow or two.
Andypro wrote:
How far can we get now until the route becomes uncertain? Or is the route complete now without any ambiguity? I assume we can at least get through the child portion?
Well yes and no. We're already at an uncertain stage in ambiguity, as to whether getting the lullaby and getting bombcu's from the well early is faster then the Spirit Temple, so we're taking advantage of our co-authoriness and splitting up, each taking the different route to time which one will be faster. Normally, here is the route and it doesn't show too much change in the child section, but we have to check and make sure which way to get bombchus is faster. Ordinarily our route wouldn't change until after Dodongo's, but can't hurt to check with two of us splitting and TASing at the same time.
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Nitsuja just showed me a route change that unoptimized brought the timer down to 0:44. So restarting again, but fortunately from about a little more than halfway through.
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"you are now a super mario kart driver!" awesome. awesome awesome awesome. awesome. Where to begin? Thank goodness I helped get this project started, the results are spectacular. Zipping speeds, expert driving, lap skips, glitches, fast speeds, insane luck manipulation; what else is there to say? YES vote. A very worthy TAS of this game that's long overdue. Edit: It is probably my fault for many people reporting desynch problems. The record reset snes9x works fine, but I believe the settings that I chose for the .smv was a bad choice. I have 13 of the tracks already encoded in the SMK forum, and if people so desire I will get to work on encoding the final 7.
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Green Grove Zone 1 improved is done. Green Grove 1 Improved / AVI / youtube In-game timer: 0:45 Frames saved: 161 The run is going for fastest in-game time like many other familiar sonic runs. I picked up a few less rings, and might have saved a few frames from the score tally, but I won't be keeping track. Many new techniques were used to keep Sonic's oscillating speed at a maximum, as well as taking advantage of speed boosters and ways to navigate around turns without Sonic's speed drastically decreasing.
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I already did up to the slingshot, Guano is finishing the rest of Deku Tree. We're not waiting for delay to be fixed, since we should be done before work can even be in full swing to fix that. We won't be needing hard resets as much as a 100% run would; deathwarps work just as well. I'm sure Kazooie and Acryte are hard at work in bomchus in the well. And no, the first 19 minutes will not remain unchanged; there's a few changes in the deku tree, some more precision to be made, the owl skip to do, and then we need to figure out before Link embarks at Hyrule Filed on whether or not early well --> bomchus work, because it's the difference between skipping going to Spirit Temple at all or not.
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Genesis is not short of Gradius style shooters: Bio Hazard Battle Fire Shark Grey Lancer M.U.S.H.A. Raiden Trad Lightning Force Air Buster Arrow Flash Burning Force Curse Dangerous Seed Forgotten Worlds Master of Weapon Sagaia Slap Fight Space Harria II Steel Empire Thunder Force II, III Twin Cobra Verytex Zero Wing There's a plethora of vertical, horizontal, and foward scrolling games, I'm sure some of them can be construed into a quad+ movie.
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questionable desynch on my part. The boss does grab the propeller and spins around (wouldn't that kill him?) and Red falls off the helicopter and dies a few times. But the stage does get cleared, so was that intended?
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I am convinced you are not human. You produced WIPs on a near daily basis, and saved more time than what everyone expected this to be improved upon. Yes vote. Fast action, very noticeable improvements in every stage, many clever solutions to quicken the speed, and utilizing up to date tricks and glitches. The only complaint, which, in the end, does not detract my yes vote, was the camera and lack of entertainment/speed tradeoff. I'm not going to go into much detail, since all my thoughts were posted about it in the thread and you improved with camera angles about 75% through the run, but I would have vastly preferred if the entire run you paid careful attention to the camera angles, rather than improving them only in the later stages. Fantastic job nonetheless.
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It's perfectly fine to vote no if you didn't like it, but if you feel it's unoptimized, "very weak play", and the only justification for a no vote, please specify why you felt this way and where it was unoptimized so that myself and others know what it is you are referring to.
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Well, what I have set up is partially what you're describing, and another part of what you postulate is actually made moot with such a plugin. For my N64 TASing, I use this USB dual analog controller: I have the left analog stick to control the N64 analog stick, and the right stick to control most of the yellow c buttons. I have the input plugin set up to receive direct input from my controller. I can either use the mouse to drag the blue dot and have the plugin hold the tilt/angle there, or make the controller control the game. Each of the buttons are configurable, and I have them mapped out for the A, B, start, R, L, Z. one button is pause/unpause, another is frame advance (which I use another program to enable, will go into detail later.) So I have the input plugin, which when in frame advance I can use it for high precision maneuvers, have it hold down buttons for me (like A for driving in Mario Kart 64.) I have the controller, which is binded to the input so the game accepts input no matter if I do it on the plugin or the controller, and I also have my keyboard, which I use for pausing and frame advancing (I have my controller set up so whenever I press the FA/pause button, it makes the computer press F or D on the keyboard. I switch between the controller and the plugin at a consistent rate, and use F or D on my keyboard if I need to hold down frame advance or make many frame advances very fast. Now, how does it help with 2 player TASing? By completely freeing your hands. Having the two windows helps in not playing "Twister with your fingers" to get all the key presses right. So, um, I guess in closing, having the buttons pressed for you on the screen on a control panel window will save time and energy, and prevent finger achiness for multi-controller runs. As to why some oif your suggestions aren't needed, the controller can be binded to register on the plugin if you press the button on the controller, and the whole point is to free up the fingers to use only the mouse for checking the boxes to be registered as held down... your suggestions are, initerestingly what the plugin can already do. if you left click on the box, it becomes held down. if you right click on the box, it turbos.
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I agree. you have so few courses left that it'd be so worth it to submit, you've worked very hard and are so close. So what is the optimal way to go about pausing? start, frame advance, start, holding B throughout, or press start and let go of B on the same frame, then next frame start holding B again to get out of pause menu? Edit: I just tested, and it looks like holding B throughout , and pressing start, frame advance, start is optimal. B is held throughout, and my alternate idea did not work.
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I keep getting either swinging with the deku stick, or slingshot goes into first person mode. I guess just watch guano's .m64.... But this is for two purposes I guess... one, to test that door closing cinematic, and two, to get practice should the need arise for me to perform it.
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Post subject: TAS Input Plugin's window helps 2+player runs in other emus?
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Nitsuja's TAS Input Plugin for Mupen 64 Has a very nifty control panel that appears when mupen is running, showing the circle and check boxes for all of the available buttons: Having this window on top of the screen all the time can be a little annoying sometimes, but when N64 TASing it is absolutely invaluable, giving full 360 degree movement and other wonderful features. However, when I was working on a N64 run with 2 controllers, 2 control panels would appear for each controller. Having done a few wips of some other 2 player runs on other systems, I found using this plugin to TAS with two characters was FAR easier than binding 2+ characters buttons to the keyboard. For some games, I was able to reduce the size of the control panels and easily fit 4 such windows on my screen at once, with the emulator still visible. I found making a 2 player run with this plugin to be far easier than I had ever thought. I was making faster and better progress than other 2p runs I've tried out. It has automatic auto-hold capabilities, and allows for a greater flexibility in testing one character's movement, and then to simultaneously do them at the same time. The plugin was more about using the mouse to press down and hold what buttons you want, instead of straining your finger's flexibility in how many buttons across the keyboard you can press. Having a separate window for each of my characters made the run so much easier for me to make, I believe that such a feature for other systems would benefit 2+ controller runs. Does this sound like a good tool to assist runners with 2+player runs, and would such a feature for a separate control panel, maybe mocking the system's controller, to appear as an option for those that wish they had more freedom with their fingers?
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Tub wrote:
you lower the water as a kid by playing the "song of storms" (?) which you usually learn as an adult, right? If there was a way to get this song as a kid before kakariko village, wouldn't that solve all problems? For example, do RBA using the kakariko bottle? unless I missed something (again) the question would be: is there an item for RBA that'll give you the song?
I believe the song of storms is used to enter the well in the first place (read mmbossman's post for when it's played)... which we skip by using those psychotic cuckoos to do a cuckoo dive. it's the zelda's lullabye that raises and lowers the water level in the well itself no? Hence why we'd love to skip it, since getting that song takes a major detour that is no obvious way faster than doing spirit temple early. I'd also like info on the deku+slingshot... specifically in what buttons to press when. I'm a teensy bit lazy and not in the mood (also have classes) to fast forward Guano's .m64 to a point where he does it. (if no one answers by early tonight, I'll just go look at the input myself...)
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no. I already have a test run of each course, i.e. the WR speedruns for them. I'd of course explore other options when I reach each level, and obviously improve a lot with frame precision. The game is straightforward enough that not too much route testing is needed. The game itself is very glitch absent. my v1 of Green Grove Zone 1 was a TAS test run I guess, to see how much time I can knock off from the WR. As soon as I found the speed memory address, I went about finding what is fastest in situations, and from that I've been able to improve upon my v1 attempt by a lot. I will continue this level of optimization of redoing gg1, complete all courses in the same quality and submit. Edit: when you start rolling on a flat surface, your speed does not oscillate. The first 10 frames your rolling speed is the speed when you started to roll, and then it gradually starts decreasing. Holding B as soon as your speed is 79 will make it stay at 79 for 10 frames, then decrease. very useful for that micro/sub-pixel optimization. update: about to get the speed boost upgrade tv. edit: (this is with speed shoes on) When you do a spin dash, and then jump off a slope for the 127 speed boost, the speed boost lasts the entire time that you're in the air, and even when you land on the ground the 127 speed remains, even when running at max speed. Even if you jump the boost stays; only if you turn direction will the 127 boost disappear. The 127 speed does not oscillate at all, so going up hills or down hills is still the same speed.
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Going to the well early is used to get bombchus instead of going to spirit temple. So if you find a way to get into that other room and successfully get the bombchus from the chest, without needing the lullabye... you'd save about 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes are counting on you! Don't let us down!
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At a point in time when Saturn emulation is possible, if indeed the levels are faster and the game looks cleaner graphics/better, than yes I guess that could obsolete this one. But a question best left alone until such time that Saturn TASing becomes reality. Update: Just killed 5th robot, so technically (not time wise) 50% done. ~ 18 in-game time seconds played, 67 frames saved so far, definitely more to follow.
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yes, the poacher's saw, which is not acquirable as a child, or else we would acquire it to save time as a child anyways.
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