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Small WIP. Made on v24 svn422.
I'm behind Dragonfangs any% run by 11 frames at this point, but ahead by 33 frames ingame, which is mostly due to emulator differences. The room with the Hives is the only one that's improved on significantly, although going faster forced me to do a walljump at the end to avoid getting hit as I couldn't manipulate the flies to go right after killing the hive (couldn't find a way to manipulate that to happen anyway).
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That WS strat was pretty cool. Really counter intuitive as the PB breaks the block slower, so it's very nice that you found this.
I think Taco found the post R-tank blueball strategy a while ago, and IIRC it should be faster if optimized. And Hero posted about that X-ray blueball in norfair, and found that it was slower.
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Yeah I'm not really for it. I think the ammo restraint would be put to the point of just being tedious. Plus the fact that you have to do it from dirty SRAM, which is generally not preferred, and on the (E) ROM, which is also generally not preferred (even though the differences are close to none in this case) doesn't work in its favor.
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Well hard mode can only be accessed after completing the game, so I think normal is the better choice :P
Anyway, I tested it out with the newest emulator, unfortunately it looks like you lose a frame in every door transition, and a couple of frames in every item collection/cut scene. But I guess it won't add up to too much in the end.
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I'm thinking of maybe picking up the 9% run for this game. Is there anything specific worth considering here that can't be derived from watching the old WIP? And figured I might as well ask so that no one else was working on this already.
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I tihnk the norfair one can be problematic to implement due to health restraints (and possible due to ammo restraints as well), but it's impossible to tell before getting there.
The Maridia one seems solid though. Very nice improvement.
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Can't watch this right now but I'm curious. How much time did you end up saving in the first level, and how much of that was reduced lag and how much was faster movement?
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I dunno, even considering all that I think selling 600 units should not be much of a problem. Collectors will buy it, some old school enthusiasts will buy it, and then some will buy it for the novelty factor. That should probably have it covered, I think.
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Yeah I can't encode for shit, so I just let Youtube have it's way with the relatively loss-less video I got from recording directly from the emulator. They should really up the frame cap to 60 at some point...
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Even if the run would use the same emulator and end up slower due to optimizing for ingame time, I think it could still be published if it was clear that it's only slower because a the goal of the run was changed, that the new goal is more interesting/entertaining and that the new run is significantly more optimized.
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I think it's fine as it is, and it looks pretty awesome :P
BTW, I noticed a small mistake I made close to the end that cost me 2 frames (4th room of the escape, nut using one of the ledges to gain extra height during the second walljumping part). I went on to fix it but the entirety of the gain was lost to manipulate steam in the last two rooms, and therefore it didn't end up saving any time in the end.
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hero of the day wrote:
I was wondering if regular missiles can kill the pirates during the escape sequence? You burn 2 missiles in the room after the big metroid room, and I wasn't sure if they could be put to better use. Would it have saved time to simply not bring those 2 missiles into tourian?
The pirates during the escape have 500hp (and take double damage from supers), so regular missiles would not do you any good. IIRC the sacrifice for getting those two missiles was about 3 frame. If I didn't take them I would have picked up another big energy ball after X-ray and skipped the two drops on the way back in Pink Brinstar, which is slightly faster. But without those missiles you can't fall straight down and destroy all the blocks after the big metroid room, so it saves a few frames in the end.
Eye of the Beholder wrote:
Also, regarding your discovery of how an action in the first frame when entering a room can affect the time, what about not having any input in the first frame (maybe in the last frame in the previous room as well), could it save any time?
I think you misunderstood. It's not the action you do on the first frame after entering a room that makes a difference, but what you do before reaching the door of the previous room (like aiming down, which I found added lag in two of the doors in the game). This is how you can more easily manipulate luck in an ingame oriented run, but adding lag at the door by doing stuff like constantly switching on and of missiles or shooting just before entering a door. It's just that I had never found simply aiming to make a difference.
Eye of the Beholder wrote:
Even if it can't destroy them, can't they be used to pass unharmed through the pirates, like you do in the pirates room in Norfair, after Ridley?
This only works with plasma beam and power bombs for normal enemies. And the Elite Pirates are as far as I can remember the only enemies that have the special properties to make it possible with other weapons as well.
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That's probably true, but it's weird that it's specific to those two rooms. Maybe it has something to do with vertical scrolling. That's the only unique feature I can think of in those rooms.
Also another weird thing. Aiming up or down when going through a door can add lag, but it only happens extremely rarely, and also seem specific to certain rooms. It adds one frame of lag when leaving the room where you get the PB in Red Brinstar, and adds about 10 frames when entering the long vertical room in Pink Brinstar, on your way back to Tourian.
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Found a weird quirk that I can't really understand. In the 2nd and 4th of the Metroid rooms in Tourian, if you place the 2nd and 3rd powerbomb on the first frame possible you get like 40-50 frames more lag than if you just wait 1 extra frame to place it. And it's not dependent at all on positioning. I managed to avoid this in the 2nd room in my old run without knowing about it, but unwittingly lost ~100 frames in the 4th room because of it. No idea why this would happen, and why it would only happen in those two rooms. But hey, a huge timesaver is a huge timesaver.
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Found and fixed a minor error I did towards the end of the X-ray room on my way back that saved 2 frames (I think I accidentally recorded over the optimized method with an older test). Got super lucky against the first set of Metroids too, saving another 30-40 frames right of the bat (with essentially the same movements I used in my old run too). Still 3 rooms left that could potentially fuck up everything, but after that I'm basically set.
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I checked and you do indeed get a boost from the robots walking in the right direction. This should be pretty easy to manipulate too, since they will almost instantly start to move back when shot.
Got up to just before Tourian in my run (haven't jumped up to the elevator). About 150 frames ahead at this point, though I have one PB less which might be troublesome. I skipped getting any PB drops in Pink Brinstar, because the Rio's didn't want to drop them in a reasonable timeframe (best I got was a ~25 frame delay for 1 PB, which is unlikely to be worth it). Also skipped one of the health drops on the way back from X-ray which saved 14 frames. Instead I got a health drop plus a missile drop in the last room in Pink Brinstar which took 2-3 frames longer, but having 2 missiles in Tourian saves 10 frames (and entering Tourian with just 3 PB's won't allow me to get any missiles).
I've tried figuring out any better spot to get any drops, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment since most enemies have an extremely low drop rate for PB's this early in the game. So I think it'll just be up to luck in Tourian now.
Smv
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Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Realtime runs don't get 49:23 in Ceres.
Lag frames?
To get the best time on the clock you need to delay the intro by several frames to manipulate the steam pattern in the second to last room. I lose 2 frames there because of a slightly worse pattern. Besides that, the clock moves either 00.02 or 00.01 per frame, and if you aim for ingame time you can manipulate this so that the clock goes 00.01 less in a room without actually saving any time.
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Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
Edit: I see that this one is different by the use of a cwj going for the morphball... does that really save time? i remember suggesting this but was told that it wouldn't be worth as you could reach the platform not using a cwj.
It's equally fast, I just thought it looked slightly better.
LOL