I vote yes. The majority of each race cannot be replicated without tool-assists, so I still consider it a tool-assisted run. I keep reading people claiming "if I wanted to see a run with mistakes, I'd do it myself without tools". They aren't realizing how much effort went into this run. For instance, when he shoots three green shells against the wall and it hits him as well as the two other opponents, that's nearly impossible to replicate without tool-assists. And as MF as posted in those vids, beating the game in record times can be done without tool-assists. So what's the more complicated feat?
There's a quote by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) I like a lot: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
I know it's been a while... I just returned to school last week. To say the least, life has been hectic. A lot of my free time is spent with my friends and neighbors, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Anyhow... I've completed another couple tracks, but still haven't finished Division A of Bogmire. I'm not feeling very inspired to complete these Division A's - 16 tracks per planet is too much!
But I'm not giving up the run yet. I'll keep on truckin', just it will take me longer than expected.
I've completed a couple more tracks in Division A. Remember the bug I found out on the last track in Division B where right at the start I jump, shoot 5 missiles and end up with 7 when I land? Well, so far I haven't been able to reproduce that bug on any other track. I don't know why it's only specific to the short-cut track so far. What an odd programming bug.
I'll post the next vid when I finish division A.
I liked the idea of the run and look forward to seeing your improvements. I especially liked how you manipulated the various collision detection errors.
Got it to work now.
I don't recall if you can use the B button to control the other character at the start, but I know later on you can. If anyone is planning on doing a run of this game, you can control every character to do the most damaging attacks/spells. Finally, an RPG run I'd be interested to watch!
Good point about the zig-zagging. I'll try to keep it in line.
I'll keep the planet switch scenario for Inferno. Thanks for the idea!
Thanks for alerting me to the possible desync. However, I'm still unable to reproduce the desync. Here's what I have checked:
WIP1 Timing
Volume Envelope Height Reading
Sync Samples With Sound CPU
I know this sounds like a stupid question, but are you sure it's desyncing? I start off the next race doing something quite unusual (as I marked on my comments on track 8), which perhaps looks like a desync. But if you watch the track in entirety, you'll see it was intentional.
If you have all those settings checked and it still desyncs, I'll have to re-do it. I'm glad you caught it early!
Thanks for the suggestion. But like Saturn said, I don't think it'll work out well. I'd lose all my upgrades on the Marauder, which actually would make NHO impossible. If I switch to the Airblade, there goes one of my goals, and plus, I'd have to start with one missile, one nitro, and upgrade from there. There's not much I can do from there.
Some of my thoughts and critiques on my overall run so far...
1) My menus are not optimized.
The way I handle menus is similar to speed-runs compared to tool-assisted runs. It's still faster than SDA, but not quite up to par with TAR. I'm certainly not going back through and re-doing every menu now. Call it laziness to not want to do another 20 hours of work again because my menus aren't frame-perfect. I hope this doesn't seriously affect my chances of getting this run published.
2) I have vague goals.
I will place first on every track using the worst car on the toughest difficulty, while aiming for entertainment instead of speed. To accomplish this, I make use of programming errors, play extremely aggressively, do many complicated stunts requiring precise timing, and use various measures to manipulate the AI into catching up. That's the best I've come up with so far - I hope it's acceptable.
3) Very little in my run is planned out ahead of time.
That is, I improvise by adapting to every situation I am confronted with and trying to figure out ways to make them entertaining. Even on tracks like the Drakonis one where I gain a lapping bonus on everyone and I know well ahead of time what I'd need to do to accomplish this feat, I still had to adapt to the situations to see when I could push them the wrong way and how much it would slow me down.
4) Bogmire and beyond have too many tracks.
There's nothing I can do about this. I have to complete 8 tracks per division on each planet before I can advance to the next (and those 8 tracks repeat). I worry this will make the run too repetitive.
5) This run is taking me forever to complete and the finished run will be over three hours.
I am currently averaging 30 minutes to finish a track. This doesn't include me rewinding and re-watching various parts of the run. I've watched through the entire run a few times as well.
The finished run will probably be a little less than 3 hours. I have 26 tracks complete in 48 minutes, which is roughly 1.85 minutes per track. There are 82 tracks in the game (8 on Chem, 10 on Drak, 16 on Bog, Mojave, NHO, and Inferno), which means at the current rate I will finish every track in 152 minutes. Add to this.. between every track there will be a few seconds to navigate through menus (upgrades, starting new race, advancing to next planet or division, etc), so I wouldn't be surprised if the final run ends up close to 3 hours.
******
Current movie stats:
Length- 48:40
Rerecords- 4501
Bogmire division B is now complete! I wish I could just skip division A.
Some highlights and things to look for:
Track 1: Mostly me just messing around in first place. I make use of a programming error by approaching turbo arrows at an angle to increase speed and distance.
Track 2: The classic shortcut map. I only use the shortcut on the first two laps, and I zig-zag through it. On the last two laps, I had to tone down a little on the risky moves since it became difficult to catch up with the AI nitroing through bumpy terrain. I found out that blowing up the AI gave me a bigger lead than taking the shortcut, so I used the long-route for the final two laps.
Track 3: I start off with a MK-esque juggle combo on Wart. The rest is similar to my play on other tracks.
Track 4: I make a couple more uses of the turbo programming error. In retrospect, I could have easily sent someone the wrong way on this track.
Track 5: Speaking of sending people the wrong way... check out the last two laps here! Especially my timing on the final lap. I also end the race differently than usual.
Track 6: I bump Rip and Shred off the track over a jump. I also force everyone in the wrong direction.
Track 7: More turbo arrow programming bug usage. And I finish the race differently.
Track 8: I accidentally stumble upon another programming bug. Right at the start you'll see me jump up and fire 5 missiles, but when I land, I have all 7 missiles again! It's almost like I already finished a lap and got a reload. I'll have to make more use of this bug on future tracks. I now can fire up to 12 missiles on the first lap - on this track I only fire 10, Both times destroying cars at full health (5 shots each).
On track 8, I also make use of a programming error where if you hit the jump-jet button at a certain area over a jump, your car will ride down the other side of the jump with considerable speed instead of fly over it. It's similar to taking a ramp like a rollercoaster, up and down the hill.
******************************
For the sake of everyone who has been following the run up to this point, I have uploaded my savestate that starts right at the beginning of Bogmire. This will save you from having to fast-forward forever. Make sure you place it in the directory with your other save-states, and name it the same as your rom. Then just play the movie in read-only and load save-state slot 3 (where I saved it).
Download the save-state here:
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/bogmire_ss.zip
Download the run here:
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/rrr115.zip
I'm struggling to find more ways to vary my run in Bogmire. Any suggestions there (or on future planets) would be greatly appreciated.
The one on Bogmire where I randomly do a 180 jump? It was mostly a "look how far ahead of you I am, I can even do this!". It also allowed the AI to catch up a bit.
Entertainment.
I can't tell the difference between a 43:11.07 and a 43:10.07. But if that 1 extra second is used to pull off some fancy trick, the movie will be more memorable.
w0rd.
Entertainment is far more important to me in every single run.
While recording a few more tracks on Bogmire I quickly realized... damn I have to do 8 tracks each division here! If I recall correctly, the highest points required on Inferno planet to advance is 3200, or 8 first places. So thankfully no more than 8 tracks a division!
I'm struggling to find more ways to vary the run, and the game is going to become even more repetitive (doing 16 tracks a planet instead of 8 or 10). Any suggestions for Bogmire and beyond? So far I've managed to keep Bogmire entertaining, but that's becoming more and more difficult with each track I complete.
I think you should manage to do a lap backwards, by hitting the car in the others.. is it possible? would be entertaining imho^^
Thanks for the suggestion! It's really tough to pull off, I do it for about a quarter of the first track on Bogmire (did that inspire this suggestion?). I only stopped because I thought it probably would be boring if I continued for too long.
Unless you mean literally going backwards for an entire lap and then trying to catch up. I found that was damn close to impossible on warrior difficulty with the marauder. Perhaps I'll try it again sometime. I know if I do, I need to have a neer optimized run of the track - as if I'm doing a speed-run of the game. Another problem, since I'm going backwards, I essentially am going two laps with only 7 seven missiles (no $200, I mean, no missile reload if you don't pass Go).
That last one was much easier to ... uh... "fix". The solution? Don't change it. It wasn't a missed shot! It looks like a missed shot, but it actually hits Rip.
Now that my run has no missed shots and no desyncs, I can finally continue.
So here's my current run with no missed shots. Same file name as the last one, but this is the improved version (i.e. ZERO missed shots instead of one).
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/rrrhex.zip
I am now up to Bogmire's 2nd track (haven't started it). I can't imagine anyone really wants to watch all of Chem VI again to see my fixed up missed shots, but at least I've added the last track of Drakonis and the first track of Bogmire. Once again, fast-forwarding is your friend.
As Drom suggested, I have added a situation where while side-by-side with Rip, I push him off the track. This is found on the final track in Drakonis.
On the first track of Bogmire, I make use of a programming error (to the best of my knowledge it is). If you approach a turbo arrow at an angle, you shoot ahead further and faster than the straight ahead approach. You'll notice it a few times on Bogmire. On Bogmire I also do some crazy zig-zagging, make some fun use of the water puddles, and do some fancy kills and jumps.
HOOOORAY!!
EVERYBODY CELEBRATE!!! This is fun!!
After thorough examination, frame advancing, input display, and lotsa hex-editing trial and error, I FINALLY fixed the 51150 error!
Only one more to go.
Okay, now I think I'm finally getting somewhere. My "fix" on that 51150 error was never really fixed. In my "fixed" version (that lead to desyncs) I end up firing later than usual, but at least not doing the missed shots. But this late firing is messing with the timing. I have to find EXACTLY where the missed shot is, and ONLY take that out. Right now when I look at EXACTLY where the missed shot is, all I see is a bunch of 00 80s (Bs). I don't know what I'm doing wrong... I'll recalculate everything again and see what I can find out.
I'm doing a lot of trial and error to fix the 51150 error. I keep narrowing down the error, but not finding a solution. When I replace the B+Y (acceleration and shot) with just B there, for some reason it's almost like I've missed a frame. On the last lap, I'm supposed to fire at Rip twice, BARELY miss being slammed into by him, and then fire at him the last second before he crosses. But when I hex-edit and replace the B+Y (in hex: 00 C0) with B (in hex: 00 80), I no longer have a missed shot on Shred, but on the final lap I fire at Rip twice [good], and get slammed into by him [bad]. This obviously throws off my timing on the final stretch and the races after that.
Perhaps B+Y does something different to your acceleration speed than B alone? That's the only way I can make sense of this. But if that's the case, then why did my other fixes not lead to desyncs but this one did? It has to be something more specific. Perhaps because I'm also clearing a ramp?
Like I said... I have already edited out a few of the missed shots. What I did was replace the shot with the accelerate button, which is something I usually have held down the entire race anyway, so it does no harm. Well, except for those two shots that somehow lead to desyncs later.
The first one really baffles me since the missed shot is on last track in Division A of Chem VI, but the desync doesn't happen until the first track of Drakonis! I have no idea how a desync happens that much later!
At least from Division A of Drakonis and on I have no missed shots and aim to keep it that way.
I have three examples where my hex-editing did NOT lead to desyncs (frame numbers):
18721
25723
67610
And here's the frame numbers where hex-editing DOES lead to desyncs (HELP!):
51150
81924
In the 51150 one, it doesn't desync until the first lap of Division B in Drakonis! If anyone can figure that one out, you are a genius! What happens in the desync is the car makes a sharp turn after the first ramp on that track. I don't know how an R button got in there from a desync? That's the only way I can think of taking that turn so sharp.
In the 81924 one, it desyncs around the next turn while firing at Rip. It fires one less shot (keeping Rip alive) and then the timing of the turns are too early and botches the entire race.
You can view the hexed version of my SMV here:
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/rrrhex.zip
I'll give you full credit for the help and be very appreciative. I know now how laborious and time-consuming those hex edits can be.
Also, on that SMV you can view my last track on Drakonis as well as first one on Bogmire. The Bogmire one I throw in a lot more playing around and fancy shots, so that should be fun to watch. I know I had fun making it!
After watching my WIP in entirety again, I noticed there are a few missed shots that do not add to the entertainment value, and really just seem to hurt my run.
I've had very little prior experience with hex editing, but thanks to help on this page, and my little experience, I was able to hex edit out most of the missed shots without problems. However, there still is one egregious missed shot and one insignificant missed shot that I haven't successfully been able to hex edit out. Well... the problem isn't hex-editing out the shot. Allow me to clarify...
I can hex edit out the shot. No problem there - no more missed shot! But later on in that track or the next one, there will be a desync. I'll post more details tomorrow.
Anyone here good with hex-editing and willing to hex edit out two separate shots (without getting desyncs)? I'll give you the specific frames. If I can't figure it out tomorrow, I would greatly appreciate your help.
Also, I have now completed Drakonis and the first track of Bogmire.
... look forward to see the harder levels and how you will handle them by hopefully still mixing some show in the races.
I'm happy to say - there still is plenty of show. I would even say more show than before! This is partly because I have a better car so I can risk more, Drakonis' tracks have many good places for jump jetting, and the AI has Airblades with nitros so you can force them to boost you.
Remember how I said I'd try to lap everyone? Well... I DID IT! On track 4 (same one I lapped Grinder on in Division B), within the first three laps I lap everyone except Rip. The final lap... I don't want to ruin the surprise. I'll just say it seemed impossible for me to lap Rip there, but hey, that's what TARs are for, right?
Check out my current run here:
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/rrr111LB.zip
The only changes I've done is adding Division A of Drakonis, so feel free to fast-forward.
I still have one last track on Drakonis before advancing to Bogmire. As you'll see from the other tracks in Division A, I've tried even more ways to vary my run. I often use the "bumping" tactic by the forcing the AI to boost me ahead, and I make more liberal use of my jump jets. Otherwise, I just do fancier ways of obliterating my opposition. Fun!
Lately I've been bogged with personal matters and not working much on this project. I still try to put in at least a few hours a week on this. Add to this... school is creeping back up soon, but I usually end up having a good amount of free time in my apartment. I'll try my best to stay dedicated to this project. It'll just take longer to complete than I originally thought, and that's fine.
Current movie stats:
Length- 31:02
Rerecords- 2487
I'm fluent in English, being an american citizen and all. I've also taken French in high school, and a semester of American Sign Language (ASL). I want to learn more ASL.
There's very few missed shots in, and the few left in are the ones that lead to entertaining situations. For instance, I missed one shot against Viper back in Chem VI, placing myself in 2nd on the last lap. But I ended up catapulting myself into 1st by using a jump jet.