Not bad! I'll watch it a few more times to make sure about something, but for the moment, two things stuck out.
1. The jumps inside the castle and the last level seemed sloppy. Several steps were overshot.
I've learned quite a bit about Cocoron's jump timing. There are a few different "powers" of jumps...come to think of it, I think they're "powers of two" jumps. After you release A, you still have a bit of arc to your trajectory that gets bigger when you hold for 1, 2, and 16 frames...I'll have to double-check on 4 and 8.
Anyway, these jumps that look overshot are what happens when 15 frames of A doesn't quite get you there, but 16 frames is too much. Sad but true. It's one of the drawbacks of carrying Shuriken around.
One new thing I did learn in this run, although not until the final levels, is that running into a wall doesn't stop your all-important momentum as long as you hold the direction down. What this means is you can jump up a straight wall while holding the arrow and as soon as you crest the top you'll have full horizontal speed.
Ferret Warlord further wrote:
2. You still do some unnecassary backtracking in the last level. <v_v>
That part just before the Ratketeers, where I loop around and jump over an armadillo? I can't make it up both tiers in one jump and --
Oh bloody hell. I can just leap from the right edge and curve around to the upper platform. It'll look sloppy and won't set me up as well for the next jump, but it'll be faster.
I'm glad that part's near the end.
Finally, Ferret Warlord wrote:
But this one does look a lot better though. I never expected that strategy on the moon! :P
I'm glad the moon died when he did. There doesn't seem to be enough room in there to be perfectly safe; if the left star had appeared it would have just clipped my tail or the corner of my head.
Ferret Warlord, who has a seriously cool name, wrote:
Edit Zwie: I also suggest starting a topic for this game and posting WIPs every so often so we can critique your progress.
Done and done.
I was very proud of my 15:24 Coco-run and thought it was a worthy submission, but forum regulars pointed out lots of improvements that had just never occurred to me. A new route was proposed. Apparently I can skip naming altogether, leading an army of ____ characters to victory. Frame-by-framing all the menus hadn't seemed worthwhile to me when I was already playing at 6% speed, but there was definitely some time saved there. And Bag of Magic Food, I even designed a useful second character.
Upshot? I'm checking the movie now for desynchs, but it looks like I got it down to a sub-15 minute time.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Personally, I'm not so sure about using the shuriken. From my experiments, I'd guesstimate about 2-5 seconds lost per level, and the bosses go so quickly already I doubt it'd make up for it.
The shuriken may be useful for short levels/long bosses, though. Look into that.
Oh boy, you thought the bosses were fast before. Although I miss the extra few pixels in jump height the sheer speed with which it rips bosses apart cannot be denied.
Well lookit that. 14:46 and no desynchs. A 38 second improvement!
Cocoron WIP
I played this ages ago, probably the same summer I played most of the Final Fantasies. Meaning that I have no useful input to give, but I would enjoy watching an attack.
It would seem Takeru or K2 or whoever it was drew from the same well as the Beattles did when they made the Yellow Sumarine movie when they made this game. In fact, Tapir looks like a Yellow Submarine character art reject. Gotta love the abstract.
I've heard they also literally drew from Mega Man 2. As in, it's the same (or very nearly same) game engine.
If anybody can figure out how to get a character into the ceiling, I'd be much obliged ;)
Ferret Warlord wrote:
I've jumped over them. Requires some frame precise moves, but it's quite easy.
I tried frame-by-frame for quite a while...I don't understand why I couldn't do it. The gap certainly looked big enough. I'll give it another thirty attempts on my next run-through.
I'm taking all your comments to heart and it's pretty awesome that you can just instantly help on a game like this. For instance, I was so caught up in naming my characters (from the English version) that it never occurred to me that I could leave it totally blank. Stupid, stupid mistakes...but I'm proud of my run nonetheless.
I'm testing out a Shuriken user right now. The extra 70 weight is noticeable in terms of jumping height, but I'm beginning to think any losses during the level can be offset by the increased boss-whupping power.
I'm still not sure about the lag. It's not just the power of my weapon that's a problem. I'd have to shoot 2 Shuriken to kill, 2 more to open the egg, and then be right there to catch the item. I'm not sure it's practical in the area where it would matter most -- outside the house -- because of the sheer number of enemies coming at different elevations.
But if it IS possible, frame advance will solve everything.
Any game that let's me play as Astroboy with an alien head that sings its enemies to death is pure, undiluted awesome.
Oh, the run? I haven't watched it yet, but as soon as I beat this game, I will!
Hero1 + Cyborg1 + weapon = Cyborg 009.
This game is bursting with creative possibilities that are nonetheless distracting for a timeattack. Also, each head has its own taunt when you hold Up. That's how I got the flashing pumpkin face when I absolutely had to wait for something to appear. The alien-slug-head thing has a pretty silly taunt, too.
Okay, I'll address all the questions I know the answers to:
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
So is it never beneficial to use any of the other characters you designed? That's disappointing.
FODA wrote:
But what bugs me is why do you always choose the same character, in some boss battles you clearly have the choice to pick other characters, you dont need the fastest one, why is that?
Xerophyte wrote:
As for the movie; I'm by no means an expert on this game, but it at least looks like using different characters should save time. There are levels/bosses where the parasols or flight capabilities seemingly don't do much for speed, especially the boss fight with its own character select at the end. Using lighter characters and higher-damage weapons in these situations should help. Even having a slower character with more HP could be beneficial, so you can run through blocking enemies without dying.
It may be beneficial to use some of the other characters. And I say maybe. Because jumping and running are the same speed (even on inclines!) it doesn't matter much if I'm flying over everything. That's just an aesthetic thing. Maybe I should have bobbed and weaved through more baddies.
But I don't recall any time where I was allowed to switch characters right before a boss. EDIT: Oh, duh. Right before Tapir 1. Okay, so that one time a ?-Wing-Shuriken would have gone slightly faster. Call it two seconds. This is why I need more eyes watching the movie :)
You only get to pick a guy before entering a level, and have to get that character through the whole level before fighting the boss. It's not like Little Samson where you can switch at will. Wing is so ridiculously useful during the levels that it doesn't make much sense to use anything else. Wing-hovering at the bosses is as important a tactic as firing every other frame, so I don't see much room for improvement here.
It is sad that I can't bust out a variety of characters, but in the interest of speed, variety must suffer. It also leaves the door open for things like "tank-only" time attacks.
Ouzo wrote:
2. To avoid lag, try to destroy as many enemies as you can.
FODA wrote:
and sometimes you could have killed enemies and try to avoid some slowdown.
I knew this would come up. There's quite a few places with lag in Cocoron because of all the sprites coming from every direction. Here's the unfortunate part: Parasol is so weak that it takes anywhere from 2-4 shots to kill even a minor character. The exception are the dive-bombing birds, which take one shot each.
Sadly, that means 2-4 extra parasol sprites aimed at a badguy. Add to that the small explosion when the enemy dies. Then consider that every single enemy leaves behind a powerup egg...you don't see this until I start killing birds in my way, but trust me that eggs are a 100% non-luck thing. Then add 2-4 shots to open these eggs, and then I have to actually collect the powerup that falls out.
All told, shooting enemies would probably add more lag than just trying to scroll them offscreen as fast as possible.
Ouzo wrote:
3. There was one instance where you stop to kill two shell-enemies. Couldn't you have just taken damage to pass them?
Xerophyte wrote:
Even having a slower character with more HP could be beneficial, so you can run through blocking enemies without dying.
I was trying to complete it with zero damage/deaths, which I guess is at odds with the "as fast as possible" goal here.
I didn't like it either, but the reason I stop for those two armadillos in cactus-land is because I couldn't squeeze my sprite over the top of them and still avoid the cacti. It was either run through (and I would have survived that hit), or shoot them away and maintain my no-damage status.
NrgSpoon wrote:
I just need to say that your avatar is ridiculous and awesome.
Ouzo wrote:
P.S. I like your avatar too :)
Thankie. Maybe in a couple days I'll bust out my second Cocoron avatar :)
In summary: I can see saving a few frames in the menu parts if I timed it down to the frame, but I was playing the whole thing at 6% so the savings would result in maybe three seconds alltogether. All the jumps up leaves and around corners were frame-by-frame, so I don't see much wiggle room there. If I could find a way to pass those two armadillos in the cactus corridor, that would save a bunch of momentum and time. And of course, more solid luck manipulation on Silver Dragon and Boss Tapir 1 and 2 to bring them down lower would help.
Red hot.
I'm amused by Mega Man's leading questions regarding the weapons he picks up. It's like he's trying to jog the old doc's memory, make him feel useful.
Dr. Light: "The Freeze Cracker fires ice...that cracks!"
Mega Man: "It sure does, doc. It sure does."
Okay, sorry. There does some to be a non-trivial timing difference between the J and T versions here...that desynch in the star level is weird, since all the jumps up to that point were still picture perfect. And there's an extra parasol in the fight with the fairy queen.
I'll get to work on a real run in the J version soon. It'll definitely be faster since I won't be messing around with different parts or names.
CocoronJ shall fear my army of 'AAAA' creatures.
So...alternating Run and Shoot moves you faster than just Run? Kinda like how you alternate Missle and Beam in Metroid Prime to interrupt the animation?
In the actual Rockman 2 movie, I think you can save time, when you use the Rush-Jet in the Heat-Man level on the lava!?
Every movie i downloaded from the site is laggin' now and desync' from start on, I use VideoLan Client to play the Avi-files, because my other players can't play them - any idea's?
Greets;
Spawn!
I noticed this started a couple weeks ago, too. Go get the official DivX codec from http://divx.com and put it into Quicktime/Media Player. VLC is great for lots of stuff but doesn't keep up with the very latest codec releases.
Monthenor: if you weren't using my build, what 1st, 2nd, and 4th boxes were you checking? There is no "sync settings" panel in any official version.
*pops his head in during the Culex fight*
I was using 1.43. Under the Sound Settings, the left panel had five boxes...1, 2, and 4 were already checked there, and number 5 was sound sync. I thought that was the one.
My bad.
Mario RPG is running great in the Nitsuja Special Edition.
Okay, I'mma ask here for help on playing this movie.
I could not play it in SNES9X-WIP
I could not play it in full-screen
I could not play it in SNES9X
I could not play it "sound sync" unchecked
I could not play it with sound muted
I could not play it post-rebooted
I could not play it in reverse
I could not play it, spezzafer!
Whoa, I totally Suessed out there. Sorry. What I mean to say is:
I've read the FAQs, the threads, and made all the tweaks that come recommended, but it consistently desynchs right at the first Terrapin fight...Mario sits and thinks for a while and ends up punching them all to death after like five minutes.
Either I need some remedial help with smvs (which I doubt, because I got a few other movies to work), or I need to wait for the official submitation and encoding.
Please help?
