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Stage 7 is the most frustrating stage to slide route because the enemies are placed in exactly the right way to be inconvenient to optimal damage boosting. I tried about 10 different ways of going through (on top of the routes taken in the previous runs, of course) and only two of them managed to make it through without dying right at the end. The one in the submission ends up duck-jumping over the final log, so we're going into the auto-walking section 1 subspeed increment slower than we would if we had slid in, but at most this only loses a frame or two, and taking damage later to be able to slide into the cutscene loses much more time than this (my best attempt was 10 frames slower, even with sliding at the end).
Also, to clarify more on the input file time and the inability to end input early in this run: Hell Chaos decided it wasn't going to spawn on the optimal side of the screen for the 4th and final cycles. Our way of dealing damage every cycle is starting with a slide then following with two or three punches or kicks, as it minimizes the time spent between attacks. Two punches/kicks before sliding would lead to a time loss, as we can't kick twice in the air and land into a slide, and even if we could it wouldn't save any time anyway. Since we deal 9 damage in the first cycle and Hell Chaos has 40 HP, we only need to deal 7 damage in the final cycle, meaning we can land a kick and immediately input a slide afterward, carrying Rick through and killing the boss with no further input.
The problem is that you don't lose control, and Rick isn't invulnerable once the boss dies, and those falling rocks can and absolutely did hit and kill Rick when I tried doing this in this run. Hell Chaos being on the right means the rock placement is different, making it actually impossible to end input early since the slide would always carry Rick to the right side of the screen, where rocks fall. The place where we start the slide in the submission is actually still too far to the right for it to work, which is already way too far to the left to deliver the first hit.
We think the spawn side is RNG-dependent (I was completely unable to find a way to manipulate it either within or before the fight), and that's a problem because the only way we (okay, EZGames) found to manipulate RNG is the Necromancer room all the way back in Stage 5, and we got SUPER lucky with the spawn patterns in Stage 6 allowing for a perfect boss fight. Going back to change the RNG would change the spawn patterns in Stage 6 and likely lose us that perfect fight. Since the only side effect of the spawn side is being unable to end input early, we elected to just take the hit (not literally, we would've died) as the gameplay improvement is the same either way.
Link to video
Oh, and, uh, yeah, it does restart the level if you die after killing the boss.
EDIT: Second post has been updated with a comparison encode, which shows off more accurately that the input time is purely an aesthetic loss and not a gameplay loss.
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Link to video
Comparison encode is here, courtesy of EZGames! This is using the TurboNyma resync of the published run, so the final improvement is shown as -155. Plus, it's video proof that the loss in input time isn't a loss of gameplay time. I like video proof. It really helps arguments.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
For these reasons, I'd like to pick this chance to reiterate my proposal: since the GBinGBC mode may make some games potentially uglier to look than GB, I think it should be allowed only for Moons & Stars.
That's even more arbitrary than banning GB-in-GBC outright. It sets a really weird precedent where you're essentially telling people that the deck is stacked against them. "These runs could be ugly and bad to look at, so they'll be less entertaining to watch. Anyway, you have to make it to Moons, the tier where runs are required to meet a minimum level of entertainment. Good luck!"
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One day, I decided to see if the 1-1 in the old all items TAS was optimal, with no expectation to even save a frame over it considering that the old TAS was made by Mars608 and HappyLee. However, I was actually able to save 9 frames. Although it didn’t save a framerule, this motivated me to make a new all items TAS.
I'm seriously impressed by this line. 1-1 being 9 frames "suboptimal" is a huge trap in the SMB TASes, I believe it's used for entertainment purposes due to the framerule and it applies to more TASes than just All Items, so actually seeing it motivate someone to make a legitimate improvement as opposed to its usual luring a new TASer into a false sense of security is really astonishing.
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Whatever it is, I don't think it can be avoided in BizHawk. I'd rather just move past it for now and come back later if necessary. If I'm losing time to emulation differences, I'm glad it's only going to be two frames.
Xipo, do you still have any of your old work on this game? I've been referring to your cancelled submission pretty heavily, but I know you've done a significant amount of work since then. Any more information you can provide would be wonderful.
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It's Lovecraft-inspired. You're not supposed to be able to comprehend it. I can't tell if this is a joke or not.
Anyway, hi, it's me, a Judge. Voting looks positive but actual posting has been a bit less so. Anyone else wanna chime in on entertainment value? Personally, this is one of those movies that hits the exact right part of my brain that's entertained by this sort of ridiculousness. One of those movies where, much like an F-Zero TAS, it gets infinitely more enjoyable if you just imagine the player character screaming every time they start moving. Definitely borderline, though, so more opinions would be much appreciated!
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66784147849212248
Trying to follow the cancelled submission for a test run, but the game suddenly decided it won't let me throw fire wheels the frame after jumping. I have no idea what's going on: It works outside of the boss, it works fine in the cancelled submission, but it doesn't work for me. It's not subpixels, they're near-identical to the submission save for X subpixel, and poking that to be the same doesn't change anything. I don't think it's an emulation difference because doing this works elsewhere in the game, it's just not working in the specific instance where I need it.
Either I somehow get this to work not knowing where the hell to begin, or I take a forced two frame loss and wonder where my life went wrong.
EDIT: Well not only did I upload the wrong branch, but the fix that was found only works on the wrong branch and doesn't work at all on the good branch.
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I imagine the desync issues come from how the script and TAStudio interact, since the script itself savestates, emulates two invisible frames ahead and then loadstates the original frame. It would likely desync in the same way if you rewind during traditional TASing since that also throws out errors/crashes.
...Now comes the time where I have to clarify that when I asked how feasible it was to do this, what I meant was "How bad should I feel when asking someone with actual coding knowledge to do it for me?" because I sure as hell don't know what I'm doing. If it's a huge amount of trouble, I can work around it (traditional TASing isn't that bad and is stable with the script, though I'm not confident in my ability to optimize that way), but if it's something that someone can knock out real easily then I figured it's worth embarrassing myself by begging.
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Reviving this thread in the only way Sonic fans know: Disappointingly, after years of inactivity.
How feasible would it be to implement the camhack directly into BizHawk like the oldschool camhack VBA? The Lua script works nicely and all, but it really, really doesn't get along with TAStudio whatsoever (major desync issues when it isn't just outright throwing up error messages or crashing BH altogether). I have no idea how difficult these camhack builds are to create, so apologies if I'm requesting something ridiculous here.
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For future reference, Super Mario Bros is by far the hardest game to get published on this site. We've had 225 submissions that related to SMB1 in some way, at this point we've seen almost everything the game has to offer. It would almost certainly an improvement of one of the already published categories, and... Well, good luck on that, I'd wager they're the closest things we have to perfect TASes.
Feel free to post your works to Userfiles, share them on our Discord server and/or post them in the game thread on the forums. Never feel pressured to submit, by the way. If you're unsure, ask the community first. Submissions (and only submissions) are held to extremely high standards, most notably there can't be any noticeable mistakes or obvious improvements, so it's much better to hold off on submitting until you are absolutely certain you can't improve on it any more.
New branches are also held to scrutiny, requiring positive audience feedback and unique content in order to be published alongside other runs. This category doesn't really qualify as unique content to me: I see how not being able to press left restricts a normal warps route, but in practice it's just a warpless run without 1-3 to 4-4 included. Plus, not being able to press left just makes it a lot slower and more boring in general. No flagpole glitches, no fun playaround stuff like in the other published runs, and simple things like collecting a mushroom or fire flower just looks awkward and slow even when optimized. I don't see this being a publishable category at all.
My recommendation here is to cancel this run, but stick around the community and learn from people. Feel free to keep working on an improvement, of course, and definitely show it off somewhere when you're done. Just remember that submitting it would just subject it to the same scrutiny this one is getting, and SMB1 is far and away the most heavily scrutinized game on TASvideos.
EDIT:
xxezrabxxx wrote:
While this branch would be publishable itself,
I appreciate you're trying to help out, but please leave things like this to the Judges, thank you.
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I asked this already in Discord but figured I'd ask again in a place I can easily check: I'm planning on running the next DTC. What would be a good general timeframe for everyone? June came up as an option for those who tend to be busy with school over the rest of the year, but I was also thinking of running it over December/January to take advantage of the holidays, which will also be appropriate when I announce that everyone's working in Hourglass to improve Hyper Princess Pitch.
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InfamousKnight wrote:
I'm convinced this whole thing is a big hoax to take down Trump.
COVID killed my uncle. I was the last person to see him alive and the first to see him dead. My family still hasn't recovered from it and I don't think we ever will.
Look me dead in the eyes and say it's a hoax again. I dare you.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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It's been quite a while since the published run, and in my continuous effort to challenge myself with each new TAS I make, I think I'm going to start looking into this. This post says there's at least 34 frames to save over the published run, so that's my goal, though there's also mention of potential improvements being closer to 40+ frames.
The problem is... I have no idea where these improvements are, apart from the 16 frames from Xipo's cancelled submission. I suppose I have to rediscover them, and I'll do that if I have to, but I'm reviving this thread in hopes that Xipo or someone else more familiar with the game/series is able to provide some insight on what can be improved. Basically, save me the trouble of going through the actually difficult work, thanks in advance. If someone could come to my house and move my hands to paint input in TAStudio, that'd be great, too.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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