Posts for Gigafrost

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I've become interested in working on a warpless run of SMB2. I've got a WIP here: http://www.kraftfam.org/~erk/nesvideos/smb2.zip However, I'm not necessarily done with these three levels either. Notes: - I finish level 1-1 6 frames faster than Genisto's current version. - The second-to-last room can be done 16 frames faster, although it doesn't apparently change the boss timings. If that's so, I'll probably redo that part and try and hex-edit the rest back on. - World 1-2 is done 2 frames slower than Genisto's current version. One is lost in the pot with the key (I'm not sure why). One is lost in the battle with Birdo, but since I have an idea how to fix that, I might redo from that point. - World 1-3 has already been modified a few times from within the door. Short of any more ideas, I think it's optimum. - Speaking of which, I did test jumping vs. simply turning around (during the falling-with-key part...the one just below the cave's entrance) - I'm not entirely sure that I'm done with the Mouser battle, either. Many ideas have not panned out, but I haven't thrown in the flag yet.
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Very impressive. Good show.
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Not really. They're annoying as heck. I think the fastest one could do is finding out what speed puts you farthest through the key door, then from there finding out the latest you can start hold left, which is what I've done, but because I can't think of any other way to do it I haven't been able to come up with a good strategy. :\
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What's probably going on is I just use different keys (the keyboard might not let you press much if you're pressing UP+LEFT at the same time? Normally, anyways). I use the numeric keypad arrow keys, and I don't think those are the default keys. If you haven't tried using them (and you haven't trying binding the direction keys to them) then hopefully that'll do it. :) As for the sliding-through-solid-bricks idea, it doesn't work. Pretty much, you can use the L\L+R trick to embedd yourself into a single block, but once you're all the way in it you're stuck. Well, you're stuck horizontally. If you can destroy the block beneath you then you can fall out of the wall. If Link's upper body isn't in a block (only the legs are) then you can jump out. But without those vertical options, you get to thrash around all you want.
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Unsuprisingly, I've found yet another place to shave 2 seconds off. First, the glitched map of Death Mountain: http://www.kraftfam.org/~erk/nesvideos/DMount.gif (On a funny note, I thought it was sort of funny that you can't enter caves D and E at all...caves with the Xs on them can't be entered from that entrance because you appear in the water\lava, instantly die, and keep dying until you lose your lives.) So, about the improved path...in the 7:38 run, the path through Death Mountain was... Q - Left Glitch F - Left Glitch J - Left Glitch L - Left M - Left Glitch N - Left However, you can drop 137 frames by instead going this route: Q - Left Glitch F - Left Glitch J - Left Glitch L - Left Glitch N - Left Note that the difference is you Left Glitch through L instead of going straight through it. I also tested to see if, using the full map, it was possible to drop time by not dying after getting the hammer. Well, dying is 256 frames faster than going through Death Mountain again so scratch that. Dying is significantly faster. Another discovery is that it is slightly faster to jump to maintain the max speed than to simply slide and alternate pressing\not-pressing. In particular, in the case of the town with the Jump spell, for the first screen, it is 2 frames faster to maintain speed with jump instead of sliding. For Zelda's palace, however, it isn't faster. I haven't tested any other places, though.
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It's possible. Here's the specs for the FCM format: http://tasvideos.org/FCM.html The major difficulty is that it compresses the information by saying how long a key was pressed (or rather the number of frames between updates). I must admit that I've been unsuccessful in properly "simulating" a run in such a way that I could see the button presses. I did find a way to hex edit, though (although it's annoying at best).
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Wow. On a smaller note, it's also neat that the Mega Man 7 glitch works here as well.
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Okay, I hate to mention stuff even though you're probably in the middle of making your run, but now I think you should try for 6:20. Everything I mentioned before really adds up, and as for a few of the untested parts... In the river town, it's 77 frames faster to "Left Glitch" in the first screen (IE, you do what you did in your video except 70 frames faster). In the second room in the cave that leads to the hammer in death mountain, Left Glitching to the floor below is 17 frames faster. In the Great Palace, the possible improved path is 144 frames faster suggesting it definately is faster. :) Also, it occured to me that you could use the "get onto the ceiling from an elevator" trick in Palace 2 to speed it up a bit. In particular... Using it on the first (entrance) elevator is 29 frames faster. Using it on the second elevator is 76 frames faster (because you go over a locked door you normally have to Left-warp through. Hurray!)
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Wow, still good, and so close to the end. You're almost there. :)
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Well, I'm going to double-post the remaining information. (IE, things I forgot to mention and info about Great Palace related stuff). It looks like you can get pretty close to (if not under) a 6:30. I think that should be your target time. Other things to mention...I think in your latest video you might have opened the menu to cast Jump when getting Downward Stab. I might be wrong. But, anyways, I just wanted to post a reminder that you can simply press select to cast it without opening the menu (because the menu was opened for you when you got the spell). To get on top of the ceiling from an elevator (to slide on the ceiling), assuming you're coming from the top of the screen, from the first frame you can start input (when the background is drawn but link isn't): UP+LEFT+RIGHT UP+LEFT UP+LEFT+RIGHT UP+LEFT UP+LEFT+RIGHT UP+LEFT UP+LEFT+RIGHT UP+LEFT UP+LEFT+RIGHT [Release keys] Read: While holding up... Press L+R for one frame... Then "slide" into the fall by alternating L with L+R Then make sure you're not pressing up Pretty much, alternating L and L+R allows you to slide into a wall. When doing the above 10 frame sequence, you'll time it right so that when you're done alternating L; L+R you're at the exact frame to release UP (so you don't accidently go up a screen) and you're also at the exact frame where it doesn't matter how you move because on the next frame you'll have been forced onto the ceiling. So, that's how you do a smooth transition onto the ceiling from an elevator. Path-wise, I'm beginning to wonder if there's a better path through the Great Palace...at a specific point, of course. Basically, from my map posted in the previous post, I was thinking that your path from room U to Y was faster. I'm starting to have doubts now. Here's that path: -Come into U from the bottom (used U+D in the room above so you came from the bottom) -Go down to W -Ceiling slide to X -Left Glitch to W -Go through "glitched" W to Y Another possible path: -Come into U from the bottom -Take secret passage to the left to Left Glitch to W -Go left In fact, listing it like that it seems like it'd be a whole lot faster. Another speedup involves the "stairs" rooms in the Great Palace (where you climb the stairs, attack blocks, downward thrust through blocks, then reach an elevator...rooms K and S?) Instead of downward thrusting all the way to the bottom, downward thrust to the second-to-bottom. Also, there's a frame where you can DOWN+ATTACK the blocks to your right and you can take them both out in one attack. This should be a bit faster. In the room with the long collapsing bridge (room !, the one where you're supposed to stop at a specific point on the bridge and fall), you can shave off two frames by dropping from the bridge-block to the LEFT of the hole. While falling, there's a point where you can alternate L,L+R to force yourself into the next bridge block without the game putting you on top of it. I think you just L,L+R four times and you'll be able to fall straight into the hole. So, hopefully that covers just about everything.
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Alright, I'm still looking at the Great Palace, but I've created a map... http://www.kraftfam.org/~erk/nesvideos/gpalace.gif In particular, it's a glitch map of the palace. If there's a square without any red\blue\yellow on it then it's unreachable with the Healer glitch. Of note is that, if the glitch doesn't kill you or get you stuck (done from the rooms with the red dots), or it doesn't return you to the beginning (rooms with the blue dots), or it doesn't return you to the map (rooms with the yellow dots...but you go right) then it either allows you to go left two rooms or it allows you to go down one floor. So, based upon this, when the glitch is active the optimum path is trivially... Glitch left (only option from entrance) Left Glitch left (goes down) Right Right Down Right Down Down Down Right Down Right Down Right Down Down Down Right Glitch Left Left Down Right Down Right Right So pretty much, the path was already optimal with the exception of the entrance. In the current 7:38 video, you Glitch Left, right, Glitch Left, Left, Glitch left. You can completely throw out the "right, Glitch Left" part and simply go left. :)
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You should be able to break 7 minutes easily. Everything really adds up...timing the L+R right, continuous movement, the U+D elevator trick, etc. At a minimum it should be 50 seconds faster. (I've calculated at least 50 seconds of improvement. I haven't done any exploration of the inside of the Great Palace, though. Only so much time in a day...) If I'm mistaken about that I'll be able to find out when I get home...
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You're still getting a lot of Yes votes even when there's obvious errors (such as the pauses). I think that a run without the obvious errors has a very good chance of being run (as in people want to see this sort of run...)
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I'm back from my exam but instead of double-posting in the submission thread I'll post the L+R details here. For starters, there's finding the right frame for input. Using frame advance and save states, you want to make a save state at the exact time the scenario is drawn while Link is not. If you're falling from the top, taking an elevator, or coming out of a door, you can instantly control the character from this point. If you're coming from the left or the right, you have to advance 8 frames. The effect (in general) of holding L+R for a certain number of frames: 1 Frame - Moving to the right sort of fast 2 Frames - Moving to the right really fast 3 Frames - Moving to the left really fast 4 Frames - Moving to the left sort of fast 5 Frames - Practically stopping So, if you want to go to the right really fast, you hold L+R for two frames and then "accelerate" (more on that later). Going to the right, likewise, is holding down L+R for three frames. Note that if you're entering a screen from the right side (your character is walking left for those 8 frames) then this won't work. Fixing this is a simple matter of pressing Right for one frame (and then you can immediately hold L+R the desired number of times). To maintain the fastest speed, you have to accelerate. Naturally, this is simply holding down the direction you're moving. The tricky part is that holding it down too long will, at some point, suddenly reverse directions. There are a couple of ways of handling this: 1) If you're in the air, once you reach max velocity it won't go down so there's no problem. 2) You can maintain that velocity by pressing JUMP at the exact frame where the game doesn't think you've landed (even though you just jumped off the ground). This avoids the ground friction. 3) That can't be done every time, so from the ground you simply alternate "Pressing Direction" and "Not Pressing Direction". Naturally, if you touch the ground for too long after landing it'll start slowing you down so you'll have to find out when you can start alternating (frame advance, save states, etc). When you're accelerating, how do you know when to start alternating? It's actually pretty simple. You keep accelerating using frame-advance until you reach the frame where Link suddenly reverses direction. Take note of the Frame #. Let's just say it's 9564. This means that at 9562 you have to NOT press the direction and that's when you start alternating. In fact, this is a general rule of thumb: when sliding along using the glitch, if Link suddenly turns around, go back and do not press the direction key you did two frames before. (This is helpful when you're sliding off of a platform) As a quick note, when you enter the screen from the Right side, you press Left, press L+R 3 times, and press Left only 2 times before maxing out the velocity. About jumping from the ground when you're alternating: if you jump on the same frame you press the direction key, you'll have max velocity in the air. If you jump on a frame when you're not pressing the direction key, your first frame in the air you only need to press that direction key once. An important thing to mention is that maintaining maximum speed can sometimes cause the wrong room to load when you travel between screens. Here's where I've experienced it: -In my first glitched test-run, sometimes going off the screen to the right would cause me to re-enter the same room from that side. -In my tests involving the Healer glitch, sometimes you're supposed to scroll the screen a bit to the right then exit on the left, correct? One time it didn't exit at the proper place. The only way I've found to prevent that is to slow down a bit. It'll be hard to notice, though. You shouldn't run into it too often. On the mentioning of the Healer glitch, sometimes you need to have the screen scroll to the right a little bit more than usual, right? So just use L+R twice and delay the third L+R a few frames (you probably want to accelerate some during that pause). Note that putting off L+R for more than two frames if you entered from the Right side of the screen will cause L+R to make you go to the Left faster (because it only takes two frames to reach max velocity to the left). If you're coming from the Left side of the screen and you're going to scroll the screen a bit to the right and exit to the left (which happens very frequently) what I've done is L+R twice, accelerating to the right, and just after the screen scrolls a bit the velocity will suddenly reverse directions (it was faster than trying to time L+R #3). This makes it pretty fast to do that. In addition, to deal with platforms or stuff that might be in your way in front of you, you can JUMP on the first L+R (or, if you need more height, on the second L+R). If you control the height of the jump, you can usually just enter and exit the room in a flash. On another note, if you haven't noticed, holding JUMP causes Link to go higher. You can release JUMP at just the right time in some places to speed yourself up. A good example of this is in my glitch test-run at the palace entrances. For all but the first (I think), I jump at just the right time (and hold jump down just the right amount of time) to land in the elevator without hitting the wall or floor. You can use this to control where you land in caves, in general, and you can also use it to jump just high enough to clear the edge of a platform while landing on it as soon as possible. When the Healer glitch is active, you have to clear the downward stab room, right? I still don't have a good idea how to do it. That room is problematic. What I did was... -Slide into the room and slid into the wall, counting how many tile columns were loaded. -Found the earliest spot where I could duck+attack (thereby stopping) and cause the same number of columns to load. -L+R glitched to the left, then turned around at some point where sliding all the way to the right freed a good more. -...and I don't remember what I did after that. All I remember is clearing (counting the number of "bricks")...5 the first time, 4 the next, and then clearing up to the Warrior. (1 brick = 2 tile columns). So, the second time I had 9 bricks total cleared, although 11 was possible (if I slammed into the wall and couldn't L+R myself for a while, I think...) Naturally, if I was typing this in from home I would have more details, but alas y'all have to live with my memory for now. Notes about certain rooms and the L+R glitch... For the Trophy cave, you can accelerate to max speed and you don't have to slow down; you can reach the Trophy by traveling through the cave at max velocity. The same with getting out. For "climbing" walls using the L+R glitch, normally you might: -Find the latest frame you can jump -On that frame, Jump once, then L+R glitch once -Repeat But suprisingly this ended up being faster: -Find the latest frame you can jump -On the previous frame, jump once. -Then do nothing for a frame, then L+R glitch once. -Repeat (I think faster by only 1 frame, though). In Palace 2, the room with the slimes in it that I easily got through with the downward thrust. You have to slow down a bit to jump over the slimes but it's not a big slowdown. A viewer probably wouldn't notice it, actually. You can continuously move through the room. Likewise, in the room where you "drop down the stairs" and there are two floating skulls down there, you can jump at the right time and slow yourself down enough so that you make it down the stairs and still have most of your velocity. (This is good because it doesn't take many frames to return to max velocity). Well, that's everything that came to mind...that and I've got to head to class. ^.^;;
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Okay, I decided that the reason I'm voting no is the pauses. The L+R glitch is used very well (although not perfectly) but the pauses on the overworld are unecessary (as well as the slowdown from colliding with things with the L+R glitch). I've played around with the glitches a bit so let's see if I can list my findings (as well as my more thurough analysis of the L+R glitch)... One interesting thing I noticed is that landing on the Trophy in the first cave instead of sliding into it caused it to be picked up roughly 10 frames earlier (I'm not sure if you did this but I'm just mentioning it). In palace 2, both elevators should be taken UP with the U+D glitch instead of down. You do this by using U+D to force yourself into the ceiling. It doesn't move you through the ceiling, though, so you have to hold just Up until you reach the top where you can then hold U+D and appear on the screen BELOW (from the bottom). There are multiple things to note about this: 1) This is about 40 frames faster than the normal method for both the elevators. 2) If you do it this way, you can't attack the wall to move yourself to the left or else when you start using the L+R glitch you'll suddenly stop for no reason. 3) The frame-precise way to do this is as follows: Hold U+D. Using frame advance and save states, find the frame where you can release D and still be moving up through the ceiling. Then, when you're getting near the top of the ceiling, using frame advance and save states find the frame where you can hold U+D and move (too early will make you unable to move). For the healer glitch, I've only been able to do it by pixel-wise reproducing what Genisto did. There is a way to speed it up, though. If you warp through town fast enough then you can spawn the healer walking TO THE LEFT and you don't have to wait for her to walk all the way to the right, then almost all the way to the left. Your path through the river village place might be the fastest. I was 7 frames faster simply going straight through it but you might be able to drop more than 7 frames from your path (IE, I didn't test this). In death mountain, when you enter the cave that leads to the hammer, from the second room you can use the "Left Glitch" (IE, you go to the right a bit then exit the screen to the left) to teleport to the room directly below you (bypassing the Elevator.) I didn't test if this was faster but I want to make sure you're aware that it exists. :) Also in Death Mountain, when you break the boulder and fall down to where the Magic Potion is, as soon as you're on the screen, instead of falling down, use the L+R glitch to get on top of the ceiling. In East Hyrule (I think?) you've gotten to the Great Palace the same way in both videos: -Get out of maze -Take bridge -Take cave -"Left Glitch" -Walk across swamp -"Left Glitch" in the second cave -Enter Great Palace I've found a faster path: -Get out of maze -Take bridge -Take cave -"Left Glitch" -Instead of walking across the swamp, re-enter the cave. -"Left Glitch" will take you to the Great Palace area. -Re-enter the cave you came out of there and L+R glitch through the one room. -You'll come out of the cave at the Great Palace. (When I found that way, I started testing the old path and 200 frames after I would have entered the Great Palace in the new path, I was still in the swamp in the old one!) I was hoping to post specifics about how to use the L+R glitch here, but I've got to go take a probability exam. I'll be back in an hour to post that...
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I think the run might have been a bit better had I responded to my e-mail a bit quicker. Apparently I didn't check it all weekend and an early WIP had been e-mailed to me. Although I made a bunch of suggestions, the fact that I made them two days latter means they probably weren't included. :(
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I don't plan on competing with Blitz on this, though. I was simply having fun playing around with the glitch (although admittedly 10,000 re-records seems a bit extreme...)
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Sure - both our runs are for the US version of Zelda 2.
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I'm hoping Blitzag's run will have close to that level of control. :) As for finishing my test, I could, but it's problematic. After palace 5, I'd have to go back and acquire fairy (because that was why I continued after the first palace in the first place. Once I got far enough into palace 5, I could get to palace 6 and test skipping the fairy parts, and I couldn't skip one). Also, my path is definately not optimum. As a simple example I could have done palace 1 after getting the downward stab. There's some odd level-up choices as well that were simply convenient. Plus, I really ought to finish the Rockman and Forte run. ^.^;;
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Oh! I thought there was something else I was forgetting to mention. UP+DOWN on the elevator. It shoots you up really fast on the elevator, right? If you're holding UP+DOWN on the elevator when you go off the top of the screen, it'll take you one screen down, but only if the elevator could have gone down in the first place (otherwise it deposits you in the wall buried underneath the entrance...trapped, for all eternity...). So, for the parts of the palaces where you'd be going down a couple of rooms on the elevator, holding UP+DOWN would definately be faster. Likewise, you can hold UP+DOWN to shoot into the ceiling, normal UP to move while in the ceiling, and UP+DOWN when you're above the ceiling to go up really fast. For that, consider the entering of a palace. In fact, look at my test and compare the entrance to palace 3 with the entrance to palace 5. Prior to palace 5 I didn't have a full grasp of the UP+DOWN glitch, however comparing times now the entrance to palace 5 was 50 frames faster and the entrance to palace 3. It might be different for palace 2, though, but testing using UP+DOWN vs. not should be done. Anywho, I'm looking forward to this run, even if some people don't like seeing the game glitched this much. I'm definately interested in how fast it ultimately will be. :)
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Well, while there's a thread about it and I'm still around, I'd like to point something out about the video I mentioned in the submission thread: http://www.kraftfam.org/~erk/nesvideos/Zelda2.zip Namely, if you pause the emulator, play the movie, stop the movie, and unpause, you'll notice that the movie had no game data when I started recording it. You'll also notice (by watching the movie itself) that I start the game without entering a name because I was able to start a game from non-existant data. This was by simply pressing start early enough (there's only 1 frame you can do it). Make sure you press start at that time. I also think it'd be pretty neat to include that glitch in a final run. :)
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Although it is indeed fast, I have to vote no. There are simply too many errors. For instance: I don't think there's enough of a difference between the US and Japan versions to warrant Dark Link taking so much longer in this version than the current normal run. Even if I'm wrong about that, I can guarantee that you can do a much better job of controlling the Left+Right glitch. There are simply too many times you held L+R down too long or didn't keep the max speed. To give you an idea of how much better the glitch can be used, take the cave you usually need jump to get through. It took roughly 1026 frames to get through it. I played around quite a bit with the Left+Right glitch and looking at that test run I was working on a couple months ago I got through that same cave in 572 frames. That's a 7.5 second difference. I have no clue if I ever linked to the test run other than when I did the first palace in under a minute. Here's a link to the latest "version": http://www.kraftfam.org/~erk/nesvideos/Zelda2.zip Granted, properly using the Left+Right glitch might be a pain in the ass because you HAVE to do it one frame at a time, at the very least you could have gotten rid of most of the big errors... :\
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Short of discovering some sort of glitch, no. It's because he automatically does it when he's lost enough health (well, after he lands, but even trying to take advantage of that doesn't help because he's invincible while he's jumping up).
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Wow, it's coming along really well. Heh, and you even made the Burst Man battle entertaining. Excellent! 21-22 seconds...it sounds do-able. :) Oh... I don't remember if you're doing Shade Man or Slash Man next. All I recall is having an idea (that I don't remember ;_;) about how to handle Slash Man that might make him easier. Well, I think I'll be interested to see the run either way. :)
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Megafrost was the only one who did, but he stopped. Basically, he burned himself out by starting over too many times trying to achieve a perfect run the first time through. So, no go until somebody else picks it up.
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