Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
Full completion means there's nothing more to gain within the criteria. You can't get all weapons, and you can't get all nano/armor/health pickups. It means their collection can't be full. You can't collect 100% of them. So they can't be required for full completion.
Whatever else you collect in addition to fully collectable ones, can be a speed/entertainment trade-off. It just has to actually increase entertainment. Which means it doesn't have to cost too much time. This is a subjective balance.
In that case you could argue that my original TAS does just that in making sure that the route is different enough from any% and collects the items which you can collect all of. The trapmine and scrambler don't necessarily add on aditional entertainment.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
What I am getting at is that collecting all nano/armor/health pickups (not upgrades) isn't a good idea. Think of these as a means to an end. They do not count towords anything, health and armor pickups only make the game easier and routing for minimal possible nano pickups is in my opinion a lot more challenging and fun to watch than going to great lengths to get them all (not that you could due to the level cap). I don't see why getting all exp and health pickups would be necessery for this goal. In other games you don't need to collect all of the exp pickups/kill all enemies/get all coins or whatever in order to get 100% completion. Having the category collect all unique items that can be collected whithin a single playthrough migth be a better way of putting it. For this reason while it is true that you cannot get all guns, yoiu can still get the Banana gun, which fits into this category. This would serve as a 100% of a single playthrough.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
What about the rest of the post? We still have items that don't require several playthroughs and whose amount is known for sure to address.
Well what do you mean 'whose amount we know for sure'? We could know the exact amount of nano, armor and health pickups but as discussed earlier, this would make for a very tedious run and would make it not fun to watch. Tell me exactly which things you mean by 'whose amount we know for sure'.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
Not being able to collect something twice at all, even after reboot, would be a clear aspect, but if it's not feasible, we may agree to require items that don't respawn in a sector.
I don't undestand this rule. Everything in a sector can only be collected once unless you restart the sector or select a different file. This applies to all things including ammo, health, nano, etc.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
The whole point of this category is to come as close to a 100% run as can be done in one playthrough. To get a true 100% would require easily 5 playthroughs (one like this TAS, one on extreme, one on ultimortal, each sudden death sector and one to get to sector Y and Z) and that wouldn’t make for an entertaining TAS as it would be 3+ hours of going through the same 10 sectors. For this reason it is important that the community decides on what the rules should be. Feedback is much appreciated.
I agree that the existing rules (all ribbons, posters and supercharges) don’t include everything and I have learned that I should stop following the rules on speedrun.com when making these TASes. I am willing to redo the TAS but first we need to define the rules clearly. Here is my proposed ruleset
• All posters, ribbons, supercharges
• Trapmine
• Banana gun
• All armor and jump upgrades
There is also Yukabacera’s scrambler, which scrambles the dialog to where it doesn’t make sense. You get it by defeating Yukabacera (a miniboss) in sector 6. It permanently unlocks it in the main menu. Should this also be required? I see no reason to exclude this.
Would you also have to get all cracked nanowepons? They have to be made with a combination of tasen and komato nanoweapons at a cracking station. Would you have to end the game with all of them or just have all of them at the same time at some point in the run? If not would you need to have all regular nanoweapons at the end of the game? Personally I think this is going too far, perhaps the rule where you at least need to have all of the nanoweapons, including the cracked ones at some point (not necessarily all at once).
I wouldn’t consider nano overloads items, more like powerups. They don’t play any important roles and don’t change the gameplay in a meaningful way. Again up to the community.
feos wrote:
What about Nano, Health, Armor pickups? Is their count per sector limited? Do they respawn? How many of them are there per sector? How much extra time would they require?
I wouldn’t consider these items collectables and as KennyMan666 said
KennyMan666 wrote:
These would be really weird to include for a couple of reasons. Nano's just experience points. Health, armour, and ammunition can't be picked up if you're fully stocked. Weapons you can only collect at certain levels of Tasen and Komato, and when you reboot your nanofield to respec your stat points, you drop all weapons you can't use. But you can pick up ammo for weapons you can't use. So you'd have to make sure you could get hurt and spend ammo to actually collect some of them.
Also you couldn’t collect all of the Nano pickups as the game doesn’t let you collect them once you have reached the level cap for the sector. It would make for a lot of unneccessary backtracking and going through huge parts of the stage for no reason. Additionally you could not collect all even if you tried because there is sometimes a split path and you can only go down one, like in sector 3.
The jump upgrades are required to beat the game, but the armor upgrades aren’t. It is advatageous to collect them (at least the one in sector 3) because you take way less armor damage. Each time you take damage from your armor depleting it wastes 1 frame unless you are in the air. These should be required to be collected but they don't add on much time if any.
feos wrote:
Also overall, which of all these items persist across reboot, as in, recorded in the game save file? Which of them reappear after reboot?
None of the items respawn while in the sector. All of them respawn if you restart the sector or start a new run. Classifying items this way doesn’t make sense.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Then what about "all collectables"?
Well there are other collectables such as the banana gun and null driver but I think it is a much more fitting name. Have renamed it, thanks for the suggestion.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
I can only see Poster viewer in the main menu and nothing else related to those item types in either main or in-game menu. How are they tracked exactly?
In the records section in the main menu. The sudden death sector part would require first a completion on expert and then sector by sector play. The hidden skills do not need to be found in order to be used and would, like guns discussed previously, require at least one additional playthrough. For these reasons I did not include the other two things the game tracks in this TAS as it would make it easily 1.5+h long and would require going through the game 3 times.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
Radiant wrote:
feos wrote:
Then won't it be faster to kill more and still get that ending?
The good ending requires less than 51 kills, not zero kills. Saving Dan merely requires a brief detour in sector 8 to pick up the trapmine item; this would otherwise look identical to the current any%.
True but the Massacre saves a lot of time on Tor and this is therefore the fastest way of getting the best ending.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
You could rename it to "best ending" since that's what you get if you save Dan, go into deep sector in sector 9 and are pacifist according to the ingame kill counter.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
fsvgm777 wrote:
Comparing back and forth between the published any% TAS and this one, I'm raising several concerns:
1) For some inexplicable reason, you stop at around 0:47 in this TAS, but not in the any% TAS. It should be noted that Sector 1 is also pacifist in the any% TAS, meaning that this one is actually a bit sub-optimal.
2) You actually destroy some of the turrets, which goes against the spirit of a pacifist TAS (unless they're somehow impassable, or I missed something), IMHO, even if the game does not count it as one. Therefore, this is not a pacifist TAS for me.
1) That is an issue with the video, not the tas.
2) Yes, the goal is to complete the game with 0 kills, not to not destroy anything. You need to destroy Proxima no matter what so a "no destroying" TAS wouldn't be possible anyways. For this reason I opted for the fastest time with 0 kills not the fastest time with nothing destroyed.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
As was pointed out here and as I say in my notes, All items isn't the best name, it's just the one that speedruners use. Feel free to suggest a better name other than "All posters, supercharges, ribbons" because that is too long. The reason I only chose these is because they are tracked by the game (in the ingame and main menu).
Getting the other guns/items would require multiple runs through the game and I think that that would be vary boring as they would not differ much at all.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
First to clarify the "pacifist", I meant 0 kills and therefore the Innocent rank (and also Massacre right before Tor).
I agree that any% and this are very similar up to sector 8. But for the sake of completeness (different ending, changed Iosa and Tor fights) I think it should be at least voulted. I think that Pacifist is restrictive enough to have its own category. There are skips you cannot do but the Massacre makes up for some of the time loss.
This is also a "best ending" run so there is that too.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
Giga wrote:
Yup. Specifically, there are the two secret weapons (one in Sector 9, one in Sector X) the Ultimortal difficulty (unlocked by beating Extreme, and if I remember correctly this also unlocks Normal and Hard mode's postgame unlockables) and Sector Z, which houses the final weapon - the Null Driver. You can see the teleporter to Sector Z in this movie, in Sector 1. It's right beside the Supercharge, but you can't use it until you unlock all the posters. To actually get to the Null Driver, you need to get all the ribbons, to clear all ten Sudden Death Sectors in single sector play, wherein everything has 1 HP and 100 armor, and you need to have the game recognize that you know all four hidden skills. (Teching; which is done by hitting the use key right when you get damaged, Retribution; the attack this movie uses on Annihilator Iosa after getting knocked down, which can only be used once per sector, and isn't useful against Tor, Air braking, and the Nanofield Reboot; which this movie uses to reset their stats.)
I wouldn't mind seeing a movie playing through reallyjoel's dad difficulty, either. You need Ultimortal unlocked (beat Extreme) and it's literally impossible, according to the website. You get two minutes to kill every Tasen in Sector 1, then end the level - however, the forcefield that kills you at the end, which is supposed to go away once you have 100% kills, doesn't. I'd like to see if that's true or not, but I'm not that good at the game.
About the reallyjoel's difficulty, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCGjinbDSL0
I never bothered submitting it because I think it isn't worthy. And yes there is absolutely no way of getting past the barrier.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
Svimmer wrote:
Using the hardest setting is the baseline in TASing so just explain why you haven't in the submission comments if you don't want people wondering about it (your explanation is impossible to follow without knowing more about the game). Of course people shouldn't assume it's the worse choice before they hear you out.
I like the various damage boosts not all of which I think were used in the other two TASes, and generally the changes resulting from the pacifist approach. Worth having done this category. I guess the only thing missing now is some kind of 100% thing.
I have done a 100% (kinda) TAS and will submit it shortly if there is enough interest.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
GJTASer2018 wrote:
Matslo123, I would recommend editing the comment about the difficulty choice to something like this:
"The only rule / limitation of this category is to complete the game with 0 Kills, which awards you the Pacifist rank, so for this reason I use Normal difficulty. On the game's hardest difficulty (Ultimortal), a Pacifist run is impossible because you are required to kill a boss on that difficulty. On the Hard and Extreme difficulties, a Pacifist run would be far more time-consuming, due to required Nano farming and other factors, without a significant gain in difficulty under TAS conditions. This would result in a far less entertaining movie in comparison to one on Normal difficulty."
Thanks a lot for your suggestion, I have put that into the submission notes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
moozooh wrote:
As someone who once attempted a no-reboot true pacifist Extreme difficulty playthrough, I can confirm Extreme takes over twice as long to complete because 1) you actually need to explore every stage and kill most of the enemies in it for Nano pickups; 2) you still cannot kill directly, so in many cases you need to set enemies up to kill themselves by splash damage off of your body—but since you can take at most one heavy hit without dying, you have to constantly backtrack to heal yourself. Running this category on Normal is a wise decision in my opinion; Hard would just be slower and not necessarily more exciting because the no-damage Ultimortal run already exists.
I guess people see using the lowest difficulty as something bad or just think I was lazy and unskilled, but if they actually played the game like you they would understand why normal is a much better choice. Perhaps they think that playing on Extreme changes the game drasitcally when in a TAS all it does is it makes it so that you have to farm nano without any real gain in difficulty.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
The only rule / limitation of this category is to complete the game with 0 Kills, which awards you the Pacifist rank so for this reason I use Normal difficulty.
I still don't understand why you use Normal difficulty. Wouldn't be possible to get the Pacifist rank with the hardest difficulty as well?
While it would be possible to do it on Hard or Extreme (not Ultimortal though), I would have to spend and insane amount of time farming Nano because you need level 27 for sector X, otherwise you have to kill Asha. As I have explained previously changing the difficulty also changes the amount of Nano you need per level. Anh hard really doesn't add anything of value. The faster enemies would hardly make a difference and the bosses would be basically the same so I really don't think that doing it on any other difficulty is worth it. If you want to see a TAS of the highest difficulty http://tasvideos.org/6302S.html
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
Matslo123, please post the same couple of movies as for any%: the one that ands at the final hit and the one that reaches the credits and lets them play.
Also, is having 1HP inherent to this difficulty or it was independently added as another goal?
Ultimortal1HPNoEnd.wtf is the one that ends on the final hit. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_DRRGiERXp5H_KG8vWhLm_yyavwaiYzt
No, in this difficulty you can only level up your HP, not any other stats. Also I guess I should have called it 'no hit / no damage' because that is what I ment by 1 HP. Having level 1 Health gives you 2 HP, but I not only keep my Health level at 1 but also don't take damage (not health damage anyway, not taking armor damage is impossible). I also fought Tor on Maximum charge, which makes the fight a lot harder but also makes him have extra HP. I did it for entertainment purposes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
I'm having problems with rerecording this game. But I discovered the credits roll after you let a certain cutscene play. Please make the movie reach a point after which the game automatically finishes, and we'll use that for encoding. So only skip as many cutscenes as required for automatic end (which includes its own cutscenes that you don't have to skip).
Yes, Horglass is unreliable, the best way of recording video and audio is to do it with the built in AVI capture and remux all of the recordings into one file. Still, the game may crash at certain loading points but if you try again it should work. I guess we should be happy that Hourglass still works after all this time.
I have edited the TAS to go to the credits (1.6Non-PacifistCredits.wtf) in Iji1.6 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rrnqTq0nAW73_LvBDfRDLoGQLPsccD4r
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(103)
Joined: 3/10/2019
Posts: 73
feos wrote:
Okay I'll use that file for movie replacement. Though I have one question. After the movie ends in Hourglass, I can't send any inputs to the game, is that how it works? If so, we'd need a movie for encoding that actually ends at the final stats screen so that no rerecording is required from the publisher.
Well in order to input after a movie ends you have to select 'resume recording from now' or 'resume recording to different file' from the File dropdown. I would recommend the second option because otherwise you modify the original .wtf file. You have plenty of time to do this after the final roket is shot.
''Reallyjoel's dad'' Difficulty
You must have the Ultimortal difficulty unlocked to be able to use this cheat. To unlock the ''reallyjoel's dad'' difficulty, choose New Game at the title screen, and hold the Right arrow key for five seconds at the difficulty screen. This mode is quite literally impossible to complete since you cannot complete Sector 1, as well as being extremely difficult.
Though I couldn't find a way to unlock Ultimortal without completing the game once.
As he says there is now way of beating reallyjoel's dad difficulty, you can only got to the end of sector 1. I did a TAS of this too but didn't submit it as it doesn't look that impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCGjinbDSL0
And even the game developer writes on his site " (Ultimortal difficulty) How to unlock: Beat the game on Extreme ".