The game resource page mentions that you can form a keyhole using the stunned sprite glitch. I know https://www.youtube.com/user/SomeGuy712x uses this a lot for his challenge runs like 'level X with no A button', but are there any places in the game where this was not quite fast enough? Same for the stunned sprite glitch with Pokey
I've consumed huge amounts of super mario world glitch videos, TASes, romhack playthroughs and raocow's let's plays and I still managed to get surprised and impressed. That means yes vote :D
Do we have a rough estimate on ETA for this run? I've been waiting so eagerly for this; it'll undoubtedly be the most incredible run this site has ever produced.
Some rhythm games would be interesting to TAS, where either the scoring is non-trivial (Rock Band Blitz) or you can fail or remix the song in interesting ways (IIDX's keysounding)
In that case, would it be feasible to combine all three goals?
Have a single movie that first beats the game as quickly as possible using warps, thus unlocking the Yoshi Challenge. Then go through all 20 stages, getting all A-Coins and Yoshi Eggs. This would mean that 8 stages would be played twice in the run.
The movie goal could still be nicely summarized as "Gets all A-Coins and Yoshi Eggs as fast as possible (from blank save data)", since you need to first beat the game as fast as possible in order to get all Yoshi Eggs as fast as possible.
Combining the second two goals with the first doesn't create any interesting routing decisions, since you ignore A-coins until the second run through. If they're separate they may as well be separate TASes so they're easier to update.
I could see it being done, if Project64 would be integrated into Bizhawk. But right now, with an N64 emulator that is worse than the GC and Wii emulator, I'm with Grunz.
I think for a run of such ridiculous complexity to route and optimize, an exception should be made to the 'TASes should be PERFECT' rule and it should merely be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly awesome to watch. :D
I'm looking forward to a Tomba 2 TAS. A few questions:
1) Do illegal d-pad combinations (u+d, l+r, u+d+l and so on) do anything interesting? Check in every 'movement state', menu and so on.
2) Have you found the memory addresses for x/y speed and position? In some games running with the directional button held down is not the fastest way to move under TAS conditions, due to oscillating speeds you can freeze (super mario world) or acceleration/top speed being different in the air or slopes or land.
1) Do you mean if I do an illegal d-pad combination while turning at an intersection or opening the menu, it may cause the action to go faster? I hardly know anything about TASing so I could be wrong.
I mean things like what you can do in Link to the Past. If you use items with illegal d-pad combinations then the game gets confused and writes absurd values for position and velocity:
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/GBx/LinksAwakening.html#UpDownLeftRightGlitches
So every 'different way' the game can use the value of which d-pad buttons are pushed own should be tested with illegal combinations to see if glitches occur. It's not the only way to find glitches, but a common one.
2) You lost me here lol. I understand what you mean by different acceleration speeds in the air and ground. I still have to test whether I accelerate at different speeds on the ground and in the air, but so far it seems like it's the same. I do not understand what you mean by "memory addresses for x/y speed and position."
Almost every game has a set of memory addresses, the values of which indicate the player character's x position, y position, x speed and y speed (x being horizontal, y being vertical). For example, Super Mario Bros: http://tasvideos.org/Addresses-11.html
To find such a memory address, in most emulators with memory watch there is a feature that lets you do the following:
Search memory
Move right
Ssearch memory for all values that increased since the last check, narrow possibilities
Move left
Search memory for all values that decreased since the last check, narrow possibilities
And by doing this over and over again the program narrows down all values that could be x position - until you have only one. Then you can do the same for y position, x velocity, y velocity and whatever else you can think of measuring.
And now, you can verify that methods of movement are as fast/as slow as you think they are :)
I'm looking forward to a Tomba 2 TAS. A few questions:
1) Do illegal d-pad combinations (u+d, l+r, u+d+l and so on) do anything interesting? Check in every 'movement state', menu and so on.
2) Have you found the memory addresses for x/y speed and position? In some games running with the directional button held down is not the fastest way to move under TAS conditions, due to oscillating speeds you can freeze (super mario world) or acceleration/top speed being different in the air or slopes or land.
(Is it standard to notate 1 frame in a 20 fps game as 3 frames?)
I think it is. Mupen only counts in 60 frames per second while TASing those games. There's also a lot of lag in some places, so counting that way is a lot easier to understand.
Ah, I see - a few of the splits were not multiples of 3 frames. That is due to lag?
Game absolutely obliterated and squeezed for every precious frame - every superslide, every damage boost, every unbelievable clip, plus Extreme Cucco Herding 2013 (for PC and XBox 360). I was surprised so many times in a great way. Yes.
(Is it standard to notate 1 frame in a 20 fps game as 3 frames?)
A few ideas that aren't ideal solutions:
-Running the game inside a virtual machine
-Running the game on an old machine or laptop (laptops in particular let you adjust the CPU speed, or I think you can underclock desktop PCs in the bios settings too?)
-Running the game alongside a program, such as Cpukiller, which tries to throttle CPU (I remember using this to cheat at Neopets flash games back in the day, not sure if it still works well)
If the game runs at a consistent frame rate you could make macros and scripts to automate input for you. Then it would be a 'script-assisted speedrun' like some of the Half Life runs.
The old Chrono Trigger glitched TAS resets during save, corrupts the universe and destroys all gaming sanity in order to win as fast as possible.
http://tasvideos.org/1285M.htmlLink to video
Definitely a fav of mine, much flashier than the faster but not as glitchy movie that obsoleted it :)
