Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
I changed the branch of the video on YouTube to "only grenades on enemies & scenery" and it seems like a good branch. I think this is what comes closest to explaining the objective of TAS (taking into account that the objective is to only use grenades on enemies and in some mandatory scenarios and the pistol only on objects/boxes/vases etc.).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
eien86 wrote:
Hi IgorOliveira666,
I am not convinced your movie actually optimizes for the goals you imposed on it. Here are the notes I took, could you please comment on them and correct me if I interpreted things incorrectly? (apologies for the use of third person):
Although this movie has an odd choice of goal, one can appreciate the extra challenge it brings. The community has reacted mostly positive to it, indicating they found it entertaining. TASVideos certainly is open, today more than ever, to weird funny alternative goals other than finishing the game as fast as possible.
Notwithstanding the above, we always require that movies are decently optimized, even for the more relaxed category we accept. This doesn't imply that the movie has to be perfect, but that the author has done their best to polish both the routing and the execution of the movie.
My opinion can be prefaced by the author's own admission:
IgorOliveira666 wrote:
This TAS can probably be much faster, using other strategies, manipulating RNG's better. I didn't focus so much on optimization.
Although I see a somewhat polished execution, I believe routing has failed to remain consistent with the movie's own goals. For example, although both pistol and grenades are allowed, only enemies are killed with grenades, whereas the pistol is used for scenery only. However, such distinction is not clearly made in the movie's goal. It ought to be renamed to "Grenades for enemies, pistol for scenery".
Even if the goal was changed, a particular violation of this rule was indicated in the findings by Dimon12321:
Dimon12321 wrote:
[...] Usage of grenades is weird at times. For example, when Leon and Ashley are locked in the room with a ceiling moving down, it takes a lot of time to wait for the ceiling to reach the height to make it possible to destroy "energy sources" with grenades, instead of using a handgun instantly.
We would need to accept that the energy sources in the ceiling are (un)living and breathing enemies to not use the pistol on them. This is a hard pill to swallow, as these are, albeit active, part of the scenery. Another observation by Dimon:
Dimon12321 wrote:
[...] The optimisation of TAS is also a little questionable.
Since grenades are used as the only combat weapon, the author has to rely on adaptive difficulty to make necessary-to-kill enemies have less health and, maybe, improve the odds to get grenade drops. This is achieved by taking a lot of damage throughout the game. Watching this may make one doubt the optimisation of TAS. It looks very fragile, amateur-like and prolonged.
I would agree with this. Playing the game sloppily just for it to drop the difficulty and allow you to kill enemies with fewer grenades goes a bit against the spirit of the movies we produce. In a sense this might be, indeed, the fastest way to beat the game with grenades. However, it makes you wonder whether more clever ways can be found.
Well, I can try to explain. Firstly, talking about the objects on which I used grenades instead of the pistol, I did this to increase the challenge of the TAS and to show the public that it is possible to pass these specific parts using only grenades, without the aid of weapons.
In fact, my initial idea with this TAS was not to use a pistol or any other type of weapon other than grenades. And yes, it is possible to complete the game using just grenades, without the aid of a pistol, however, I didn't do it that way because it would be too slow. I would have to use my own grenades to drop other grenades and I would have to take damage all the time to control the difficulty level. The reason I chose to use the pistol was exactly to avoid this and make the TAS more dynamic, but the main objective is to complete the game using only grenades, not only on enemies, but also in mandatory parts where we have to break objects or things in the type. I think I forgot to include and make these details clear in the description and I also think I made a mistake in the branch of this movie, and I apologize for that :(
But now talking about optimization, I didn't really focus on optimizing that much, however, I didn't do it sloppily. As I already said, the damage I received was calculated and I had to manipulate the difficulty level. It's not a question of wanting to use as few grenades as possible, but rather that the game doesn't provide as many grenades in barrels/vases/RNG boxes as it seems. Could I have avoided taking so much damage? For sure! However, I would have to farm more grenades and probably farm by killing enemies and manipulating drops. Or, otherwise, I would have to go to off-route places to find more RNG objects to drop grenades with the pistol. So, realize that, one way or another, I would have to "waste" time, either taking damage or farming grenades. It's very difficult to know which strategy would be faster in this case and as I wasn't as focused on being as fast as possible, I opted for the easier strategy of taking damage and using less grenades. And another issue is that, many times, I didn't farm grenades, even though I could, because I didn't have space in the suitcase. I could have farmed a lot of grenades in the cabin, for example, which would have prevented me from taking too much damage in the future, but, as I didn't have space in the suitcase, I couldn't do that. Maybe I should have thought better about the routes for this TAS. I did my best with what I had.
Finally, I don't know what the ideal branch would be for this movie. I believe that "Grenades for enemies, pistol for scenery" would not be correct, because I ONLY use the pistol to farm grenades and I use the grenades themselves in the scenery. Maybe "grenades for enemies/scenario & pistol on objects" or something like that would be better, but I'm not sure.
EDIT: I edited the description and I believe the objective of this TAS is now clearer. Sorry about that! Now all that remains is to correct the branch, but I'm still not sure which one would be ideal.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
Dimon12321 wrote:
That was an addictive TAS. I have watched the whole premiere!
Your main goal is to pass the game by killing enemies with grenades only. That's a reasonable challenge and a boost to entertainment, albeit debatable.
However, the usage of pistol as the only alternative weapon feels like an unnecessary constraint because, basically it doesn't matter which weapon you use to destroy boxes, barrels and shootables, as long as you don't injure enemies. Removing this constraint would result in a more technically advanced TAS.
1. You could have bought a TMP and a stock to shoot the lock from the other side of the door, like it's done in any% TAS. Here's the moment.
2. You could have bought a Striker to perform speed boost glitch (Ditman glitch). You spend a lot of time looting - that would save some time in some sections. Also, you could have skipped Salazar boss fight using it.
Did you test the imprecise jump-down glitch in the mining trolley section to jump out-of-bounds of the trolley, bypass the ride and run to the point where you jump across the pit? The original TAS didn't know about it, but it might save some time.
Did you track down the value of your rank (difficulty meter) or, at least, performed calculations through your walkthrough? I certainly remember a video which showed your rank in real time, but I can't find it. It's possible to use RAM search to look for addresses which react in the same way. What perplexes me is that you take damage quite often. It looks like you were trying to make bosses have as less health as possible. Wouldn't it be faster to manipulate 1-2 more grenades, instead of losing time by taking damage and using herbs?
Anyway, I appreciate the effort you've put into this TAS. My biases are rather theoretical. I think it makes sense to still accept the run and, yes, I enjoyed watching it, so I vote Yes!
Well, a brief explanation of why I didn't do the things you mentioned is that I didn't do this TAS trying to be as fast as possible with just grenades. My real focus was just on finishing the game using grenades and because of that I limited myself to just using the pistol. A TAS seeking to be as fast as possible would have to have very well-planned planning regarding all variables and it would certainly require a lot of work.
About the mine cart glitch: yes, it works, but I didn't do it because I dropped a lot of hand grenades in that part.
And about the difficulty, yes, I followed the "rank" value the entire time in TAS, so none of the damage was "random". And there would be no way to leave the bosses with the minimum HP, because most of them reset the value. I even made this very clear in the submission itself. So, to keep the bosses' HP to a minimum, I would have to spend a long-time taking damage from the bosses themselves. The only boss that really had the minimum HP was Verdugo and in him I had to wait for the door to open, so I didn't waste so much time taking damage from him.
The frequent damage was to maintain the value at the base of 5500 and sometimes lower the value. It's not that simple to farm grenades, because the game doesn't have as many barrels/pots/RNG boxes as it seems. From the castle to the end of the game I must have destroyed practically all the RNG barrels and vases. In this case, if I wanted to drop more grenades, I would have to kill the enemies with a grenade to drop two grenades, however, this would increase the rank value and consequently I would have to take more damage to maintain the base value. Otherwise, I would have to use more grenades on the bosses and in the end, I would probably waste the same amount of time.
Anyway, I liked these observations and maybe in the future I will think about doing a TAS trying to be as fast as possible using grenades and without limiting myself to just using the pistol. Thanks!
Second, due to heavy time pressure (AGDQ 2014), what we see here is what Masterjun came up with overall. It may be not perfect for everybody, so there is a room for obsoletion - if better stuff is programmed within total control. But for now it is the best payload existing. And posts and votes on this submission prove that.
Since this movie's goal is in no way speed, it can not be obsoleted by reaching the total control point faster, or by making input during total control shorter. Only by providing a better payload. Which will be judged by the audience response. If people like the new movie more (as happened with Pokemon total control), this one will be obsoleted by it.
Now I didn't explicitly go and ask for feedback on this submission because I wanted t judge it quickly, and recently we have problems with getting feedback. Looks like making a decision was a more effective way to get this feedback, and I don't even think anything bad happened: we can't delay every uncertain submission for months, but we can fix a decision if it gets backlash. Thankfully it's easy to fix this one.
dart193 wrote:
Now, visually both glitchy TASes look quite similar - in that you can hardly undestand what is going on in there, though deep knowledge of the game may help that. Masterjun's TAS, however, is both competely different and everything that happens on screen is absolutely clear to most viewers (well, except if you never played/seen/heard of snake and pong) and is significally different to two other TASes.
I like this point.
The only unclear thing is what would be a good way to label these movies, because ultimately there are only two ways to do an ACE TAS: you either program something entirely new into the game, or you change what is in the game. Sometimes it's a combination of both.
What I'm unsure about is whether it makes sense to have several movies with the same payload type published separately, or is it better to split them only by payload type, or in some other way? Masterjun's ACE is an entirely-new type, and this submission is a hack of what is there. Or maybe we approach it from a different angle and just rename this movie to "ACE, glitchfest"?
Renaming this as "ace glitchfest" seems like a good decision to me.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
FractalFusion wrote:
Almost forgot to comment.
IgorOliveira666 wrote:
I think the most interesting thing about this TAS is the fact that it completely broke the hack. 95% of the levels were not completed as the author would like them to be.
In general, I am against breaking hacks in this way. If a hack is completely broken by a TAS, why should I care about the hack in the first place?
Besides, there aren't any glitches that aren't already in the glitchfest TAS, so nothing new there either.
I don't see any point in citing glitchfest here because hardly any TAS will make glitches that haven't already been shown in it. Even though I used glitches that are already in glitchfest, they weren't for the same purpose.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
feos wrote:
Note to whoever's publishing this: We may need to talk about the branch name first, as it's likely to only be either "glitchfest" or "playaround".
I have an idea. Since "playaround" runs usually just aim for maximum entertainment value while doing arbitrary impressive stuff, this run aims for something specific for the sake of entertainment: It showcases "all (or almost all) features of the game's levels" and "about 90% of all glitches in Super Mario World". What if we just call it "glitchfest"? We used to have that branch some years ago, but it was eventually changed to "playaround".
Though honestly I wouldn't complain if this is simply called just "playaround" too, to avoidintroducing fuzzy borderline between subjective definitions.
I agree with that. I think it would be nice to call this a "glitchfest" because one of the goals is to show as many glitches as possible. I put "glitchfest/playaround" because that fits both "glitchfest" and "playaround", but if I have to pick just one, I'll stick with "glitchfest".
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
bahamete wrote:
I finally got some time to watch this! First of all, congratulations on finishing such an anticipated run! This must have been a lot of work, especially to plan out a route for how to tackle all (most) of the known glitches in the game. Overall, I really enjoyed it - even as a veteran of the game. Despite the intimidating watch time, I would recommend it, especially to anyone who doesn’t have much knowledge about smw as a speedgame. There’s plenty of surprises here, even to people who know the game well.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of the concepts are stretched so thin that some of it can be a bit of a boring watch, and a tiny amount of it is even slightly annoying (I’ll elaborate below). I think there is a lot of room for improvement here. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 - it may have been hard to foresee these things when creating the run.
The watch time - 3 hours is *way too long*. A lot of these bugs are showcased in smw96, which is less than half of the watch time, but I don’t think this run is twice as entertaining. (Definitely in some places, but mostly not.)
It feels like the run is rushing to check everything off of a checklist rather than a conscious effort to make the run as interesting as possible. I suspect this is an intentional choice to showcase everything you could in a reasonable timeframe, but the run suffers as a result. It would be much nicer to pick a subset of the known bugs that are particularly interesting and can’t be seen in the other runs on the site, and show these off while naturally progressing through the game.
There is *a lot* of time-wasting. Revisiting levels (sometimes up to 4 times!), backtracking within levels for little reason, pausing the game to show off 1F graphical glitches, shell juggling/getting 1-UPs from hopping on enemies, etc. None of these are inherently bad by themselves but after a while, it gets a little dry.
Poor route planning - in a run about being as entertaining as possible, I was surprised to see how many water levels and autoscrollers were visited. To me these were the lowlights of the run, and some of the water levels were even entered multiple times. I couldn’t see any bugs in the water levels that couldn’t be done elsewhere, except the buoyancy glitch with a star.
Over-reliance on Yoshi. I know that Yoshi is the root cause of a lot of glitches in this game, but it seemed like 95% of the run was with Yoshi! There were times when Yoshi was ditched and I was hoping for some small-only entertainment, but usually he was obtained immediately after.
Minor annoyances - for me, the 30hz item box trick was used way too frequently. Once you’ve seen this once that should really be enough (and again, this is in the other runs on this site). The elephant in the room, however, is the mosaic effect that lasted for way too long. This was kind of hard to watch.
I couldn’t figure out why the game was set to 2P mode - twice. I might have just been missing something really obvious. My first guess was the wrong warp that occurs, but I don’t think you need to be 2P for that? I couldn’t see anything Luigi-specific, either.
Crashing - this is really subjective, but I don’t really like game crashes. The music and graphics when this happens is just really harsh. Luckily, I think there’s only two in this run (might be miscounting) so it didn’t bother me too much.
Ending. Using what I assume is ACE to finish this run over a traditional Bowser fight feels like a bad punchline to a huge amount of buildup. There’s a lot of potential in the Bowser fight, too! What about using the Lakitu Cloud from reserve to mess with his timings? Or destroying the Bowling Balls with the cape slide? I’m sure there’s more things.
Sorry if I’m being nit-picky here. As I said before I did enjoy it overall, I just feel like the run had a lot of potential some of which was missed.
Overall level comments (mostly positive!)
- c1 - Hitting Iggy off screen was very nice, I forgot you could do this!
- tsa - Dying here, the safest level in the game, is a really good joke.
- dp3 (first visit) - Wow. This is my favourite level in the entire run. Spawning Koopas out of nowhere with the grey platform null spit was amazing. This is the first time this bug is in a run on this site, I think, and it looks great. The bonus room was great fun, and exiting the level by getting the switch palace exit was very surprising. Great job here.
- vgh - Clipping through the brown blocks by using the POWs is a great joke. I was laughing out loud at that.
- vd3 - Killing all those Yoshis, then clipping through the pipe to kill Mario, was really funny. I have absolutely no idea what happens at the end of this level with the yellow sprite zipping around the screen, but it was great.
- cm - Yoshi in the Bonus Game with the winged key was really cool. Never seen these bugs before.
- cba - The screen going to black, but still playing the game, was so great! I had no idea what was going on. Minor gripe would be when doing the palette-swap, it didn’t really add anything to show the entire overworld..
- sw3 - This is a massive highlight in the run for me. Such a small, limited level stretched to its absolute limits. Swapping the goal and then dying, despawning the goal, just all great. Collecting the Yoshi Wings and hitting the goal tape I have never seen before
- sw4 - Was that a Boss Boo kill? That’s amazing!
- sw4 (again) - I legitimately cried with laughter when you jumped on the Koopa and it went “beep”, and Mario just stood there. I had to rewatch that a few times. Great.
- sw5 - Voting no because spelling “TAS” is traditional!
- way cool - reset to the title screen - incredible. Most WTF moment in the run for me.
- funky - nintendo’s super secret exit. Was hoping to see this and it was executed really well.
- vs2 - JOIEN RA G. Getting 00 (or is it 100?) bonus stars was very funny. How is that even done - the Bob-omb?
- foi1 - Hyperkinetic flying key + star was very funny
- foi4 - Going *up* the up-pipe I had no idea was possible, fantastic.
- gsp - death by corner bug against the switch, very good
- ci1 - wow... turning the level into an OW sub-map? I have absolutely no clue what is going on, but I love it. The music is grating but this is so interesting I don’t care.
- c6 - star power during the Castle outro cutscene is great. I think we did that during our proof of concept run?
- valley fortress - ha, a walkathon speedrun! What a neat idea! We don’t really get to see this anywhere else, so it was nice here. I don’t typically like walkathons but as it’s just one level, it’s a nice treat.
Ah I wrote a lot... All in all - thanks for your hard work. Somewhat tentative yes vote.
Answering some things here.
No ACE types were used in this run. The game end glitch performed on the gray platform and it's the same glitch I used to generate sprites, like big boo boss in SW4, Bowser in CI3 and so on. I just changed the setup to change game mode and activate credits. Incidentally, the fact that I didn't use ACE in this run, not even those ACE's that come back imediately, held me back from doing some things I would have liked to have done, but chose to avoid. I also didn't play the battle with Bowser for that reason: there was little to do there if I didn't use ACE non-intentionaly to get some sprites in the item box. In general, Bowser is a bit boring to play if there's nothing interesting to be shown there. Knowing this, I decided to run an endgame glitch because I came to the conclusion that it would be funnier.
I had to choose 2 player mode twice due to some reasons: the first time was to play with luigi and sew the map with Mario from DP3 to Chocolate Island. The second time was to unlock Mario from the map and also do some specific things that wouldn't be possible with just 1 player. In fact, it would be possible, but it would certainly take a lot longer and would ruin my route on top of that. The star in Castle 6, for example, had to be calculated very well, and probably wouldn't be viable with 1 player alone.
The other observations I cited in the comment above. Thanks for the comments.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
Well, I see that the enemy of this run was exactly the fact that I tried to show as many things as possible, instead of showing the most interesting things in a smaller run. 95% of the problems cited were caused by this enemy.
I was forced to do lots and lots of things that I didn't want to simply because I wanted to show as many things as possible.
A run with 90/95% of all existing glitches in Super Mario World could not be less than 3 hours, unfortunately.
I was forced to stay with Yoshi 90% of the time because 95% of all glitches are done with him. So if I were without him, a lot of things wouldn't be shown.
I was forced to waste time going back through the map, going back within a few levels, and entering levels more than once to show specific things that depended on it.
I was forced to play the entire game, pretty much every level, including boring auto scroller or underwater levels because obviously I couldn't show all that a game has to offer by playing just half or a little more than half. Some levels should have been avoided because they were boring, but I was forced to play them so as not to spoil the route.
I was forced to show the mosaic effect more than I would like because I have no way to remove it other than restarting the game or entering a boss. If I restart the game earlier than I should, my route would be totally ruined.
So, I had to do lots and lots of unwanted stuff towards the goal of showing 95% of everything Super Mario World has to offer. In fact, many, many glitches were shown in this run, including many that were never seen, however, unfortunately, entertainment had to be sacrificed at times for this.
Lastly, I agree with some things that could be avoided here.
The 30hz item box trick was used a lot. After watching the run a few times, I noticed it got pretty repetitive, but unfortunately I didn't notice it while doing the run.
Maybe I used start a lot to show things not so interesting.
I also took a while on some levels where they could be done much faster.
Thanks for all the comments and for all the observations made, I'm learning a lot from this! And sorry for the bad english ☹
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
CoolHandMike wrote:
Really wild tas! Lots of crazy stuff happening all over the place. Kind of wish there were some subtitles or something playing alongside the video. I think the only complaint I have is that it is a bit self indulgent at places, but this is a playaround so that is fine. Will probably watch this in little bits over the next couple weeks.
Yes, I intend to make a subtitle, a pity that it will take a while because it is long :(
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
Dacicus wrote:
I have not watched the entire run or voted yet, but I do have some questions based on the submission comments:
Why did you choose to not play those three levels?
How much time would the other glitches add that you did not show off?
Alright, let's go.
I didn't make these 3 levels because they are levels that don't have much to do. Things that could be done on these levels have been done on other levels. It would be an unnecessary waste of time.
I don't know the exact time that would be lost, but there are glitches that depend on certain circumstances to be made. There are glitches where I would have to lose Yoshi, for example, and at the next level I would need a Yoshi. That way, if I were going to do this particular glitch, I'd have to go around the map, to the closest level that has a Yoshi, so I could catch him and that would probably be pretty boring to watch.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
Well, I quite liked Masterjun's suggestions. I was thinking and it really has many levels that there is not much to do and with that it would be unnecessary to do them.
So, I'll take a good look at what each level has to offer and decide which ones are worth doing. With that I intend no more to do the 96 exits, but yes, only the exits in which there is a great potential of entertainment.
I'm also going to try to pass some levels without jumping, I've never tried to do this, but I think I can. Receiving all the items and coins is a cool suggestion and I can do it from now on.
About the repeatability of the stun glitch, I agree with Bruno and after having seen my video a few times I realized that it really is too much and so I decided to do it only when the result is satisfactory not to get so repetitive.
In short ...I will try to make the suggestions of Masterjun to make this run the best possible, I will try not to spend much time in the levels, I will try not to make it so repetitive and try to show as many glitches as possible.
And finally, thanks to everyone for the suggestions, I will do my best! and sorry for the bad english :/
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(633)
Joined: 5/2/2014
Posts: 21
Mister wrote:
The run itself looks made well but rather boring. I guess the main part of this run is the stun glitch part, which looks very nice, but the preceding part is the classic left-to-right type. So I wonder if there's a better game where we can perform stun glitches without a long boring part (I don't think having only stun glitch is so attractive that it can get viewers' interest, though).
What I couldn't read from description is:
Is it really faster to enter the pipe at 1-1?
Do we really need a shell at 8-1 and 8-2? Can we dodge plants as you did in 4-1?
Why did you release the shell in the watery area of 8-4?
Is it impossible to avoid 6/5 at 9-4?
I believe you could go with better entertainment choice. Especially at 9-3. Flying outside of the screen is the worst choice in my opinion.
That's all. I wish they were explained in your description. Comparison with a seven-year-old run which has no documentation is by no means helpful.
Well I will explain:
In 8-1 is yes faster into the pipe. It is 13 frames faster if I'm not mistaken.
In the 8-1 / 8-2 is yes actually faster, because if I did the same in the 4-1 I would have to go the whole stage 6/5, which would lose some frames, for, taking the shell I could go the the rest of the stage 49 velocity.
At 8-4 I let the shell to kill the sprite because it was not going to lag 8 or 9 frames. Furthermore only did not win lag because I was above the stage. If I had gone under, would have won lag, even killing the sprite.
At 9-4 I went with 6/5 because if it was with speed 49, further ahead in step (on the pass between the blocks) the Mario floating and could not pass between the blocks.
In 9-3 if I remember correctly gave some lag frames if underneath.
Well that's it.
