Posts for Graveworm


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Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
So I tried Dolphin and noticed the lack of load times, is this because of the emulation or that I'm reading the .iso straight from the harddrive? Of course no one likes load times, but it would give a skewed perspective of the game I guess.
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So you managed to turn this into another thread on bashing religion? It's getting quite old. It's also just going to make everyone religious seclude themselves even further into their shell, so it's not going to amount to anything, or lead anywhere. With that said, carry on doing what you will.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
If look at the topic in question, it has recieved over 7000 views in the last three days. It would seem to me as though this would actually be a very good topic to place opinions of something that is actually very relevant to the subject. Also, you've stated your opinions as if they were facts.
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While I see no reason to not publish an improvement of the game, provided it's not a "pride improvement" (However you'll define that), when the game is already in the workbench, I realise that there is an abnormally large amount of time and work laid down to just improve movies by mere seconds or frames. I'm not referring to one specific movie in this case, but it has happened many times before. What I can expect people would oppose themselves against is small unnoticable improvements taking up space in the workbench and being unneccessary work for the publishers and encoders. This however is of course up to the people encoding and publishing the movies in question. With the old voting question "Did you enjoy watching this movie", it could be justified as such that if you watch a movie you feel like you've already seen, this refers to very small improvements of movies including barely or no new tricks, the newer question of "Should this movie be published" is a trickier one to justify a no vote because of not enjoying watching a movie you feel like you've watched before. In either case it's very possible to say that you might not feel like the work involved in publishing a small unnoticable improvement to a movie is worth the effort it takes. Of course you would have to be consequent in this and not just apply it to games you don't like, or have very little relation to. Including of course the Mario/Metroid/Zelda games. On the other hand this might be advocating the original state of the game. Thinking that maybe zipping, BLJ glitches, out of boundries glitches and warp glitches are better left for demonstrational versions of the game and that you should exclude these glitches in runs to better suit them for people who are not that into the games. This is of course highly subjective, and in drawing a line of which glitches should or should not be allowed is of course impossible to do without stating an opinion based on the very situation or game you're looking at for the moment. There's no doubt that there are alot of competative players on this site, that would like to hold a record for a more popular game, and that there are those who would rather try and make a game not previously TAS'ed interesting to watch with newer glitches, routes or tricks. This obviously leads to different camps of players who value optimization higher than entertainment, and vice versa. The term "TAS" is a very vague one, and it can be defended as such to call it a "Tool-assisted Speedrun", and that it should be as optimized as possible, therefore justifying another couple of frames of improvement off a more or less popular run. It can also be interpreted as an acronym for "Tool-assisted Superplay", meaning you should try and bring something new, innovative and highly entertaining for the viewer to watch. In this you might feel it's more important that a new movie includes precise movement, cool tricks and playaround elements (Not necessarily a trade-off to speed) than breaking the game into a five minute glitchfest, as I'm sure many would refer to it as. These are both to me very relevant opinions, and as such they should both be respected as valid. What you're going to have to remember as you post on this forum, is that there is no one who will ever be truly subjective. You might like one game broken into a warp glitchfest, and another game not, depending on what kind of relation you have to the game. Whether or not you refer to that as inconsequent and double morals or not, is up to you individually as well. Another problem posed in these situations as well is the relation between different people of the community. There are people those who are humble enough to accept that no one but the people really into the game might enjoy the run they've made, and there are those who are proud enough to take a single no vote, no matter the reason as a personal attack against them. This is a huge span, and being as we're just people there's inevitably going to be tension rising between players. And as such movies can no longer be judged solely on the movie in question, but maybe even in spite of personal opinions of what system it's played on, who's made the movie and what another person in the topic has voted. Not only are we very subjective when it comes to game choice, execution and run type, but also about the runner, others opinions and what other votes the movie has recieved. Now I believe only one person has said he voted no in protest, so it's hardly representative of every no vote in the history of this website. And there's always going to be no votes on movies based on what I've written, or maybe something as simple as someone who votes no on a movie just for the sake of it, since no one had yet voted no. There are those who vote yes, even though they might not have enjoyed the movie as a whole, but that they believe someone else might like it. On the other side of the spectrum, there's also those who would vote meh on a movie based on it missing a single trick saving a couple of frames. Looking back at it I realise I feel stupid for posting what I posted. The vote is there for everyone to use, a single no vote doesn't make it harder to publish a publishworthy movie, but everyone should have the privilege to vote what they want, and explain why they did it. The problem in this case is not a no vote cast in protest, but you should ask yourself, why would he vote no in protest? Now is this really important? Is it hurting someone that a movie doesn't have a perfect record of yes votes? You're giving the voting process some kind of artificial value by stating that a single no vote against a hundred yes votes is somehow valuable to how the movie is going to fare in publication. Let people vote whatever they want, as long as they explain why they voted how they voted. And if it like in this case brings up a discussion, let's just hope it's a valuable discussion, and not one cluttered with personal opinion of the value of a no vote, of how you feel against another person on the forum or how it used to be on this page. Maybe it's time to change the voting process again, and add more choices to the poll, maybe it's not needed at all. Most submitted improvements of popular games have over 95% yes votes anyway. Maybe it's time to have poll that doesn't have an option that generates arguments and hard feelings, or maybe it's just time to accept that not everyone will feel exactly the way you do. Not everyone loves Mario, Metroid or Zelda, not everyone feels like every movie has a great replay value, and therefore a "highly similiar" movie might not be enjoyable, or bring anything new to the table. Not everyone likes zipping, out of boundry glitches or warp glitches. You think this is a big deal, you personally find this "akin to vandalism", but guess what? I couldn't care less about whether someone voted no on a movie or not, whether it was mine or not. Just like TAS'ing and this site needs to develop, so do we, and I hope I have in the last five years, and I hope I will in the next five years. This isn't the first time you've made a topic like this, in a matter similiar to something like this, I'm not sure it's lead to anything in particular before, so maybe, just maybe this is an excessive topic. And that this kind of discussion needs to develop further than just stating your own opinion over and over again. And yes, I do realise I'm doing pretty much the same thing as I'm antagonizing, but as much as I would like to submit myself to apatheia, I can't as a human being be objective. In my own self-righteous way I believe myself to bring something to this topic here, but in fact I might as well be just as opiniated as anyone else would. At least I try, I try to develop and understand why not everyone feels like I do, and to try and listen and understand others opinions as well, and not just see them as something to bounce off my own opiniated arguments against.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
I've only wall jumped in a hack of Yoshi's Island, I don't remember if it was called Golden Yoshi or if that was the creator of the hack. In any case I don't know if it was a patched (U) or (E) rom, and all I can say thus far is that I wasn't as close to the wall as I thought I would have to be, and I wasn't moving a full speed. I'll see what I can do if I can get my hands on a ROM image.
Post subject: Re: Questions for Speed runners
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
lumice wrote:
Do you find real life unfulfilling?
Yes, quite. I'm having an existential crisis just about every five minutes and I'm feeling worse for the future of the people around me every day.
lumice wrote:
Do you have a tendecy to avoid problems?
Not only that, I tend to deny their existance as long as I can possibly as well. Of course I can't lie to my self, but there are many excellent ways to escape reality, or temporarily make for the future or past to not matter that much any more.
lumice wrote:
Do you look for ways of escaping from stressful situations?
I wish I could, even if I realise I can't escape life, I still try.
lumice wrote:
How long is the average speedrun?
Bad question, it's not a matter of opinion but I guess you'd rather have to find a median or mean. Either that of you just worded the question rather badly.
lumice wrote:
Why do you speed run?
While I've never quite enjoyed playing video games for story or the sake of completion I'm a very competative person, and I play to be the best. TAS'ing on the other hand is very much unlike playing video games and when I've done that it's rather to see what the final result looks like.
lumice wrote:
I'm currently doing a paper on video games and would like to gather from data.
Quite short answers, but either way this is the internet and I can answer whatever without anyone actually knowing who I am, hurra0y.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
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Posts: 460
I've only played like old SNES games the last few years, but I guess it's hard to make the map look like a globe with that kind of technology, hence you'll have to imagine the world on the map being round and all edges connecting in some kind of twisted way instead. Like papier-maché on a balloon. (And extensive cutting.) I probably missed the point by a mile though. (The center of the map is one pole and the edges are another, do I win?)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
I'll make sure to read the first three chapters on that webpage. I really need to pick something up to read, and even though fantasy isn't really my first choice it's probably because I've never taken the time to read a fantasy book. I'll let you know what I think. Also, congratulations on finishing writing a whole book, it's a far greater creative accomplishment than I could ever imagine myself doing. I'll have to give you credit for that.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
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It's a TAS, just save state until you get said trivia right. I suppose you could run it side by side with the english translation as well just to be sure of which item you're buying. That is if it's a straight translation with no other changes to the game.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
Nah, it's just that I haven't been active in the community for almost five years, and back then it would seem to be alot more activity on the forum. Now I'm not hanging around in the IRC channel, so I don't know how much activity I'd see there. I used to enjoy looking through the topics of interesting games and watching wips and so forth. Of course there are things happening within the TAS community or TAS'ing in general, but there's alot less activity on this forum, and even less wips than four or five years ago. I might be wrong, but it's just how I see it I guess.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
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Posts: 460
Ernie Ball Music Man This site I don't spend too much time on the computer, and there's not really much happening over here, so I might cut it down to visiting tasvideos like once a week, which is sad.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
As I've finally gotten settled down again from the turmoil last year I've gotten some time to TAS again. Not feeling quite ready to tackle my main project I decided that Mega Man X2 has not gotten enough attention recently. Now this might not be enough to warrant any discussion of sorts, but I decided on making a TAS collecting only the arm cannon since I believe it has not been confirmed whether it's actually faster than obtaining the Shoryuken or not. Movie time So I've continued today on a file I started last year, where I actually couldn't bother to finish half the intro stage actually, up until the arm cannon capsule. Now I've noticed that the capsule will not open until the screen stops shaking, so I have to reach the capsule between two screen shakes. In my movie I believe it takes 657 frames from I start to move until the capsule opens, and in the older run FractalFusion did it takes 30 frames less. Delaying the entry to the stage seems not change when the screen shakes, and seeing as it does not seem static I began wondering what could possibly cause this. Is it on a global timer that only runs during the stages? Is it RNG that can be manipulated sliding down a wall? I don't know yet, but I guess someone might be able to tell me more. I'm of course gonna poke around a bit in trying to manipulate the screen shakes, but doing almost 2 stages in one night is a bit much for me right now and I've got other things to attend to. If someone knows more about this I guess you could just post, otherwise I'll see what I can do about it and post if I find anything of interest. I hope there's still interest for one more Mega Man X2 run, there's been quite a few so far floating around.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
I'm not sure what you're on about, but if you don't want to watch the .smv, I could roughly explain it to you I guess. The boss order's basically 1 - Tunnel Rhino - To get the Drill Weapon for the Heart on Blizzard Buffalo's stage. Skipping the Heart and the Helmet upgrade. 2 - Blizzard Buffalo - For the Leg upgrade, and the Ice Weapon, both save time on Neon Tigers stage. 3 - Neon Tiger - Doing this stage before Blizzard Buffalo would possibly let you reach the Heart faster, but you'd miss out on having the Ice for the mini boss and the leg upgrade when going for the sub tank. 4 -Toxic Seahorse - You need either the "F" Ride Armor or the Arm Cannon upgrade and the Ice to reach the "K" Ride Armor upgrade, using charged Ice is significantly faster. Also the Ice is a very effective choice against the mini boss of this stage. 5 - Gravity Beetle - Completing this stage gets rid of the battle event right before the Bit/Byte room in Blast Hornets stage, and completing Blast Hornets stage gives you access to the Heart in this stage. Revisiting Gravity Beetles stage for the heart is significantly faster than the event in Blast Hornets. Blast Hornets weapon is very effective against Gravity Beetle, but most likely using the charged X-buster is the fastest way to rid of this boss. 6 - Blast Hornet - The best weapon to use for this boss is Crush Crawfish's weapon, unfortunately you need a Ride Armor for the Heart in Crush Crawfish stage and Volt Catfish stage as well, thus Blast Hornet is at this point the most relevant choice. With Gravity Beetle beaten the event in this stage is removed, and any time after completing this stage you can get the Heart from Gravity Beetles stage. I guess using the X-buster for this boss as well would be a suitable choice. 7 - Volt Catfish - This stage needs Gravity Well for the Armor upgrade, and it's preferrable to have at least the Ray Splasher for Vile to make sure he explodes, a Ride Armor is also needed to gain access to the part of the stage where the Sub Tank is located. 8 - Crush Crawfish - Volt Catfishs weapon is needed to reach the "H" Ride Armor upgrade, and a Ride Armor for the Heart. 9 - Revisiting Gravity Beetles stage, just to pick up the Heart. 10 - Revisiting Tunnel Rhino's stage, picking up the Helmet upgrade and the Heart, to avoid having more than 1 map-helm-screen. And then of course the Sigma stages to complete that. The boss order is quite logical, and I can hardly find any flaws, the one closest would be Neon Tiger before Blizzard Buffalo, but with the Leg upgrade and the Ice being useful in that stage I can't see that happening. (Also, both the Leg upgrade and the Arm Cannon upgrade increases the speed of which you climb ladders. Having both makes is faster than walljumping, even in shafts where you can alternate walls before the 1 frame stop animation.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
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This might be one of the first TAS'es I did, and probably the first game I finished. I certainly didn't bother to, or even know how to optimize it. I think that's the original name of the file as well, I just didn't bother to rename it. But as I stated I don't think there's anything wrong with the boss order, just the execution of the stages and bosses.
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I made a movie of this 5 years ago, should still be relevant though, the gameplay is awful, but the route is probably worth looking at, I'll see if I can find it. Edit: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1577969754/Me%20sucky%20sucky%20graveworm-mmx3.smv Would seem as though it's from October 2005. I'll take a look at it and see if I can spot any improvements to the route to be made. Just watched it, this is truly terrible, the tactics on bosses and such are terrible, but the route looks pretty solid I believe. I guess the file was on microstorage already (or else I wouldn't have it), but I couldn't find it in the Mega Man X3 topic. So I just reuploaded it, and wasted some space. Forgive me.
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I guess we'll just have to wait and see, hopefully it's gonna be possible to make it look smooth.
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moozooh wrote:
Don't forget that tool-assisted scandashes are going to look very disorienting, close to incomprehensible, due to rapid angle changes and moving sideways.
I'm not too sure about that, unless you go beyond what the controller can do, which I believe would count as modifying the hardware, you can't really turn around that fast. But yes, alot of time will be spent going sideways, but you can always use the "R" button to turn around during dashes without losing speed. I do believe you walk faster diagonally though, and if that's true I guess there wont be much room for actually moving straight forward.
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Actually I made that .smv today, and as it turns out you can wall kick 8 pixels away from the wall, and the wall kick takes you 24 pixels and some sub pixels away from the wall. Now 2 blocks is 32 pixels as well which will make X bump his head. Thing is that if you have a low enough sub pixel position (or high enough if coming from the other direction), you will move 25 full pixels resulting in being 33 pixels away from the wall. This jump of course has to then be on the correct height as well so that you can wall kick before he reaches the point where he will switch to the "going straight up" animation. It's actually alot more complex than it looks. ;)
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On the topic of the fastest way of completing the game, most likely the fastest way is getting the arm cannon upgrade only, as stated by FractalFusion. If I remember correctly from a couple of years back I anticipated it being by a very small margin though, less than 10 seconds. Btw, here's a pretty cool thing I discovered years back but could never reproduce. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/55583752/2%20block%20wall%20kick%20faster%20method.smv Now I picked out some position adresses in the memory watcher and realised how hard this actually is to do. It might already be known, but I've never seen it before. (Watch in frame advance I guess.)
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Enjoyed watching, but I'm in a hurry to move again, voting later.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 9/29/2005
Posts: 460
I don't know if I understood it correctly, but nevertheless here's a small demonstration for visualisation. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/411253853/kraidspark.smv
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
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Posts: 460
Well, you can force an instant unmorph at pretty much every point in the game, I've been playing around with it for a bit in the past, and there's nowhere I found so far where you in a speed run could save time by forcing an instant unmorph where it's not possible. And in many places you might be able to force instant morphs as well. Something else that has not been mentioned so far, or I've just missed it is the time saved by playing from SRAM. Skipping cutscenes not only saves the time it takes to watch them, but also are used for several speed tricks and to manipulate monsters to be in the right place when coming to that spot in the room. To give an example or two of each Parasite Queen and Omega Pirate are both much faster when skipping cutscenes. And skipping the first cutscene in Magmoor for example, and also the one when picking up the Artifact in the same room will allow for manipulating puffers to be in near perfect positions. To answer to HonorableJay, there are several ways around these including bending, and using the "R" (And "L" to an extent) button(s) to avoid losing much speed while turning duirng a dash. That's really nice Angerfist, some of that only apply to console runs though, and other might seem unusable unfortunately. But there's plenty more to be found, and many things that could be handled differently. I thank you for your commitment in this case. There are many more things to consider and discuss, and I hope when time comes there will be alot of interest in TAS'ing this game, and that many people will TAS it. I know for sure already that I will at least. Let's just hope this will be TAS'able very soon.
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Shinryuu wrote:
Baxter wrote:
Mitjitsu wrote:
Waiting for an AVI or the run to be YouTubed.
There is already a streamed version available here: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7956924
Be sure to make an account to watch!
Why on a Japanese page, in Japanese, where I would have to register an account to see it? I tried using babelfish, but got some error about my email adress not being valid or something. I'll just wait until it's published I guess.
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How would that save time again? Looks like it takes quite a while to set up, and it means you'd either have to kill Kraid first, or do a norfair heat run (not awesome). I guess you might as well pick up plasma if you're doing this? But it'll cost alot of time in terms of setting up and doing Norfair either without Varia, I'm sure that wont save time though, or doing Kraids lair without speed booster or such, and Norfair without power bombs. Or am I missing something crucial here?
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