As one of not that many people that actually know what's going on throughout the TAS I have to give this a yes vote.
I not only enjoyed every single spike spark, X-mode superjumps, shinesparks, or G-mode to get into lower norfair, but also all the small details and optimizations such as using X-Ray turnaround standup to clip through a block quickly, using mock ball to activate the green gate, maintaining falling speed via soft unmorphing after a moon fall, using X-mode teleportation while charging up a shinespark etc.
It's nice to see a TAS that makes full use of all the powerful glitches and discoveries and skips that have been made in the last ~4 years I think.
Great work on the TAS, taking the shortcuts as tight as possible and discovering some new strats.
I can't wait for you to tackle down those brutal tracks in King League as well.
Yes vote
Great job on the TAS, I'm glad to finally see a highly optimized TAS for the first cup of this game.
I gave this a yes vote as a runner of the series that knows how complex this game can get.
So there are 3 things I'd like to talk about.
1. Regarding the ingame time discussion. IGT can be manipulated by pausing and unpausing rapidly, so the timer increments by 0.01 each frame instead of alternating between 0.01 and 0.02.
For more information you can look into the F-zero Central discussion: http://www.fzerocentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=13945&sid=02735c7825c36a3421d5c4ca37a23509
and here is a video demonstration by Edward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWmlXD3ccMg
2. I assume you went without the rapid pausing glitch seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9wcWH_Q99w
Though I don't know if that's only an emulator bug, but watching a TAS Glitch around the finish line wouldn't be as much fun to watch.
3. Do you plan on TASing the other cups as well ? I'd love to see those tracks highly optimized as they are even more complex and involve wall bounces, extremely sharp corners and some sick shortcuts.
Uhh, I'd be highly surprised if this route would end up faster than the current 100% TAS route. You probably underestimate how much time having speed booster and highjump boots early saves throughout an entire run, just by moving way faster in every single room, but new ideas are never a bad thing.
Also I would change a few things that would probably make the route faster:
1. Instead of cf'ing a spike suit at gravity it would probably be faster to just do a ceiling cf for the reserve tank and then get gravity.
2. I would get Grapple after speedbooster, so ice beam -> highjump -> speed booster -> grapple -> LN as again having speedbooster makes movement a LOT faster, especially in the crocomire area.
Link to video
I guess this is worth mentioning.
Also edzan is working on a 100% TAS (that he already decided to redo because of this newly discovered secret world).
Basically you go oob first to make the game think that you are in Chapel Tunnel while going inbounds in Chozo Ice Temple (you can see this well by the map on the top right zooming into Chapel Tunnel).
By making the game think you are in Chapel Tunnel the game will have both connecting rooms loaded, so Chozo Ice Temple and Chapel of the Elders (the room with wave beam).
Another important aspect is that the game doesn't calculate any repositioning from collision of rooms the game doesn't think you are in.
So since you are in Chozo Ice Temple with the game thinking you are in Chapel Tunnel you can morph against a wall and get stuck where usually the game repositions you away from the wall on that kind of situation.
If you get stuck on a certain position and angle then you can rotate with the morphball without friction and exponentially increase your rotational speed until you overflow the value and the game sets your rotational speed to NaN (this is when the morphball gets rid of the hull for whatever reason).
We call this glitch infinite speed and we don't know exactly how it works, but if you boost with infinite speed you hit almost everything that is currently loaded.
So by boosting there you also get both items: the artifact of Sun in Chozo Ice Temple and Wave Beam in Chapel of the Elders at the same time. The wave beam cutscene warps you into Chapel of the Elders, which is why you are immediately there.
The 2nd Samus you see in the cutscene appears because you also hit the trigger to start the Shegoth fight.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on anything.
Yes vote.
Very entertaining watch even though I don't know the game well.
Something I noticed on bosses is that they might be finished faster by a few frames if you doppler them, so go a far distance first so you can shoot your first time earlier since the projectile takes time to travel. Then get closer to reduce the time it takes to hit.
But as I said I don't know much about this game and since the projectiles are so fast, I doubt it would have made much of a difference if any.
That's some really cool stuff. I guess 100% will be more interesting.
One thing you can do in 100% I figured out is that when you find a kid, you can cancel the clapping animation with a kiss and cancel the kiss animation by turning around twice.
Well, a few casuals got something we call "Where's the room Glitch" in one of the rooms in Impact Creator, which appears to be a very random glitch though.
The glitch get's you into a room without the map transitioning, so the game actually thinks you are in a different room.
With that we can get infinite speed on a wall and then use that in some way to skip exo.
( I don't know the exact details for which triggers you want to hit/avoid with IS to make that work, but andy should know the specifics )
If we can replicate that, then we pretty much have exo skip confirmed.
Another possibility would be to just find a secret world (oob) in one of the rooms in Phazon Core, which might be possible with the use of Fission Metroids, where we have ideas, but no positive results yet.
Transport Access North sounds incredibly slow if you're doing a Tallon > Phendrana VMR. A more likely candidate is Training Chamber, currently I've only managed to collect it without Bombs if I have floaty jump active... but if some morph ball collision magic can be pulled off to flick the ball up the spider tack, then that tank very much fits into the route.
Yeah, Transport Access North is incredibly slow to the point where the route would end up slower than getting varia instead.
Also my bad for not counting in Traning Chamber, but well yeah we don't know any way to get that quickly in the route.
I also wouldn't be surprised if a morph reposition SW is possible in Furnace using the Beetles to create a tight space, making the Etank there more an option. ...I'd rather not be the one to look into that garbage trick though.
Interesting idea that should work on many other places as well if it works.
Regarding final time estimate:
It should be possible to sub 40, but another huge chunk could be saved if Exo skip is found, which only needs a secret world in phazon core and we have a few approaches on it.
Is the idea of skipping Varia saving time for any% or 100%? It's not obviously faster or slower in either context (of course in 100% you'd have to come back later but you need to do that in both cases due to artifact of Wild).
Currently for any%, idk if it would be useful for hundo.
This is what the varialess route would look like:
Go straight to Phendrana after getting X-Ray and the artifact of Chozo via magmoor varialess while collecting the artifact of Strength on this trip and an E-Tank:
Link to videoLink to videoLink to video
After getting boost ball, Wave beam and the artifact of Sun in Phendrana you have to do a 2nd and even longer trip through Magmoor to go to Chozo Ruins to collect the artifact of Nature.
Eventually this SW can come in handy to avoid double heat damage in one room:
Link to video
The next step is a pretty ugly bsj on a wasp to climb up suntower from the wrong side and skipping varia + supers:
Link to video
Doing so you also hit the trigger that changes the room layout of Sunchamber (the room with Flaahgra) to the ghost fight layer and you can get the artifact of Wild and since Lifegiver is also on the way you can collect that as well and then head towards Tallon Overworld and Magmoor and then do Far Phendrana and Mines just like in the other route.
The advantages of this route are:
1. You skip the flaahgra fight and some backtracking from X-Ray to it.
2. You also don't need to Collect Lifegiver after finishing Mines which cuts out some backtracking in the end.
The disadvantages:
1. You need to get many E-Tanks to survive the Magmoor trips.
It's confirmed that 2 E-Tanks are enough to survive the first trip and 3 should be sufficient if you want to include the artifact of strength on this trip (which you probably want to do since otherwise you would have to do it on the 2nd even longer trip).
You get another E-Tank at the end of magmoor though, which will also refresh energy, so we can try the 2nd trip with 4 E-Tanks, but we don't know yet if that is enough. If not we need 4 E-Tanks from Chozo Ruins and that's most cerntainly slower.
The potential E-Tanks one could get before entering Magmoor would be:
Main Plaza, Hall of the elders, Furnance, Transport Access North, maybe Hydro Access Tunnel
The first 2 are pretty quick, while the other 3 are sorta slow.
2. It still requires a backtrack to Chozo Ruins only after 1st Phendrana trip, because Lifegiver requires Wave Beam.
It really isn't clear which route is faster, so having something to compare with when testing the other route wouldn't be a bad idea.
The TAS is actually pretty ground breaking with the abuse of new techniques ( mainly Broken Stearing and airborne shiftboosts ).
To sumarize them:
Broken Stearing makes it possible to turn almost instantly when airborne, which is used to cut the checkpoints extremely sharp.
Airbone shiftboosts are just what it says, shiftboosts in the air that you normally only do on the ground on specific spots depending on your speed.
So this opens many more opportunities for potential shiftboosts to speed up even more.
Those tricks were sorta known already, but they happen extremely rare and usually only ruin runs whenever they happen.
That said it is extremely impressive to see them used so well in a TAS since they are barely known and seem extremely random and require a ton of work to get them even to trigger and even more to make them how you want them.
Also CGN did a more detailed explanation here if anyone wants more info on the TAS:
http://www.fzerocentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=9884&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
So apparently the replay files dolphin creates also work on console (yes I played back my TASes and they synch up perfectly).
The TASes were made on the NTSC version of the game, but you can change the region very easily with a little hex edit to make them work on PAL.
If you want to see it yourself you can download my TAS replays here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-j5xoa_4Sx3LWxpWWlRSW1CT28
Also I'm thinking about making an IL TAS of Green Plant Mobius Ring.
I think it should turn out very broken because the track shape allowes for many shiftboosts throughout the entire track.
I already got one shiftboost to work, but I couldn't get a chain going so far, but I will work on that when I have time/motivation.
Not a bad idea to bring this up here, as a corruption TAS would look pretty sick with those recent discoveries. I hope you won't run into some desync issues again though, or does dolphin work well for Corruption ?
Anyways get those adresses for him !
I used one of the newer versions around 6000-7801 and it could have been caused by someting different, but I'm not entirely sure.
Also I thought it might have been the same problem as this one, which is how I came up with the theory of AI desyncing the TAS, but I think the AI actually caused it.
Its not *completely* different. Its the same series, and same gameplay.
The only major differences are the focus and the story and overall complexity.
Aside from those 4 things, not much. I think we all pretty much care about the action rather than going around looking for items to kill the next boss. Using a fast route.
Get a grip guys..
Ignoring that both games have completely different mechanics, movement, tricks and glitches and TASes of both games would look absolutely different.
Wow, I didn't knew someone else did TASes of XClimax.
It seems very inspired by Jagg2zero's TASes, though he does them in GP and not in Time Attack mode and it seems like he has less experience with the game (no AGG and less optimized dives).
Here is the link to jagg2zero's TAS of silver cup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GNw9ZlH6lA
Good job on the TAS!
Just thinking about it, it might be faster to go on the back of the turtle first and then run forward, so you fall with more speed.
I don´t know if this would be faster, but it might be worth testing (or not, because it´s Barney's Hide and Seek Game ).
Also when´s 100% ? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Actually 100% is s lot more interesting, since you have to optimize some a lot more movement and even maybe some loading ( for good cycles ) by turning around so the camera moves with the direction you are facing ( probably only when finding friends ) .
To me (2) happens rather often, but (1) doesn´t independent of input recording or not. Also surprisingly dolphin didn´t crash for me so far. ( using version 4.0-7322)
When (2) happens, it also happens again after 1-2 frame advances very often.
I hope this gets fixed soon, so I can start my new GX TAS.
starting with Chapter 1:
I did a bit of testing today and found out that you can get a shiftboost on a little hill on the right at the very end by MTSing into it and exit it with a sideattack (maybe even without, with more speed) on boostlaps.
I tried to get a double shiftboost there, but I couldn´t get one so far, but it feels like you can squeze another one there, maybe just by going faster, but I will try this excessively in the actual TAS.
The important part of getting one shiftboost, is not only that you go faster, but also might be able to get another shiftboost that you couldn´t get otherwise and keep going faster.
The faster you go, the easier it is to get more shiftboosts.
Regarding the capsule collection strat you want to get the inner ones in the opener and take all boostplates, as you aren´t going fast, because you have no boost. Also I might take advantage of this little trick https://youtu.be/tj22kPQeFYM?t=122 to go faster between the boostplates, but it can´t be abused too heavily, because it slows you down after a while.
Regarding the TAS:
I will wait a little before starting the actual TAS, because I want to make it on a more recent version of dolphin, but the current versions still have that issue when advancing frames.
You open the config screen and set the memory card to none.
Do this at a certain framecount in the movie (and do it at that framecount when playing back) and it should sync.
Can you link to your TASes or youtube?
What are you doing exactly? If you play back the whole .dtm file from the beginning then you need to account for the memory card file. The memory card file is not saved in the .dtm, so the game may behave differently when the savegame is different. Make a backup of the memory card file when you start recording and replace the currently used one with that when playing back.
Yeah I´m aware of that, so I already did a backup memory card file and that might have actually caused the desync (I´m still not 100% sure though).
MUGG wrote:
btw, my tip for TASing in Dolphin: Save a state at slot 1 (or wherever you prefer) at the beginning of a room / level / race and disable that hotkey. Then you can not save over it and you can always play back your current work from the beginning of that room / race etc.
I know where the savestates are stored, so I can just copy it somewhere else, so it doesn´t get overwritten and I have one savestate slot more to work with.
MUGG wrote:
You may want to remove the memory card at a certain frame count to prevent the game from saving.
How do you do that while running the game ? I have never done that.
Regarding CGN, you might not be aware of it, but I´m running GX myself and already did a few TASes (look at that GPS or OSMS TAS above for example ^^ ), but I will contact him for a few suggestions/ strats/ ideas.
Also I don´t need a 100% file, as I already have one and atm I´m testing if the verification file I just did syncs ( it looks like it syncs perfectly so far ^^).
anyways, thanks for your reply MUGG