Posts for Nye

Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
Nice improvements, I had thought about it but it was a good idea to just focus on deflecting the missiles against the helicopter instead of punching it. Unfortunately this where it decided to dysnc for me. However there are quite a few things that I noticed that can be improved or further looked into. I don't know if you know this but with the UPC's I found that you can use a sweep after the fourth cancel to continue moving as normal Joe without stopping, so it would be 4 kicks to cancel the first 4 uppercuts then a sweep followed by another 4 kicks and so on. This is ideal since using Joe's default walking is slow and you want to be uppercutting as much as possible. Another thing I noticed was that you would use Joe's kicks, it's much faster to focus on using Joe's punch, uppercut and the first kick when fighting. With the slot machine it's faster to open the door and while you're waiting for it to open hit the machine and let the coins follow you as you head to the other room. As for why the ending seemed faster, chances are that you skipped the grade from showing which speeds up the transition for some cutscenes.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
I had a look at your WIP using Dolphin and unfortunately had it desync at the fight with the Bianco Billy with the chandelier not killing the bianky on the left, but I watched the youtube video and it looks like you've got a good understanding of the game. I guess since you're still on the first level I'll mention the things that'll be most useful for it. Combo Reset; Joe's punches and kicks consist of a four move combo with the later moves taking more frames to hit an enemy, for example the punch combo goes 8, 9, 12 and then 9 frames. I found that using an uppercut and then a sweep (down + x) followed by either a punch or kick will reset Joe's attack to the first move in the combo. So with the punches you can land the third hit 2 frames earlier by using the first punch, this costs 2 frames since you have to uppercut/sweep but is faster than letting the combo play out. This is also applied when using an uppercut when attacking. The uppercut is the fastest attack taking 7 frames to hit an enemy and also resets Joe's combo but sends the enemy in the air which requires either a punch or kick to prevent them from flying away. Combo Skipping; Similar to the method used above but when you get mach speed you're able to skip a move in the combo, usually used to skip the third punch. I messed around with the uppercut cancelling and found that uppercutting for 6 frames then cancelling it was 1 frames faster when entering the tutorial section but when going over to the first bunch of enemies there was no difference between 5 or 6 frames. The method I used when UPC was to uppercut for 6 frames and then cancel (using the sweep which is slower), so this might be something that needs looking into. That covers some of the movement and fighting mechanics that I've found, now I'll mention some strategies not shown in Tminator's tutorial or Yamato's TAS. After the tutorial you can attack the binaky with two hits and then proceed to spawn the other two. Doing this aside from getting some early damage means that you also don't have to get them dizzy since during the tutorial you already dodged their attack. After taking out the bianco billy you can take out all the binakies with the chandelier, I don't know if this is Kids exclusive but it should work for Adults. Also speaking of chandeliers, during that section where you're using them to take out the enemies I found that jumping after the hit and using UPC while on ground will spawn them faster. The Joker and helicopter fight I can't say much since the differences in modes makes them hard to compare, but you can deflect 3 missiles during the first phase against the copter which is what I used and may be useful during the fight. The cutscene skip with the book looks faster and other than that, that's all for 1-1.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
Hi it's nice to see someone interested in doing a TAS for this game. I've been working on improving the previous Kids mode TAS and am currently at the start of fire Leo. I just found out about an improvement with an earlier boss fight which required redoing a decent amount and now you're method of uppercut canceling means I'd have to redo everything from the start. This would be the third to fourth time having to start from the beginning which isn't ideal. I'm a bit burned out and will probably will put the TAS on hold, but since you're starting out I figure I can share some of my knowledge and potentially help out if it's welcomed.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I mentioned in the submission notes about some ways I tried to manipulate it, such as entering the level later, defeating the boss later and messing around with using different inputs. It's strange that it is only this level where the end varies, all the others are consistent when I've made changes.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I've posted an updated movie and video which incorporates the mentioned boss fight improvements as well as some other ones, most notably better use of the boosters in some situations. The Gillwing fight is 8 frames faster and certainly looks much better and the Reala fight was improved by 306 frames, but loses 45 frames after the fight with the screen taking longer to fade out. The other notable improvement was in Mystic Forest where I decided to use the boosters in Mares 2 and 4, as well as finding an angle that worked for collecting the final cluster at the end of Mare 4. All this made it possible to skip some rings at the beginning since the boosters removed the need to dash, overall the level was improved by roughly 90 frames.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I did the loop like in the video and it saved 2 frames, however I looped the other way going through Gillwing again which saved 8 frames over my original method. Again with this new method I could get an earlier loop to connect but it doesn't trigger the one hit kill. I'll test the Reala fight this weekend.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
I probably could have explained it better in the submission notes but with the loop I delay it a bit for it to hit the tail. You can create a loop several frames earlier but it doesn't hit the boss, so I move in a way which does look a bit slow but was the only way which would work. I spent around half an hour messing around and couldn't find any improvements, I'll try again when I get back from work. Regrading a score based TAS, yeah I had thought about this and think that an A rank or maximum points run would be fun to route and mess around with.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I've just finished my TAS of Nights into Dreams and before I submit it I thought that I should check to see if there are any issues or things that could be changed. For the run I complete both characters three unique stages and then select the final stage. The thing about this is that both characters share the same final stage and I only complete one of them to reach the credits and get that characters ending. The stage is identical between the two, so would it be fine if I just leave things as is to avoid repeating the same stage/boss fight.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I got up to the end of area 2 using the very hard difficulty and the only difference that I noticed is that the robot silhouettes have 100 health, similiar to the PS1 version.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I actually started out with the PS1 version and would say that the difference in difficulty is very minimal. But if you finish all five different paths you can unlock higher difficulties in the options. As for the extra bosses, one of them you have to let the two minute countdown finish to activate that as the final fight. An idea for a PS1 TAS could be to fight the other extra boss and choose the good ending to see the boss/ending.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
Once you deal enough damage during that fight you lose control and it moves you into a position where you unfortunately have to wait awhile until the next phase.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
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I did a quick runthrough and everything seems to be fixed thanks to the new core change. Yeah it looks good so far, I look foward to seeing this and other Saturn TAS's in the future. Also I'm glad people have enjoyed watching this game.
Nye
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Joined: 5/26/2017
Posts: 13
When I started TASing on the Saturnus there were no issues to get it working from memory, so I didn't have to configure or change anything. I also tried Clockwork Knight about a month ago on BizHawk 1.12.2 and no issues with desyncs. The only issues were that the text at the end of the levels were blurry and that the game just stopped working after the first boss. I had thought about going to the star rooms or maybe the drama in the levels, but decided to just stick with doing the levels as fast as possible.