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GJTASer2018 wrote:
Two questions:
1. Are you not allowed to carry more than one key at a time? (Would save quite a bit of backtracking if you could!)
2. There's no way to clip through the platform to the left of the locks and skip having to get the keys altogether?
You can only carry one key at a time.
You can't skip the keys, you can clip up after the locks, but the screen transition isn't there.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Could you explain a little more about what is going on in the stages? Like in the sand stage, because I do not understand why a lot of actions are being taken. A good example of this is around 7:00 when the character just stands there twirling the sword, at another part shortly later kind of sinks in the sand then jumps out again, and another just kind of hangs around a block for a couple seconds then moves on. Not sure what to make of all these odd movements. Also in the water level what happens if you jump into the water?
In the sand stage, there's a sandtorm that appears periodically, at that point, if you are not close to a wall to cover form the wind you'll be swept backwards, that's slow, so at 7:00 I'm just waiting it out, doing some twirls to pass the time. You can see at 7:56 how The Rock is being swept backwards since there were no convenient spot to prevent it.
On the water level, if The Rock is fully submerged he'll instantly drown, and die, there's no swimming in this game, so you have to wait out the cycles to continue unfortunately.
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ninespaces wrote:
Induviel wrote:
Oh snap, I had a WIP of this, I got bored of it so its incomplete, its done up to about the middle of the rose maze.
Here it is, I think I do some stuff faster that maybe can be implemented without too much trouble.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638561395016683392
Whoops - sorry I didn't reply to this sooner. Your WIP is great, Induviel! I haven't managed to get through the whole thing, but there's definitely parts where yours is faster. I'm in a bit of a pickle now though. It seems like it's not a simple matter of replacing some of my inputs with yours - it desyncs (that's probably not the right word, but you get what I mean) and makes later parts no longer work correctly. (Actually, mine seems to even start on a different frame... which I don't understand. They're using the same BIOS?) That in itself isn't a big deal, and I'd be happy to go through the whole thing and update it all... but unfortunately I'm not going to have time for a while.
Can I ask a judge / others what's appropriate in this situation? I don't mind cancelling the submission if the current version can't be published, given the above.
Thanks!
I think mine probably starts at a different frame because yours is in GBA mode, while I have it set to GBC mode, otherwise it doesn't make much sense.
Anyway, if trying to implement the optimizations means redoing most of the TAS, I guess its fine to keep it as is, I really just wanted to shared the WIP so I wasn't hoarding any possible optimizations. Most, or all, of my optimizations really just come from dealing with the jank of the jump glitch anyway.
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Oh snap, I had a WIP of this, I got bored of it so its incomplete, its done up to about the middle of the rose maze.
Here it is, I think I do some stuff faster that maybe can be implemented without too much trouble.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638561395016683392
Bootleg games must not be direct clones of a licensed game on the same console. Unlicensed ports with unique gameplay, such as demakes, are allowed.
Does this apply?
Ooh, I didn't know about that one, would this be considered a bootleg?
It is pretty much the same as the original nes game, appart from being NTSC, and having slightly better graphics.
Does that mean I'd have to redo it on the original game? It would be pretty much the same, just slower.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
Achieves best ending (?). If you reach the end without the whole party the game gives you a fail screen, not sure if that would be considered an actual ending or just a fail screen.
Based on this statement from the submission notes,
...quest to assemble a party of of adventurers...
I'd argue that this submission is not a "best ending" but just a general ending. It seems the presented goal of the game is to assemble the party. If the game tells you that you've failed because you didn't assemble the full party, then you've not beaten the game.
To me, a game outright telling they player that they've failed in the main goal means that they didn't beat the game even if they otherwise reached the end of playability. So if it's required to have the full party in order to get an ending that doesn't say "failed," that's a minimum requirement for the game to be considered beaten.
I realize that some games have multiple endings where it may report you failed some sub-task(s) presented while still achieving the main goal. In these cases we'd often consider such an instance a "bad" ending or not the "best" ending. But when a game only has 2 ending possibilities (effectively You Won or You Failed), then winning must be achieved to consider the game beaten.
Since we generally don't accept unbeaten games for publication, I don't think a run of this game that finishes faster by not getting (or, if possible, losing) party members would qualify for publication under a "bad ending" branch.
Ah, ok, I wasn't sure, I'll remove that line.
This TAS gets the whole party to the end so it should be good then.
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Was playing this one casually and it seems that at the start of the game you can wear the cloak without first getting it, should save a few frames from skipping the GET CLOA command
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Just found out about this other TAS on the game.
https://youtu.be/Xwf61j1chRQ
A good chunk of the time difference comes just from loading times, but it does do some faster stuff I'm not doing, which I'll have to implement.
No need to delay, probably, hopefully the improvement will be done before this gets claimed.
Edit: Finally done with the improvement, it is still slower overall, because of the loading time differences, but I made sure I beat or at least tied that TAS in every level gameplay-wise, I'll be updating the encode now, once the encode is done.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638450992467542281
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The RTA record of this game does many things that are not done here, that should be able to save a lot of time, like clipping through some doors, and somehow teleporting around, and even OoB, would be interesting to see a new TAS using those new tricks. I'd do it myself, but I don't think I could make it justice, probably.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Why didn't you use your special attack against the slug boss?
The reviews say it's possible to collect certain items (or craft them) and bypass boss fights. Is it possible to skip the slug boss? Because, you spent an entire minute fighting it.
The special attack doesn't deal damage to the slug.
I know you can skip the spider boss by crafting an item, tho its slower to collect the items needed, I didn't find any item that could be used to skip the slug.
In this longplay, for example, it looks like it's collecting and doing everything, and in the forest level you can craft an item to become inmune to bushes, and an item to disable bear traps, but none for skipping the boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN4ANwfUlW4
It also manages to find fire, but needs the same amount of hits to kill the slug.
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WhiteHat94 wrote:
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on Sega CD, totally different from the Genesis/SNES version, this is an adventure game with 2D fighting boss fights. The adventure parts are pretty straightforward, not much you can skip. For the fights I believe they react to you so you can probably manipulate them all to do what you want.
RTA run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-LTYLY8H4
I was thinking of doing this one next, that run will help a lot.
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scrimpeh wrote:
It's a bit unfortunate that you have to run past most enemies, letting them just hit you. Since all damage that you take slows you down, along with the creature having a pretty slow acceleration, it does hurt the flow of watching. Same goes for landing from a jump, and a lot of other animations you need to recover from.
Without knowing anything about this game, could you have picked up a stronger weapon in Stage 3 to finish the slug boss faster? Or is the stick all that you get?
Fwiw, the game was short enough and the TAS was interesting enough to hold my attention, so I'm giving it a yes.
Didn't find any other weapon, and in all the longplays or speedruns I've seen no other weapon was used, so I don't think theres anything other than the stick, in that level there's also no fire to lit the stick, tho I don't think that would deal extra damage to the slug, since I've counted the hits needed to kill the spider boss in two different speedruns, one where the fire was taken and one where it didn't, and both needed the same amount of hits.
Also, I don't think damage itself slows you down, its the landing animation when you land after a jump, done to prevent the animation of getting hit while on the ground, which is way longer than the landing animation.
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FYI I just found a new glitch, right after submitting... anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to implement, no need to delay or anything.
The glitch in particular is done by jumping into a room transition trigger, and fall into a pit in the next room without touching the ground, this makes the game put you in the next room with the coordinates of the previous room, which could be used to warp to the other side of a room, if there's a pit near enough to the door. Since the fall animation is somewhat long there aren't that many places where this should be useful anyway, since walking would be faster if theres no specific obstacles in the way.
Here it is:
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638412076690829915
Found one room where its useful, since it skips waiting in a moving platform, on level 4, had to change around the movement on some rooms later on because of different enemies patterns, which lost a few frames over the previous movement.
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Kentilla, a text adventure.
You can buffer every key before the game even loads, so the TAS would probably be done way before the game is finished, and you can do some extreme word shortening.
"Unlock the red door with the small key" can become "UN RE W SM"
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Looked into Super Hunchback, the variations between runs probably come from jumping into the bells at the end of each level, the level transistions start earlier if hunchback lands earlier, which depend on the jump you do to grab the bell.
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Estoy intentando hacer una TAS de este juego en este momento, y he descubierto una optimización que debería ser útil para otros que intenten hacer este juego, por si no lo termino yo.
Básicamente, si lanzas un proyectil mientras estás reptando por un túnel, te empuja un poco hacia adelante, la diferencia puede ser muy grande, dependiendo de si hay un enemigo u otro objeto que absorba los proyectiles, ya que así puedes lanzar más. Por ahora estoy en el nivel 3, así que no sé qué efecto puede tener esto con los recursos, puede que en algún momento te puedas quedar sin projectiles.
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Anvil of Dawn
There's a glitch in this game involving the Backlash throwable weapon, a special weapon that comes back to you after being used, where if you spam it into an enemy that's on a certain distance while on a dungeon with a lot of objects, happens mostly on the Underground City, there's a high chance for a null reference error to happen, and crash the game, after pressing C to keep playing, not sure why it lets you do that, the inventory becomes scrambled and mostly unusable, with random sprites.
The whole point of the game is to obtain a specific item to then trigger the ending when reaching the Anvil of Dawn, so maybe this glitch could be used to get the item to appear on the scrambled inventory.
You can also skip overworld movement animations and stair animations when exiting a dungeon or inside dungeons, by pressing F11, or one of those F buttons, can't remember which exactly at the moment, one side effect this has tho is that doing it on the stair animations inside a dungeon break the graphics, and make them darker until you open a menu.
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Tarzan for GBC might be a good one to TAS, its a simple platformer, there's a double jump glitch you can get if you jump again after jumping once and still being near the florr, and holding L+R plus other buttons glitch the sprites, maybe something can come from that.
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Technickle wrote:
Hey Induviel! I've found some time save regarding this movie.
My Setup:
Bizhawk 2.9.1
Core: Gambatte
Profile: Tool-Assisted Speedruns
-
Suggested Time Saves:
*WB Splash Screen -10f (frame # = 342)
*DC Splash Screen - 10f (frame # = 448)
*Ubisoft Splash Screen -10f (frame # = 554)
*Digital Eclipse Splash Screen -10f (frame # = 660)
*Red Background with Gate -10f (frame # = 707)
*New Game -29f (frame # = 761 & 762)
*Car scene -29f (frame # = 823)
*First frame of Batman's Movement happens on: (frame # 1117)
*Total Frames Saved = 29f
(frames with same frame value equates to the concurrent value of time saved and not more than) Note: Opinions expressed by me do not necessarily translate to the current involvement of a judge and are only user to user suggestions at the time of findings
I swear I checked this.
Thank you, I'll fix it right now.
Here it is.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638394821650216800
Had to redo Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy, I lost a frame to slightly worse RNG unfortunately but other than that its fixed.
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Could the file be changed to this one?
I missed that you could skip the startup screens early, other than that its the same.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638383220323738039
I was made aware by WhiteHat94 that you can actually make the jump at the end of Volcano 4, so you don't need to wait for the flame cycle. For some reason every time I tried improving that level that jump was impossible in my head. Here's the new file.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638383507847286723
Technickle mentioned I could skip the startup screens even sooner, so here's a file that does that. It messed up the input polling timing or something, so to make it sync I had to add a frame before entering The Wilderness, and remove one frame off The Wilderness 2, it synced fine after that.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638384031395926722
If I missed anything else please let me know.