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Bisqwit wrote:
Only 5 minutes of improvement considering how totally you changed the route and abused the game's holes?
Meh.
I'm so lame I actually fell for this at first and was just getting ready to feel indignant...;)
phunqsauce wrote:
I wish I could use your "wiggle-spawn" to put 5 yes votes on top of each other. ( And I don't give a shit how cheesy that just sounded)
I feel certain that having "phunqsauce" and "wiggle-spawn" appear in the same post is prohibited by obscenity laws.
Aglar wrote:
It's amazing how you always completely crush the previous records of the games you try out, no matter how short or long you still find minuts to cut. Will you try SMB3 next?:).
Thanks, though I think it's more that I choose obscure games that only Walker Boh and I have ever played...
Finally, the "music" in Dorago's palace is literally four notes repeated over and over again. I really need to check out the music in 1942 now...
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UraniumAnchor wrote:
So what exactly is it about the PAL version that lets you do that glitch in the final castle? Worse hit detection, or something to do with the frame rate difference?
Short answer: I don't know.
Long answer: The overhead-view glitches that involve passing through boundaries can be very sensitive to sub-pixel positioning.
The specific glitch used in Sky Castle requires the player to be airborne and near a cleft, then press down+right for one frame, followed by right to enter the wall.
I haven't verified, but it seems likely that the available sub-pixel positions in the US version are just different due to the different frame rate and/or decreased effect of gravity.
I put significant effort into trying to replicate this type of glitch in the US ROM back when I was working on the warp glitch run, but was unsuccessful (using my TomBot method). If someone were to ascertain that there are exact sub-pixel requirements for this glitch to work, it might be possible to replicate them in US. I doubt it, though. ;)
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If Lee is unHappy with the delays in the publication of his run, is he really HappyLee?
Also, I see something poetic in slow publication of a run which eschews running...
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Whew. This (no warp glitch) run is essentially complete, only issue is the Ligar fight is a tad slower than Walker's run so I'll have to see if I can improve. Should be in over the weekend...lots of new glitchin' on display!
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Here's an idea for an improvement, I have never TAS'd this game so I apologize if it's already been considered and rejected. Or if it just sucks. ;)
There are 3, maybe 4 places in this run which seemingly could be shortened by using conventional death abuse to avoid backtracking.
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/zelda2glovedeathabuse.fcm
This example saves a little over 2s by letting the red iron knuckle kill Link after he grabs the glove. Other exploitable scenes I've found are the hammer and raft (about 3s saved apiece) and possibly the kid (might save half a second or so if optimized).
It is also possible that the technique could make it shorter to backtrack in some places where the game reset sequence is currently used, ie in cases (if any exist) where the gain from using the reset sequence was <2 or 3s.
As I see it, another advantage might include a free magic refill; dying doesn't seem to result in losing any experience gained, though I don't know if it affects enemy counts toward potions or P-bags.
Even if this is legit I absolutely think the current submission should be published due to the seemingly ridiculous amount of work that went into constructing it in all its awesomeness.
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Voted yes.
I love how strategy in a TAS can be dictated by details of the game that have nothing to do with gameplay. The idea of levelling magic 1st to cut down on the (purely aesthetic) refill animation is a great example...well done.
Oh, and you two owe us some trees after all that unnecessary deforestation with the hammer...;)
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Yeah, so route design is done for the full route. I found a new glitch whic h allows some big shortcuts in Sagila's lair and Garba, and a huge timesaver elsewhere using a previously known glitch.
Provided reasonable item drops, this should come together fairly quickly, and I'm hoping to chop 3-4 minutes off.
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Voted meh.
This may be just me, but I feel that comparatively minor revisions shouldn't be submitted so soon after a run is published. Waiting at least a month or so at least gives me the impression that significant work went into it, or that it was a difficult find.
This improvement is, I believe, about 1.2s, less than a third of 1 percent the total run time, which is why I call it minor. I guess one could argue that SMB is such a mature game that any improvement is major, but this is just my opinion.
Also, I'd appreciate in the comments some detail as to what was improved, so I know what to evaluate...
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Bisqwit wrote:
I was especially surprised that you used those rolling things (ammolums?) for TP gathering instead of bargans (the robots) -- especially as according to this table, they only give 1 TPs each: http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/nes/rygar/renem.shtml
Guess that shows how to trust game information collected by others :-/
Yeah, the info on that page is actually quite accurate, he just omitted one version of ammolum with much more hp/tone than others. As far as I know, this tougher ammolum has only that 1 spawn point in the entire game.
Amusingly, whoever made that web page claims to have figured out enemy hp by counting the number of hits taken to kill an enemy with the starting tone (30), meaning he actually hit Ligar 1,364 times. Hit power increases linearly as tone/8, so Rygar is weird in that max hit power (1024/8=128) is more than 40x initial hit power (30/8=3). I imagine he'd curl up into a ball, sucking his thumb if I showed him how I just used memory watch to find out enemy hp...Ligar has 4090 btw...
Anyways, I've started work on the full version now; I'm glad ppl liked this movie and that it will be published. Thanks!
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DarkKobold wrote:
The game actually requires 1 extra input at the bird to see the end screen. Was this included in any previous run?
Wow, I never even knew there was more after the bird. You're totally right. A quick survey of movies by Bisqwit, Walker Boh, Warp and Cardboard didn't turn up any movies that show the final screen.
You have to press start to get there, rather than the more intuitive 'a', and there's no indication that more is coming, which probably explains why we all missed it.
This is the missing screen:
"Finishing" the movie will add about 901 frames (18s in PAL). I guess by site rules it should be changed, though it will throw off comparisons to the other Rygar runs. Any strong opinions?
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Yes vote.
Those survival rooms are annoying, but the falling animation where the character faces the audience and flails his arms makes it all worth it. Ha! Also receiving high marks is the little stutter-step celebration after bosses.
I second the idea of using death abuse to speed things up...if you could knock out those times you have to wait for spikes to move that would be cool.
Also, in the sections where you have to wait for the floor to collapse below you several times in a row, did you try a small jump each time you land, to speed your arrival at the next level down?
Overall, seemed pretty accurate and well played. Nice!
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Ferret Warlord wrote:
Lord Tom wrote:
Still not worth it to jump all the time due to the 3 frames forward progress lost initiating a jump, but it is faster to jump and then bounce on a monster than just to run.
I'm probably sending you on a wild goose chase with this one, but I swear more than once I've jumped without having that annoying little pause.
Ha, I won't look too hard, I think it would be pretty annoying if Rygar leapt through all the side scroller stages. Occasional bouncage is ok, though...;)
You may be thinking of the mechanics in the overhead stages, though; pressing left/right while airborne allows you to string jumps together with less (or zero?) delay.
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I made an NTSC improvement of the "glitched" run that came out a little under 5:40. I'm in the process of applying the same strategies to a PAL run. Given the specifics of how I power up in my run, I believe the PAL run will end up 5-10s faster, but it'll take a few days to get it together. I'll submit whichever is faster.
As for the full run, well from what I've done so far it's a very route-specific question, so I'll have to bang together a route before I could make an educated guess which ROM would be faster. Fortunately, given the route and the experience of making the glitched run, I'll hopefully be able to predict times for each version rather than actually making each separately.
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The full PAL run essentially maxes out a little more than halfway through, if memory serves.
Fun fact for anyone trying this game in the future: Speed is higher while flying through the air. How much higher? Well, in PAL, running speed is 1 5/16 pixels per frame. While airborne, the programmers thought it vital that speed be 1 3/8 pixels per frame...all of 4% faster...
Wow.
Still not worth it to jump all the time due to the 3 frames forward progress lost initiating a jump, but it is faster to jump and then bounce on a monster than just to run.
Oh yeah, the above applies only to side scrolling mode; overhead the speed is the same jumping/running.
Cool, thanks for pointing these out to me, I hadn't seen either, and didn't realize the game was beatable w/o the grapple weapon.
One other difference in timing I've noticed is that the frame counts for door & screen transitions are equal in both versions, meaning NTSC door is about 0.33s faster, and screen change is about 0.4s faster.
As to Walker's comment, I'm still familiarizing myself with the game, but I assume you're referring to the higher tone limit for NTSC? I just don't know how to evaluate the effect that would have on the "difficulty", since you need to spend time racking up the extra tone, and 1024 is quite a bit anyways relative to most enemies.
I guess my personal tendency would still be to prefer the "fastest at all costs" approach. I mean, jumping the river is cool, but I also find it cool jumping around the ends of the river in NTSC. And faster fighting is, IMO, always to the good.
Thanks for all your input, BTW, the existing Rygar runs rock and this game is a lot of fun to TAS compared to Legacy of the Wizard and Faxanadu!
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BTW, not sure if anyone's ever used the air walk for this before, but you can "walk" off the sides of several levels at the bottom using it. Not useful, of course...
http://tom.seufert.googlepages.com/airwalkunderneath.fcm
(uses US ROM)
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Truncated wrote:
Just because the game shows more frames per second doesn't mean it's faster. The speed of the character/enemies is sometimes adjusted so that they run the same speed in meters/second on both systems.
I'm not completely sure which it is for Rygar, but a quick test showed that
1) NTSC and PAL Rygars walk at the approximate same speed
2) NTSC Rygar climbs a lot faster
3) PAL Rygar is less affected by gravity when he jumps and lands later.
You can always TAS the first stage in both games and see which is faster (in seconds, not frames).
Thanks, that makes sense. In looking at this issue for both runs, it seems...
1. PAL's major advantage is in Garloz; jumping the river saves a good chunk of time, but just as big is the ability to take shortcuts by walking on the grass. The route taken in Walker's glitched run (shortcut to the grappler, and then going east after getting the grappler) is not replicatable (by me) in NTSC. All told, this made my NTSC TAS to Lapis ~25s slower, and that's using suicide as a shortcut.
2. Both the boss invincibility and faster climbing save time in NTSC. My preliminary calculations are that it would save about 20-30s in the glitched run starting from Lapis, making NTSC vs PAL probably very close timewise. For reference, robot invulnerability period is 20 frames, Ligar's is 30 frames; realtime savings per swing is thus 0.067s for robots, 0.1s for Ligar.
3. Walker's unglitched route seems like it would be somewhat faster in NTSC (more bosses, more climbing), but that's just a guess based on examining the glitched route. And again, suicide might be required.
I guess my conclusion from all this rambling is that PAL seems to have more, cool glitches, even if it's somewhat of a wash timewise. If I were to try to make improvements to one or both runs, would anyone care which one is used? Would throwing in some death abuse be viewed negatively?
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So I'm playing around with this title now, in the interest of updating Walker Boh's warpless run.
It's early days yet, but it seems that the game could actually be finished faster in real time by using the US version. My calculations show there's not many frames saved by jumping over rivers as opposed to using the pulley. The biggest savings is the first jump Walker takes before the player has the pulley (~600 frames or so). The total savings I would say is very unlikely to exceed, say, 1800 frames.
This savings, it seems to me, would be dwarfed by the realtime savings of NTSC emulation (i.e. the game running 16.7% faster).
Can anyone correct me if I'm wrong on this? Otherwise, my temptation would be to do my improvement using the US ROM.
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Thanks. I would be really excited to see a new speedrun of Faxanadu; if anyone wants to try let me know and I'd be glad to give any information that might be helpful.
I can actually see the timer glitch being modestly usable in a console run. Obviously, you wouldn't be able to abuse it to the extent I do here, but on an easy screen (like a town) you could probably do your best to pause/unpause about a second after each decrement, maybe stretching the effective item time by 25-50%. Maybe.
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No vote, based entirely on game choice. From what I could tell, though, you TAS'd it well, and it did make me laugh.
This game induces physical agony to watch. Turning off the music or watching at 200% speed relieves the pain somewhat, but really only takes the edge off. And why is this guy being attacked by so many dogs, cats, birds and rats?!
My wife's comment sums it up: "Can't he at least run or something?"
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Could you give a little detail of what the new, time-saving strategy was?
Also, it's incredible that such an apparently short, simple movie is still improvable. Nice!
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aglar wrote:
I almost thoguht it desynched right away:)
Ha! I can totally see that, though it wasn't intentional.
alden wrote:
I love that glitch, kudos for finding it. You've now made two of my favorite runs on this site! Tom, Lord of Adventure games.
That actually used to be my screen name but logging in was a pain...;)
Seriously, thanks all for the feedback, I'm glad most of you like the run (despite the silent 'no' vote!) and after nearly throwing my laptop across the room when I first saw the ointment expire in front of the king, it's gratifying that ppl find it funny. And no, I never beat Faxanadu either...
I hate to sound clueless, but can anyone tell me if dwedit's post ("We're ointment!") means anything, or if it's just a funny picture/phrase?
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Tristal wrote:
I notice when you first go to the church to get your Aspirant title for death warping, you need to watch him say the whole message, but later on in Branch and one other place you don't need to wait for his message.
Is that first title text skippable?
No, you cannot skip the guru text if you are receiving a title. The other two times when I see the guru and skip what he says my experience is too low to merit a title, so I don't have to wait. Were I to have waited, he would have just said "You need peace of mind, I will meditate with you..."
It possible, though undesirable, to skip getting this first title, because having it lets me start with 500 gold for free after I die. This is both efficient time-wise (500 gold in about 4s) and route-wise because otherwise I'd have to return to the town to buy the Q key after getting the Ring of Ruby, instead of upon resurrection.
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DarkKobold wrote:
Minor misspelling:
NesVideoAgent wrote:
WorldOfBranchGetBattleSuitDworfRing
I think you're referring to the word "Dworf" here? They misspell the name of the ring in the game, so, just like "golds", I went with it. Let me know if you meant something else though, thanks.
"Finishing" the movie will add about 901 frames (18s in PAL). I guess by site rules it should be changed, though it will throw off comparisons to the other Rygar runs. Any strong opinions?