...granted, I did see one place where the balloon-dismount bug would save a couple frames. Just before his last trip through water, he ditches his balloon early when he could have ridden it right to the water and gone straight down. It's not even going to be a second, though.
Frame 2800:
Why do you walk over, then jump?
Shouldn't you jump earlier and move
to the left as you jump?
Your horizontal movement is impeded by the blocks as you jump through them + the jumps aren't a "perfect" height + it would spawn more enemies in the right side of the top corridor.
scubed wrote:
Frame 4200:
Why do you wait so long to go into the water?
...
Frame 25000:
Couldn't you dive earlier?
Water is so slow that I eke out the horizontal distance as much as possible. Floating or bouncing across water is much faster than swimming through it.
scubed wrote:
Frame 17000:
Why do you swim all of the way around? That takes a very long time.
Here's how I would do it:
http://lingcog.iit.edu/~scubed/kiwikraz_1.zip
(I'm not sure if you can trigger the upper cloud guy to appear so you can just directly jump on his cloud.)
I had a long explanation here about how there's always hidden improvements in this level and I found all I could and that I didn't think blah blah blah. Then I watched your movie. You are a golden god. I didn't think jumping up there could avoid the water current...this throws my entire run into question.
scubed wrote:
Frame 30000:
Could shoot out water while at the top to save time
breathing later (31337)
Noted.
scubed wrote:
Frame 42000:
There is some slowdown around here. Maybe you should kill more enemies to avoid it?
I still don't notice any slowdown, is it just a couple frames that my eyes can't catch?
Awesome catch on that frame 17000 thing. That's why I like this game: with all the walls so un-wall-like there's room for improvement for a long while.
I don't know that we can call it "interesting". It would be an acheivement to actually see the game completed, but it would likely be a boring game to sit through. The slow speed of the character + the backtracking necessary + waiting for elevators and conveyor belts == not a good timeattack.
I can say this because I've also been looking at this game for a couple weeks, trying to plan a route, and it's just a massive sack of boring.
Sleepz, it looks like your first throw has plenty of distance to it. Why don't you do the Wall trick as your first entry into the room and give it that much distance? If you got the Blob to sit still where the first bean lands (between the rightmost and second-from-right bars on the cage) it looks like he'd be right under the jar of vitamins and still within range of your next throw.
Right, but the main problem there is making sure everybody is wearing the glasses so as not to collapse the quantum state of fraught-ness through observation. Otherwise the situation will remain fraught whether or not you personally can see it.
Ok, more seriously, I think what interest people here is a tool that let us edit the movie file.
They have those, it's called an emulator :P
I was trying to justify that feature myself. I couldn't think of a way to make the process simple...you and Genisto came up with checkboxes, which is okay, but...
Hm. Maybe I should just let people type into the Input list and try to reverse that into hex. That just seems fraught with peril.
I would bet that every time Dr. Wily is safely behind bars Rockman thinks he can retire and hang up the weapons. I'm sure they'd run out of charge eventually anyway once he stops killing minor badguys for refills.
I don't know what X's excuse is.
Rockman wrote:
Every time I think I'm out, they keep pulling me back in!
New version! Kiwi Kraze v04
I did another clean run right from the beginning, optimizing everything along the way.
I shot fewer guys since lag isn't a big problem in this game
I framed more jumps to perfect distance and height
Level 4-2 had an easy shortcut through a ceiling I hadn't remembered
Flapping your wings can be done every 9 frames, not 10. Helped in the two places in the entire game that flapping is useful
Abused the falling faster/balloon dismount glitch
The 4-2 shortcut cut about 3 seconds off that level time and the dismount glitch was useful a couple times, so I expected to beat v03 by 300 or so frames. What actually came out is 797 frames faster, another 14 seconds off the time! I have no idea what happened to get me those extra 500 frames but I'm not going to argue. The run is now a very respectable 13:50 and looks smooth throughout.
The balloon dismount glitch is weird. It gives Kiwi a solid boost to the already crushing force of gravity -- he is a flightless bird, after all. A normal fall of one block takes an average of 8 frames, but under dismount boost it takes 5.5. We see it in its purest form at frames 8577 and 40989 where I have a non-bouncing balloon to work with. I spent about 100 rerecords at 6030 trying to wring out an extra lateral pixel, but the angle was too severe unless I came to a full stop on the block.
It also happens while going down a shaft around 12260 when I glitch a lead balloon into the wall. That was a lucky break, since I would have lost a lot of time waiting for that balloon to descend.
Also, I figured out the manipulation of items...it is frame-based, but is weighted so heavily towards apples that it's nearly useless. On top of that, sometimes an enemy just refuses to die on a certain frame, probably due to a rounding error inside the code somewhere. Turns out it doesn't matter because Laser is exactly equal to Arrow in terms of power. Laser's only advantages are that it travels faster and goes through walls, both useful in normal play but pretty lame for a timeattack.
Java FCM Parser, third public release! Source code also available.
Unfortunately Java doesn't handle CSS, so it's not as pretty/colorful as the web version. And of course it's slower then the PHP+C version...it takes its sweet ol' time rendering the HTML pages. I think I may have to ditch the HTML in favor of speed. But it does work, with full tabbed browsing for viewing multiple files at once.
EDIT: 2nd version now. I removed all the HTML rendering...it looks worse, but it runs like five hojillion times faster.
RE-EDIT: 3rd version. File chooser now filters for FCM files and remembers the last directory used (in that session). ROM checksum un-flipped. Movie length given in frames and hours-minutes-seconds-milliseconds. Is anybody listening? Format change to clean up Input tab.
I hit that bug once while doing Cocoron. I was able to recover it though...I can't remember if I rerecorded from earlier in the movie or hex-edited a keypress out. I thought it was just my fat fingers hitting the reset key by accident.
I may be wrong about this, but it looks like you fall faster when dismounting a floaty thing (for lack of a better name). If this is true then you most likely could use this to your advantage. I know there's a least one point in one of the volcano themed levels where you dismount and then walk into a hole immediately after.
That surprised me too. I didn't even notice that when I was making the movie, it's not that blatant at 25% speed. I knew that Kiwi falls faster without a balloon, but I didn't see that dismounting actually shot me downwards. I will have to go back and find all the places where I can dismount straight into a hole.
NrgSpoon wrote:
Also, maybe you can find some way to manipulate a weapon drop for the first boss fight to speed it up somehow. I'm also unsure if there's more than one weapon upgrade level but if there is there's that aspect too.
That laser on the last level was just a lucky drop. My jaw hit the floor when I saw it...my reward for cutting 1:14 off my previous run, I guess. Kiwi Kraze only has three weapons: Arrow, Laser, and Bomb. Laser seems to be 1.5 times as powerful as Arrow. I'm guessing Bomb is 2 times Arrow, but it's pretty rare and its short arc means I'd lose a lot of frames getting into position. Even worse, your weapon gets reset to Arrow at the beginning of each stage.
I've tried affecting enemy drops but it seems a lot of the stuff in this game is set at enemy spawn time and can't be changed. For instance, enemies will drop different items if you shoot them directly as opposed to popping their balloons, but I've tried shooting one guy at every point in a 30-frame window and he dropped the same thing every time.
Right now I only kill three guys in level 3-4 but I can see an opportunity for six without slowing down too much. If Laser == 1.5 Arrow, then it would cut 11 shots off the battle (66 frames). I think I might be able to manipulate something within 66 frames.
Update:
Currently 302 frames faster than my old movie upon entering the main castle. So I didn't save that much time, but whatever. Tomorrow is official soul test day.
I've learned quite a bit about timeattacking since starting Cocoron, but as much as I love my pumpkiny little buddy I needed a break. I also wanted to pick a (slightly) more popular game so I could use some real FAQs to help plan everything out.
Enter Kiwi Kraze (aka The New Zealand Story), (U) ROM version.
It took a couple days to make this attempt. I was about to make a Kiwi Kraze thread but, like a good little forumer, I did a search first.
josh l. has a warpless run in this thread and it showed me several different places to improve my route. His earlier boards are pretty tight -- he must not warp as often as I do :)
So I went to work again this afternoon and came up with a new run that combines the two. Like Voltron, it is made of cats the strongest run yet, clocking in at 14:04.
So that's where it stands right now. Hook up your best stereo equipment to your computer and partake of one of the catchiest themes in the NES catalogue.
EDIT: NZ Story, not NZ Adventure. My bad.
1. When rescuing the princess, you can jump over the enemies in the narrow corridors, so you don't have to stop for them. As stated before, I only had to slow down for ten frames so I wouldn't land on top of an enemy. It was where you jumped up on top of a ledge; I took the low road there and had to slow down otherwise that armidillo would have smacked me.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I just do things because I've always done them, and I don't stop to think about whether it's framewise the fastest way. Taking the low road doesn't really give a significant speed-up on the low road itself, but it might offset the rest of the board enough frames that I don't have to shoot the stupid skunk. I tried everything to get past that goober, but once he revs up to shoot his hitbox enlarges to cover his tail.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
2. For levels that really don't need any hovering, like Castle -> Mountain, it might be worth it to use ?-?-Shuriken. No gaurantees, though.
Now that I've seen the wonders of ??Mel, I'm noticing more and more places where Wing is more of a convenience than a necessity. If it wasn't for the usefulness of hovering on the bosses I'd be tempted to bring out a ??Shr for everything.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
3. Try slowing down on the ice dragon. The last part of his shell seems to come off automatically (there's no damage noise), so attacking then probably isn't doing anything. Slow down and you won't get as much lag.
I do stop shooting before his last little shell comes off, I was just venting rage into his hide for fun. I didn't see any lag frames because of that...it only lags when his shell comes off into four pieces, and that's solely due to the pieces.
Nitsuja wrote:
It looks like you can kill the very first boss (pirate ship) faster by moving much closer to it (while firing) when the battle starts, and if necessary backing away between shots.
I stopped at a point that I wouldn't get beaned by the skeleton or rammed by the ship. What you propose would require hovering probably halfway between that point and the ship, slowly backing away while turning around for four frames to fire the shots. Hovering right next to the ship would allow me to fire every other frame, but then I'd have no chance to build up backwards momentum...
Sounds like a challenge :)
Nitsuja wrote:
For the areas where you're overshooting the stairs (jumping up 2 and a half steps high, it looks like), wouldn't it be faster to instead jump up 1 step at a time?
Noted for testing. It seems so counter-intuitive.
Nitsuja wrote:
Going down hills is definitely faster, does that mean going up hills is slower? I can't quite tell if you're flying up them or walking up them, but if walking it might be slower. (And it seems like going down hills with a character that has treads gives more of a speed boost than normal, but that probably really is an illusion.)
I've never noticed an uphill slowing me down, which is weird because momentum is such a big deal everywhere else. If you stop on a hill, you'll slowly start to slide downhill unless you have treads. That's really the only ability treads have. Knowing that, it might well be even faster on the downhill due to some weird internal math, but holy crap are tanks slow.
Nitsuja wrote:
(When using the character that outruns his own shots, would it be faster to kill some more enemies by shooting backwards as you pass them by?)
The game does seem to keep track of enemies that are slightly offscreen, so there's a good chance I can hit some with Melody. Flying elephants sadly take way too many shots to kill and are the major source of lag in that board.
Nitsuja wrote:
There are some (well, very few) places where there are lots of enemies onscreen but you leave them all alone, when it looks like it'd be faster to kill some. Even if they all create eggs, I think it's likely that eggs cause less lag than enemies.
I wasn't on top of the lag yet in the first few boards. Those should be cleaned up in the final master run, if I ever get the gumption to face this game again. That Trump Castle boss battle just takes sooooo long to work through. It saps the will.
I did notice that eggs don't seem to figure into the lag, or at least only count as half a sprite or something. In fact, shots and weapons don't seem to create lag at all. It makes me think there's some really really poorly coded AI routines, because three flying elephants can make lag all on their own, and those flying pieces of Silver Dragon's shell are just murder on the framerate.
Bisqwit, I was wondering if you'd care to share the PHP source for this handy doodad.
Sure!
http://bisqwit.iki.fi/utils/fcmparser-source.zip
Includes a PHP frontend (.php) and a C++ backend (.cc).
(In the first version, the backend was also PHP code, but I changed it to C++ for effeciency reasons. The C++ code is straightforward converted from the PHP code, thus it may not be as tidy as it should be.)
C++ backend? Score! That will be super-easy to convert...I'm lucky I have such a lax job.
>.>
Boss isn't watching, is he?
Bisqwit, I was wondering if you'd care to share the PHP source for this handy doodad. I don't know PHP at all, but I'd like to take this program offline and slap a Java frontend on it. Save you some bandwidth.
I know I could just re-implement it all from this info, but I'd like to try converting the PHP first before doing all the hard thinking ;)
Awww, your latest glitch run got lockX0red before I could make my request:
Somebody (flagitious? Omni?) now needs to make the "HolyShitMyPantsAreOnFire" page. Seeing as how it's a wiki link and all.
Any game where the hero saves the dame from low-key Nintendo rape for the promise of low-key Nintendo nookie is teh win.
Nintendo Nookie would be an awesome band name.
Thread, I bid thee rise!!
I finally pushed my other hobbies aside to give Cocoron some more of that special pumpkin lovin'. I used my old movie up to the Fairy Queen and started recording from the character creation menu, which is why the rerecord count is so low. The result is another 5 second improvement, to a time of 14:41 (52876 frames).
CocoronJ WIPv2
Time saved comes from:
I finally surrendered to the Ferret Warlord and used a ??Mel to rescue Princess Rua. ~150 frames all told even though it looks sloppier and lags!
Didn't do that stupid backtracking described above.
I used more downhills in the Tapir stages. Sometimes the ratketeers just couldn't be evaded, but whenever I could get through without being hit I did. Small number of frames here. Watching my old movie repeatedly, I'm not sure there are many downhills in the other stages that I could abuse without setting myself up for a bad jump/enemy. Will investigate further.
I optomized the hell out of Tapir himself in both battles. I think I got 5 hits on him every time he was vulnerable...6 hits has proved even more elusive, but if possible would cut an entire cycle off the battle.
EDIT: As far as I can tell the biggest remaining time-saver is the lag when traveling from Star Hill to the Forest, worth another couple of seconds. Those stupid birds mess up everything!
Any other items I'm too blind to see?
What I want to know is how you can take a ~350KB ips patch and a <1MB rom file and end up with a 6MB rom.
My mind hurts just thinking about it. ips files are just diffs, right? Can you embed macros in these things?
I did a test run to rescue the princess using ?-?-music (the movie is long since gone) and only once did I have to stop for ten frames to avoid hitting a dillo. Overall it was about three seconds faster.
Ahah, yes it's faster when rescuing the princess, but is it also faster after you play the house level with it? Because according to the plot all your other non-princess-rescuing characters are kidnapped and put into eggs, and you must beat the house level to get another character back. Whichever char you rescue the princess with is automatically what you use in the next level. Ergo, ?-?-Mel must be faster after playing both the Forest->Milk Sea and the house level.
Of course, I haven't gone through and tested this yet. And Wednesday is drunk night. If you've tested up through house, disregard all comments and continue with the critique.
EDIT: Tested! You're right. ??Mel came through the house about 150 frames faster than ?WinShr, even after the lag. Wow.
I'm not dead, just taking a break after playing this game three times in one weekend.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
1. Are you sure you can't use a ?-?-music config for rescuing the princess? I just tested some things related to this and you can still jump the armidillos.
The question really becomes "is the time saved while rescuing Princess worth the time (and aesthetics) lost to lag in the house level?" I used shuriken quite a bit to kill off some lag immediately after the princess and make that level quite a few frames faster. Unfortunately ?-?-music is so light that he easily outruns his own shots, making him useless against enemy-induced lag. The lightest we can go is ?-?-boomerang, and the range on that is worse than useless.
I'll have to do some more frame comparisons, but ?-?-shuriken looks promising. It saves 67 weight and gives me a chance to show off the spring body :) I'll have to make sure I don't need any hovering to fend off lag...
Ferret Warlord wrote:
2. Running down a hill gives you greater horizontal speed. It didn't look like you abused this as much as possible.
I thought that was just an optical illusion. Guess I need to watch a few more times and identify where I can use this.
