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Chamale wrote:
I've heard you're more likely to roll over in your sleep, fall out of bed, and die from impact than get busted for downloading ROMs. I'm not too worried, really.
What about winning the lottery, getting struck by lightning, dying from a falling coconut, or being eaten by a grue? : )
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Whether the TAS is or would be faster or not has nothing to do with it.
Please read my previous post, and let me know if there are still any questions.
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Guybrush wrote:
Chamale wrote:
All the SMB1 TAS improvements are accepted, even though the unassisted speedruns are only 6 seconds slower. I did a test run of this, which was similar to what a very good unassisted runner to do, and it was 28 seconds slower than this.
That has nothing to do with judging of this submission. Unassisted speedruns should NOT be compared to TASes.
I think I was misunderstood, and if this is because my wording was ambiguous, then I apologize.
I wasn't attempting to compare times between a tool-assisted and unassisted run of this game, as if that were the only criterion for a yes/no vote. My point was that a tool-assisted speedrun should add something special or surprising to the game to provide entertainment, which is the reason movies are published on this site. Some games just aren't suited for a TAS. My criticism of this movie is that, while the movements may even be perfectly optimized, the end result looks like nothing more than a regular playthrough, which is boring to watch, and, in my opinion, unfit to be published.
The only problem here is a poor choice of game. I have said in the past that I believe that Chamale has the skills to be a good TAS runner and would be very successful with a tool-assisted run of a suitable game.
I certainly respect anyone who has a different opinion about this or any other submission. I just want to make sure that my opinions are correctly understood, so please let me know if there are still questions.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Edit: And despite the fact that the smallest Commodore PET 2001 emulator (which can run Microsoft BASIC among other things) fits in under 4 kilobytes of C code, you should not try to take example on that one :)
OK, I'm familiar with C (somewhat), but that's just like... WTF???
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mmbossman wrote:
Level 1- Obviously improvable. Too much walking, not enough boosting, and some backtracking, which seems like it should be a sin in this game.
Level one will be improved substantially.
mmbossman wrote:
And please, please, PLEASE do something more entertaining with the autoscrolling sections. Don't just hug the side of the screen waiting to move forward.
I understand what you're saying. This game has a lot of autoscrolling portions, so for entertainment, I plan to work in the theme of Sparkster dancing to the music, especially on that later level where the player rides a platform and has to navigate up or down... that has some nice music to dance to.
I've noticed that dancing to music is really only effective with tool assistance.
mmbossman wrote:
Level 2- I'm sure there is more entertainment to be had on the minecarts, especially during the overhead bomber phase.
As a nice programming touch, the minecart can kill enemies even when Sparkster is high in the air. I'll probably show this off a few times. I might also dodge the enemies' attacks while dancing to the music -- this would be entertaining, and the enemies automatically die after a certain amount of time has passed anyway.
I'm not sure about the overhead bombing scene, because I don't know if it's possible to survive without killing the enemies. But I'll worry about that when I get there.
mmbossman wrote:
And I'm sure you can take the snake boss out in just two passes, looks like there was a lot of wasted time there.
Dan's unfinished version three run does this, so probably.
mmbossman wrote:
And I'm sure that all the time added up could shave a significant amount off the clock, possibly as much as a few minutes through the whole run just from better movement planning.
My goal for this movie is to complete the game in under thirty minutes, which Dan said would be very impressive. : )
I'm so happy to see so much interest in this run!
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hero of the day wrote:
If you listen to all the character voices in slow motion or in frame advance, it is obvious that they recycled the words "wing damage" and simply used it at different speeds for each character's voice.
Wow, I never noticed that before! : )
Although I also heard "Repaired" and "Twin Blasters" being used as well.
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moozooh wrote:
Only two times, so it's not a good example. :D
Touché. But you know what I mean. ; )
moozooh wrote:
Well… you sure DO know how to impress. There are not many players here ready to show such a thoroughness and indepth knowledge even of their favorite games, and that quality is very commendable.
I actually feel inferior to a lot of players on the site. I see a lot of players reverse engineering different things in the games by examining the ASM code. Bisqwit has a program that can calculate input based on the physics of Mega Man. Acmlm and FractalFusion were able to write a program to calculate the shortest games of Monopoly. I know there are more examples that I can't think of right now. ASM looks like gibberish to me; in fact, I barely know enough C++ to do anything useful.
Most of what I know about the game comes from just observing things in test runs and using the Gens memory search feature.
moozooh wrote:
I still think you're overly cautious with your run being improved. I mean, you seem to already know much more than anyone here about this game, and will certainly learn much more things in the progress. There's hardly anyone able (let alone willing) to outperform you with such an attitude.
I'm not against having my run improved (except under the circumstances we talked about before, but I'm not worried about that anymore) if someone else is able to do that. For example, I don't know of any super glitches in this game to exploit. If someone like Phil or nitsuja found a way to break the game somehow, my run would probably be toast. I just want my run to be as good as I know how to make it, so I can still be proud of my work even if it does get improved.
I used the Gods run as an (admittedly bad) example because the newest submission improves by only a little more than a second, and it's hard (for me anyway) to see the difference. Of course, by principle it should deserve to be published as an improvement, but this is the kind of optimization that I would want to make sure is in the run before I submit it.
moozooh wrote:
And I'm really curious if you have any specific thing about the current SMB3 run that can be improved, since it wouldn't be an easy (or even possible) task.
I don't. Partly it was a joke about my real-time playing skills. But I do intend to try, even if it's not easy or even possible, just because I want to sink my teeth into A Serious Big-Time TAS™ after I'm finished with this run. I know that I still have a lot to learn.
mmbossman wrote:
I'm also looking forward to any sort of WIPs, because this was one of my favorite games as a kid, and I was flabbergasted by Dan's run, so I have no doubt yours will floor me.
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Chef Stef wrote:
I think everybody's comments are fair and valid, and I appreciate the response towards this movie.
I appreciate your mild manner. It's not fun voting no and then giving negative feedback on someone else's movie when I know how much time and work goes into it. It shows a lot about you as a person that you can so graciously accept criticism.
Chef Stef wrote:
Am I right in saying that an any% movie would be a lot more interesting to watch?
I certainly think so, and I'm looking forward to voting "yes" on the finished submission!
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moozooh wrote:
Is there any progress yet, btw? I'm itching to see what you will come up with to preserve your speed everywhere. :)
Bunny hopping is the biggest trick to preserve speed. I understand that this is true in many games: when the character jumps, whatever speed that is then present is preserved. Some loss of speed is inevitable due to friction, but bunny hopping after a rocket boost preseves high speed long enough until the booster is charged again.
I was also able to use one of the diagonal vines in the first level to bring my speed above rocket boosting speed. That's just cool. And when I needed to stop to fight the walker machines (stopping from a high speed in this game is usually difficult because "stopping" is really just accelerating the other way), I found (quite by accident) a convienant glitch where colliding with the hill the right way immediately sets my horizontal velocity to zero -- right where I needed to stop. That's also cool.
Boosting diagonally has less horizontal speed than boosting horizontally (which is logical, but the other players didn't seem to notice that). Also, when Sparkster is in his "falling" animation after a rocket boost (where he flaps his arms wildly), horizontal velocity is cut drastically, even if boosting forward, so I try to avoid this at all costs.
You'll also see me bunny hopping in areas where I don't use the rocket booster to gain speed. This is because, when walking, the horizontal speed switches between two values every frame. By jumping, I can preserve the fastest speed the whole time. (This is similar to a trick used in the Super Mario World run.) This is also why the first thing I do in the first level is jump. While the time saved would be counted in frames instead of seconds, it's still time saved nonetheless. : )
Another thing that will be helpful is simply the NTSC timing of the (U) ROM. The rocket booster value increases by one for each frame that an attack button is held down until it reaches its maximum, 63. This rule applies to all versions of the game. Since 63 frames in NTSC is faster than 63 frames in PAL, this means that I can take less time charging the rocket booster. This will definitely save some time in the first castle level, where Sparkster needs to boost a lot, and probably in other places as well.
Since Rocket Knight Adventures has a lot of bosses, optimal boss fighting strategy is a big part of the game. There are two kinds of bosses: hit-based and health-based. The first boss at the end of the first stage is a hit-based boss, a fact of which Dan and the other players were evidently unaware. This boss always takes (I think) six hits to go down, and there is a short invulnerablity period after each hit. Constantly swiping at the boss is pointless, and can actually waste time if the hits don't land on the first possible frame.
The best way to deal a lot of damage very fast for a health-based boss (and other enemies, like the trucks and walkers of level one) is to swipe the enemy as close as possible. This causes the game to register multiple hits in one swipe. Furthermore, when a health-based enemy is taking damage, it is usually possible to position Sparkster physically inside the enemy's collision box without harm. From this position, it is possible to deal very much damage very quickly, and by using frame advance, the next blow can be delivered before the collision box is reactivated. This strategy causes some functions of the game to lag, but it's not a problem because it is the fastest way to defeat the enemy, and other things (like the booster not recharging one unit per frame) can be easily compensated for.
moozooh wrote:
Is there any progress yet, btw?
Well, let me put it to you this way: I'm taking my sweet sweet time working on this run.
One thing I've seen a lot here is this: a person completes a TAS, submits it, then, once that run is published, submits an improvement. Then, once that run is published, they submit another improvement, and so on and so forth. As an example: how many times has Aqfaq submitted improvements to his Genesis Gods run?
There's nothing wrong or bad about this in any way whatsoever. I just intend to do my run somewhat differently. I'm a perfectionist. If I see a small way that my run can be improved, or even if there's a strategy that might save time and I haven't thoroughly tested it, then my run's not finished in my eyes. I want to try everything before declaring the run "finished".
Take a perfectly good example: I knew that, when fighting the trucks, the second truck doesn't even appear until the debris from the exploded first truck have settled down, and this happens a lot quicker if the first truck explodes in front of the tree. My first strategy had be explode the first truck, immediately boost to the far right side of the level, and defeat the second truck even before it fully appeared on the screen. I would then diagonal-boost over the wall. This sounds like a very logical, optimal strategy.
Guess what? Scrolling the screen just makes the second truck take longer to appear in the foreground. So my revised strategy eventually became to wait for the second truck, jump and attack it on the earliest possible frame, then immediately boost and bunny hop to the right. I can't remember exactly, but this saved something like two or three seconds of time. Anything that can shave two to three seconds off of a twenty-five second segment is definitely worth doing, plus I do the cool trick of jumping over the wall that the player's not supposed to be able to jump over. So everything is better that way. : )
I wrote before in response to Ouzo, Bob A, and TNSe that I felt bad that progress is slow. I retract that statement. My progress is going to be as slow as it needs to be for my run to be the best that it can be. That way, if someone does come along and obsolete the run, I get to be seriously shocked and surprised. : )
But you don't have to worry. I am absolutely NOT going to give up on this run. So even if I don't post anything for a while, I'm still working on it.
I'll release my next WIP when I complete level two. Unless I get pestered enough to do so sooner. : )
On a sidenote to the perfectionism comment, Rocket Knight Adventures is pretty straightforward compared to many other games, so it seems like I've found the perfect game of which to do my first TAS.
Anyway, that's enough out of me for today. : )
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Voted MEH.
Obviously the run was very well done. I agree with everything that's been written about the run, including the WTF experience and the comparison to Sonic Advance run.
What bothers me is the use of the password. After completing five tracks, we read:
Excellent! You survived 30 races and won it all!
This, along with the upgraded bike parts, does make it feel like the author cheated. I understand the reasons for this, but... I just don't know.
upthorn wrote:
If someone can get me the ram addresses of the camera coordinates, and the player coordinates, a crude (and somewhat inaccurate) camhack should be a fairly simple matter.
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I have a lot of both praise and constructive criticism for this movie.
The good part is that the tool-assisted gameplay is very precise, and you handle many seemingly akward and difficult situations very skillfully. ("Skillfully" as defined on the Why and How page). This is obviously the most important part of any tool-assisted speedrun, and it is very well done.
On the minus side, I think that the goals are poorly chosen. A high score adds nothing to the entertainment value of the movie (in my opinion), so when the player spends that much extra time collecting presents and (to a lesser extent) defeating enemies instead of just going to the goal quicker, the movie becomes that much less entertaining as a result. Also, while the movie spends more time in the levels going for highest score, it merely dismisses the bonus screens as fast as possible, instead of spending a little more time to get the highest number of lives, which would add much to the entertainment value here. Watching a tool-assisted player get "UGH!" as a bonus during a supposedly 100% run is kind of confusing. It's also unclear what exactly makes the run "100%" -- in some levels the player takes time to kill enemies, in other levels not. Sometimes the player collects all the items, sometimes not. You mentioned in the submission text that a 100% run would look similar to a straight speedrun. My personal opinion is that you made the wrong choice.
Second, this is a very long movie, enough so that it becomes wearisome to try to finish watching it. This may be directly related to the goals chosen -- it does seem (as KDR_11k pointed out) that significantly more time is spent collecting items and defeating enemies to raise the score and achieve 100% status than would be necessary in a straight speedrun. I think that a shorter movie would be much more bearable in this case, although using an .avi file could ameliorate that problem somewhat. A better idea, in my opinion, is to split the run into several parts, with the "regular" levels in one movie, followed by seperate movies for the "plus" and "expert" levels.
(To answer your question about RPGs: if I had to sit through a two or three hour RPG movie that didn't do something very impressive during that time, I would almost certainly vote "no" for that submission.)
For what it's worth, the gameplay itself of very high caliber here, and if that were the only issue at hand I would proudly vote "yes". Unfortunately, unless the goals of the movie are clarified and something is done about the unbearable length of the movie, my only choice with this submission is to vote NO.
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Truncated wrote:
For me, it's because I haven't found the ROM, which is reportedly "Title.fds".
Honestly, I have wanted to watch and judge it, but can't find the correct FDS image. I was hoping someone else could step in.
I don't have the correct FDS image either. The checksum is the same as the old Luigi run but completely different from whatever Phil used. And I have no idea where "Title.fds" comes from.
Yet, using the different FDS image, the movie still synced perfectly, so I don't know what the difference could be...
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moozooh wrote:
The scene in question is The Scene. I know, that's a good name. %)
OK. A "scener" is colloquial for a member of "The Scene", basically meaning the warez/pirating scene. Got it. And thanks for educating me... again! : )
I still think that these so-called "cracktros" on the GBA ROMs are just idiotic!
OK, Chamale, about your run... I honestly think that you have the skills to be a very good TAS runner. The major problem with this submission is the same as in the Tom and Jerry run: poor game selection. I don't intend to discredit the amount of work that you put into this -- I can see that you took the time to do everything right -- but the end result is the same: a movie that's uninteresting, repetitive, and, for a good deal of the time, indistinguishable from unassisted play. So I'm going to vote NO.
Please don't take this as a rejection of you as a runner. You could probably be a TASVideos superstar with a good choice of game. I mean that.
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Just so you know, now that I've finally found a good source for GBA ROMs, I'll watch your movie and leave feedback as soon as possible.
Edit: I thought I had a good source for GBA ROMs, but now I know what Zurreco meant by "a retarded hacked introduction screen". My ROM actually gave me this message:
Remember: true sceners [sic] don't care about CRCs and untouched dumps. Those that do can **** off and die!
Notwithstanding the fact that "sceners" isn't even a word, that's just retarded.
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I hate not voting yes on someone's submission, I really do. I can see the work that went into producing this run. But I just don't think that this is TASVideos material.
The run itself looks good and seems optimized -- the problem here is that, overall, the movie lacks the special punch that seperates tool-assisted speedruns from the ordinary non-assisted runs. I just can't imagine this movie being significantly faster or better than what an unassisted runner would produce. To the author's credit, this is a problem with the game, not the submission itself.
I'm sorry, but the vote from me has to be NO.