Joined: 1/24/2018
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Location: Stafford, NY
"Plexar was here" - I wonder who or what this "Plexar" is. None of the sources you used seem to mention that message, and neither does the Digit Press database. GameFAQs shows part of the message in their image gallery on the game, but no one seems to have asked about it there.
Even trying to look at the archive of GameWinners doesn't seem to yield anything. Do you have any idea what this message is about?
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
Could you elaborate on why you believe the game will not ever be finished (i.e. the final boss fight not implemented)? And "because it's eight years old at this point" is not going to be a good enough answer on its own. :)
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
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Location: Stafford, NY
Winslinartor, I'm curious if you've tested in MAMEHawk whether the movement tricks you found here will also work in the original arcade game (of which the Genesis game is pretty much a straight port of)? And if so, do you plan on tackling the original arcade game at some point?
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
Yeah, I can tell this was definitely inspired by recent events. :P
Also, just like the original Die Hard is technically a Christmas movie, Ghostbusters II is technically an end-of-year movie with the climatic scenes taking place on New Year's Eve, so seasonal relevance should not be questioned here. (The two movies also share an actor in a fairly important role - can you figure out who it is? :) )
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
But that shouldn't excuse using an E ROM for the submission in the first place when there was a good dump U version available. Perhaps the current submission file should be replaced with the one that was resynced on the U ROM?
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
It might also be worth asking Bisqwit for help - he's good at this kind of disassembly to retrieve passwords/passcodes. It doesn't look like he's done anything with this particular game, but he's done plenty with other NES games. Especially since bruteforcing isn't as infeasible as it was 6-7 years ago, it might be worth a shot trying to get his help. :)
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
Very impressive for a game that has most of its frustration in the control scheme - anyone that's tried to play Crazy Climber or one of its ports will know what I'm talking about. This is particularly noteworthy not just because it's a technically impressive port of an arcade coin-op, but because it was the first of four games that were only available at the time to Atari Fan Club members (making it a very rare cartridge to find today).
Hopefully once MAMEHawk is a fully-fledged (pun intended) core we can see a TAS of the Crazy Climber arcade game, as this port has only a bare shadow of the original version's quirky charms...
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
AtariProtos has a useful page on this game for anyone not familiar with it. Although it's considered a prototype, the game appears to have been completed (or nearly so) - it was never released due to a combination of the divided rights to the LotR franchise (you might have heard of this before) and the Great Crash of 1983.
Voted "Meh" because it's just not a very good game, unfortunately...
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
Don't forget that MAME's "shortnames" for some games are also changed whenever a new version is released. For example, the database of MAME Action Replay is peppered with game notes in the style of:
"Renamed from 'something' to 'something else' in MAME version 0.XYZ
So use shortname 'something' for versions before XYZ
And use shortname 'something else' for versions XYZ onward"
Trying to keep track of the shortname changes for a submission the same way the MAME team does just sounds like unnecessary extra work and headaches in my opinion...
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
I know in most cases regional and text differences are ignored when it comes to judging optimization, but in this case we're talking at least 3 hours difference in a movie that tops 9 hours. (And if you look at the other branches on the Speedrun.com leaderboards, they are all topped by the Japanese version as well by significant amounts.) Is it worth making an exception for this case when you have a known gap of this massive a size?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 242
Location: Stafford, NY
So basically the bot found that to break this port of the game is to "Press Up+B in certain places to get weird, unintended behavior to happen" and then you had to figure out the RIGHT "weird, unintended behavior" to generate that didn't softlock or crash the game...
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...