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This competition is getting increasingly interesting. Those videos were amazing! It's interesting to see a bot play levels like this. Only issue I see right now in the video is that Mario sometimes ends up bumping into obstacles he could have jumped across.
What baffles me is that walljump feature the AI used in the pit. Is it like in Mario sunshine or in NSMB (not sure, I haven't played that game) where you can jump towards a wall, slide on it and jump at any time you want? I don't think this should have been implemented for the competition to make it more challenging for the contestants. I mean, if a bot navigates into a pit then death is the punishment. Or else you could program the bot to autofire A when reaching a certain Y coordinate, am I right? Unless I miss the point of the competition...
I hope to see more soon.
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Question: any analysis of the randomness of the roulette wheel? There was a time or two that you had to wait until near the end of the roulette to get what you wanted. No way to manipulate that, I'm guessing?
The roulette is dependant on which two enemies you are sucking in, and in which order (EDIT: might actually be dependent on which is the first enemy you are sucking in). So there's no luck involved and I tried to make the best of the situation all the time.
I know, that's what I've been trying to find but I can't find it anywhere.
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We really need to get this 1 frame improvement in 1-1, after all we're only a pixel away from succeeding. This gotta be improvable... somehow! :P
It'd be very cool to get that done :)
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The next step is now to get it to work without getting hit. Currently, the most plausible approach is to use the inside-of-enemy technique. You can mustache jump on the first koopa, then after landing on the platform, you can stay inside of it. When the second koopa is approaching, proceed as normal. Problem is that the jump you gain from landing on enemies are random (at least I think they are) in height. You need to be facing left and bump into the wall to use the no-scrolling technique.
So sometimes when mustache jumping, you would bump into the corner, but not make it on the platform. Sometimes you would land on the platform without touching the wall. And sometimes you can make it on the ground while having bumped into the corner. But I was only able to land on the platform with next to zero acceleration. So this made the no-scrolling trick kind of inefficient. I haven't figured out yet what determines the randomness behind the random jump heights.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/502710249/4-3_problem-not-hurt.fcm
This is the approach.
Note that I posted the 4-3 solution right after I found it. I didn't have another try at it, so it might be possible to get it to work with less space in the gap on the left. (Although, right now as I'm typing this here, I think I had actually checked this. No idea...) Currently, I'm rather demotivated to have more tries at that 4-3 level again.
edit: Oh, and thanks for the cheers concerning my 4-3 solution earlier! :P
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I found myself fastforwarding after 20 minutes of it, then stopped when I reached 90k frames.
I think the game lacks some gameplay elements and variety. I wouldn't watch it again...
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I just thought I'd make you aware in case you already haven't figured it out that the levers need to be pulled on both sides of those tunnel areas (like from Area 5 to Area 8). Those count towards 100%.
That was taken care of.
I recently managed to get the outcome I wanted concerning the part with the CPU-controlled kirbys, but I had to invest some idle frames. The movie might be completed by the end of the week. But no promises :)
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So yeah, I've run a few more testings. I got lucky and managed to get the shell on the lower platform with much less scrolling, so that there was almost the whole gap still on-screen. I knew that the whole gap wasn't required, but only a part of it since you can stomp on the shell without actually going down the gap.
Then the problem was to get the shell to float in the gap. But kicking the shell off and still landing on it turned out to be very difficult and I would only die (by touching the shell) instead of landing on it. Then I saw that there where two modes of walking. One that was slower than the other, and the slower one would produce a lower jump then the faster one. I found this out after several hours of trying, and this is what led to the solution finally. The jump was just as high as it was required to be to come down and land on the shell in time. This all was very tricky...
Then all that was needed now was to bump into the left side of the screen to stop all the momentum and go do the right faster. I just barely missed the shell and that was it. The shell was on the air and the problem is now hereby solved.
-> The full-game walkathon is now possible.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/700442319/4-3_problem_solved.fcm
(FCEU movie)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SX3V3LRE
(avi)
I'm not going to make the run, feel free to discuss, ask etc.
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I tried what you suggested, andrewg, but it seems Mario can't reach the shell he kicked off when he's in the air.
When kicking a shell off a platform it slows down just as it leaves the platform. This behavour isn't existent (or at least, not very notable) on the SNES version, it seems.
I'll try some more today.
@ Spider-Waffle: It doesn't reach the other platform. The jump you gain from landing on a koopa (or goomba or anything else) is very minimal.
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How are you getting the koopas down there anyway, I thought they won't walk off ledges? Are you hitting their shell into the air, then having them sprout back in the air, then hitting them again? Could you just do this to the right of the platform you jump off of?
I'm getting their shell to move by touching them. It is possible to land on a shell that you just pushed off the platform, just by walking off the platform. If you land on a shell that is flying in mid-air within the two rows of blocks at the bottom of the screen, a glitch will take place: The shell will be stopped from moving and will just behave as if it was on the ground. It will even walk through the floor if it is set up in a certain way.
I'm confused why you can't do this on the right side of the lower platform. You said you can't make it back to the platform; what is it, and what is the platform?
I mean the very first platform in this level. If you take a look on the big illustration, it's the one on the bottom left. Since you need to walk and running is prohibited, landing on the shell you kicked off a platform is even harder and you need a lot of speed / momentum to reach it. You can't make it back to the platform because you can't just abruptly stop and gain much momentum to the opposite direction.
So there's no way to move the screen left at all?
Not to my knowledge.
All you can do is move yourself right while the screen stays in place? And you can't even do this at this particular first section of the level?
I was able to proceed just as much as is needed to kick one of the two koopas to the left, while still having the gap open. I'll post some .vbm's soon for better realising my explanations and techniques.
What do you mean by the particular first section of the level? The only instance where to gain a few pixels of range is the 'second' platform, with the koopas on it. You bump against it while facing to the left. This trick is actually well-known and can be done in 4-1 to skip the vine. I, however, somehow found it myself and haven't bothered looking up a detailed description, so maybe someone is able to gain more distance than I was able to. Again, I'll show you what I got shortly...
Could small fire mario help at all with the first method?
I don't think so. It's been quite a while since I tried out fiery small mario, but I think he just acts like small Mario unless you shoot fireballs (which is prohibited).
I'm no SMB expert or knowledgable person, I just test stuff because I'm bored. So if I'm mistaken somewhere or something is confusing, tell me!
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I felt like trying again today, but no luck. There are two methods I tried, that were pretty close to working out. The first is just duck-jumping in a way that you slightly get inside of the platform that is 'in the way'.
This is the closest I've got:
The second one implies using the midair-koopa-walking trick. I made an illustration of my idea on the previous page.
The problems:
-> You can't place a shell on the right side of the lower platform since you can't make it back on the platform. Therefore, the only alternative is using the gap on the left side of that platform. But then again, you can't go to the right to set up the koopas to throw them off to the lower platform because the screen scrolls and you can't access that gap again. And there are only very limited techniques to get to the right side of the screen without scrolling the screen.
I'm very confident that if we got a shell on the lower platform while still having the gap open to place the shell on the air, it will work out just fine. Both this and the other method are just one or two pixels away from working.
Sorry, I didn't bother to post my testings. I'll add them sometime in the future.
edit: I'm also convinced now that the whole gap may not be required to be displayed. Maybe only half of it? Not so sure about this though.
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EDIT EDIT EDIT: Nah, JXQ's run seems to be un-improvable, said by my expirements. Unless JXQ personally knows improvements.
No, his movie is quite improvable. You can save at least 5 (probably more) seconds only from lag reduction and better strategies.
I planned on improving upon JXQ's run, but I kinda ran into a stupid frame rule at whispy woods and I don't know what to do. Also, I'm now a little frustrated and demotivated :(
So I did what I always do when it comes to such cases: I'm posting my progress and knowledge for future reference and leave the project alone for awhile.
Most of these are somewhat complicated to comprehend or to use efficently. My .vbm covers all of these though. Here goes:
Facts, tricks, glitches:
- pressing down for 1 frame just before landing will make kirby land without producing a star sprite. Also, there's no landing animation to recover from.
- To reduce lag efficently, you need to keep the number of sprites on-screen as low as possible. Often trial-and-error is required though... Sometimes it's faster to go through the room without sucking in enemies, sometimes it's faster to swallow them. For some reason, the game doesn't lag as much when you jump in certain situations.
- You can swallow enemies in the very moment you suck them in. If you then suck in another enemy (you need to be close enough, preferably above or below the enemy or object), you can skip the "sucking-in"-animation.
- Damage boosts are rather useless. Only in some situations, you can use them to acquire invincibility (for instance, it's useful after the miniboss battle in level 1) or if you don't need to accelerate after the boost (like in the first room of level 1 where you can boost towards the warp star, or in the first room of level 2, where you can boost towards the door to the next room...)
- You can keep many animations by pressing left and right alternately, like the landing animation, the bumping-against-a-wall/ceiling animation, the sucking-in animation...
- Left+Right will make Kirby walk in place. If you walk to the left and then alternately press left+right and right you will moonwalk. Also this can be used to abruptly and temporarily loose your momentum. If you let go of either left or right, you will regain your momentum. This is sometimes useful in sections like the third room of level 1, where you need to float up to the top of the room while navigating by the corners.
Spitting stars at whispy woods should only be done between the periods in which he drops 3 items. If you damage him while he drops items, it'll take quite some time until he can drop the next item.
In my movie I get the first two apples from whispy woods. And here's the problem: When spitting the last apple of the first period at him there's such a huge time span where he's just doing nothing! It takes 40 additional frames for him to drop the next 3 items as opposed to not spitting the last apple at him. So yeah... I don't want to make half-assed movies anymore. Even less when improving upon an existing movie.
Hope you guys like what I did so far. I'm aware I killed some surprises for the next kirby's dreamland TAS, but it couldn't be helped. The only way I see to avoid this problem is to save some frames before whispy woods. But I already optimized my gameplay as well as I could.
Let me know if you got any hints, glitches, tricks that I'm not aware of.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/196948073/Kirby%27s%20Dream%20Land%20%28UE%29%20%5B%21%5D2.vbm
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Two things:
- Your movie died at the end on me...
- Did you use that trick to push Mario off-screen? I didn't really pay attention so I might have overlooked you doing it. Otherwise, would be cool if you included that.
Aside from these, I'd say it's pretty good. :)
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Good to see you make another SMB TAS.
However, I'm not that much of a fan of hacks, at least this one here didn't really convince me...
I don't like how this game was programmed to expect you glitching through the wall. Kinda took the fun factor for me.
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.cl was the only useful tool I ever used... Would be nice to have that back again.
And .cards was such a nice tool to play with :(
I'm okay with giving the sane tools much more priority, but I think .cards, .dice etc. combined with what Zurreco suggested wouldn't hurt, would it?
Put a limit on requests per time and it would be a good tool.
Also, would be cool to see tasvideosbot say something else than "don't you talk to me!". :)
Basicly, I'm supporting the fun tools and aspects, but I wouldn't really mind if they were missing out in the end.
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If any, call it TasVideosAgent or TASvideosAgent...
TASVideosAgent has to many capital letters for my taste :P
Damn, I miss that #nesvideos address already and NesVideosAgent :'(
RIP.
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There's a new glitch that let's you skip the first level. Basicly, you have to go down one of the stumps in the level to enter a bonus-room. Then you have to hold "up" and the first level is skipped!
But it didn't work for me in VBA... well, just saying...
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Pointers for those who want to improve the current run:
- When you get grabbed, do only proceed at the same time you lose at least 0.5 HP so the 5 frames of being held are well-invested. It takes the same amount of time to lose HP when being grabbed and punched as it does for the scoring system to clear the the HP at the level end sequence.
- If there are enough sprites on screen (in most cases 3, I think) you can prevent semi-bosses and those spikey things in level 4 + 5 from spawning.
- You can save time by getting hit from barrels and spikes, which btw deal 1.5 points of damage. If barrels don't spawn, use zig-zag walking to make sure only 2 sprites are on-screen or use the first technique (being grabbed for longer than ~5 frames).
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There's a similar trick in Super Mario land 2 where you can save some seconds by ducking repeatedly. I vote for not using it for reasons Kyrsimys already listed.
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Are still improvements made in emulation as well as in TAS features? Because Dirty Racing (GB) is still unplayable, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga (GBA) still has the annoying flickering issue and possibly also the glitched screen after you save Mario in the university, and The Smurfs (GB) has a glitch that let's you skip the first level if you press up upon entering one of the bonus rooms in said level, and this glitch doesn't work in VBA.
The second one implies using the midair-koopa-walking trick. I made an illustration of my idea on the previous page.
The problems:
-> You can't place a shell on the right side of the lower platform since you can't make it back on the platform. Therefore, the only alternative is using the gap on the left side of that platform. But then again, you can't go to the right to set up the koopas to throw them off to the lower platform because the screen scrolls and you can't access that gap again. And there are only very limited techniques to get to the right side of the screen without scrolling the screen.
I'm very confident that if we got a shell on the lower platform while still having the gap open to place the shell on the air, it will work out just fine. Both this and the other method are just one or two pixels away from working.
Sorry, I didn't bother to post my testings. I'll add them sometime in the future.
edit: I'm also convinced now that the whole gap may not be required to be displayed. Maybe only half of it? Not so sure about this though.