Posts for PotatoHandle

Posted: 6/30/2015 4:59 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Oh wow, I swung by to leech some expertise, I had no idea there was a 100% TAS going on. Gecko, you are a wonderful person and I wish you the best of luck, super looking forward to the submission! \o/ But yes, I came here hoping some incredibly smart people could help me and other challenge runners out. I'm hoping to get some juicy details about Meltigemini's AI script. I'm doing a L1 challenge run and I have a setup which can kill him in three turns (Cheesy damage skills like limit glove/Thievery are also banned), but Viral Smoke happens within the first two turns every time, and I'm pretty sure his AI takes reflect into account, so that he doesn't cast bio when everyone has reflect. But with 6 minutes of cutscenes per attempt (Playing on real hardware. PAL no less. >_>), I've only tried about 25-30 times, and I can't be sure if it's all just bad luck. Is there any set turn order for Meltigemini, or target checking for reflect? Sorry if this is a tad off-topic, but I couldn't think of anywhere else that would have the means to get this info. Thanks a bundle for any replies, and best of luck manipulation for your TAS! \o/
Posted: 2/3/2014 10:09 PM
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PotatoHandle
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Thumbs up for the Princess! Enjoyed the part of the stream I saw, and ~13 seconds is a huge improvement in a ~1 minute run. The run doesn't overstay its welcome, so I found the brutal luck manipulation entertaining, yes vote. \o/
Posted: 11/27/2013 12:04 AM
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PotatoHandle
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Tseralith wrote:
Yeah... no progress, sorry for not mentioning anything the past months. I just lost motivation and couldn't find the will to try again. I'll maybe continue, but won't give any promises. @PotatoHandle: Apologies for the late reply, but I just hit a time where I couldn't bother replying at all. Now that Plasma Storm, I've never really considered it but after trying it out a little I realize it might actually be pretty useful. I haven't tested it in a TAS envoriment yet so I don't know how effective it can be with optimized usage (or if it's actually better than just buying normal front/rear/side weapon). As I haven't tried the Plasma Storm I don't know whether it can be bought the way you mention, but I'll keep it in mind.
I'm also have to apologise for a super-late reply (Over a year, haha), but I have a bit more information for yourself or anyone else who ends up doing a TAS of this game. There are some version differences to take into account. I've spent most of my time playing "Vanilla" Tyrian (With 4 episodes.) but I recently played through Tyrian 2000, which has 5 episodes and a bunch of subtle balance tweaks. In 2k I noticed the following changes to Plasma Storm early in the game: - Plasma Storm now costs 9,500. - It has fewer charges (From 8 down to 6, IIRC). - Plasma Storm no longer cuts through Bosses and large enemies. - You can no longer "Lock in" sidekick upgrades, as I described in my last post. It may still be worth it for Tyrian 2k, but it's not quite the hideously broken sidekick it used to be, so maybe a case can be made for running the vanilla version? Episode 5 is pretty short and a bit... odd anyways, but that's just an opinion. I'm sure you'd get higher destruction% on the vanilla version though.
Posted: 8/27/2013 4:56 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
I was planning on trying my hand at TASing with this game a while ago, but I decided that I probably wouldn't do a good enough job, haha (I was going to push for a 100% kills category for entertainment as well, and wasn't sure how well that would be received.) But even with the small amount that I did, I can see lots of improvements to this run, One of the main things is that moving diagonally slows you down, and there's lots of unnecessary side-to-side movement, etc.
Posted: 8/13/2013 5:17 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Been hoping to see a Monster Land TAS for ages now, I'm quite surprised by the route used though (Judging by the submission comments), I thought it would have been much faster to buy fireballs and maybe flashes on the way, rather than fighting all the optional bosses for weapon upgrades. I haven't tried myself though, so I don't doubt that the route used is faster, it's mentioned in the notes that gauntlet affects the casting of flash; does that mean that some spell's damage is based off your weapon damage? Does this include fireball? I'd love to hear a word or two on any magic testing that was done either way. Looking forward to the encode. \o/
Posted: 4/2/2013 3:11 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
diggidoyo wrote:
Also, if accepted, how could this be improved? Infinity +1? Infinity and beyond?
Multiple games, one input in ∞? >____>
Posted: 4/1/2013 11:43 PM
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PotatoHandle
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
This is a really clever idea for an April submission. The livestream is hilarious, haha. Awesome job adelikat. \o/ BTW, If someone made a small looping .gif of like the first 5 or so cycles starting from the first lives screen, I'd love you forever.
Posted: 8/7/2012 2:06 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
I'm a huge fan of Tyrian, and a TAS of it would be amazing. I tried to do a Real-time run on Lord difficulty a while ago; and I picked up a few early tips which may help with a TAS. Firstly you can buy a Plasma Storm side-weapon before the first mission. It takes 8,000 of your 10,000 starting money, but it just about pays for itself by the end of level 1, because you can kill most of the spikes and the barriers before the boss; and before the spikes, one should hopefully increase your destruction % for the first level overall. It also will kill anything in a wide line this early on in one hit, and it recharges pretty quickly. It's also worth noting that you can't buy a plasma storm or anything even near as good after the first level for quite a while IIRC. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think that if you buy one for example for your left sidekick, it sort-of "locks it in" so that you can buy it for your right sidekick in levels that you normally wouldn't be allowed to. A couple of other tricks I learned of too, there's a point during Asteroid, can't remember if it's 1 or 2, where the scrolling stops and you fight a turret that spews small balls at you. You can shoot the balls for as long as you like and get 100 money per hit. Useful for Real-time, but prolly boring for a TAS, but it may be useful, you never know, mentioned for completeness. Also running the game on the lowest graphics setting removes the "headlight" effect, which may be preferable for a TAS, as to not obscure ~2/3rds of the screen to the viewer. Graphical perdiness lost by doing this is layered and transparent clouds and explosions, doesn't make the game look horrible by any means, but it may break the rules. And I think max Destruction % would be an awesome goal, for the record. If the worry is about "cookie-cutter" loadouts, by about half-way through the game for most levels it should be trivial for a TAS to get 100% with sub-optimal weapons on some levels, so the runner can vary things a bit as they will, I don't think there should be any rules holding them back other than their creativity.
Posted: 2/22/2012 5:53 AM
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PotatoHandle
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Childhood ruined? Check. Within one frame of death several times? Check. Rode the awesome red bouncy dudes? Check. Awesome TAS!
Posted: 1/4/2012 12:35 AM
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PotatoHandle
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
DarkKobold wrote:
PotatoHandle wrote:
What's wrong with SDA's method of differentiating these kinds of runs? The term "(With large skip glitches)" is appended to their speedrun titles with, well, with large skip glitches.
That is sort of the same as "glitched", just slightly more verbose. I fail to see how adding 3 words makes it magically better. I forgot who mentioned it, but we do need to add "glitched" to our glossary, to explain it.
Wasn't expecting a reply from my favourite TASer, big fan, haha. There was a lot of discussion over the use of "glitched" being too general, as nearly every TAS uses a glitch somewhere, which is why I thought a slightly more specific version might've made things a bit more clear; however, a glossary entry defining the term in a TAS context could work just as well.
Posted: 1/3/2012 9:54 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Maybe a slight redesign (Easier said than done, I know.) would be appropriate then? Give each game a single entry on the console's page, with a priority on speedrunning but would have a "View other categories" link or something similar for alternate runs, walkathons, PAL roms, warpless, playarounds, etc, etc. You could decide which run gets main page exposure by either drawing a hard line at fastest completion, or you could use the community ratings to choose the community's favourite of the categories, which would usually give you the most impressive and/or glitchiest run available. If you draw a hard line, then stuff like SMW where the desire for a more full run is likely, the 2-minute run would take precedence, but you could easily link to the 10-minute run in the description for added exposure, like I've seen done before to great effect; I use those links all the time. While all this wouldn't solve the problem per se, it would certainly lessen the blow a bit for those who make brilliant runs like this that many people will want to see; only to have it potentially rejected, or runs like chrono trigger, and still allow viewers such as myself access to all our beloved categories. It would also open up the doors a bit for people to add more creative categories, as they wouldn't be cluttering up the game page anymore. And would still be moderated by the community to filter out the garbage. Just some thoughts, hopefully there's at least something in there that hasn't been said yet, haha.
Posted: 1/3/2012 6:10 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
I'm way late to the party here, I'm sure everything's been discussed to death already, but I'll just throw this out there anyways just in case. What's wrong with SDA's method of differentiating these kinds of runs? The term "(With large skip glitches)" is appended to their speedrun titles with, well, with large skip glitches. It seems specific enough to draw a reasonably hard line between runs, but vague enough to include most runs of this kind. And as for categories, just speaking as a lay-person who generally just watches these TASs, I think the current system of new categories being decided by the community is best. New categories are great, especially for popular games, but need to be different/interesting enough to please the community at large.
Posted: 9/23/2011 1:00 AM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Don't worry about it, It's all yours; I needed a reference point before I got started since this was my first TAS, but help seems to be hard to come by here. So I didn't make it past the first 500 frames unfortunately, because I was constantly worried that I was doing something wrong and had no way to check; thus I made this thread. I'll be looking forward to your run though!
Posted: 5/17/2011 11:30 AM
Post subject: Re: The Ninja - SMS: First-time TASer, looking for info.
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Warp wrote:
PotatoHandle wrote:
The Ninja
I vote no. The run is clearly unoptimized and there are many places which could have been done significantly faster. (Just kidding, of course. :P )
Let's hope you're not saying the same thing when the run's done, haha.
Posted: 5/17/2011 4:37 AM
Post subject: The Ninja - SMS: First-time TASer, looking for info.
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Avast fellas, I'm looking at starting my first TAS, I chose The Ninja as my first game because it's a great game, pretty simple and short, playing it in real-time is really difficult, so it should make for an entertaining run, there's no existing run of it, and I've played it quite a lot it when I was younger. I haven't done much work on it yet, I'm sorta hoping to get a point of comparison first before I get too far. Does anyone feel like TASing the first 500 frames or so? (Getting through the first gate ~6 seconds in would be plenty.) Just so I have an idea of how far along I should be, and where/when frames are dropped from sideways movement, etc. I was hoping to try for as many kills as as possible on the run too, but movement seems to behave strangely when shooting at angles, When moving straight up, you move at 1 pixel per frame, so that was an easy benchmark to set myself to, While moving up/left or up/right this slows down to about 4 pixels (Of upward movement) per 5 frames. And for some reason, whichever enemy I killed 3rd with a diagonal shot would cause me to lose a frame of upward movement, I tried killing them in different orders and at different times, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. If I have to run through nearly the whole game only firing up and skipping most enemies, it'd make for a pretty boring watch, nor would I enjoy making it half as much, so is it viable for me to make my first run a "100% kill" run? Or should I try to keep it as a standard speedrun? Thankee for any help!
Posted: 7/30/2010 11:34 PM
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PotatoHandle
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Joined: 7/30/2010
Posts: 16
Heh, it's good to see my original slack speed run finally inspired a proper TAS, just like I hoped it would. Nitrogenesis did a good job of optimizing my run, but you guys fixed up a lot of my larger mistakes on top of optimizing the stuff I got right. Awesome stuff, especially with the new optimizations. I always wondered if you could skip that shop in level 4. And that level 3 warp was much cooler-looking than mine. >_> Was there any luck manipulation to make the dynamite spawn in the right places in world 5? I noticed they jumped around a bit in my run when I reloaded the level. Do you guys mind if I put a link and annotation to this run's page on my original vid?