Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
If this is what a human can do unaided, it will be truly jaw-dropping what a bot can accomplish in this game!
I have one question though: Does the game keep track of how many sparks you have in reserve beyond 9? If so, are there any glitchy effects when the number reaches certain thresholds? (100, 128 and 256 would be good ones to test for this purpose)
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
I previously tried to improve the current submission for this game in BizHawk 2.3, but got stymied on the first "U-Turn" hover (on Level 8). For some reason, I couldn't get the player to "snap" to the ground at the end and had to manually land him instead, wiping out the previous gains I had accomplished. I gave up at that point because I assumed that the previous submission took advantage of an emulation bug (and that "proper" emulation would result in a slower submission as a result), so I would like to know if my initial conclusion was wrong or if there really WAS an emulation problem in that version...
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Warp wrote:
I'm of the strong opinion that "defeat Ganon" should also be considered a valid category for TASing as well.
So in case this submission is accepted it shouldn't obsolete the current fastest-completion submission (using "Ganondoor") but instead inherit the "branchless" designation with the current submission being labeled as a new branch instead?
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
McBobX wrote:
I'd actually say this isn't an Any% run more like a game end glitch run, since neither Maxim nor Dracula have been fought, and we didn't see Dracula at all lol.
The problem with thinking of it this way is that essentially this would be another branch for a game that already has five of them. Especially considering the current fastest completion run has heavy glitch abuse, is there really a justification for making a seperate "game-end glitch" branch for this 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...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Arc wrote:
The MJ aspect connects with a lot of people.
Also, it's pretty much agreed upon that MJ (even if completely uncredited) was a contributor to the Sonic 3 & Knuckles soundtrack, providing the inspiration for the music of iconic zones such as Flying Battery and Hydrocity. The fact that those two stages made it into Sonic Mania shows the enduring appeal of the material.
(The music in this game also makes the "official explanation" of him being uncredited in S3&K - the Genesis/Megadrive hardware not being up to his standards for reproducing his music - sound quite strange. The assumption that he was deliberately left uncredited by Sega because of the scandals surrounding him is probably the actual truth here.)
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
XTREMAL93 wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Wouldn't be faster to use the Zapper?
I tried it in start and with Zapper game uses more frames for "Fire" than B button so I decided to use regular controller. Also these screen flashings from Zapper is annoying. Let it be "non-Zapper" category
The Speedrun.com leaderboards for this game also have the regular controller as faster than Zapper, so the regular controller should be the preferred input method.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
KiwiCracker wrote:
However, I just want to mention, that there are accepted TASes of f. e. Minesweeper, Polarium and Rubics World, which more or less fall in the same cathegory as this game (1P, puzzle, no action).
Problem: All of those submissions are older ones, and I believe were submitted and accepted before the rules regarding such games for Vault eligibility were set in their current form. Someone (ideally, a judge different from the one that handled the original submission) would have to determine whether those games would be acceptable under the current ruleset before referencing them as an argument for accepting this submission.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Arc, I'm curious why you didn't try to manipulate red potions to appear in certain earlier stages so that you have more potential damage boost options (especially Stage 8 considering you don't have spare HP for damage boosting in the following stage).
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
I found a couple Reddit threads showing a similar error message - all of them seem to involve a corrupted or out-of-date ROM version. In particular, there's this from the Fightcade FAQ (Fightcade is built on top of FBA):
This is a hard one because it can be due to a variety of reasons, but, if you consistently have it, please make sure that you have the correct romset. Old Fightcade roms no longer work on the new Fightcade.
If you have MAME, try loading your Vs. Castlevania ROM in there and see if you also get an error message. If you do, you probably have a corrupted ROM and will need to download a fresh copy.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
A movie made in one version of BizHawk (in this case, BizHawk 1.11.8) generally won't sync if you try to play it back in a newer version, even if you have the correct ROM. In this case, you'll need to use the old version of BizHawk to play it back properly.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Twisted Eye wrote:
That new usage of that Guo Ji killer glitch surprises me, I wonder what causes it.
Probably the same underflow effect isn't "stoppered" the same way in that different context, so it wipes out a lot more than just one byte.
For reference about the glitch in question (from the previous submission's text)...
When canceling the first character's command, a table index underflow (for TP used) clears a byte in the "character status" table. Guo Ji (from Xu Rong's battle, before Dong Zhuo 1) just happens to belong to that byte, so he's completely removed from 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...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
CaneofPacci wrote:
I'm not sure what in this run really required tool assistance other than the luck.
I agree with this assessment, but the bigger objection I have is the use of Easy mode. If this was done on Hard mode this would be ten times more impressive than simply trying to manipulate the right drops to trigger big combos over and over again.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Patashu wrote:
but if everyone in the country gets it simultaneously, there'll be 10x (or more?) people badly sick then ventilators physically exist, so the death rate will rise in proportion to how fast people get sick.
This, sadly, seems to be what is happening in Italy now - people are dying by the hundreds each day because the rate of new infections have far outpaced the ability of their healthcare system to cope with the problem. :(
This is also the main justification for the draconian shutdown measures of restaurants and public places in certain areas of the U.S. - "leveling the curve" as they call it - so that the spread peaks at a level low enough for the system to manage it without breaking down. People will still get sick and die from COVID-19, but not nearly as many (hopefully) as elsewhere in the world.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Zinfidel wrote:
The only negative thing in the whole run is Tails' atrocious voice acting, not that the writing helped at all there.
Tails has had his fair share of bad voice actors, but the Heroes voice (by William Corkery) is by far the worst he's had in the video games proper. (And newsflash, it doesn't get any better with Cream or Charmy in the other teams!)
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
ViGadeomes wrote:
- Is it played in the hardest difficulty ? and if not, why ?
According to the game's manual, the only significant difference in difficulty is the "handicap", with the ball going much farther after being putted when the difficulty switch is set to A. You can debate whether this would make things harder or easier, but that's the only thing that could be changed to affect the difficulty.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Quick update on the project status:
I just tested my current 1st loop submission in the new BizHawk release (2.3.3), and just like I found with GameBreaker's submission in 2.3.2 I got a desync after a few jumps in Deadly Forest. This means I'm reasonably confident emulation differences are indeed the cause of the loss in that section.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
For reference, the Morimoto "time attack" video for Super Mario Bros 3 was archived on this site here. The "warps" run for that game by Lord Tom, Maru and Tompa is considered its current successor in terms of obsoletion.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Personman wrote:
Alternately, FractalFusion could just submit that run again, and that could be published.
The problem with that idea is that FractalFusion's run is from mid-2006 using a very old version of FCEUX (0.98.16). I highly doubt any judge is going to seriously consider any submission made on an emulator version from 13-14 years ago, and judging from the cancellation notes I don't think FractalFusion is likely to be persuaded to try to replicate the run in a more modern emulator version.
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
Alyosha wrote:
The key seems to be to delay when you press start.
For context, how long a delay in pressing start are we talking about here compared to, say, the game's current publication? It is even going to save time at all to try to get the values to line up the way Arc wants them to?
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: 252
Location: Stafford, NY
A name-based list would only make sense if a judge has ruled on a submission that "it doesn't seem an acceptable TAS could ever be made for this game". And it misses the point of what the list would be most useful for - a guide to help potential TASers pick a game to make a submission out of. Remember the cardinal rule of what a good submission is:
The game-play needs to standout from non-assisted play, and must not be seen as trivial.
Certain categories of game are just not likely to produce something that could fulfill that requirement - trying to list all games in those categories would be a lot of unnecessary work. Just giving out a category and a few examples in each category ought to be good enough for a competent submitter to figure out whether it is a good idea to pick a certain game or not.
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...
