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Here is a quick TAS that aims to beat the Ocean Palace Lavos, a much harder version of the boss you are normally supposed to lose to, as fast as possible in glitchless conditions and without NewGame+. Game clock time is 3 hours and 29 minutes at L.Core's defeat, which is closer than I expected to the glitchless any% variations:
Link to video
PS:
It's a direct continuation from the first Zeal Palace visit of this any% run:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwbZ2q6agbo
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
Saturn wrote:
Eventually it might become possible (if it isn't already) to skip all bosses and enter Tourian right away instead of just Norfair backwards, and we would have another „notable improvement“ of the so called NMG category if this trend continues.
Obviously I was referring to the new X-Ray method in combination with SpeedBooster shown here. In the end result it's just a much faster version of the old X-Ray climb, which was considered a major glitch as well.
Using major glitches (even in restricted form) in a no major glitch category doesn't make sense by definition.
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Nice and well optimized run that demonstrates some of the latest tricks pretty well.
The glitches used here are acceptable I guess, except the X-Ray ones, which are clearly major, as the screwed up graphics also indicate. Although cool to see as a demonstration, zipping to pretty much any destination with grey doors and solid blocks no longer being a factor, seems just too much to be called a „no major glitches“ run. Eventually it might become possible (if it isn't already) to skip all bosses and enter Tourian right away instead of just Norfair backwards, and we would have another „notable improvement“ of the so called NMG category if this trend continues.
Also I don't think it should obsolete the RBO TAS solely based on the alleged similarity suggested by a few here. There is no suitless heat-run through entire Norfair, or Crystal Flash required to survive, which are one of its main exclusive features not present in any other run. The only similarity is Maridia without GravitySuit, and even there it's vastly different due to the glitchy mess involved, while throwing some of the more tricky strategies out the window (e.g. Draygon).
Either way, voting yes for the solid general improvement, which even without the X-Ray glitches would probably reach a 0:21 IGT, but IMO it's not suitable for the no major glitches category as long as they are included.
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Warp wrote:
By the way, how did you find these?
By trial and error until something works against this specific opponent. It's the same approach as saving frames by trying different moves in any other game.
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An interesting idea to go for the quickest checkmate specially on the hardest difficulty. This provides a decent challenge, since on that level Chessmaster shouldn't fall into obvious traps such as the Scholar's or Fool's Mate quickly, and thus needing a more creative approach.
Using a strong engine for assistance is certainly helpful to reach that goal, as Warp already demonstrated with those relatively short games, but picking sharp lines that exploit Chessmaster's weaknesses, even if not recommended by the engine as the best continuation at first, is IMO the most important thing.
Anyway, here's my take on it after experimenting around with various openings (Chessmaster on hardest difficulty as black with opening book enabled):
Mate in 19, King's Gambit
1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. d4 g4 5. Bc4 gxf3 6. Qxf3 Nc6 7. Bxf4 Bg7 8. Nc3 Nxd4 9. Bxf7+ Kxf7 10. Qh5+ Ke7 11. Nd5+ Kf8 12. O-O Nf6 13. Bh6 Kg8 14. Rxf6 Ne2+ 15. Kh1 Qf8 16. Rxf8+ Kxf8 17. Rf1+ Nf4 18. Rxf4+ Kg8 19. Ne7# 1-0
Mate in 17, Caro-Kann Defense
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 e5 5. Nf3 exd4 6. Bc4 b5 7. Bxf7+ Kxf7 8. Ne5+ Ke7 9. Bg5+ Nf6 10. Qf3 Ke6 11. O-O-O Bb7 12. g4 c5 13. Qf5+ Kd5 14. Nd7+ Kc4 15. Nd2+ Kb4 16. Qd3 Nbxd7 17. Qa3# 1-0
That line already looked to be hard, if not impossible to beat due to how well everything worked out, but surprisingly enough, I got one more major improvement in with my final attempt:
Mate in 12 on hardest difficulty
CM's total thinking time is 38 minutes and 11 seconds, so these delays are sped up in the video to make it less boring.
This line is also reproducible on NES's version of Chessmaster at max difficulty. (in fact, both versions seem to generally play very similar)
Looks like it might well be the limit now on this level, but of course it's impossible to know for sure.
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Thanks hero.
Regarding a TAS, I doubt it would improve this by more than ~10-15 minutes to make a significant difference, so not interested at the moment.
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Here is an unassisted glitchless any% run, reviving the classic "All Characters" route.
With various new strategies, a game clock completion time of 3 hours and 27 minutes is reached at Lavos' defeat, which seems to make it about as fast as the pure glitchless any% route (Lavos after first 12000BC visit), but with no leveling-up requirement at all on the pro side, other than briefly in Tyrano Lair.
Done in 26 segments joined together.
Link to video
Enjoy!
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Sniq wrote:
If you disallow this for IGT TAS, you also disallow gravity statue skip and 13% maridian mountain reserve spark strat.
I meant only for the case of purposefully abusing it with continuous pausing. If a trick like those just happens to have it involved briefly, that should be fine in an ingame run as well. And as Taco said, for a realtime run it doesn't matter anyway due to it using a different timer.
Taco wrote:
The real problem with Saturn's argument, the more I think about it, is that he's unable to justify IGT by itself as an interesting goal choice. By resorting to "it has a different route" or "it uses different strats" -- things that are true just by coincidence
Yes, the latter may be true if the new route proves to be superior to what we currently have. Though the benefits of a more accurate and independent timer and higher move precision are still there and apply to any run regardless of route and item choice.
Sniq wrote:
Just to clarify, the time it takes for door to center from offcenter isnt lag.
Agreed, but screen changes themself are, as well as cases that have a lot of action within rooms. And those can vary between emulators or eventually their future updates.
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The actual gains from excessive pausing are very small, probably not more than ~5 IG seconds over an entire run, but on cost of several RT minutes or possibly hours, easily making it a reasonable entertainment tradeoff.
The 0 HP timer stopping glitch shouldn't be taken into account IMO, as it's simply a form of cheating that has nothing to do with optimization, since one could delay the run infinitely in most places without affecting the timer. It doesn't make sense nor is it helpful to accurately measure how fast the game can be beaten with perfect play and no move-slowdowns for arbitrary lag reduction.
Warp wrote:
IGT with tradeoffs seems like a rather nonsensical category.
There is only one tradeoff, that being pause abuse. It's as sensical as in any other category from the objective point of view.
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Sniq wrote:
Emulator: lsnes / bizhawk run at correct 60.098... fps and is almost cycle accurate compared to real console. Snes9x runs at incorrect 59.94 fps and is overall very poor emulator.
"Almost" is still not 100% accurate, as is the case with ingame time.
Sniq wrote:
Ingame-oriented run's point isn't to save IGT? What? All currently published tases couldve used pausing much more, whether it wasnt even the 00 energy abuse, but for other things. If you're going for IGT then whats the point of not optimizing it fully?
You do optimize it fully, just without excessive pause-abuse, as that goes against the nature of a speedrun and makes it unwatchable. It's about entertainment as well, and tradeoffs happen all the time for it in almost any TAS.
Regarding faster boss fights, I was referring to the current any% TASes. You don't get Plasma in the realtime one, but it makes the MotherBrain fight considerably faster.
As for the rest, Taco summed it up well.
Taco wrote:
It's worth noting that the route used by this run is known to be improvable. The KRDP route, to the best of my knowledge, would have the exact same major item collection and boss order for an IGT or RT category, or underflow/no underflow (except that underflow would skip plasma in both cases). It's that good. So while what you said is correct in general, it will no longer apply to vanilla any% if that run is ever made, as it completely destroys every other possible route regardless of goal choice.
That needs to be proven first. If it's true, cool, otherwise it's just an assumption.
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This run certainly can't be compared to ACE, but it is similar to the GT-Code in its approach. The only difference is that the setup takes more time to execute, and the item gain is not as significant.
Ingame time has its benefits, especially for TASes where limits can be reached and emulators can differ:
* more precise overall movement
* greater mobility, more variety, faster boss fights (in legit conditions for any%)
* universal timing independent of emulator choice (in 10 years there might be an even more accurate emulator developed, after which all actual realtime-runs could be off again)
Stopping the timer with the well known pause-abuse trick (or other nonsense resulting from it) was never the point of an ingame-oriented run. It is to provide maximal pace by focusing on gameplay quality in normal conditions rather than some weird moves to lower emulator-dependent lag, using an as accurate and reliable timer as possible. Obviously lowering realtime is still a secondary goal to avoid pace interruptions, as is in most TASes.
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Nice and thoroughly optimized run, with a couple of cool new strategies.
Also a clever Maridia approach which seems perfect for this runs conditions to save important ammo for Draygon, though I doubt it would be of use in runs that have Gravity Suit + SpeedBooster, mainly due to the missing pre-Draygon shinespark.
All in all this is a yes vote for excellent work on a run that demonstrates the ammo-glitch and its unique route very well. It shouldn't be compared to traditional any% runs though IMO, due to getting items out of nowhere similarly like in a GT-Code run, which isn't really legit and what the classic any% category is all about in SM.
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Amazing run with many new tricks. It's cool that the low% could be further reduced in legit conditions. Also nice realtime optimization, even though wasting PBs and energy solely for lag reduction displays yet another side effect of the RT-category.
Regarding the 65000+ ammo glitch, right decision to not use it IMO, as that makes further boss fights pretty cheap while fooling the percentage to not count it at the same time. A low% isn't about speed in first place after all, but to demonstrate the struggle to get through the game with minimal amount of items, and the ammo glitch certainly kills that effect.
There is also a more than one second improvement possible in this route: In the Green Brinstar elevator room, it's faster to refill the 5 Missiles back immediately after opening the red door and go straight to the Reserve Tank instead of the double detour to the Supers and back. Other than that it's a well researched and optimized TAS, with the unique Maridia stuff surely being one of the highlights. Yes vote.
Aran Jaeger wrote:
There are a bunch of indicators from Saturn's TASes (including the Grandprix 1&2 hack TASes) that lead to think that he probably knew about the perfect soft unmorph's application on slopes long ago, since apparently he used it at some points, but didn't use it everywhere
Well noticed. It was to expect that if the effect works on threadmills, it should also work on slopes, and it saved a couple of frames in both GrandPrix TASes which had plenty of them due to it's unusual design. I only used it where it was natural to do, as otherwise the setup would look strange and cost additional time that wouldn't make it of benefit in the original game in most cases. Turns out the diagonal Crateria room is more or less the only noticeable one for ingame-time runs (mainly due to its circumstances of having to wait for the bomb anyway), so it's not that big of a deal.
Reeve wrote:
I'll not spoil it, but just from Norfair Elevator to Draygon, in terms of in-game, comparing to Saturn's RBO, there are over 1min improvements found.
Even Grapple saved almost a half minute in Mt. Doom alone, so adding several flashsuit sparks in suitless underwater conditions certainly makes that an expectable gain.
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fsvgm777 wrote:
Bullshit. All PAL releases of Terranigma run 16.7% slower than the NTSC-J release (known as Tenchi Souzou). It's already noticeable if you just let the intro sequence play.
To top it all off, the PAL releases have an unskippable "Nintendo Presents" screen that's not present in the NTSC-J release.
Bottom line: Stop with your uninformed assumption there's no difference between NTSC and PAL, when there's a noticeable one.
You misunderstood. It's obvious that PAL runs slower with 50fps instead of NTSC's 60fps, but the actions that happen in this game between each frame are identical regardless of the version, since there is no speed adjustment in the PAL version. For example if you need 100 frames to run across a certain room on NTSC, you will also require the exact same amount on PAL. The seconds will differ with NTSC being faster, the frames not. That's why a pure frame comparison is possible between NTSC and PAL as long as text differences and lag are not involved.
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arandomgameTASer:
You made your points, I made mine. Time to move on.
Panda:
It was a general statement, no need to take offense.
Samsara wrote:
You stole information from this thread and passed it off as your own work. It's only fair that you give us the input file that we made possible.
An outdated WIP till Tower 3 and a handful of single trick-demos (that are basic stuff to find for a TASer with some general knowledge) doesn't make you an entire, almost 4 hour long run that consists of 99% never before TASed situations.
Regarding timing, there should be no difference between NTSC and PAL when comparing frames (other than at text scenes) if done within rooms only, as long as they don't lag. Screen changes should be avoided for previously mentioned reasons.
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As said before, the run is not suitable for this site in its current state, so there is no need for an input file when a video exists that shows everything in detail. Surely having it just to make use of the copy-paste function is alot easier and faster than optimizing something on your own, but at the same time it's also lame and kills the uniqueness of a TAS.
TheAngryPanda wrote:
The reason yours would be nice is because it's completed, it's something tangible that I can say "On this map, I'm 5 frames behind, what does he does that I don't and how can I learn to fix this in the future maps." Once that's done, I can further compare and challenge myself based upon your pathing and other decisions.
In case you missed it, there's a full 50 fps HQ video file available that can be played back on various media players on a frame by frame level, which allows an exact comparison for each room just as well when aiming for realtime.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Saturn has decided that he doesn't want to work with TASVideos because we didn't publish one of his Super Metroid runs once. So he's made it a goal to troll us.
That's not the case. Jumping to quick conclusions isn't always a good choice.
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
Maybe so we can figure out how you did certain tricks without reverse-engineering it from a two and a half year old video? Seems pretty obvious to me why we would want it.
Everything is clearly noticeable in the videos provided, and the inputs are obvious. Besides, as mentioned before the RNG will be different due to another ROM, so you're on your own when it matters (which is during most enemy/boss encounters) anyway.
Regarding ROM choice, there is no official English NTSC version for this game, so one has to stick with PAL when that language has priority. Since a TAS is for entertainment purposes and not a speedrun competition for realtime, I didn't see a problem with it.
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Samsara wrote:
Like I said on Discord, the differences between Saturn's TAS and this one could easily be chalked up to emulation differences.
Wrong.
To make it clear, the run is fully reproducible on new emulators (tested on Bizhawk), since the RNG in this game is entirely based on in-game actions, thus not influenced by emulation (which differs only in lag during screen changes) at all. That was actually a criteria I was looking for during run-production, with the intention to eventually convert it to the Bizhawk format when it was finished. I later decided to let it be, since it still shows the same quick way to beat the game, and the at most few seconds of added lag over the run wouldn't be noticeable, nor would they influence the ingame timer for which I aimed for anyway.
It should be noted however that since Panda is using a different ROM, the RNG will likely deviate at some point due to shorter text anyway, from which some of the strategies would have to be readjusted to the given conditions.
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So I gave the Time Challenge mode another go, using a revised strategy that is heavily based on luck manipulation and cooperation of the opponent, to save more than 1,5 seconds over the previous attempt:
Link to video
Enjoy!
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Here is another challenge TAS I did to test the limits, beating Lavos at the earliest possible point in the game, and getting the first ending (without NewGame+).
Link to video
With a game clock completion of 3 hours and 24 minutes, it's actually not that much slower than an optimized glitchless any% run, and could potentially be the fastest "no SRAM corruption" one if there would be a way to get a more exp-giving battle such as in Death Peak by breaking into it early for example, if possible.
Might also be of use in an "All Endings" run, as one wouldn't need to play through the game a second time.
Enjoy!
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Interesting new X-Ray glitch that turns this into a relatively simple and short run.
There is no reason not to obsolete both of the currently published glitched runs now, at least from the speed perspective. Yes vote.
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So I finally came around to finish a long time considered TAS for this game, using the original English PAL version:
Link to video
It's an any% run, breaking the 3 hour mark with a 2:56 ingame time at Dark Gaia's defeat, which is universally comparable to any version of the game except of text delay differences.
Recorded on Snes9x 1.43.
Enjoy!
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Nice run.
Considering that it aims to trigger the games ending as fast as possible by any means, I don't think it should matter whether it uses the GT code in this case, since it's a hidden one that likely wasn't intended to be used by the players. It also allows to use the pause glitch with good purpose for the first time in a run, and the quick obtainment of the SpaceTime Beam, on which you guys did an amazing research job, makes for a very unique and unexpected finish.
All in all this is the fastest glitched SM run, and clearly more entertaining than the X-Ray one, so it's obviously a yes vote. I agree though that the latter should keep it's own category, due to its unique glitched low% completion.
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Amazing improvement to an already very optimized run. Lots of new tricks and route changes which together ensured the as expected tough to get 0:34. Also a good decision to aim for ingame time, as that allows comparability to the other runs despite of different emulators.
Good job on an overall great and entertaining run. A late yes vote.
Mate in 17, Caro-Kann Defense
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 e5 5. Nf3 exd4 6. Bc4 b5 7. Bxf7+ Kxf7 8. Ne5+ Ke7 9. Bg5+ Nf6 10. Qf3 Ke6 11. O-O-O Bb7 12. g4 c5 13. Qf5+ Kd5 14. Nd7+ Kc4 15. Nd2+ Kb4 16. Qd3 Nbxd7 17. Qa3# 1-0
That line already looked to be hard, if not impossible to beat due to how well everything worked out, but surprisingly enough, I got one more major improvement in with my final attempt:
Mate in 12 on hardest difficulty
CM's total thinking time is 38 minutes and 11 seconds, so these delays are sped up in the video to make it less boring.
This line is also reproducible on NES's version of Chessmaster at max difficulty. (in fact, both versions seem to generally play very similar)
Looks like it might well be the limit now on this level, but of course it's impossible to know for sure.