Like many hacks, it's made for people who have played the original game to death. Also for people who have savestates. Most Super Metroid hacks don't even bother with save stations, barring the one on the ship.
This is one of the reasons I like the Stardust hack so much -- its challenge level isn't blatantly through the roof.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
If people like the run you make, it'll probably get accepted. Conversations about this game suggest that a pure speedrun would tend to be fairly repetitive, though, relying heavily on a small set of physics glitches associated with specific classes of items. Thus a pure speedrun is unlikely to be enjoyed by the audience, which means it wouldn't be accepted.
But heck, we've accepted all kinds of crap. If you want to make a speedrun, whip up a few levels and see what people think of them.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for the encode, feos!
I used to play this game as a kid, and it is indeed quite hard. Stage 5 was usually my roadblock, though I think I once did manage to make it to stage 8. I had no idea that was the last stage though, and of course I lasted about fifteen seconds on it.
Anyway, the run looked good to me. Nice work!
And now I keep thinking Zitz is wearing blackface.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It's a trivial optimization with an obvious tradeoff in a run that's likely to be viewed by people who don't normally watch TASes (and thus may not realize that they have the emulator set up "incorrectly"). Saving the 13 frames doesn't show any increase in skill on the part of the TASer. So who cares?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Yep, those non-chaos-emerald-collecting runs sure are keeping you from finding the runs that get all the emeralds! Yup yup yup.
(Maybe if the bonus stages weren't so dull and the requirement to actually use Super Sonic meant he wasn't useful because of route deviations, there'd be more use of him e.g. in Sonic 2)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Zeupar: defining glitches gets really tricky sometimes. Slope jumps may not break the physics engine or involve going through walls, but it seems likely they were not known about by the developers (or at least the developers did not expect them to be used), judging from the level design.
Or maybe they did know about them and left in the possibility that they could be abused, either because they didn't care or as a bonus to the dedicated player. It's a judgement call.
I say that a "glitchless" run should be a sequence of steps, each of which a normal console player can understand, but applied with precision and planning that would normally be impossible. Mysteriously jumping higher than normal wouldn't qualify under that set of conditions.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
To be fair, a "no" vote can mean anything from "poor game choice" to "I would like this movie if it made different stylistic choices" to "I hate the author". It would be helpful in the former two instances to call out your reasoning so the author at least knows what's distasteful about his run.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It's pretty simple. MZ has a principle that runs that are not significantly different from already-published runs should not be published. He stands up for that principle by voting no on runs he does not think demonstrate sufficient novel content. He's explained his principle, he's following through on it, all that remains is to agree or disagree with his reasoning. If you're going to argue with him, you have to try to argue against the principle, not the action that he takes as a result of that principle.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
In other words, not using such tricks would be going against the site. If you really wanna see gameplay without these sort of things, then there's always Youtube.
Nahhh, there's plenty of room for runs that don't use tricks that break the game. See e.g. the Harmony of Dissonance runs without wallsinking, the Super Metroid runs without X-Ray Climb, the Adventure of Link runs without L+R, etc.
The reasonable corollary for SM64 would be a run that doesn't make use of techniques that break the normal speed limits (BLJ, chained wallkicks, etc.). Awhile back there seemed to be decent support for a 70-star run made under those conditions, but I don't remember if anyone actually started working on it. Of course, most people who have enough skill to make a top-quality SM64 TAS are not interested in making one that purposefully doesn't take advantage of all of the possible speed techniques.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Has there been any investigation into how well Project Wonderful or other banner ads would fund the site? PW shows how much it'd cost to buy a particular ad per-day next to each ad, so I know that popular websites can easily get over $10/day from tower ads, for example (MS Paint Adventures currently shows $18.80 for one of its tower ads).
Granted this would be more obtrusive than a stealth embedded link...but it'd also clearly be an ad, unlike the stealth embedded link.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Andymac might still have a list of game candidates from last time. IIRC he wanted to keep the actual game being run a secret until the competition actually started to keep players from getting a head-start.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
My idea is that you take the current records from a fixed date, and use those to compile a 120 star TAS. Accept no further improvements if they can't be added as you are working on it, but ones that can be added as you go, obviously include them. Then, next year on the same date, a new 120 star TAS can be worked on, using the records gained from that year. This way, it gives people incentive to work on an individual star or series of stars, and have their work compiled into the yearly 120 star project.
Derakon wrote:
I think it far more likely that a run would be completed if the runners simply said "Okay, as soon as we're done with this star, that's it -- any improvements to that star will have to wait for a new run." The run would be known to be less fast than it could be if the runners had infinite patience, but oh well. I don't think the rate of newly-found improvements is going to slow down anytime soon.
:)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I've played through this hack. It's hard. And I did find its tendency to put the next powerup on the opposite end of the map to be a bit aggravating. That said, I enjoyed watching this TAS. Here's a few of my notes while watching:
* Check out that Torizo (bomb guardian) room! Fighting him normally is just asking for the conveyor belt to take you into the spikes for 60 damage a pop.
* That section in the first video right after using a missile to go the wrong way through a blue shutter gate isn't quite as evil as it looks. Most of the jumps are intended to be made in morphball form. Doing it "normally" is an exercise in masochism. :)
* Right after taking an elevator down (into the area with the Wrecked Ship music), you kill two enemies with the grapple beam. This resets your falling speed. Would it be possible to kill either with the normal beam and avoid slowing down?
* I always hated that room with the rising lava and pillars with gaps you have to jump through. Nice to see it so smoothly navigated.
* Naturally, having the hi-jump boots early makes the underwater segment a lot faster. :) Precision underwater jumping..grrr... (you're supposed to go underwater => wavebeam => backtrack to grapple beam => rebacktrack to hi-jump boots => underwater for supers, to give you an idea of how much back-and-forth this hack normally has)
* The watery maze room with the Rinkas is hot, so Samus will take damage continuously if she doesn't have the Varia. Thus the detour to pick it up from Crocomire.
* You're supposed to have Spring Ball and Gravity Suit for Phantoon. And a lot more energy tanks. I also fought him with just Varia when I played the hack, and he's a spiteful little thing. Deals way too much damage.
Anyway, nice work! I enjoyed it. I just don't know if the publishers will think there's enough room for yet another Super Metroid TAS on the site...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for the encode, Jlun.
Honestly, I think it's a good thing that this run skips to the last level right off; I think I'd find a run of the full game boring but this was short enough that it didn't become dull. Yes vote.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Of course, obsoleted movies aren't gone, especially with the move to continue to host encodes of them. We could just add a link to the less-glitched movie in the currently-published movie.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Um, the glitched glob is pretty clearly made up largely of Megaman sprites.
And I highly doubt you could use this to jump to Wily's Fortress. Cutscenes have basically nothing to do with sprite sets beyond that the relevant sprites are normally loaded before the cutscene is run.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Higher difficulties are usually preferable, but it depends on how they're made harder. For example, if the additional difficulty just results in each fight taking longer as you must whittle away more hitpoints and stop more often to heal (i.e. fights are longer but do not have new strategies), then hard mode is not preferable. This often happens in beat-em-up games, for example.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Usually runs that make use of glitches that cut out a large amount of the game do not obsolete runs that do not make use of those glitches. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule, mind.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Perhaps your hitpoints are expressed as a floating point number? I can't imagine why they would be, but then you could take partial HP damage, which (if damage is displayed as int(original HP - current HP)) would cause variable damage display.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
