I've seen the TAS before, and I typically ask marzo questions whenever I need some deep technical insight but I haven't been able to get in touch with him.
The problem is that watching a TAS doesn't help for real time speed runs. In a TAS you simply get slope glitch and forget it, whereas speed runs have to account for variance and inconsistencies. My aim is to make the trick as consistent as possible, but there is some factor I'm overlooking that's making it a problem for Knuckles only.
Hey all, I recently returned to speed runs and have been noticing inconsistencies with the slope glitch in Ice Cap, specifically with Knuckles. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why that is.
What I've gathered so far is that Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles all have slightly different 3 frame windows for it, and that vertical subpixels do not change once on the platform, however there's something about doing it with Knuckles that makes it fail significantly more often. I've tried manipulating all kinds of subpixel values including grabbing the wall above the platform and can't find a clear cause or a solution.
What typically happens when it fails is that Knuckles will brush up against the object as he usually does, but instead of getting pushed upwards he'll just stay pushing it. The platform will also break the wall 2 frames earlier, though it appears to be in the exact same position every time. The position Knuckles himself needs is 17781, and sometimes he'll overshoot that but it will work anyway.
The only thought I had was perhaps variance with the objects themselves, but I haven't been able to confirm. Anyone know what's going on here?
Would really like to see Magical Pop'n improved upon. This is the best TAS I've been able to find. It's only somewhat faster than my current single segment speed run and missing loads of optimizations.
Link to video
Probably a long shot at this point but I'm curious if anyone has any tools like lua scripts for this game. I do speed runs and 1 credit completions of it and it would be super helpful to view information like frame data, hit boxes, etc.
I actually did a bit more testing before I saw your post, and I forgot to turn the HUD on. I still did learn some new things, though:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl65zdxt3gh8b3c/DE2.mp4
There's at least one other spot Tails can wind up in. If you hold right and press no buttons, you will get stuck and be able to zip around (this is the most common type of failure). But if you fly early inside the wall, you'll get stuck in that pocket of air like the video shows.
The interesting part is when you delay the flight a bit. You'll successfully go to the pipe from all the way down there even though it totally looks like that shouldn't work. My guess is that whenever I succeed in real time, what's actually happening is that I just happened to have the correct delay during my mashing so as not to fly too early or too late. From my understanding if I can learn this timing I might be able to manipulate it to work every time (I'll try and test to see how large this window is, I already know it's larger than 1-2 frames).
I'll do some more testing later with HUD turned on and check out y-position pixels too.
They appeared in the post correctly for me, but I changed them to direct links now.
Aglar wrote:
I had a discussion with you about this before, where I proposed a strategy where you stand on the flat ground to the left of the tube in the loop-back area and wait for the camera to get to a certain position, then start mashing the jump buttons while holding right. I retried this strat now and it works basically every time, though I don't remember if the position of the camera for when to jump is same as I said back then. So you should jump and mash the buttons and hold right when the camera reaches somewhere inside the blue rectangle here: http://i.imgur.com/9N3lelw.jpg
So quite some margin actually. You can try to see which position that works best for you, though aiming for the middle part should be the safest.
I would caution against thinking a particular strategy works every time. As I said I've tried all sorts of setups and timings, including the spot you point out. There have been times where I succeeded as many as 20 times in a row and thought I "decrypted the secret" only to fail it later on with what I swear was the exact same setup. Keep in mind that jump and flight timing will always vary in real time.
I need to know what determines whether Tails winds up here or here, because like I said once you reach that frame, further input will not help.
Perhaps some visual aid will help. This is where Tails winds up when you successfully enter the boss room:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tn68zt15o20d402/Success.png
And if you wind up here, you get stuck in the wall:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9fy0htbqhak89d/Failure.png
What I want to know is if one can consistently induce the former in real time, because the 2nd one sucks. My goal is to avoid getting stuck in the wall as consistently as possible. I've tried all sorts of setups, different timings, inputs, you name it.
Hey guys, I speed run this game, doing mostly any% with Tails and Knuckles.
As you know, Tails has that level wrap in DE2 to reach the boss. Problem is that it doesn't always succeed, which is a huge issue if I had a good run up until the end.
I'm trying to understand it thoroughly using emulator but I still don't fully get it. All I've learned so far is that as soon as the boss triggers, Tails can appear in one of two spots, after which input doesn't matter.
What exactly determines where he winds up, subpixels? I want to know if anything can be done to consistently manipulate it.
