Posts for Ioti

Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/24/2006
Posts: 4
I think the encoding got messed up, there's a three second delay before the movie actually starts playing, the sound doesn't work at all unless I open it with Avidemux (I tried Winamp, WMP, MPC, and VLC and they all did the same thing), and then it's played far too fast.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/24/2006
Posts: 4
I appreciate the responses but I'm not really looking for a full-on critique just yet, when I'm closer to finishing the first run through I'll start thinking about how I want to do the real run. If you do find any improvable spots by all means let me know (I already know of a few, I just didn't feel like going back and fixing them just yet). Right now I'm mostly working on the route and picking out trouble spots. I'm reasonably sure that 90% of the movie is as fast as possible at the moment (compared to a "taking damage" route). If you REALLY wanted to go for maximum speed here, you'd want to make sure to complete the level with an empty energy bar (you lose a frame per pixel of energy left). I may just end up doing it both ways once I finish the rough draft. For a game like this where it only saves a few seconds per level (compared to, say, Castlevania) I find it more entertaining to watch a no damage run, but that's just me. It'll probably be Monday before I can work on it again. I'll post GMVs in a sec here... Edit: Posted here.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/24/2006
Posts: 4
I did a search for Fatal Rewind and that one didn't come up, weird. His movie seems a hair faster than mine in a few places, but he's also taking damage rather than avoiding it entirely. Still, there's a couple things I see in there that could be useful to me. Too bad it's so short.
Post subject: Fatal Rewind Rough Draft - 5 Levels (Updated 10/06/06)
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/24/2006
Posts: 4
Did a search and didn't see any mention of this game so I decided I'd start a speed run of it. It's based on an old Amiga game called Killing Game Show (why they changed the name I have no idea) that was one of my favorite platformers as a kid. I'm shooting for a hardest difficulty, no damage, speed run. I turned off the music because the Genesis version of the music irritates me, and I'd prefer to layer the Amiga original over top of it. (you can hear it in the video) If this just strikes people as silly I'll take that out when I do the final version. Current WIP video viewable here (10/06/06, 5 levels complete): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5568544930713355905 It's still pretty dirty, but that's why I'm calling it a rough draft. It's got some subtitles notes in it now, too. GMVs are here. Things to note: - Whoops, the bit about screen scrolling was wrong, it just makes it so you can't see, it doesn't affect enemy spawns at all. - Enemies spawn when you touch a certain area, so jumping in the right spot can delay the spawn or avoid it entirely. This might count as luck manipulation. - Jumping off the edge of a ledge is always faster than falling off since you fall straight down, unless you WANT to fall. - Falling onto a weapon/tool (either straight down, or falling farther than you can jump) picks it up when you land. - Most of the input is delayed by 1-2 frames, making timing a chore. It took me a bit to figure this out so there's a couple spots in the first two levels where I hold something longer than neccessary. I can probably shave about 15 frames off when I go back and redo it. The intro screens can probably be done about 5 frames faster as well. - The diamonds in 2-2 are only there for bonus points. They stop showing up because they spawn in a chain, and since I'm going for speed I very quickly miss enough that they "backlog". - Level 3-1 in general seems pretty bad as far as waiting, but some of it is unavoidable because of having to wait for chains to lower. I can probably shave some of the other waiting off by using the jump trick, but that will just require relentless experimentation. - There's a bit of lag in 3-1 when I shoot rapidly to get rid of the Side Shot, and I didn't notice this until I'd already encoded the video. Easy enough to fix later, not sure how many frames it loses though. - There are a LOT of stray shots in the movie. One of about a billion things I need to clean up. - I need to find something interesting to do for times when I need to hold still. Alternating frame-wobble seems so cliche but I'm not sure what else could be done in this game. - When I finish this rough draft I'll sit down and figure out how much time I lose by not taking damage and decide which one I want to redo first. I hope to eventually do it both ways. For the damage run I'll want to finish the level with zero health to make the end-of-level bonus go by as fast as possible.