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Okay, I'm here. I knew about that clipping glitch, but never thought it spawns various gimmicks like yours speedrun. I like it.
Now I have some questions to ask.
1. For me, FBA emulates this game very badly. Although most of gameplay remains uninjured, lots of programmatic glitch occured while watching. There are ugly sound effects which tortured me all the time, music's pace is often faster than it used to be, and some of blackouts during cutscenes are missing. If you can emulate this game well and know about this error, please notify me how to deal with it.
2. I'm not sure whether the world order you've took is the fastest route. Would you tell me about it more?
3. Why didn't you do it with 2 player?
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Hey.... I was actually fanatic of this game in my childhood and kept thinking of watching this game TASed some day!(even had a plan to do this if no one submits it) I'm glad someone remembered this game.
I'll be back when I finish watching this.
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You've got through all this like nothing. Great run! You just won yes vote from me.
By the way, I couldn't find VBA v23 svn270 on here, so I used vba-rerecording-svn232 instead and it syncs perfectly.
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Nach wrote:
Whether its predecessors made it or not is not really relavent. The main question to ask, does this game and this run fix the flaws, or overcome the flaws that made the prequels unacceptable?
Hmm, that makes sense. I'm now reading your previous comments on Kaizo 2 TAS.
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Wow, you guys have broken this game way too far. Much more than I expected. Good work there!
But sadly, I have to mention this, I wonder if this might be qualified to be published(no personal offense, I voted yes on this, too). Do we have to accept TAS of the game which is unofficial, made just 3 months ago, while itspredecessor didn't make it?
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Warepire wrote:
I found the pointer address to the speed-addresses, sadly it's ALSO level-dependent, so the pointer also changes location from level to level, and there doesn't seem to be any pointer to keep track of the pointers. If you want to try to find a pattern in the pointer addresses they are here:
02025BA4, 4bytes, hexadecimal, x-speed-ptr for level 1
02034950, 4bytes, hexadecimal, x-speed-ptr for level 2-1
0201CCD0, 4bytes, hexadecimal, x-speed-ptr for level 2-2
I guess the game loads the level (hit-boxes etc) into RAM before it loads the mechanics (speed values etc), so the size of the level decides how far the speed values etc is offsetted (is that a word?) from the initial address (the address where the game starts writing level specific data in the RAM).
Sad that the location of fixed pointer is still unknown. But that's okay; still I can handle finding addresses because it doesn't take so long.
Warepire wrote:
I also discovered that the speed values are 2byte values, in some levels you may avoid some artifacts in the values if you reduce the watched scope to 2bytes instead of the current 4bytes. It may also make the values easier to find in some levels if you search for 2byte values.
My goodness, why didn't I recheck values within 2bytes? I could have missed something important. Thanks for your support!
By the way, let me talk about the process. I finally found an optimizing strategy in level 3 and finished it just a while ago. I saved about 300 frames than I thought it would take. WIP is here : https://www.dropbox.com/s/uli7hu3dv15f8mm/Finding%20Nemo%20-%20~level3%2C%2020130205.vbm
If memory serves me, there's no specific obstacle till level 6. I'll post my WIP then.
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I've tried your suggestion but got no valid result. They only show meaningless figures when moving to next level. I convert them into hexadecimal number but still have no idea what they mean. I'll just attach my address list when I submit this.
There's actually more puzzling problem than this. I'm now in stuck at level 3. This level has only a single minigame like this:
It seems that the game ends when I travel a certain distance(the number of rings collected does not count, it varies whenever I play), but I can't find RAM addresses which indicate boost counter, which is bad news for making TAS. This gonna take some time....
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Well, I think I can do it by myself. Actually I searched and checked RAM Watches to make sure every boost I made is optimized. There are RAM addresses which stand for X/Y speed and direction. X/Y direction is very useful pointer to make TAS because boosting is only possible when its value is not zero.
Only annoying and weird thing is that these RAM address change when I enter other stage, so I have to re-search again to find them(but it takes just several minutes, so I don't think it bad). GBA uses 4 bytes, doesn't it?
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I was making my first TAS with this game since last week. I expected it would be easy, but the game's physics is complicated than I thought. After lots of trial and error, I found a glitch in first level, which is awesome. So far so good.
Anyway, here's my WIP that completes first two level: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/4298203092772943. Since I don't have Youtube account, I couldn't post the encode. Sorry for inconvenience.
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Finished watching. I see you guys put numerous efforts in here. There were a number of mind-blown tricks; going through levels by unexpected method, abruptly spawning wings from nowhere, fancy performences doing with cape, and lots of other gimmicks. I especially like what you did on Donut Secret House's boss fight: T A S!
I'm happy I just spent an hour wisely. Once again, thanks for making my day.
Oh, and here, take my Yes vote.
P.S.
There's a thing about which I still have no idea. What did you do on Chocolate Island 2 normal exit? Does it help you save time?
P.S. 2
This looks like Ness from Earthbound sneaking to SMW.
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On your last TAS, there was little gameplay. In this TAS, there is no gameplay at all. Nice game-breaking there.
I recommend this screenshot, one of the few actual gameplay.(frame 7148)
Edit: Oh wait, I was comparing to the one that already obsoleted. But still good anyway.
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VanillaCoke wrote:
I found it to be very entertaining, even if it is improvable. Although if you're going to bother improving this run, I'd suggest making it "co-op" for some of the extra shortcuts and optimizations that are only possible with two or more players.
You could have a player throw another player while traveling on a moving ice block and perhaps that'd really get some insane speed. Or maybe a player with a block of ice and on top of that ice is another player holding a block with a player on top. Player 1 throws their block, Player 2 then throws their block a second later, and that would give a stacked speed (So say if the regular block moves at 5, then that block throw from the moving block would move at 10).
You could get the most out of each level having four players, each with a designated power up (one Mini, one Penguin/Ice, one Propellar, and less useful fire). The beauty of a co-op run is the bubble system. More often that not, you won't have to worry about input for the other three players.
Actually, there's a obstacle in making co-op TAS. Even though one player can boost by assistance from others, the game does not end unless all player reach the flag. So merely just sending one doesn't have any merits.
But there are some solution to this problem, too. If the stage consists of several levels, connected with pipes, then you can send one player to enter the pipe, because the game force players to warp it. Also, you can control some players to take death on purpose so that you don't have to wait for them(but losing all power-ups they had).
Anyway, it seems that controlling more then one player on this game is terribly hard.
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Looks like having a same feature with Swordless Link's: starting from a saved state and breaking the game.
Well, I'm now wondering what to say... I'll vote later.
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Well.... if you did triple jump at that point, you could float slightly more; which means there's extra room to jump earlier.
Also, if propelling jump doesn't affect x speed, you can do big jump with triple jump + propeller, while maintaining fast x speed. This may allow Mario to reach the flag much earlier. Did I miss something?
It seems that the game ends when I travel a certain distance(the number of rings collected does not count, it varies whenever I play), but I can't find RAM addresses which indicate boost counter, which is bad news for making TAS. This gonna take some time....
Edit: Oh wait, I was comparing to the one that already obsoleted. But still good anyway.