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Here's the Encode
Thanks! I don't anticipate the gameplay required to get to W7 will significantly alter anything vs. this movie based on what the relevant mem addresses do, though a from-power-on movie will certainly be the gold standard.
...and once THAT's done, finding the fastest possible route will be its own challenge.
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Roll credits!
Encode in the works.
I was able to use the leftmost piranha plants and the last 2 turtle shells handled/killed to get 20 e3 8f starting at $ae. Fiddling things so execution reaches the target point can be a beast - it NEVER would have happened without HHS's script.
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Uuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm... Wow?
Amazing work, I've enjoyed your various glitch vids! Definitely going to explore this more!
Edit: I hexed the inventory to try using map items, nothing worked:
Power-ups: Luigi sprite changes, but still can't move
Whistle: Luigi disappears, warp music plays, but broken map screen still there, can't use additional items or move.
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Never played this version, but IIRC in the windows version, to defeat a level it is sufficient to click on all non-mine grids, without necessarily marking all mines. Is that true here? The action moves a bit too fast to really tell, but it looks like you mark all the mines.
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I'm impressed to hear you're 4 seconds ahead as of the ice beam, I was aware of an maybe 1-2 seconds improvement for the whole run based on making the low % and 100% so wherever you end up it'll be bigger than I expected.
I have to say I'd likely consider any password-entry strat to be invalid for this title, though I'd have to see the strat to form a final opinion.
I may be confused/misunderstanding, but I don't think the delay after killing Kraid is even close to 24 seconds. Watching on YT, it seems there's about 5s from when K takes the last hit until the reset can occur, then about another 7 to get moving again afterwards (which wouldn't be decreased using early reset-->enter password).
Finally, does OoB just mean "out of bounds??"
Anyways, great work & looking forward to the final product!
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Tompa: to do a wall-jump or duck-jump-into-a-corner should be possible at walking speed on an auto-scroller with the bonus speed of jumping from solid ground.
However, the "falling into the top-left corner of a block" method occurs via a different mechanism which requires greater speed - I've never rigorously tested but I don't believe it's possible on a normal level at speed <49, or on an autoscroller where you jump from solid ground at speed<33.
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While this thread is active, for a walkathon do people think that grabbing shells/blocks should be forbidden, since it uses the B button, even if walking speed is not exceeded?
In a warpless walkathon, at least, there may be a lot of spots where that would allow better entertainment and times (by throwing shells/blocks to break blocks, or to bounce off to make big jumps). Though I can see the purity/simplicity counter-argument...
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So what do people want in an all levels run? (my opinions included)
-all levels (e.g. 1-1, fortresses, etc) - duh
-fight all hands in World 8? - yes
-fight all hammer brothers? - probably
-all toad houses? - probably no, but extra items could add some interest
-all slot games? - boring, no
Anything else?
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Tompa:
Wow, I'd never actually seen GlitchMan's video...pretty cool strat in 2-F! I think I'd clipped through that first wall before but didn't realize it was possible to get through the 2nd one to BoomBoom.
I'd be interested in taking up the warpless project again, especially if GlitchMan has abandoned it...
Re: the walkathon yeah that's been a long haul...I spent a lot of time on strats that turned out to be dead ends. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to clip into walls at walking speed...33 is the min speed I've ever done it with on an autoscroller, and you have to jump from solid ground or else you need P-speed.
I forget...did u say way back when you'd improved my original walkathon world-1 somehow? I tried corner-boosting and got 7 frames ahead in 1-1, but hammer manipulation ended up eating all my savings in 1-3/1-4...
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Wow, that's a pretty crazy coincidence...I've been working on the SMB3 walkathon again and independently discovered the same glitch a week or two ago.
When the glitch activates, Mario can run/jump on air for a certain time, then he falls no matter where he is...I think somehow Mario's y position gets overwritten by that of a wrench.
Sadly, no obvious use apart from entertainment...I also encountered this on the ship, haven't tried on other auto's.
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Kuwaga wrote:
I wonder why this didn't get any replies. From my testing waiting on the car selection screen or the select game mode screen doesn't changed the RNG seed, but waiting on the push start screen does. So wasn't this oversight what caused the run to pick a suboptimal car?
Sorry I didn't reply earlier. That was a good and unexpected find - thanks for looking into it. I think it's an open question which car is the best option and which car properties are weighted to what extent.
So I don't think it's established that Golden Fox is suboptimal - though there may be a better car. I suspect overall that car choice effects are minimal for this run now that the enemy manipulation aspect has been separated.
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Derakon wrote:
In particular it's interesting how every single tap by the player's machine, no matter how slight, seems to provoke the other machine to explode. It is possible to one-hit-kill other machines in this game, but in unassisted play you won't ever do it so casually. I'd be curious to hear more about exactly what the mechanics are for "combat".
Based on my observations, I'd speculate that when 2 ships collide, damage is calculated separately for velocity differences along each axis, with a small bonus/multiplier for vehicle weight and a large multiplier for being in a side-attack/spin-attack.
This explains why when I lightly sideswipe the first car it gets destroyed - I'm barely moving towards it left to right, but I'm moving down the track much faster than the other car since I'm using turbo-boost.
In amateur real-time play (the only type I can comment on), it's hard to kill cars because the tendency is to pull up next to it, matching velocity in all 3 axes, then try to veer into the other car. This often doesn't result in a kill because the closing speed is minimal accounting for all 3 axes, and a side-attack only lasts 16 frames so there's a good chance the collision happens after it's over.
This is all just my speculation/suspicions based on the TASs I've done so far, I haven't done any rigorous testing.
Good to see it's getting mainly positive feedback - thanks!
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xenos wrote:
The movement of the cars is determined by random factors other than the car choice. I managed some good results with Twin Norita but never finished that run. The lighter cars get faster boosts from collisions but don't seem to be handicapped in killing other racers in a TAS.
I'd be interested to see that demonstrated regarding the movement of the first two cars. I tried adjusting everything I could think of and their movement was always the same for a given car.
I thought in my testing that lighter cars get penalized, but only slightly.
I adjusted the submission text to report your time of 6.993.
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I took a tangent from working on the Queen tracks:
This knocks 13 seconds off my original TAS of Mute City:
Mute City in 50.993
This beats the previously published Death Race:
Death Race in 5.866
I think the Death Race is pretty good only-possible-in-a-TAS content, killing about 5 cars per second, and could be published as its own movie.
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Some progress on my "Queen Cup" time trial TAS. For entertainment, I'm going to use a different car for each track - hence the use of Wonder Wasp for Red Canyon. I put some technical notes in the descriptions for each video.
Sector AlphaRed Canyon
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Been waiting a long time for this! Execution looks good, I like some of the entertainment, especially firing the sword to get the bat on grabbing the magic key. Time will tell if there's a faster route possible, but great job!
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Thanks, Derakon. And thanks again to AndyDick - the atlas runs are such a great innovation.
Not sure if he posted about it anywhere, but Bisqwit also made an interesting video using this TAS, combining the video with visualizations of the emulator's memory usage & sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8uPdDT4mfQ
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That is a good question -- the difficulty setting choice is easy in terms of entertainment, a little tougher in terms of "difficulty."
In the other game/difficulty mode your bullets fly straight rather than being pinned to the x coordinate of the plane, but there are no other differences.
I felt that straight bullets would clearly be much less entertaining, since steering bullets around is a big part of the unexpected/entertaining aspect I was able to achieve.
Straight bullets would decrease the flexibility in some situations, eg place where I steer a bullet around a ledge to get an enemy tucked in a crevice would not be possible (though most of the time I do that is just for show and the enemy could have been killed the normal way).
There are, however, many situations where straight bullets would be easier - in particular if there's an enemy far ahead on one side of the screen I'd like to kill, and then break to the other side to get a fuel/enemy. Being able to "fire and forget" would make this sort of case much easier.
So overall, I'd say difficulty is a wash between the two modes, but entertainment is definitely served by steerable bullets.
EDIT: good find on the manuals, I love looking through those things!
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I wouldn't think that would be an issue; the input length determines the automatically calculated time, but runs that use in-game timers (some Super Metroid, ExciteBike come to mind) just state theirs goals and their time in the comments, and that's that...provided of course the goal itself is approved of.
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Thanks again, WMJ! I haven't had the chance to bring this up at fzerocentral or try it out yet, but I was noticing/remembering that killing cars in GP restores some energy, and was wondering if this could be used in a TAS to get more boosts (laps 2/3) and/or railslide time.
Not sure if spin-attacks disable boost like side-attacks do? If not, spin attacks would be preferred on boostlaps, if so one would probably want to try to kill cars during side attacks you have to take anyways, ie around a turn, which would obviously be very challenging in terms of timing and racing line.
Depending on the exact details, I can at least imagine getting a faster time on GP on a course like DF1, where there are no DTDs or AGGs and having more energy could produce speedups in a few places. Of course, you also start back from the start line...
As regards hexing this game, I haven't tried it but I'm not aware of any randomness in time trial mode, though I've heard mupen files can have weird issues related to the variable frame rate.
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Yes vote here. Obviously the game has some entertainment limitations owing to the game choice and platform, but there's plenty of moving objects and possible path choices to make this interesting. Pacing is good too - 25 frogs find safety in 219 seconds, so like 9 seconds apiece.
