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No I haven't checked every time, though I've done random tests occasionally. I've only held -> for 5 frames (or 10 etc) at a time though, so it shouldn't have caused any slowdown. On the other hand, that's exactly what it did in Misty Isle at first, so it's of course possible it has in other levels too. As far as I can tell it's been going well so far though.
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You don't have to have the reserve shell, you can take the upper route in the castle, where there's at least one koopa (IIRC there are some climbing and one regular walking). There's also a pipe leading to the lower route. Taking the shell would undoubtedly be faster though, thanks for the reminder. That would mean I'll definately not use fireflower in the pyramid, and I'm not fully convinced your method was faster. I'll do some tests tomorrow before I continue with the run.
Also, one obstacle that's coming up is getting down to the Reznor's (not sure if that's their name, I'm talking about the rhino boss in desert pyramid) without getting hit. I'm not sure how narrow that last passage is, i.e. if it's possible to fly or not. The solution I came up with when I first thought about it some time ago was to throw the P-switch down there and jump off it. I'm not sure if that's possible either though. Do you have any suggestions for that part? Maybe take a detour and fetch the key, which I could jump on/grab like you do, only sideways. Provided that's fast enough to reach the boss, since I'd have to take the P-switch up where the key is.
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That absolutely isn't the reason jxq, quite the opposite. Your help is very much appreciated
Basically, I want to have fun while doing this run. And it is fun until people start being mean to me (not pointing fingers here GWing), then I'd just prefer to do it for my own satisfaction. Since people (not you jxq) seem to dislike what I do with the game so much it's doubtful this would get published even if I did finish it, so it's not about that any more either way. But I like getting feedback from you jxq, it's very nice of you to sacrifice so much time to help me. Thanks again.
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It's going well so far, it's a very very long way to go though. The levels keep getting more and more complicated too, so if I ever actually finish this, which is doubtful at best, it'll be a while.
If you want the rom you can contact me on irc.
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It was my intention to not post in this thread anymore, but I've changed my mind for now and will share my progress.
My latest smv
I hope you like it. Being very unfamiliar with flying, I found the tricky passage in Desert World 2 (the last thing in this movie) extremely difficult. This was the best I could do, I'm sure jxq would be able to do better.
And btw jxq, thanks for all your help so far, it is very appreciated.
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We're talking 2. Salty Isle was unintentional. I also think he loses time in Valley of Bowser 4 where he gets 21 stars, but I could be wrong about that.
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Don't worry, I understand you don't mean anything by it.
But my point kind of is that while most people won't get why that section is so nice, not a single person will know I miss those frames either. I've seen people with these opinions before on this forum, and they are never well recieved. And I kind of understand that, TAS's are all about optimization.
However I can't remember reading any protests about Viper7's "entertaining" but time consuming moves anywhere. I think that's a little weird. Not that I equal acidentally losing 30+ frames with waiting for 50 stars after a ghost house, but the general point is if you (general you, not you specifially GWing) were ok with that (and some other stuff he did), I don't understand why there can't be similar things in other videos. I'm mainly thinking about my shells of course.
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GWing: To me comparing/competing isn't very important. If you make your own version and feel yours needs to be "better" than mine, and if you feel speed is the way to accomplish this, that's fine by me. If people prefer your run, yours is the one that will be published (unless they both would be), and vice versa. Either way, I want to make mine as entertaining as I can. We "create art", to quote the guidelines, and sometimes I feel the hunt for frames becomes too important, especially in movies like these. I've already stated what I think in earlier posts. Not that these "mistakes", as BoltR puts it, will be that common either. After you've picked up the cape there's not much room for picking up shells and playing around with them.
I've finished Salty Isle now. I spent almost 2 hours by the second (edit: third to be picky) water passage, trying to take the "lower" route (which means the screen won't scroll up when you ascend later) and still getting past the three koopas and various blocks that follows after the water. That was extremely difficult. Because of that, I couldn't kill as many koopas I'd have liked to there, but at last I found a way past those damn blocks, and even managed to take the third yoshi coin (something I thought would be nearly impossible from down there).
Unfortunately, after I had passed that horrible spot, I flew to the exit to see if I had lost any time, and to my huge disappointment I had. And quite a lot too, almost 100 frames. I finished the level quickly anyway, and to my surprise, this time when I reached the goal post I was only 30 something frames behind! I wasn't going to keep the level at first, but now I'm thinking about it because I really liked how it turned out, and I spent a lot of time to get it right.
The lost time obviously came from pressing -> for some reason, although I only did it 5 frames at a time. In the second half of the level, I used the "get into swoop animation quickly" glitch twice, and for some reason it seems that made up for most of the lost time. Flying is weird.
Edit: Oh and I forgot: Very nice pyramid jxq! Although you take away all my fun with the levels by doing them yourself :-) Just kidding of course. After you take the key, is it regular wall jumps you do?
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I've now finished the first castle, and will soon take on Salty Isle.
Being the great planner I am, I just realized that I'll need a fireflower very soon (Desert Pyramid b), and have no plan on where to pick one up. Now that I wrote this, I randomly thought of what must be the best fireflower to get, the one where you get the "first" P-switch in the Desert Pyramid. However, if someone can think of another fireflower they think would be faster, please let me know.
There should be no problems in Salty Isle. I'll try to get all five yoshi coins here, and killing of various enemies and picking up as many coins as possible. At the very beginning, you must run around on the platform a bit to reach running speed, but other than that it should just be straight flying to the exit.
Viper7: I've thought about the lag in Crystal and Ice World, and while I do want this to be as entertaining as possible, if it lags too much it's not very entertaining. That means if I have a choice between flying over a level or killing enemies/causing lag, I'll probably choose the first. I'll make a judgment on each individual level what the best course of action is. Most likely there will be a mix of the two choices.
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Excellent! My Misty Isle 4 was exactly 24 frames slower than yours, thank you very much for correcting it. I did feel a little bad for saying "This absolutely doesn't mean I'll get sloppy and won't care if I don't do something as quickly as possible" while just wasting 24 frames like that, but I decided that would be an exception because I was so sick of the level :-)
Thanks again.
Edit: I finished most of Castle 1a before going to bed now. The last room before Iggy, and Iggy himself, is left to do.
Since this was my first level where I used B-flying, I'd like to describe how I did it so someone can correct me if I did it wrong:
1. I pressed B (for one frame) the first possible frame Mario had running speed. (While holding right and Y of course)
2. I waited for the first possible frame I could press left without Mario turning around and flying left. I started holding left and made a savestate
3. I went back and waited for the second possible frame I could press left without Mario turning around. I started holding left and made a savestate
4-6. See above, third, fourth, fifth
7. I flew until I hit a wall with all five savestates, noting the frame Mario hit the wall in each state.
8. I loaded the fastest one and carried on with the level.
It's mainly somewhere around point 2 I imagine I might have screwed up. If this is not how you guys do it, please let me know so I don't continue to make this mistake. It actually was less complicated than I feared it would be, so that was a relief.
Bedtime for me now. Finishing the castle tomorrow.
Oh and also, still about B-flying. In the passage with the climbing koopas, I held right for 20 frames before holding left again. If I understand your description correctly, this didn't cause me to lose any speed, right?
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jxq2000 wrote:
Maybe the subject of this thread should be changed to just "Super Demo World: The Legend Continues." I don't mind having both runs discussed here, as I'm sure we could probably accomplish more by bouncing ideas off each other. After all, the two runs have a little bit in common.
I agree with this. I think it's good to keep all ideas and discussions in one place.
jxq2000 wrote:
Fabian wrote:
After I'd done the last room of Castle #1b as fast as jxq, I experimented 10 more minutes, and in the end that gained me a frame.
Alright! Frames gained are good. Coincidentally, I was watching your first SDW-15 run and noticed that you played that room differently than I did (you didn't let go of A during the flight), and so I messed around with that strategy and also gained that same frame before knowing you did the same. I'm keeping a log of ideas for my next SDW-15 run on a little web page I made here, for anyone who is interested.
In our original run, I had nothing to do with the castle. After I saw it, me and Gorling did some quick experimentation on console and noticed it was easily improvable, but the project died around that time so it didn't matter.
Very nice webpage, the overworld map route page should be especially helpful to me. Thanks!
GWing_02 wrote:
I think that overall in a super-long run like this it may be okay to sacrifice a few frames here or there for the sake of entertainment, but I don't think it should be done every level... say 10 or 20 frames a world or so, that way too much time isn't lost.
I realise this is a highly subjective topic, and I understand that many will disagree with me. My own opinion is that the 11 exit run for SMW and 15 exit run for SDW:TLC should aim for absolute speed. No frames whatsoever should be wasted, they should defeat Bowser at the earliest possible frame (or possibly end input at earliest possible frame, though I'm in the first camp on this issue).
However, when doing the full runs, I think entertainment becomes more important than pure speed. If someone watched this movie who didn't know I would stop to pick up a shell, he wouldn't notice a time loss. The only thing he would notice is that "wow, he kills all those Chucks and takes every coin by the water, that's neat" or "wow I haven't seen anyone duckjump holding a shell, kicking it and jumping off of it instead of falling into that hole before". Not that these are absolutely stunning moves or anything, but without originality this movie will be long and boring for most non-SMW-enthusiasts. I watched the "full amazing runthrough of SMB3" in the NES forum a few weeks ago, and that might be the single movie I've been most entertained by on this site, because it does what I like most about tool-assisted speedruns: It shows off the tricks and cool stunts in the game.
In the end, I can only do what I think will produce the best end result, and losing frames you won't notice without close observation to produce cool moves will always be worth it for me in runs like these.
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Alright, sorry for the double post, but thanks to Dacicus I have the .smv up for download.
Super Demo World up to Castle #1 normal exit
I'd like to make some comments about it. You'll notice I grab a shell in both Misty Isle 1 and 3, losing a few frames. I feel the loss of a few frames here and there is very worth it to keep the movie entertaining. If I find spots where I can do something that has never been shown in a SMW speedrun, I might very well do it even if it costs time. This absolutely doesn't mean I'll get sloppy and won't care if I don't do something as quickly as possible. After I'd done the last room of Castle #1b as fast as jxq, I experimented 10 more minutes, and in the end that gained me a frame. Which I was very happy about :-)
It's difficult to know what to prioritize. When I saw the first SMW speedrun, I felt that the order of importance was this: frame > extra life > yoshi coin > killing enemy > coin, and if you had to choose between two of them you'd choose the one with highest priority. Now I've changed opinion about this, for example I only end up with 4 yoshi coins in Misty Isle 1 because instead of taking the second I kill the chuck and take the item box with a star. I miss out on an extra life, but we've seen Viper7 take billions of yoshi coins, netting him billions of extra lives, right? At least that's how I feel about it.
Alright I'm done ranting now. I hope you enjoy the movie.
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Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully we can find some way to skip some more of them though :-) Like how the creator of the game didn't want it to be possible to fly up to the secret exit in castle #1.
Speaking of that secret exit, I've just finished it. I finally got through Misty Isle 4, largely by watching jxq's moves. Thanks, I'll be sure to mention you in my thanks to-section ;)
In the end I didn't feel like doing any more work on Misty Isle 4 ever ever ever again so I settled for being something like 20 frames slower than jxq there. I make up for some of it in the castle though, saving 5 frames in the second room and 1 frame in the third. (I did these comparisons really quickly so if I'm off on these numbers I apologise). If I knew how to upload the .smv I would.
Now it's time to start on the unexplored stuff, everything up to this point has been done before (Misty Isle 4b was finished by Gorling, Stefan and me when we were working on the 15 exit run, before we had noticed flying to Castle #1b was possible). I most likely won't do more than one exit at a time, so everytime I write "next up is X" It'd be great if you could post suggestions for that level. Anything from ideas on how to entertain to important time savers I might overlook to crazy ideas that probably will be useless. Anything. The more farfetched it is, the better :-) I'm sure most of you are more creative than me.
So, next up is Castle #1, normal exit.
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That's a very interesting thought jxq. However I don't think I'll use it, I just don't like the thought of it. If you went for pure speed it would probably be very helpful though.
No more progress yet. I might try later.
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Thanks for directing my attention to the trick page, it's been a while since I was there and some new stuff for SMW had been added since.
So about the Star Worlds, unless I'm overlooking something (and considering how complex the game is, I most likely am), the best way to tackle them would be to:
1. Finish Bowser Castle c (super secret exit)
2. Take the Backdoor Star to Star World
3. Do all normal exits, ending up on Backdoor Star World again
4. Do all secret exits in reverse order, ending at Secret Star World
5. Go to ...? and take on Big Boo's world.
This Star World route should require fewer worldmap movements than any alternative, right? It would also mean I don't have to worry about Star Worlds until the end of this project (as if I'll ever actually get there, heh), which is nice since you've already played through most of them, and I think most of them are boring.
I'll go redo Misty Isle 4 now. Since there have been quite a few SMW speedruns made now, it's difficult to be original. I try very hard to not to do everything the exact same way we all have seen a thousand times already, choosing different routes whenever I can. For example in this level, I fell down towards the feather, instead of jumping up to it like you and Gorling did, but this caused a very long initial elevation (sorry if that's the wrong word) before I could control Mario again. I'll try to do it more like you did now, even though I don't like it.
Edit: Apparently that wasn't the problem, I couldn't fing a way to avoid the initial lift. I might try again tomorrow. Flying sucks.
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Ok so I've been productive tonight and finished another three levels, Misty Isle 1-4 and 4b are done now. I'll have to redo the second part of Misty Isle 4 though, since I didn't do a good job of flying and ended up like 50 frames slower than jxq's version from grabbing the feather to touching the star. I hate flying already. I could easily see me losing interest in this very quickly now that I have that damn cape.
So anyway, next up is castle #1. I'm doing the secret exit first of course but I'm not sure if I should do one or both exits in Misty Star World after that or if I should save all Star Worlds for later or whatever. Brainstorm away!
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I'd like to discuss route optimization (and anything else) for a full (120 exit?) run of SDW:TLC, do you guys think I should start a new topic or is this one good enough? I redid the first two levels, but I won't do this very fast so I encourage someone else to pick up the challenge too. Some friendly competition never hurts :)
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That's a great segment, and I'm really looking forward to seeing this finished. I don't know of anything that can help you I'm afraid, but very nice work!
