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The stump storage trick is relatively easy. The only hard part is clearing the text right before entering the loading zone. We just need to activate the stair-lowering script (or maybe the pipe-entering script) instead of the pipe-exiting script, but there's no way of manipulating which script activates when you exit the top screen. The only way to activate a different script is by using a different top screen, but that's the only top screen from Gritzy Desert I've been able to store.
If you skip the dome, the elevator to the arena is gone, as well as the cutscene that plays when you enter the dome.
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Out of bounds is an area with no collision/air detection so you can walk forever. Some rooms have out of bounds walls, though.
It's unfortunate that some crashes are not emulated accurately, or at all. The crash that prevents that skip from working on console is when entering a time hole while the babies are on the top screen of a different room. If there was a way to prevent that crash, then after going through the time hole the babies are "fake" (you can't pick them up) so you can't use the blue switches to access other floors of the castle. If there was a way to keep real babies on the top screen and the bottom screen, it would likely be possible to open the Shroob Castle gate early and the Toad Town gate early.
I am looking for an alternative way to do that skip, and have gotten pretty close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f4t2ENbTT4 It would still be U-only but would probably work on console.
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Since I finished this TAS, a bunch of new glitches were found that have led to about 20 minutes of timesave. Here is a doc with all of the new findings: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oOEv4GPXC4qZ7lzriDkyvL1q6QcV4ub98rV-F_xiMME/edit?usp=sharing
I expect more glitches/skips to be found, so I will wait to begin a new TAS because I don't want to start over if a skip is found halfway through TASing. Also, the game needs to be rerouted, notably since I'm pretty sure the US version is faster due to exclusive glitches, even with increased boss health.
There is one US-exclusive glitch that is not understood well. If Mario is standing still on ground that is below the ground Luigi is on, Luigi will try to walk to Mario, but can't reach him since their heights are different. When Luigi reaches Mario's X and Z positions, on non-US versions, Luigi just stops, but on US, Luigi teleports somewhere. If he teleports to a close location, he will continue trying to go to Mario, resulting in another teleport once he reaches Mario's position. If he teleports far enough away, he will stop moving. In some cases, Mario can then teleport to Luigi after Mario starts moving again. This is useful if Luigi teleports out of bounds, because he can bring Mario out of bounds with him. This is used for a sequence break in Gritzy Caves. However, we have no way of manipulating where Luigi teleports to. If anyone is looking for a glitch to experiment with and figure out, I'd love your help.
Also, here's an invite to the series discord server: https://discord.gg/2AfNrh9
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jlun2 wrote:
Finally watched the whole thing; the battles were surprisingly shorter than I expected.
I'm quite curious on something though: the run skips the switches in places such as Thwomp Volcano and Toad Town, which were supposed to be for unlocking a way to go back to the area quickly. Similarly, half of shroob castle is skipped. If I stopped the movie at the end, and went back to those locations, would they be inaccessible?
Yes, as far as I know you wouldn't be able to get to Thwomp Caverns or Toad Town. Although the skipped portion of Shroob Castle should be accessible by going through the pipe used for basement skip.
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@Paused
Nothing really went wrong, just optimizing took longer than I expected. There will be mostly unscripted commentary on twitch.
@MUGG
I've sent the encode to Anwonu, don't know if he'll watch it before the stream or if he'll make it a surprise for him. And I'll submit on Sunday, assuming I finish the notes by then.
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Go to Config -> Hotkey Config -> Movie and assign a hotkey to "Toggle Read Only". Now play the movie in read-only mode and pause the emulator at the point you want to continue. Make a new savestate here. Then, go to read+write mode by pressing the hotkey you created, and load the new savestate. Now you can continue the TAS.
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Paused wrote:
I had assumed you'd let the adults die during the lollipop boss to set up 'perril status for Petty, but you got a heal and had to set it up else where. Are levels already that un-needed that you can skip that bosses exp?
If both adults die at once it ends the attack since there are no targets on the screen. If I dodged the lollipops Shrooboid Brat would continue with a second phase of the attack before I got a turn, so I died quickly to get a turn quicker. I knew the adults would be healed and that I would need to set up low health in a normal encounter.
As for the exp, the adults got 2 level-ups after Petey to compensate for the missed exp from Shrooboid Brat, and they would end up at the same level regardless of whether or not they got the exp. The missed exp ends up not saving or losing any time overall.
2. Regarding the google docs, I have no idea what things like "use 1 if (2)" mean, but I assume the numbers take account to crits?
"if" means ice flower, "bf" is bro flower, etc. The numbers in parentheses indicate how many of the item is remaining. So that line means I start with 3 ice flowers, use 1 and end up with 2.
3. How exactly would the crits for copy flowers/pocket chomps be manipulated? How worth it would it be given every hit is a jump?
There's really no way to manipulate lucky hits on those multi-hit attacks, since RNG only advances when you land a hit (to determine if it's lucky). This is unlike bro/ice flowers - in that case RNG advances every frame so it's simple to get the right RNG. In addition, a lucky hit on a bro flower will affect the attack as a whole, whereas a lucky hit on a copy flower will only affect the one jump.
- 24:40 This blue button in particular seems suboptimal. Can't you jump and land on the middle of it?
Yes, that could be 5 or so frames faster. Fortunately it doesn't matter to much since I had to wait 30-something frames before the next battle for the correct RNG.
- 43:15 If you jump up the ledges here with Mario only, Luigi will teleport up. There was a video about this bug but it's gone. Not sure if it's faster to do that. (Also I don't know what are the conditions for that bug to work.)
Didn't know about that bug. It doesn't sound like it would be faster since Mario's jumps would still take the same amount of time, but idk.
- Is English or Japanese faster for this game, and why?
The USA version is slowest because of increased boss health. However, the EU and JP versions have the same enemy stats. In my previous WIP I used JP since I didn't even consider EU. Now I'm using EU for the English text. J actually has a quicker title screen, and might have fewer text boxes, but I've found no gameplay differences.
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TheKDX7 wrote:
Did the player delete this record of speedrun.com ? The world record is now here : http://www.speedrun.com/run/pzg2r0dy and it is 6 minutes slower...
The 6:10 run is chalkboard completion, which is not 100%. The current 100% definition is here. The 6:16 run achieves all of those objectives, which include chalkboard completion.
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Yes, but the end of the timer acts differently when you are in a different area - you can't move around after it hits zero. I think it's because the end of the timer is kind of like a cutscene that's associated with the original area, and cutscenes only play if they exist in the same area as you.
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The statue and sign must be in the same area, and that's the only area with both a statue and a sign, so it's the only location in the desert where it's possible. There are other places to get text storage though, through a different method: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=350806#350806
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The starting RNG seems to be equal to the hours of the start time (mod 24). So there's only 24 possible starting RNG values. I guess I'll find the best one for the toad movement at the beginning.
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MUGG wrote:
ghostcookies wrote:
when i was playing i activated the dry bone statue to the right then before the time ran out i read the sign to the north of the statue. The result was it allowed me to walk around while having the sign text still be there. I dont know if this was already found but it might have some potential speedrun use
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You should try to get as many syrups from boxes and battles as you can as going to the shop requires some time, especially since a ~30 second long cutscene plays the first time you enter the toad center inside Bowser. If you absolutely need to buy something I think it would be optimal if Bowser bought it. Also avoid using many syrups in battle since it takes a turn. They can be applied in the menu outside of a battle much quicker, so you should enter every fight with full SP.
Also check out Anwonu's partial route if you haven't already: http://pastebin.com/tgvgCwUp It's not a TAS route but it has some useful info.
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I've been trying to get a lucky hit on the first strike in the shrooblet tutorial battle (which I'm not sure is possible) but I've noticed some strange things.
When you start the battle, the rng changes to 1, no matter what the rng was before. It remains 1 during the battle-start animation, then a bit before the battle actually starts it changes again to a different value. The weird part is that this new value seems to be actually random. I made a savestate 1 frame before the rng changes to 1, and if I continually reload the state, the new rng value is different every time. I'm not pressing any inputs at all.
I'm not sure what's going on here. Either the ROM or the emulator has an issue, or there's something more to the RNG in the game we don't understand. Or maybe I'm an idiot :P
Hopefully I explained this well enough. If you want I can provide the .dst file.
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Thanks! I will definitely test this out when I can. Do you know if the algorithm works the same way in the EU version, since that's the one I will be using? (because it has less boss health and english text)
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In my last post I mentioned that manipulating lucky hits would save a lot of time. Since then I looked into it and I'm pretty happy with what I've come up with so far.
First I considered where I could waste time in a battle to change the RNG. I determined that RNG does not change while you are selecting an attack or selecting a bros. item. It does change, however, when you are selecting a target. (For flowers the only target option is to attack all enemies.) After selecting the target the game has determined whether or not the attack will be a lucky hit for each individual enemy. (By the way, everything I explain here is about bro flowers. It probably applies to ice flowers as well, but no other items.)
RNG changes only when you are selecting a target, but it does not change every frame. In fact, in only changes once in every ~100 frames. The frames that RNG changes happen to coincide with the moments when the fireball switches between bros in the attack demo on the top screen. Specifically, the first frame with a new RNG seed is the last frame in which the last fireball thrown by one of the bros is visible.
In the demo, Mario and Luigi will either throw 3 or 4 fireballs. If the adults and babies are present, the babies will also throw 3 or 4 fireballs. Here is the amount of time each of these takes:
Adult/baby on ground throwing 3: 103 frames
Baby on piggyback throwing 3: 118 frames
Adult/baby on ground throwing 4: 132 frames
Baby on piggyback throwing 4: 152 frames
Suppose that if you select the target on frame X, the attack will not be a lucky hit. If you select the target on frame X+1, the attack will also not be a lucky hit. However, if and only if the fireball that exists on the top screen on frame X+1 no longer exists on frame X+2, there is a chance that selecting the target on frame X+1 will produce a lucky hit.
In this way, lucky hits appear in "clusters" of 103, 118, 132, or 152 frames. The RNG is constant within each cluster and changes from cluster to cluster. There is actually a initial cluster before the demo begins which lasts only 9 frames if all 4 characters are present, and 7 if only two are present. I found that if I waited 139 frames in the hammer bros. battle, waiting past a short cluster and a 4-fireball cluster (7+132), I would reach a lucky hit cluster. This means that the hammer bros. battle can be about 13 seconds faster because the second attack turn can be completely skipped, but the first turn would take longer due to the manipulation.
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The item route is still something I'm working on, but I'm pretty sure the multi-hit attacks like trampoline and pocket chomps are much faster than flowers when the bosses get to 1000+ health.
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jlun2 wrote:
a bunch of stuff
In terms of text, pretty sure all versions are the same. I used J because of the lower boss health, but recently found that the Europe version has the same stats as J as well as English text, so I'll use that from now on. Although the title screen is 75 frames faster on J than the other versions, lol.
For text I alternate button presses every frame (ABABABAB) since ABXY all advance text. Don't see how that can be optimized further.
9:11 is unoptimized for sure. I hardly knew anything about movement at the time. Bowser's castle is when I really learned how to optimize movement.
The transitions are an encode problem, I'm not sure how to fix it. It looks fine in the emulator.
For some reason Boos notice you from a greater distance if you move diagonally. So I moved orthogonally a bit to help avoid them. I haven't noticed this behavior with any other enemies.
In the fireball thing I moved the adults to minimize the camera scrolling time.
From my minimal testing of lucky hit manipulation, it takes on average a few thousand frames to manipulate a lucky hit. If there was a quicker way, then I'd love to make every hit lucky. Not only would it save minutes, it would really simplify the item route.
The crits on the shroobers are only because they are weak to ice. Lucky hits are RNG, crits are elemental and guaranteed if you use the right item. It is possible to get lucky and crit and it does a lot of damage:
(Sunnycide is weak to fire when he is knocked down, but it takes too long to knock him down to be useful.)
What's the best place to upload input files?
(Sunnycide is weak to fire when he is knocked down, but it takes too long to knock him down to be useful.)
What's the best place to upload input files?