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This TAS made me cry years of joy from every orifice on my body, truly Hell is an eternity damned to being unable to experience this work of art of a game. Yes vote
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Heidman wrote:
Might not be the best place to ask, but would anyone be willing to make a "no glitch" TAS? Shield dashing I am not sure if that could be counted as a glitch, but a TAS where the game is played fully as the developers intended.
Regardless, This was a rather fun watch.
I've considered it. I'm only willing to make it if it includes a "no major skips" stipulation, as there are many huge breaks that are just done by manipulating natural game mechanics.
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Satoryu wrote:
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Then, is it possible to revenge tech Cerberus to change the room's state?
I don't know of any way to get it into the revenge tech vulnerable "stunned" state, as none of its actions have any affect on it and stopwatch doesn't affect it enough to help either. I probably would have ended up forgoing said revenge tech in keeping with the fewest revenge techs stipulation I put on the run, but it still would be nice if that RSL were possible somehow.
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Satoryu wrote:
To get to the Alraune, could you have used RSL from Cerberus' room instead of getting the Demon Card?
Nope. Unlike most of the bosses, entering Cerberus' room from what should be an "impossible" direction still triggers the fight, which means it loads up a new area if I try.
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Fortranm wrote:
Do you end up having more "kills" in the "0 boss" run?
Do you mean as in the actual number of kills I got in the zero bosses TAS, or do you mean the total kills if you minimized extraneous kills? Because I need to do Slogra and Gaibon skip as well as Dopple10 skip in that category, it is impossible to avoid killing numerous enemies just at the start alone so I can displace room transitions with level ups, getting more kills than pacifist within the first couple minutes is mandatory even if you count revenged enemies as part of the list of pacifist kills.
On a somewhat related note, I guess I never thought about the whole revenge tech thing until recently. Pacifist started as a concept on world beyond walls out of a desire to reach the final save with the lowest possible kill count, as a fun challenge playthrough. It was simply a kill counter of 1 or later 0 at final save (the latter of which this run achieves) and nothing else (all revenge techs were allowed and enemies that don't add kills but give exp were allowed to die), and was referred to as such. It just sort of mutated into a "pacifist-esque" category later, I guess, where somewhere along the lines the no exp stipulation was added to the category.
Revenge tech "not counting" is just something that's ingrained into the community for this game, I guess. I could have skipped the large HR chain in the Library by taking a route that gets mist, but that would require an additional revenge tech or wasting lots of time getting more relics, enough that I didn't think it was worth the speed tradeoff.
I'm sort of rambling here, but I'm just trying my best to give some insight into the mechanics of the category for people not as familiar with the game. Long story short, lowest kill counter was absolute number one priority, and everything else that makes it more of a literal pacifist run was a secondary goal added by my own personal preference. I guess you could also argue that pacifist could avoid hurting enemies as well, but that change wouldn't add anything meaningful to the run.
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Derakon wrote:
For the curious, here are the "kills" in this run:
Dracula
Slogra+Gaibon
Doppleganger10
Alraune
Dracula
I'm curious why the Alraune needed to die. I see you get a Heart Refresh there, but you already had one and a Duplicator, so what does another accomplish?
Only prologue and final Dracula are actually "killed" out of those on that list. All others are revenge teched; this makes said kills have "less impact", so to speak, though it should still be counted against the category, in my opinion.
You need 2 HRs to be able to chain them. You cannot use one HR and chain it with itself because the input buffer is not cleared during screen pauses and you're still counted as holding the use button when it's over, and you cannot use it and pause and put it on the other hand because screen pauses lock pausing the frame they start. If anybody could figure out a way to get around this restriction, it would be a huge improvement to pacifist and probably other categories as well.
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Link to video
Finally got around to making a new pacifist TAS after all this time, like I originally wanted to. I dropped arukAdo's secondary conditions of no damage and fewest HRs, but kept fewest revenge techs. Notable updates include:
1. Faster backdashing at the start
2. Damage boosting through things instead of using Dark Metamorphosis through everything saves tons of time
3. Doesn't have to wait on a clock rush
4. Doesn't have to go get Sword Card for gem underflow
5. The wolf movement in the Underground Caverns is faster in general, with a notable update being the use of the high jump with running speed
6. Faster Cerberos skip with divekick refresh
7. Uses screen pause override and erasure
8. Shuts the demon familiar up
9. Uses Mist skip instead of gathering wolf relics*
10. Faster Richter skip
11. Skips Medusa instead of going through Darkwing Bat route
12. Uses Shaft skip*
* = not sure if actually an improvement
Obviously not submitting this after negative reaction to the previous pacifist TAS. What casual viewers would want to see it now especially when it has two wallgrabs and sees less of the game?
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Patashu wrote:
8:04: The bottom line of the annotation is cut off. (In particular, depending on the resolution you view it at, more annotations besides this one have the bottom line cut off, because youtube doesn't conservatively resize the annotations. For example the one at 10:56 also has its bottom line cut off when using the small player. In general you have to make your annotations taller than you think they'd need to be to make sure this doesn't happen. Annoying but necessary.)
16:52 It might be worth mentioning that you came up with a strategy to get the Bat Card when you fought this boss. What made it slower?
17:13 How come this RSL goes an extra room than other RSLs?
I tried fixing annotations by making all the boxes taller and putting them further up on the player. It's hard to tell exactly what's wrong or how to fix it because they all show up fine on all size players on my end, sorry.
I added a comment explaining that early bat card make clock rush impossible, thanks for reminding me.
That RSL puts me into a wall and I just instantly zip down.
AzureLazuline wrote:
in the Outer Wall section, you mention how the fastest strat would cause lag. Would different weathers affect that at all?
Maybe, I haven't really looked into that specifically. Weather is based on game time IIRC so I doubt it could save time, at least.
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First few minutes of inverted castle went by fast. Just rapid fire killing bosses in the right side of the castle because no thought was put into pacing the inverted castle whatsoever.
Mostly bland because Akmodan's AI ended up being too stupid to manipulate into half blooding me, but the already sick ass strat I found for the CV3 trio resulted in me finding that level up override with the end of the shield spell animation. Also, mapless mablung sword was really satisfying to get after several TASes trying to get it quickly.
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Finished the first castle!
Everything after Cerberos ended up flying by due to being incredibly straightforward. Granfaloon was a pain but its slow rise out of the ground gave plenty of time for luck manipulation, and Dopple10 is a joke as usual.
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Really doubt ill ever get around to finishing this so im posting what i got done before i went all in on my current project. Putting the input file in the WIPs in case someone wants to pick up the rest of it for some reason.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/15856174109749186
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Gets past the Cerberos fight. Already spotted some improvements after Scylla Wyrm or so, but the movement in the caverns was a huge headache and I wanted an encode to examine so I could formulate ideas better.
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Derakon wrote:
I don't know that this wouldn't be considered a "glitchfest" by some viewers, given the amount of glitching through terrain you do, but it's awesome. None of the other SotN runs we have show off such a variety of different movement methods. Alucard really has a lot of options!
This is great, keep it up!
I mostly meant in comparison to the current 100% run for this game, which spends at least more than half the game on the wrong side of almost every wall it passes by. I guess this still hardly counts as glitchless though, I just take the same old skips that have been speedrunning bread and butter in this game for years for granted nowadays.
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Worked my ass off pretty much constantly since my last post and was able to implement the changes I needed. I also found that I could have just used a library card after spirit orb, as well as a second or so of movement optimization I didn't see before, so it wasn't all pointless at least.
Also, looking through comments on both the best ending TAS and 100% TASes of other Castlevanias, quite a few people have requested a non-glitchfest full game TAS of a Castlevania game, and I think that's enough to keep me going on this.
Link to video
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Lost more than half of my progress for at least the second time because I was supposed to know that you can just fucking jump through the floor that keeps you from just going straight to holy glasses on the way out. Too much of a time save not to include, will post another WIP when and if I ever get back to where I was. Starting to become disillusioned with the all bosses goal again.
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Fortranm wrote:
Is it true that the SOTN bonded with DXC has more glitches than the original version does?
BTW, it's a kind of ironic that PPSSPP already emulates SOTN inside of DXC better than how most of current PSX or SS emulators do in emulating SOTN for most time.
The DXC version of SotN was coded using the original 1.0 Japanese print of the PSX version, a rare version that was replaced with an update with a number of bugfixes and additional features not long after its release. A number of the glitches in that version would combine to save significant time on the any% TAS most likely, but the time saved is basically all nullified by the arbitrary inability to skip the long opening FMV like you can in later versions, to my knowledge :P
Back to the DXC version, it uses 1.0 as a base, and as such did not include a number of things that the US PSX version had. It has library card Richter skip (which, ironically, would probably be a good solution to my current problem if it worked in the US PSX version), lacks infinite wing smash, and has Shaft/Shaft cutscene skip (I recently experimented with 1.0 and found a variation of the already known Shaft fight skip that lets you skip the cutscene before the fight as well, don't know if that was known or not), to name the most significant differences that come to mind.
Some things that are only in DXC but not 1.0 are the lack of any kind of shop glitch. On a positive note, ZX497 also found transformation buffer - since you have to use mist by pressing both other transform buttons at once instead of just having a dedicated button, they made it so that you have several frames to buffer inputs upon pressing either other transformation button to make it easier to time. However, this applies to any other inputs too, so you can hold other buttons with a transform button to have that button essentially be mashed at 60 hz. This lets you open shiftlines using just the shield rod.
Sorry for the long response, but I just wanted to write that stuff here anyway since it could potentially be relevant to TASing this game in the future, and it did get back to the original point eventually anyways :P
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Fortranm wrote:
I second that you shouldn't skip Richter.
How are you gonna get Holy Glasses though? Are you gonna enter the center of the first castle via glitches or you will have to get Silver Ring from Maria? (You get Gold Ring right away after the fight inside the coffin, IIRC.)
You might have already seen to that point in the most recent WIP I posted, but I do it by wolf glitching into the slope to the right of the clock room. I could theoretically use the flea man to open a shiftline into it, but finding an experience route that actually works seems impossible seeing as how I have thousands of experience to the next level at that point in the run and flea men only give one exp per kill, and wolf glitch method skips the first half of the elevator ride.
If this were PSP, I could just use shield rod spell chaining and be done with it, heh.
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Derakon wrote:
If you're doing an All Bosses run then you have to go into the fight, IMO. So unless there's a way to kill Richter but still access the second castle, you'll have to get those glasses. I don't think glitching out of the fight really counts as doing all the bossfights.
The only way I know of to kill Richter without getting the bad ending requires having the Holy Glasses anyway, so I already knew I wouldn't bother with that. I was more asking about whether Richter should be skipped entirely or not. I'm leaning towards no at the moment, but seeing as how RTA runs skip him in all bosses this obviously isn't a unanimous opinion.
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I was actually able to hex in the instances of override fairly quickly. Granted, I worked my ass off for basically two days straight just doing it, but it was a lot less painful than I thought it would be:
Link to video
Saves a second just on shortening the screen pause each time, and saves over another half second if you do it while you have to wait on something such as a boss' dieing animation.
Not 100% certain that it was implemented perfectly optimally into the old inputs, but I've had enough setbacks that I'm done starting from square one again.
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Derakon wrote:
Yeah, keep it up!
It's too bad the list of requirements needed to make boss fights last more than two seconds would basically boil down to "no equipment and no spells", but oh well. Go go fire shuriken!
I actually think that there's a sort of art to optimizing incredibly fast kills like this. The manipulation to get crits alone is already plenty work for me, at least.
Also, I'm backtracking a ways in making this. I found a trick that allows you to shorten the length of any screen pause that occurs on the ground, and that adds up too quickly for me to pass up.
