The actual act of picking things up takes negligible time so long as you're close to the drop point...Sorcs and Assassins, though, kill from a distance, so that doesn't really help much. Assuming you have the gold, you can completely fill your belt with one click, so it's worth shopping for potions if you're in town anyway. But why would you ever be in town?
Depending on your need for potions, you could get most of them from champions and uniques, who drop multiple stacks (and champions, IIRC, show up in groups, so you get several group stacks). That would be an efficient way to refill, and a good chance to manipulate some drops while you're at it.
I'm extremely intrigued by the concept of making a TAS-friendly WINE, since it implies that we could TAS any game that runs in Windows. Of course, odds are that any TAS solutions would need to be special-coded on a per-game basis - mainly I'm thinking the code to generate a save-state - but man, there's a lot of potential there.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I doubt Enigma would be feasible until near the end of the Hell run, whereas a Sorc gets Teleport partway through Normal.
Keep in mind that the Sorc has spells that deal damage over time (whatever the spell is that causes fire to spring up in her footsteps, for example). Not nearly as easy to use as traps, of course.
Also, don't forget about charms. You can get lots of faster run/walk out of charms. If a run were to be done through Hell difficulty, by the end you should be getting the kinds of speed that are normally only possible in modded games...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
While playing through Hell would probably be more interesting for people who have played the game before, I suspect it'd be less interesting for those who haven't (or haven't played past Normal, and I know plenty of people who've played D2 didn't bother with the harder difficulties). The big problem is that the game, when TASed, becomes a matter of luck manipulation and assassinations - you manipulate the map to be short and the monsters to drop what you need, and then you move at maximum speed to the monsters, kill them, grab the MacGuffin of the day, and move on. There's enough variety in surroundings that I think this would work OK for one difficulty, but I question it for three.
And yeah, that is rather annoying just because the Sorceress doesn't really have any trouble until Hell.
Why do you need level 20/40/60 for the Ancients? Do they refuse to talk to you if you're too short?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
This is off-topic, but I've thought some about how you would abuse D2x for TASing. Presumably you'd use one of the following classes:
Sorceress: Teleport for speed; fast bosskills from fire and lightning (fire has a couple of stacking spells, while lightning has massive maximum damages that you can manipulate)
Barbarian: Skills to boost run speed (IIRC); can jump-attack as a teleport
The big problem with Sorceress is getting Teleport -- it doesn't kick in until level 18, which is mid Act 2 if you've been powerleveling. The problem for the Barbarian is getting the power needed to kill things fast. Both of them need to level - the Sorc for skillpoints and the Barb for statpoints. The Barb would be much faster in the early game, while the Sorc just totally takes off once she gets Teleport.
Obviously your first dropped item would be boots of faster run/walk. :)
Overall strategy is obvious: run past everything you can until you reach your objective, then assassinate it. The big problem is that if you get too low-level, then enemies stop giving you the experience you deserve, which means that you have to do some leveling to be able to do leveling later. Then it's largely just a matter of deciding what equipment modifiers are most helpful and ensuring that they drop.
I actually think that an "Ironman" run -- where you never make use of town facilities -- would be most interesting for this game, as it greatly reduces available resources. Sort of the equivalent of playing on hard mode.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I thought Richter mode required a clear save?
Anyway, this is awesome, and I predict that we'll eventually have the following SotN TASes on the site:
* Normal / any% / glitched
* Normal / any% / glitch-free
* Luck mode (depends on how the item manipulation works out; might combine with a "100%" mode)
* Richter mode / glitched
* Richter mode / glitch-free
* Maria mode (once Saturn TASing is available...might take a while!)
I remember playing this game without ever equipping gear, aside from the plot gear (rings, glasses) and possibly the Spike Breaker armor because I couldn't be arsed to memorize the spike room. It's so hilariously unbalanced that a TASer should have no trouble at all completely ruining it. The trick is doing so with style.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Hmm...I dunno. Watching the police fail to be able to aim at all is reasonably amusing for 30 seconds or so, but I don't think it's worth 160 seconds. Maybe if there were more tanks and hand grenades. How much of that variety of enemy type would be shown in the driving version? I assume the police blockade would still be there, and it'd actually be more of an obstacle in a car since you can't just jump the cars.
I assume there's some kind of hidden stamina meter that prevents you from running at full speed all the time?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Actually, I'm not entirely convinced that the Crystalis movie is more entertaining due to the warp; because of it, the player is able to do all sorts of things that not only wouldn't be possible for normal players, but also wouldn't be possible at all without the code. Things like buying items before they're supposed to be available, say. Plus, the game's flow is utterly ruined.
At least with the warp spell you can see where the player's going.
Now, granted that Crystalis's levelup system means that it's probably not suited to TAS anyway (you simply can't hurt enemies that are sufficiently higher-level than you are, which means that leveling to the max level is mandatory and you can't do all your leveling in one fell swoop), but if we're going to TAS it, then the warp code shouldn't be used.
As for the New Game+, the same thing applies there that applies to the alternate-character Castlevania runs (e.g. Julius / Maxim). The SRAM rule is meant to ensure that your game syncs, as I understand it (and secondarily to make certain that you're playing the entire game, e.g. that gains don't come from skipping the intro cinematic).
I do think that racing games are one area where you need to be careful how you approach them. Some games are more suited to playing through in their entirety than others. Mario Kart works because the setting keeps changing and the same strategies can't be used over and over again (or at least, not identically). Even then many of the races are forgettable. If you had a game where the only difference was the route, but you found an SMK-style glitch that let you skip laps arbitrarily, then there'd be no point in playing more than one course, as they'd all look the same. Then again, in such a situation I don't think the game would really be considered TASable.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I mainly mean the whole "Wow, this level is hard. I could skip it with a P-Wing, but what if I run into an even harder level later? Best to just tough it out and save the P-Wing for when I really need it" mentality. That kind of thinking tends to get you to the end of the game with a good half-dozen P-Wings at least. I know that as a kid, I only ever used them on the World 7 Airship and Bowser's airforce.
And that level where you had to fly a turtle shell up a shaft to break some bricks, because I wanted to access the optional Toad house but I sucked at flying while carrying things.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
This is clearly a situation in which the J ROM is preferable to the U ROM. The whole "use the old ROM" rule is, as I understand it, in place to prevent people from making new TASes that are faster solely on the basis of having less text to scroll through, or other similarly trivial differences. This is not a trivial difference.
Generally it's also preferred to use the U ROM for RPGs since that makes the text legible for more of the audience, but you'd only watch this TAS once you know how the game goes anyway, so I don't see that as a big deal.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
PhunqSauce is correct - you get an inventory full of P-Wings.
Which, I suppose, is a good way to get you to use all those P-Wings that you refused to use on the off-chance that you really needed them later (just like the one-shot bomb attacks / elixirs from RPGs).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I didn't bother to read through all 38 pages here to see if this has already been posted, but I'm posting it anyway!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY
(If this had been a TAS-related thread, the above would've gotten me smacked!)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
How hard would it be to automatically encode runs, anyway? Obviously this depends on the console in question; as I understand it FCEU has built-in AVI recording facilities, for example. It seems like the biggest problem is CPU time, followed by hosting space, but if someone was to doonate both, would there be many technical hurdles involved in automatically encoding submissions?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The movie won't work for the Sega CD - it's a different emulator. :) Even if they were the same, there's probably minute differences in timing that would prevent the movie from working on that version. Use the cart.
I think paul was asking why I chose to TAS the cart instead of the CD, rather than which he should use when playing it back.
Ahh, yes, good call. I thought it was a rather weird question. Sorry about that, Paul.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The movie won't work for the Sega CD - it's a different emulator. :) Even if they were the same, there's probably minute differences in timing that would prevent the movie from working on that version. Use the cart.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
In my opinion, you're on the money. Such a section would also give us a good place to put the "variant" runs (e.g. 100%, low%, glitch-free, different character, playaround) that people currently complain about every time a new one is made. The "default" run (generally an any% run doing whatever is required to win) would go onto the standard page, and there'd be a link in the description saying "Enjoyed this movie? See more movies for this game here" with "here" being a link to that game's section in Gruefood Delight. Except of course that we'd need to find a name that doesn't imply that the movies are bad somehow.
I do think it'd be worth making AVIs for these "semi-published" movies, but since right now there's a limit to who has the knowledge to do encodings, it shouldn't be a prerequisite of publishing. That is, the movie should be publishable sans AVI, but people should be able to submit AVIs later to be added to the publication.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'm surprised this movie wasn't published:
- This was a pretty popular RPG series, back in the day, so rejecting on quality of game choice doesn't feel right.
- The game is DESTROYED by the TAS. A typical run of this game would take days. So, we definitely don't have 'Walk to the right' syndrome.
- We already have Might & Magic 1 published for NES.
So, the only difference is entertainment. I guess the fight scene in M&M1 is enough to make it not-boring for the casual observer...
I guess whether or not you feel that a run should be published really depends on who you think the audience for the site is. My understanding is that the movies published on the site are meant to be appreciated by "normal" people (i.e. non-TASers), which means that entertainment is, in fact, the single most important metric we should use when it comes to publishing a movie. If a movie is totally incomprehensible unless you run it frame-by-frame, then odds are that it'll be hard to enjoy.
For what it's worth, my views as described above also mean that our focus on speed is occasionally mis-applied. Speed is a good general-purpose metric for enforcing precision, but it doesn't leave room for immensely entertaining movies that aren't as fast as inhumanly possible. I think also that many of the TASers here have gotten speed so deeply ingrained into their thought processes that they automatically equate speed with entertainment (as if the less time they spend looking at a game, the better the movie was), which makes it even harder for the occasional "playaround" movie to get published. It doesn't help that we don't have a good category for those movies on the site.
Of course, this movie might always make Alden's Gruefood Delight. You just won't get an AVI of it.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The normal form does have unlimited hover time. This game controls where you can go by only unlocking new levels after you've finished previous ones, instead of (as in the Gargoyle's Quest games) having bridges that are impassable until you get a powerup.
Buying any potions or scrolls is a pretty lengthy process (probably on the order of 15-20 seconds assuming you're already in town). Of course, while you were there you could also get an attack spell or two, which might make some boss fights faster.
I think it'd've been worthwhile to add the bonus boss onto the end of your movie; you've done everything required to access him at that point, and I'd so dearly love to see him die. Plus you'd get to show off the ultimate gargoyle.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
This game rocked when it was released. I don't like to mess with NES emulator, so I vote yes to see the video sooner :|
I enjoyed the game myself last time I played it, but ah, you're supposed to watch it before voting, otherwise what's the point?
"Oooh! Someone did a TAS of Castlevania Jaguar: Minuet for Eight Banjos and an Athsmatic Castrato! I love Castlevania! Voting yes."
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I managed to fix my WIP through hex-editing.
* Pause
* Start recording
* Hard reset
* Play as normal
* Save, open in hex editor, change byte that says if video starts from save state to be "start from hard reset".
The FCM format is discussed in detail here:
http://tasvideos.org/FCM.html
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
