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Full Any% TAS is back on track! I re-did Incan Ruins with the new strats and manipulated some nice fish RNG for the rafting sequence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLo829A84s
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WarHippy wrote:
This is looking pretty fantastic! I'm excited to see the whole run. A couple questions, though. how did you do the super fast dash after first talking with Kara in the palace? And is the pause buffering used to skip the level up animation?
For the fast dash, you just need to talk to the guard next to Kara's room. He will tell Will to go away and send him with super fast speed. It's just a normal feature of the game!
The pause trick is called an Orb Cancel. Everytime you kill an enemy which releases an orb to clear a passage, you can simply go to the inventory menu and come back. The animation will still be carried out but the effect will already be in place (for instance, the door will be effectively created even if it is not visible yet).
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New WIP! This goes up to the first Mystic Statue in the Gold Ship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hcu8nqX4ws
I confirm what Dessyreqt found in his WIP: Will is indeed faster than Freedan to kill Castoth (by 325 frames). I also achieve 16s remaining on the timer for the Moon Tribe Challenge. I also found out that ramp tricks on vertical ramps are actually possible but frame-perfect: you need to be facing away from the ramp and initiate the jump attack on the correct frame. Finally, I realized that you could climb ladders much faster by inputting Up or Down 4 frames out of 5 (leave an empty input every 5 frames). This makes the hero move by 2 pixels 4 frames every 5 frames, instead of 4 every 6 frames.
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Up!
I have started an Any% TAS of IoG. You can check out the bk2 file in my WIPs. Here's a YouTube encode of the run so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_WAg3yYDPg
This goes up to the end of Edward's Prison so far. Enjoy!
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c-square wrote:
LeHulk wrote:
c-square wrote:
First question that comes to mind is, why normal difficulty? What's the gain from not choosing a harder difficulty, and is it enough to justify the choice?
There's also Expert difficulty which is basically the same game with different patterns. It would be pretty much the same thing but a few seconds slower.
Thanks for the quick answer, LeHulk. Is it just different patterns, or are there more things you need to find? If the former, what would then account for the additional seconds?
Different patterns only, and the best possible patterns are overall slightly slower.
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c-square wrote:
First question that comes to mind is, why normal difficulty? What's the gain from not choosing a harder difficulty, and is it enough to justify the choice?
There's also Expert difficulty which is basically the same game with different patterns. It would be pretty much the same thing but a few seconds slower.
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SmashManiac wrote:
What do you mean, originally a PC game? The PC version has the extra/expanded levels from the Sega CD and 32X versions and is usually considered to be the best version of this game!
My bad, I really thought the PC version was the first one. Sorry for that, I'll remove that from the description. Thanks for pointing it out!
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FatRatKnight wrote:
The orb position at Greenwood's fire bridge looks like it could be easily more to the left, since you should be able to control its left-right position for 23 frames out of 24 while traveling vertical. If having it higher is the issue, I suspect holding up for 3 frames out of 4 when going down the first fire bridge might help, though by the time you get into position where the Light Arrow would help, it might have slid back to your position by then.
The issue was indeed to get the orb high enough, which I couldn't manage to do. Even with 3 out of 4 frames used for orb movement manipulation, the orb would always come down too early because of its circular pattern, and unfortunately I couldn't find any way to counter that. I tried an alternate strategy where I kill all 5 lizards from the lair after the first vertical bridge, all at the same time as the 5 from the lair after the second vertical bridge, but surprisingly that turned out to be even slower.
Thanks for your comments and all your help!
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Dwedit wrote:
Stupid question: After getting the soul sword, are you switching to the Zantetsu sword to defeat metal enemies? Or did I just misremember what I saw?
Yes, I switch to the Zantetsu after finishing World of Evil and before going to the metal enemies in the volcano, so I can kill them in one hit. I could kill the metal gorillas by poking them with the Soul Blade but that would only kill them in 2 hits, wasting 8 frames per enemy, which is 32 frames for the 4 of them. That's more than the cost of the extra sword switch (which is around 20 frames iirc).
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Thanks everybody for the kind comments. I added a link in the description to a 1080p/60fps encode of the TAS (without comments), for those who are interested.
About the sword switch glitch, it indeed doesn't work to cast Phoenix without level 24. But if it did, I'm pretty sure it would be faster to kill Deathtoll that way than grinding to level 24. You'd need to do 56 sword switches, which would probably be faster than the 50-ish seconds invested to grind to level 24.
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TAS is finished!
Here's the highlight of me streaming it and commentating on it.
https://www.twitch.tv/le_hulk/v/83411987
Before submitting the TAS to tasvideos I first want to make a version with subtitles in order to explain things during the run, since there's a lot of speed tricks and optimizations which aren't obvious and need clarification. Although, I noticed that when making subtitles in BizHawk, you can assign them (x,y) coordinates, so the position of the subtitles will depend on how the game is scaled. But I don't know if I can assume how the game will be scaled when my submission gets reviewed.
So what do you think: should I just submit the TAS without subtitles, or is it OK if I submit a bk2 movie with subtitles, even if those subtitles won't scale when changing the size of the BizHawk window?
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I recently finished Act 6! The TAS is progressing well and should be finished in August. I won't release another WIP though, to keep some surprises.
Surpsisingly, the sword switch glitch only saved time on the last ghost lair. It turned out to be slower on the first two ghost lairs because the Monster Lair's internal timer doesn't run during menuing. Another good news: I only had to delay one single frame to get the good bird boss pattern. I guess I'm lucky :)
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Act 5 complete!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1AImD4xmU
Damage management and ML multi-tasking were quite challenging once again. I had good enough gem drops in the model towns, so I didn't need to re-equip the Magic Armor. I re-equipped it at the last part, along with equipping the Zantetsu Sword, saving one menu.
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Thanks a lot for the encouragements FatRatKnigts!
Don't worry, I'm well aware of the sword switch glitch. It's already used to defeat Magridd Castle ghosts more quickly in RTA runs, and the TAS will probably do the same.
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boct1584 wrote:
What exactly makes the bosses easier in the (J) version? If you're intending to submit the run once you finish, specifics on that will be helpful for the judge. If the differences result in significantly different fights on (J) compared to (U), that might make both worth publishing.
Additionally, do be aware that the "faster text" from using the (J) version is not considered to be an "improvement" by TASVideos standards.
"Faster text" is obviously not an improvement, it just helps with the flow of working on the game, and reduces downtime, making the whole run eventually more entertaining (in my opinion).
Here are the details on the known differences between J and U:
- The title screen is skippable immediately in J, which is not the case in U (you have to wait a little while after the title has appeared).
- Text is drawn out one character per frame in J, versus one character every three frames in U, which is quite significant.
- The only actual gameplay difference is bosses. Here is the complete breakdown:
1. The first boss is MUCH MUCH easier in J. If you have level 3, the herb and full health, you can simply go towards him and poke him to death. There is no conveyor belt on the middle part. In U, there is a conveyor belt in the middle (going down), and the ones on the sides go up. The strategy is to go to one side, tap down to stay at the same altitude to make sure you hit the boss constantly and don't get hit by his body. It's much more difficult in real-time.
2. The three statues: the first two are identical, but the third one has different AI between J and U. I find it harder in J personally, but that depends mostly on what your strategy is. It doesn't really matter for the TAS.
3. the Skull has less HP in J, allowing for a 2-cycle kill, while 3 cycles are required in U.
4. The J boss is Medusa, but she was censored into Poseidon in the U version. 3-cycle kill in J, versus 4-cycle in U due to different HP amount. The J version requires you to move more to dodge her spear. But you have a bit more room to work with on the sides.
5. Tin Doll: in U, he fires missiles immediately, but in J he fires missiles after a little while. It is debatable which one is the easiest. I don't think it makes any time difference.
6. The bird has less HP in J, allowing for a 1-cycle kill, versus 2 cycles in U.
7. When Deathtoll casts his three fireballs, they are more split apart in U than in J. I don't think that makes the boss easier or harder.
If it helps, the time difference between the two versions is roughly 9 minutes, based on RTA runs. They are considered separate categories in RTA, but I don't know if the differences would warrant for a separate category in TAS. I'll let the judges decide on that. :)
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I didn't equip the Lucky Blade at all. Manipulating RNG provides me enough gems already, and the advantage of the Critical Sword is too good.
The reason why I don't always crit enemies (even if I could) is because it's not always the fastest way. Depending on when the 16th frame happens (the crit frame), it may or may not be faster to kill an enemy with magic, which takes only 9 frames (1f first hit + 8f invincibility frames) for most enemies. So if the crit frame happens more than 9 frames after the enemy becomes vulnerable, then it's faster to defeat it with magic.
That choice can be also influenced by how many gems you want to keep for the rest of the run. Tough decisions!
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Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this video too. It seems to miss a lot on the recent optimizations though... Unfortunately I don't think it currently is much faster than Kaz's original TAS.
The differences between J and U version are:
- Text. It's printed out three times as fast in J, making it a lot faster overall.
- Bosses. They all have a more or less subtle difference between the two versions, but the J bosses are easier and faster for the most part.
Dealing with much faster text is the main reason why I chose the J version. It's also my favourite version of the two to speedrun RTA.
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Act 4 done!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjWTqk_Onog
That one was quite a challenge. Lots of complex routes and unexpected ways to save time. I'm pretty happy to be done with all the testing, especially the room with he Lucky Blade (arguably the least obvious room strat in the whole game).
I didn't skip the herb this time, because it's almost certain that it will be required in Leo's Lab and/or World of Evil (probably both).
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Update!
The third WIP is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYgniDILyeE
I'm pretty happy with this one. I managed to get my theoretical route to work, by skipping the herb in Rockbird and manipulating the Level 9 to come up exactly where I needed it in Durean.
Taking the armor off does save time in Blester because the monster lair gives 3HP, and the two menus to remove and put the armor back on cost less than the time needed to lose that much HP for the deathwarp. I am less certain about the Rockbird deathwarp but I eventually took off the armor there as well: the recent Level 8 gave me so much HP to deplete, and losing all HP one by one was certainly too slow (even if I could do it in such a short time, it would have saved at most 14 frames over the two extra menus, but I don't think I could have anyway).
Man, that Critical Sword is badass. It does not work on bosses, but melting all enemies in front of me is so satisfying. I hope it will save tons of time in the rest of the game!
