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Very dissapointed in this decision, considering the perfect use of weapons is what makes MM9 one of the most interesting runs to watch, including p auses. But looking forward to WIPs anyways.
I suppose Tornado Man won't be first since you won't be abusing T. Blow nearly as much. Will it be back to Splash to start, or something weird like Magma or Concrete?
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Slowi: Don't forget that the Forest Temple still is going to require Hookshot (a huge detour), plus the 3 minutes for the Odd Mush, plus at least a minute to skip minuet and then backtrack back to trade, plus time to get bombchus, plus time to get hover boots, plus time to actually BA, plus time spent taking longer to kill enemies in Ganon's Tower without sword, etc.
Hover booting to G Castle may take about as long as the bridge cutscene (or be a bit shorter) and skipping the Light Arrow cutscene is really nice, but I'm still skeptical even a working stick on B would make LA B faster.
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In Ocarina of Time, the 11+ minutes of time saved from switching to japanese version makes the video significantly more interesting. The story is broken so badly that the cutscenes don't make sense anyways unless you are already familiar with the game. In terms of entertainment, the "loss" of not having readable text is much less than the gain of the run being faster paced (remember, the J version is projected to cut off around 8-10% of the run).
In a JRPG, many people find the run less entertaining if they don't understand what is going on. In cases like that, it seems to fine to require the U rom.
We already have subjective voting before a TAS gets accepted. We don't need a hard and fast rule about what games are allowed exceptions and what aren't - let people decide if less cutscene is more entertaining than readable text or vice versa.
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I agree, I think a full run would be better, with a note saying that is highly suggested that you skip to X in the video. It just seems kind of silly to skip to whatever level you want.
Even if that isn't done, I'll still yes vote this. Nice job, though I am a bit worried about how you found this game.
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Since the Gold version of this trick only happens after the game forcibly resets, and the game always resets at a certain point, there is no way to get enough pokemon to do the instant victory glitch. Currently, we are planning on using a Geodude - after one fight, it levels up to 100 and gets Rollout (and Earthquake if for some reason it is needed for Red). Rollout also means less manipulation for disobedience.
What would be even nicer is to get a "trainer" - a glitch pokemon that looks just like the trainer using it. We managed to get one in Crystal and it started with extremely high stats and manipulatable attacks (based on the values of other pokemon in party). Also, it had no cry, which saves a bit of time. My guess is to have the lvl 0 clone as the lead in your party, but that is untested.
As far as manipulating attacks goes, Wooper has the same value as the hold item TM Rollout, and a level 12 parabolic growth pokemon starts with their final exp byte the same as the move Rollout. Currently though it seems as if values are flying all over the place, so it is hard to pinpoint exactly what can be manipulated and how.
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Werster had the idea of trying the glitch on Gold to see if we could get different results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev7r9bltuv4
It sure looks a ton cooler, but so far it doesn't seem as powerful (although it is also faster to do). The exact details are still very confusing (what happens seems dependent on the pokemon you have).
But...
...unlike Crystal, this works on console! This means that if we can get the initial corruption to work on emulator, it should be perfectly valid for a TAS. A sub-hour TAS of Gen2 is looking more and more likely.
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Some updates:
1. We have been unable to get this trick to work on console - not because of different results, but because the game simply crashes when you withdraw a 21st pokemon. If there was some way to increase the game's processing power to that of an emulator's, likely the same results would be reachable. We could either allow the glitch anyways (unlikely), or find a way to do it a bit differently, such as the stats check of a bad clone. Or, we could somehow manipulate it to work on console, and thus allow it to be approved for a TAS.
2. We have confirmed there are different types of distortions depending on your party. With two very different parties, we got the exact same results. But with a third party that was mostly similar to one of the others, we got a different distortion that couldn't bypass Snorlax. Furthermore, using the distortion glitch by checking the stats of the bad clone [with 4-7 pokemon], we received other patterns - as of yet, we haven't found one that can board the Magnet Train early.
If I had to take a shot in the dark, I'd say some bit of the distortion glitch has to do with the pokedex. The primary difference between the party that broke into Diglett's Cave and the one that didn't was that one file had caught an Abra, the other did not. There are a ton of possible variables though, so this could be very wrong.
3. Werster is the only one who has managed to get bad clones on emulator (he has done it 3 or 4 times). He used VBA, but not the rerecording version. Even with savestates, it took him hours of attempts to get a bad clone. I don't know if there is a major difference between VBA-rr and VBA or if there is more to getting a bad clone than the exact time you save (other factors such as ammount of pokemon deposited, ammount of tries, etc). I can confirm it works on some emulator, but I guess it is up to the TASers to determine whether it works on a useful emulator.
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Well, here is an excuse for Crystal to get a new run.
Me and wersterlobe have been playing around with this game for the last few days, specifically with the bad clone glitch. We've found a lot of interesting things you can easily do by shuffling hex values around in your party - produce pokemon from items, key items from pokemon, attacks from experience, pokemon from attacks, etc. After finding that Pass and SS Ticket don't work before they are supposed to, we got a bit discouraged.
Then we stumbled upon a few new glitches...funny stuff like sliding around instead of walking or the champ music playing in the day care center. Eventually, we hit 2 jackpot glitches:
Map Distortion Glitch:
1. Get a level 0 bad clone (involves the classic cloning glitch, resetting at the exact right time...there is more on this on plenty of sites).
2. Put 6 pokemon into your party, including the bad clone.
3. Give the bad clone to the day care lady, and immediately take it back out.
4. Put the glitch pokemon that results in the fifth slot of your party.
5. Using the "Move Pokemon" option, add one pokemon from your PC to the top of your party. (It won't show it on the PC, but you should have 7 pokemon in your party)
6. Using the "Withdraw" option (and change box as needed), take out 36 more pokemon, so that your party has a total of 43 pokemon. (The glitch can actually be done w/ 31-32 total, but the next glitch can't).
7. Heal at a pokemon center.
8. When you want to distort the map, open your menu screen, select pokemon, then exit back to the game. When the map is distorted you can walk many places you wouldn't normally be able to.
Some uses of the Map Distortion Glitch that help in a run (all tested):
1. Board the magnet train before fighting Whitney (Kanto early).
2. Get past Snorlax without the EXPN card
3. Get past guards in front of Victory Road (Mt. Silver / Pokemon League with only 2 badges)
4. Avoid rival in Victory Road
Unfortunately, Mt. Silver early isn't as useful as it sounds: you still need to beat the Pokemon League for Red to appear. Furthermore, you can't glitch past the Elite 4 with the Map Distortion Glitch. However...
Instant Victory Glitch:
1. Have 43+ pokemon in your party (see above)
2. Start a battle against any wild pokemon or trainer
3. Check your pokemon, then cancel
4. Select fight
Upon selecting fight the battle will immeidately fade out, with no closing dialogue. This makes it so you can easily breeze through the elite 4, use the MDG to get back to Mt. Silver, and then instant-victory Red. The hall of fame takes a bit longer, but it doesn't crash with this many pokemon (and it only gives details for your top 6).
There is a big problem with crashing during battles or encounters, but a TAS should be able to work around this. I have managed to complete the game w/ 2 badges using save states, so this is more than just theoretically possible.
There are probably ways to further optomize the glitches. Using cloning (good or bad), we can dupe 5 pokemon at a time, so getting 43 won't take that long. This was all discovered without using any TAS tools besides savestates, so with more advanced RAM watches improvements should be found.
Any takers?
Edit2: Ignore the stuff in the old post about badges: we can just teleport back to the pokemon league after the credits, and from there head to Mt. Silver. Should save a lot of walking.
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A lot of what makes MM9 especially interesting is going for game time instead of real time. Just because a run is long doesn't mean it is boring. MegaDestructor9's runs were full of pausing but they got a lot of positive feedback because the pausing allowed for some great strategies.
This game deserves both a real time and game time run (see: Super Metroid). The bigger question is what should be done first, and that should be left to the taser (although my vote is in favor of game time).
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The emulator glitch happens after the save is already complete and you transition to the next screen. I don't think the two are related, although there is a definite possibility. This seems to revolve around save corruption.
If someone has a PS1 and Croc 2, that would be great to test (I always played the game PC and my disc is at home, not in my dorm room). The timing is really easy, I didn't even use frame by frame to find this (just triangle and X at the same time...they can even be slightly off and it will usually still count).
However, still no luck in getting this to work. The corners of this room are sort of glitchy, but I've yet to clip through. I have a feeling some clipping trick with held items (in this case, barrels) may be eventually discovered in this game.
Also, while taking a break from testing this, I found out that (at least on straightaways), the fastest form of movement seems to be long jumping (the double flip move). I also found an OoB really close to the loading zone for the boss of world 1, but Croc falls too fast to get anywhere close. I think if a skip-most-of-world-1 trick was found, it'd have to be clipping directly on top of the grate.
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This topic is officially the Croc / Croc 2 topic.
Anyways, Croc 2 has this weird emulation glitch where you can't do anything after the starting the game. You have to start the game, pause, save and quit, then load your game to continue. Today, I tested to see if psxjin fixed the problem. Unfortunately, it didn't. While trying to find a way to speed up this process, however, I accidently stumbled on the following:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OejbQZPZZs
This is really close to being something really, really big. If other people want to play around with it, that would be cool. I'm going to keep looking myself (and I'm still working on the Croc 1 100% tas).
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Miles wrote:
RingRush wrote:So... Basically, they didn't want people playing the game to use the debug code, but instead of removing it they decided to make the game crash if you attempt it.
What? >_>
A strange solution, I admit. Perhaps it was remembered very late in the game that they left it in and had to make a quick fix. Perhaps they tried to remove it normally, but did it the wrong way and that ended up with a crash. If this wasn't tested (as the ball workaround seems to point to), it is very possible that they simply have holes in the code that they forgot to splice at certain points.
I'm just wondering, if this was intended, why did they let it crash? If they were using this code themselves and chose not to remove it, surely they would have fixed the crash for their own testing. The crash suggests that something changed between when developers were testing and when we are playing, and that is likely an attempted, and failed removal.
Edit: Derakon was posting as I wrote this, and his theory makes sense too. But who knows what the right answer is? Until we have strong evidence this was an intended debug code for player use, we risk rejecting this submission unfairly.
Edit 2: After thinking about it more, two quick points:
- Since debugging is used during testing, it is presumably removed after the testing phase. That means they may never get to test whether their fix works, which could lead to the crash we currently see (some minor omission/missed correction is all that is needed to crash the game).
- If the developers knew about the crash and said to the testers to just use morphball instead, why didn't they at least remove the crash for the final version? Miyamoto has said in an interview once that when designing a game, the main things to fix are bugs that may allow a player to get stuck or crash the game. If there was a known crash, it seems like they would have removed it. Now, they could have just forgot about it, so I think Derakon's theory still holds ground, but it is something to think about.
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Looking at the original topic where this glitch was discovered:
"7. Enter Golden Torizo room in ball form and keep holding buttons.
Of course, you can enter this room while running, but the game will
crash then."
The fact that the game crashes when entering the room normally while holding the buttons may imply that the developers tried to prevent the player from using this trick. The glitch here is entering it in a special way so that it doesn't crash and the code activates like normal. Thus, if seen in this way, it is not a standard debug code and would fall under the Earthbound precedent.
The ambiguity of whether or not the developers intended this leads me to give the benefit of the doubt (especially considering the run is entertaining), and vote yes. Hopefully it should not obsolete the current, faster any%.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjiVIVAd4U
I'm happy with how this is turning out so far, my only concerns are how long it may end up. I'd be interested in hearing from people who thought the any% was "meh" because of too little interaction with the level, if this is more entertaining.
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Actually, hovering is the one trick in this run that I didn't find (along with the way to skip cutscenes as mentioned in the run comments). There is no real person to credit though, as there appear to be many people independently discovering it, to the point where it is even on GameFAQs. I did however find out most every application of it beyond the glaringly obvious, especially combined with the discovery that moving diagonally makes you move faster (allows you to hover over WAY more stuff).
About the suggestion for a no-hover run: I was considering it. However, I definitely plan to do 100% next, and I will utilize the hovering glitch to its fullest in order to pull off some cooler tricks like color-crystal door skips. Plus, I'll needing to pick stuff off the ground more anyways, so there will hopefully be a fair bit more interacting with the level.
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Honestly, I expected more responses like yours, as that was the feeling I was getting after I completed the first island. However I felt overall, the hover added a lot of unique "TAS" feeling in the later levels - complex tricks like the 3-1 key skip, total decimation of areas like skipping the box puzzle in 4-1, and of course, it is faster. I did try to do normal jumps instead of hovering wherever possible without wasting time because I agree, it is nice to interact with the level some more. My personal favorite level in this TAS is Panic at Platform Pete's Lair: I find it best combines hovering to skip a lot while being forced to utilize the platforms around you (and having some cool tricks/playaround opportunities). Tower of Power comes in second as in vertical based levels like this, the game-transcending quality of hovering is drastically reduced.
Thanks for all the positive comments guys, this has gotten a much better reception than I thought it would based on all the hovering.
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Edmund: Where does it not look optimal? As this site shows, no TAS is perfect, but I definitely spent a long time optimizing it.
Some responses to questions that have come up here and other places:
Q: Why don't you just 180 flip in the water sections where you grab a key?
A: If you've played this game, you know how horrible water sections control. This is because the angle chance system is completely different here...it accelerates much slower, but ends up much faster. By starting a turn significantly before I reach the key, I can end up turning around faster than doing a 180.
Q: Why do you slow down at X place?
A: Every example someone has pointed out has the same answer - to hyper turn, which at some points ends up faster in the long run.
Q: Why do you enter doors at such strange angles?
A: Door sections are pretty annoying. Besides the world 2 stuff I mention in the comments, doors have a lot of strange features. In 4-5, for instance, you can crash into the doors if you are moving too fast. In some levels, their hitbox extends quite a bit beyond their image. And finally, when I have to make a sharp turn into a door, I often can't turn any faster.
Q: It looks like running is faster than hovering!
A: It isn't. The main places where I run for extended periods of time (outside of bosses), are because I'm on a (usually slight) downwards slope, which does make running faster than jumping/hovering. Everywhere else, hovering is faster by about 10% over normal running and 5% over running diagonally (hold up + R1/L1)
Q: You are a douchebag for not saving the gobbo in 2-5/4-2.
A: Yes...yes I am.
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So yeah, I'm done. Head on over to the workbench to check it out.
And now on to the next issue - 100%. There are three options for the definition:
1) Must collect all gobbos, color crystals, jigsaw pieces, and complete the secret world.
2) Must collect all gobbos, jigsaws pieces, and complete the secret world.
3) Must collect all jigsaw pieces and complete the secret world.
Right now I'm going to say 1 seems like a really bad definition. Color crystals are never saved anywhere: they are nothing more than keys to open a door to get a gobbo, and keys are definitely not part of the 100% definition.
Now before I discuss 2 and 3, I need to introduce an important glitch - Gobbo duplication.
If you collect a gobbo and then die or hit a loading zone within a second or two, your gobbo counter will get +1 and yet the gobbo will still be there. You can repeat this process as much as you want. This can do some strange things - when you have 10 gobbos, the game will think you have "Croc" Gobbos (A picture of Croc is the number you have). Then you can get Gobbo Gobbos, Crystal Gobbos, A Gobbos, B Gobbos ... Z Gobbos, ! Gobbos, X button on the PS1 controller Gobbos, Key Gobbos, Scenery Tile Gobbos, etc, etc.
Now, secret levels are normally unlocked by getting 6 gobbos in each stage of a cluster of 3 normal stages. The game, however, does not check that you have 6 gobbos in each stage. It simply checks if the sum total of the 3 stages is 18 gobbos - without duplication this implies you got all gobbos in each stage.
Now the problem arises: Gobbo duplication is possible in 16 out of the 24 normal stages in the game (it is fast in about 10 or 11 of them). Gobbo duplication is also possible and fast at at least one point in seven of the eight level clusters (and I'm close to getting it to work in the last).
I'm not sure of the exact route yet, but if allowed, gobbo duplication would probably be used heavily. This also means lots and lots of Gobbo-Die-Repeat, which both A] is boring to watch, and B] removes other interesting sections of the level that would normally be done in 100%. It would also likely mean either life grinding or intentional game overs just to restock on lives.
While a gobbo duplication run may be interesting, it is not at all what people are looking for when they want to see a 100% run of the game. Unlike color crystals, your gobbo total for every level is saved, and 100% is pretty much identified with getting all gobbos. Skipping minigames is definitely a plus of duping, but overall I'd say it is much less entertaining.
It is worth noting that in Ocarina of Time, Golden Skulltula duplication is banned for 100%.
With all this in mind, I would say definition 2 above is the best 100% definition for a TAS run. Possibly, both definition 2 and definition 3 could be legitimate categories - one labeled "Best Ending", one labeled "100%" or "All Gobbos" or something along those lines.
Thoughts?
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I don't think any major skips are going to be found, but here are some comments on them anyways:
1. Any world early would be useful, since that would allow us to skip however many jiggies it takes to enter the world. Even Mumbo's Mountain early would let us skip a time consuming jiggy later on that may save over a minute.
It has been tested with emulator and loading zones for worlds exist even if the doors aren't open. The most likely candidates for early worlds are Clanker's Cavern, Mad Mosnter Mansion, and Rusty Bucket Bay. The Clanker's Cavern loading zone is extremely close to the bars, but no attempts to clip slightly through the bars and trigger it have ever been successful. Mad Monster Mansion actually has a hole in the roof that drops straight to the loading zone, and you can actually reach it if you use the "shock jump anywhere" cheat. Unfortunately, you can't get enough height otherwise (even messing with stuff like bee damage boosts). Rusty Bucket Bay doesn't have a very nice loading zone, but when the room is flooded, there is a much larger area you can potentially break out of bounds and work your way around to it.
2. Note skips are pretty useless, unless you can bypass the 810 door. Bypassing the 810 door would immediately allow us to skip click clock woods (saving 15 jiggies, although losing 11 potential jiggies, of which 2-4 would be skipped anyways). Unfortunately, this game isn't clip-friendly...other than the Rusty Bucket Bay window, you can only clip through extremely thin surfaces that happen to be above you (with Beak Buster).
3. Other ideas for useful sequence breaks: skipping the trivia game (would save a lot of time), reaching Clanker's Cavern jigsaw podium without Shock Spring (would save a little backtracking), skipping water level switch 1 (I assume hitting switch 2 would work to get to CCW/RBB podium), clip into that-one-temple-in-Gobi's Valley (the one that would allow us to do GV w/o beak bomb and thus skip two trips to FP)
I would be interested in seeing an any% run with or without more skips found, since skipping 90 notes, 6 jiggies, and all extra honey combs is actually quite a lot (just think about it, no Eyrie, no christmas tree, no tiptup choir, no mr vile...). Would you be going for real time or game time - if real time, you can skip the first credits by resetting at the right point (I know it works when Bottles appears, it probably works even earlier). However, this puts you back at the start of the tower instead of a the top, so it costs more game time (but saves around 5 minutes real time).
