TASVideos

Posted: 10/24/2017 9:16 AM

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Exonym

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Sorry I kinda faded out of existence during the middle of the improving process, but it's good to see this run finished. Without Thunderaxe and FatRatKnight this TAS would probably never see submission really. They were very dedicated to this run, and the amount of effort can be seen in the technical quality of the run and in the lengthy submission text. Voting NO however, for not using the Stage 6 weapon to skip the stage 6 miniboss.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 8/29/2017 7:42 AM

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So looking at stage 8 again, at frame 09263 we fire a shot and prevent the enemy from firing, why then don't we move right a few pixels just after the shot? I'm just throwing an idea out since you need 1 frame, not entirely sure this will work. Edit: Well it seems that we don't actually gain anything from moving right unless we move the full extent possible before grabbing the ladder. Unfortunately, since there are no ground blocks above the middle of the ladder we can't bonk, so any extra pixels gained are lost. This is just from my attempt, but I don't think we will gain anything here.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 7/29/2017 3:32 PM

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So I think I saved time on stage 6? At frame 52870 of the current movie, I flame dashed to the right, then climbed that wall, and somehow I came out ahead by about 2 frames. Of course the ceiling clips later desync, so not entirely sure about it, but perhaps there are similar locations that something like this could be faster. Don't have as much time to look over it as I would like at the moment.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 7/29/2017 2:14 AM

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I never thought about it before, but zook himself doesn't count as an enemy, does he? Say if he were to die on the frame a boss was loaded, it doesn't kill the boss. Just out of curiosity, but my thinking is that's probably a big ol NO.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 7/25/2017 9:56 PM

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So looking at stage 2, I noticed at 59566, you release the flame charge. Why not just wait a few more frames and release the flame charge so that you are caught by the ground from the next ledge? Shouldn't this reduce time spent in the air? I didn't do much further analysis but when I tried this, I got a more favorable ammo drop. Not sure if that's necessary, but I believe I was 2 frames faster. I didn't do extensive testing.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 7/11/2017 11:17 AM

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At frame 39103, I thought I remembered not needing to land on that ledge and you could just fall through if set up right? Unless it is needed for some item drop management or something.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 6/26/2017 7:15 AM

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Gotta say, it's lookin pretty smooth so far. Seems that bubble barrier glitch is coming in handy already. At first glance of the new stage 6, would it not be wise to dash to the right wall earlier, like say... frame 45511. I don't know at this point how many bubble barrier invincibility hits have taken effect. The thought for me is that there is more ground here to dash right on, since when you go to the right on that small ledge you are mostly in the air. I dont know if that long ladder is the problem, since climbing it is slower than wallkicking obviously. Just a suggestion if it hasn't already been tried. Another note, as you said it appears that enemy just before the miniboss is still present when the miniboss loads. Would it not be wise to grab the stage that gives the star powerup before stage 6 because of this? I'm fairly confident a charged star attack could hit that enemy, though I dont know if timing will work out. Edit: it appears I was looking at the wrong thing in the radar. I guess this is what happens when I dont view the TAS in so long. Now I'm not so sure a charged star attack would reach, at least at the desired timing. Okay, basically disregard everything I've said in this post. You actually get the star from this stage. I don't think I should be posting at 3AM half asleep about a game I apparently forgot.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 4/30/2017 2:16 PM

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Well there were a couple of locations that looked ideal at first glance, but my tests show no positive results. Stage 6: There were multiple helicopter enemies just before the boss door. Great, we could probably respawn them and have them fly into the boss room right? Except that just before you reach the boss door, you load a new segment.. a segment which does not contain those enemies, therefore we can't respawn them. End stages: As already pointed out the first of the final stages, the enemy was 1 pixel away from being useful. I went on to the stage 4 clone, and was surprised to find out we could respawn one of those flying enemies after touching the door. However, for whatever reason the enemy is stuck in place and will not fly to the right. Edit: In fact if you shoot and kill it, there is another one there, and this happens infinitely as far as I can tell.

EDIT I have found one in the stage 6 clone of the final stages. The enemy before the boss door is stuck between a very small pit in the ground and exists when the boss room has loaded. Now all we needed to do is charge our trusty star weapon, since that goes offscreen as far as it wants. Bam, we skipped a boss. Hooray.

Yet another edit Confirmed boss skip for the stage 7-like boss in the final stages:

The stage 8 clone stage boss is also skippable:

The stage 2 clone boss is skippable, but this one was a bit harder to set up. Basically spawn the wall enemy as late as possible, so that he's still low on wall when the boss room loads. This locks him in place so he doesnt move upwards out of range of the camera and despawn. Then we just have to wall dash up and fire our charged star attack to the left, and the result:

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 4/28/2017 10:17 AM

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As for stage 8, the only thing I could ever think of was the enemy that appears just before the upgrade capsule. I recall we delay about 4-5 frames after the capsule to ensure he's out of the way, but I always thought there might be a way to manipulate him a bit better. I was never successful, but something to think about. edit

Dacicus wrote:

This may not be useful in a run, actually. Based on Spikestuff's document, the shortest time to reach a miniboss is stage 5 at about 1500 frames.

Does this include the stages that we did not have a powerup for? For instance, if we got the flame powerup from stage 1 and then just re-entered stage 1 now with the ability to flame dash. Also we had neither flame dash, nor ground dash for stage 8, or a powerful enough weapon to bypass certain enemies effectively. I think it took roughly 2000 frames to reach the boss to stage 8 without any of those (I didnt count the frames exactly). That being said I still don't think it's possible but just throwing it out there.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 4/26/2017 2:04 PM

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My initial thought is that we can be a bit higher when triggering the boss so that the teleport ends faster (though it's on a frame rule).

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 4/24/2017 10:54 PM

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I'm pretty sure certain boss rooms have an invisible ceiling preventing you from going offscreen.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 1/16/2017 3:31 PM

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Well in the interest of getting back into TASing (with DTC6 coming up) I decided to fool around with this. I improved world 1 (bell castle) by 237 frames over arkiandruski's WIP. Some quick notes on where the time saves came from: 1-1 If you're running at full speed and jump onto a slope for some reason you preserve your speed, even with aero's sprite turned backwards as though he were sliding down it. I used this combined with a hidden ledge to save a few frames over the previous route. If you're going slower than a drill attack (which has a speed of 3) you can drill to instantly set your speed to that value. If you use this as soon as you hit a slope you can immediately set your value to 3 by doing a drill and start gaining speed from the slope from that point. (if this makes sense) Other than that not much to say about level 1, only a small amount of time saved here 1-2 Manipulated the enemy to jump at a favorable position so that I could do a downwards drill into him for just enough height to reach the spinning wheel above. I also used the stars near the end of the level so that I could preserve my max speed all the way until the wheel section, as opposed to saving a star for the caterpillar near the very end (which is only like a few frames slower). 1-3 This level sucks because of the swinging bells, and their unfavourable cycles. Anyway, first time saver is not drilling underneath the second jumping clown and rather slowing down slightly and have him jump over you. I also use the above trick to to bypass the first enemy and use the second one to drill into to reach the ledge above. This is used as opposed to using a downward drill on the first enemy (this is slower because downward drill halts your momentum). Unfortunately because of the time saves, the final bell cycle catches me twice that I have to drill through. Perhaps if more optimizations are found it could be in a more favourable cycle. There are other various minor improvements by watching x speed and x pos, etc. The good thing about this game is that it is very edit friendly, at least so far. So any optimizations or tricks that are found can be implemented and then resynced with the rest of the run. Here's the file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36385939669716209

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 1/11/2017 10:41 PM

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Sure I guess I'll sign up. Maybe I'll put more effort into it this time!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 12/11/2016 2:46 PM

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Oh wow, I didn't expect anyone to ever pick this game up! It's good to see some improvements over the test I did. I actually have a quick test run of the whole game somewhere that I never actually uploaded to the site. Nice clip into the slope for faster acceleration, I hadn't noticed that was possible. I also see various other minor improvements over mine. However I notice that you aren't using the graphical glitch that I mentioned. I didn't state that it was useful in the thread, but later on I found out that you can use it to drop below those moving platforms which I believe saved a small amount of time. That being said; I don't know whether it applies to this version of the game, though they appear to be almost identical. I guess I can just upload my full test just in case you're curious. Your run is still faster by about 30-40s. (Bizhawk 1.8.1 Was used btw) http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/35586142804728513 Great run though, it's good to see some obscure games getting attention!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 12/1/2016 2:26 PM

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Now this is much better. I'm glad to see that you took the cloud glitch and applied it to the other locations it can be used as well! I was worried that you wouldnt. There may be a few spots for some minor improvements, but I think this is definitely worth a first publication, so you have my yes vote. Good job Arcree2!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 11/10/2016 5:48 AM

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I posted a test of this in the Genesis thread here on the forums about a year ago, it seems you haven't seen it. You can find it in this thread http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3717. I've only watched the first world so far and I can say it looks fairly unoptimized. Starting with 1-2, you can punch some of the crabs just before landing on the platforms to save some damage so that you can just boost past the fish later on. You take the time to throw a bomb at one of the crabs which slows you down. And then you have to wait on the fish because you took so much damage already. You can skip waiting on the fish by punching the crabs like I said. You've lost like 85 frames alone from this from my test, but I don't know how much emulator difference is a factor if any. In 1-3, you stop randomly for no reason and then you run into the side of walls in some locations. Also, your avoidance of the falling blocks is slow, you should be jumping earlier to go over them. By doing that, you dont have to stop to kill the seahorse guy to the left at the beginning (if you even have to at all). Also, near the end you strike your fist several times in the air after the enemy has been killed, which looks clumsy in my opinion. In 1-5, you choose obelix again though I think I recall him being overall slower than asterix and should be avoided at all costs unless his larger hit box allows him to save time like in 1-4. Also your turn-arounds are slow, you can turn around much quicker by jumping. You waste time by throwing a bomb at the guy through the ground, when you can just punch him after you jump up. In 1-6 I'm confused why you took damage from the dog, when it's easily avoidable with the potion ability. In 1-7, you have several slow downs to avoid damage because you took unnecessary damage in the previous stage. Also there is a cloud glitch that you can use in this stage to save time. I used an old version of it in my test linked above, but you can actually use it as soon as you get the cloud and just climb through the ceiling there. That will allow you to skip going back to get the first key entirely which I didn't do either at the time. Your jumping with the movement speed booster item is suboptimal too, you walk forward sometimes for no reason before turning around. You also go out of your way to grab the floating powerup, which isnt even necessary to beat the level and is completely out of the way. There are various other speed issues that I noticed too, and overall it is about 5298 frames slower in the first world alone than my test I posted above. I'm not trying to deter you from the game, it's just I like this game and I would want to see it done well and there are so many missed opportunities here. Sorry, I'll have to vote no, but I will suggest watching and improving upon my run as I'm sure it can still be improved quite a bit, but you will learn some tricks you probably didn't know.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 11/19/2015 4:45 AM

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Nice, glad to see this game get some attention. It's nice to see that the game's physics allow for completely breaking certain stages. It's also unfortunate that the world 3 stages don't last long enough to hear the music though :P. The water stages are annoying, but they don't drag the movie down any in my opinion, and the rest of the run is great. I like the glitches and level breaks and it seems to be well optimized, voting yes of course!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 11/12/2015 3:46 AM

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In the first stage, it's a lot faster to take the low route if I recall. Back when I did the test on Snes9x it was about 120 frames faster than going up. I'm not sure how much of that is emulator difference though. Your version of the second level is definitely faster though, I like the insta turn around trick. The rest of the run looks good as well, especially considering how frustrating the controls are.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 9/13/2015 10:32 PM

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Short enough to stay entertaining, and the platform sections are pretty fast. I say yes!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 6/8/2015 4:18 AM

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Wow, as a Genesis fan I can't believe I've never heard of this game. It looks nice and great for speedrunning. Was that glitch at the end useful or just for showing off? Either way, looking forward to seeing this when it's done.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 6/7/2015 3:35 AM

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Ha, I remember playing this game a while back and thinking it was a good candidate for a TAS. I never did any testing or anything but your run seems to be a good idea of what it should be. I have 2 questions though, but they are probably answered by the mechanics of the game. First of all, is landing on the skateboard necessary? I don't see anything that warrants it, or do you have to be on it to advance the stage? Second, I'm assuming the slopes that looks like stairs can't be dashed up, because you walk up them. But the slopes that arent stairs can be? Seems like a silly game design. All in all it looks pretty decent, though I think the game gets pretty repetitive after a while.

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 6/4/2015 10:11 PM

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I think the game is short of enough to not lose interest, even if the gameplay is pretty basic. The jumping on air trick is nice. Any plans to visit the sequel(?)?

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 3/22/2015 2:50 AM

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Interesting, I would definitely like to see an optimized version of this game. It's actually in my list, but down the line. If no one works on it after I finish my other projects (Hachiemon, then maybe improving Rex) then I'll probably jump on it. Either way, it's a pretty cool game that deserves runs.

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Posted: 3/17/2015 7:57 PM

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I might try out a few of those at a later date, as of right now I'm kind of burnt out on this game. I probably actually spent around 80k rerecords on it, because I started using TAStudio in the 8th level, and that didn't count my rerecords. Seeing a new game for a while might cool me off enough to work on it again sometime, the game is definitely harder to optimize than I thought so there are most likely quite a few improvements somewhere. I might try messing around with the final boss again though since it's at the end, and just update the file if I improve it. If so, sub 19 will most likely be possible from this alone. Thanks for the feedback!

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

Posted: 3/16/2015 12:20 AM

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Well, it seems this flame powerup is unobtainable on hard mode? The spring plant that is in your video is missing from this version for whatever reason, and you can't reach it by freezing the enemy, even in his tallest sprite. Here's an image of what I mean (circled is where the spring plant should be):

Edit: Okay, you can reach it, you just have to wait an annoyingly long time for him to stand up and start walking..

Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.

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