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TNSE:
Of course I subtract the frames during the door animation. It is around 150-155 between one door so for 2 it will be about 300. I also subtract the time for the Missile screenshot that appears for exactly 399 frames.
Graveworm:
This is not a real detour Missile and will most likely be picked up anyway. Same as the one in the very bottom left corner near the Charge Beam.
The tests are complete. Here the results in frames by pure active time: (All values should have a 10 frames tolerance because it was only sub-optimized)
1) Lose 470 frames save around 60 frames at Chozo and "only" 4 frames at the Pirates = 406 Frames delay in total
2) lose about 175 frames if well optimized
3) lose about 275 frames (reason: have to cancel the fast mockball in order to jump into the pipe, mockballing in the pipe is impossible since I can only reach it after walljumps which cancels the speed)
4) lose about 262 frames (I can gain a good speed in the time the power bomb explodes to reach the missile faster, thats why only 262)
The clear winner is (2) - The crumble Missile. Testing pays off!
During the testings I found more improvements compared to Michael even while playing sub-optimized. I will save at least 10 more frames on the way to the elevator after the 1st Missile pack, thats for sure. Further recordings will follow tomorrow!
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Thanks for your suggestions JXQ.
This are the 4 choices I think are the fastest in first thought. Here my thoughts:
1.) The door I have to go through doesn't count at the in-game time so its not a problem since I aim only for in-game. The only door I have to wait to open is the red entrance door. All other doors are breakable without losing any speed. The reason I suggested it was because you will save a good amount of time in the Chozo Statue fight starting with 5 Missiles to defeat him a bit faster and because I will have more Missiles in the early stages beeing able to clear more enemies in my way (the Pirates for example in the room before Tourian) to save some more frames.
2.) You don't need to go out of the right room and the falling gates are irrelevant. You don't have to backtrack as you can indeed take them right after you fall down of the Super Missile block. Run to the right break through the crumble blocks and jump out of them before they reapear (like Michael did).
I think 2 and 3 are pretty close in the detour time, so best is just to test them and compare the frame-counter.
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I found out that the Morph Ball gives me much more great move-possibilities than before and I could save 12! more frames because of this.
Now almost a second (56 frames) ahead of Michael at first Missile Pack.
Now comes the first serious problem: I have to test if taking the 2nd Missile in the right room is worth it to save some time against the Chozo Statue and to skip another Missile pack for that later. If I skip this Missile, I MUST take one of the following detour-Missiles in any way (required for the Phantoon quick-kill) and this are the ones which come in mind:
* Missile below Crumble Blocks in Brinstar (the same room with first Super Missile Pack)
* Hidden Missile in the pipe of the large green room with the blue gate in Brinstar
* Hidden Missile just after the first Power Bombs in Red-Brinstar
If someone has any suggestions here or think there is another Missile which is even faster to get I would appreciate it.
For now before recording further I will test all variations by playing sub-optimized in the needed rooms and then subtract/add the times to have a pretty exact result to see which detour is faster.
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I reached the Morph Ball and saved 8 more frames till there.
The Motherbrain room of Metroid1 was a real pain and I had to test many different running/jumping moves between each platform to find the best possible timing between the jumps.
Now exactly 42 frames ahead of Michaels run at Morph Ball!
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OK, optimized the falling part and completed the vertical Tourian shaft. Saved 5 more frames here because of better falling maneuvers.
Very tired today and have to stand up very early tomorrow so thats it for today.
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Nitsuja is right, most of my rerecords were done because of testing and experimenting to find the best moves. At least 50% were wasted rerecords just to try some crazy but less promising variations to just beeing sure in any case.
Yes, the biggest error Michael did was in the room where he took the damage boost in a sub-optimized way.
I'm about to optimize the falling part of the 2nd room on Zebes just before the long vertical room with the later pirates.
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Alright JXQ, I think its a better choice to avoid make it look the same.
Just a note: I spended more than 5500 rerecords on this damn station alone and hope the effort was worth it.
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I don't plan to do a 100% run so far, but if JXQ wants to start it I would be ready to help also with my ceres station sequence.
For a 100% run it will be very important to calculate the best possible route first before recording it and I haven't done any planings on this mode though. Maybe Red Scarlets route is worth a check or better to try contact Michael somewhere and ask for advice as he surely planed out his route before.
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Don't worry, you will definitely see at least one WIP in this year because now there aren't many possibilities left to optimize.
I honestly don't like to redo a TAS for a game I did before because it would be boring and I would call that a time-waste. Why should I make sub-optimized moves and redo the complete run later when I know that I can make them frame-perfect in the first run by just taking a little effort for it?
The Ceres station optimizing was also to learn new move-techniques early for every needed situation so that I can use them in the further recording. Now I know them pretty well so the progress will be faster now. I would say the first WIP will be done in about 2 weeks maybe even faster.
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Yeah, maybe this effort was not worth for one little frame, but this is my personality. As long as I have doubts that it could be done faster I try everything to be 100% sure. But in this case I had another motivation because of the in-game counter that shows every frame you will save in the final time of your escape.
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Thx Highness, I will do my best!
Haven't much time today, but I optimized the Ceres-station escape by one more frame (reached elevator at 00'48"99) and think its the absolute limit now). Tomorrow I will record the first rooms on Planet Zebes!
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What the hell???? Someone makes a TAS-run of this game, did it until Magus already and never even mentioned something before? Anyway I will check it out.
EDIT: Watched it. The Berserker was surely a good choice against some bosses and the strategy not taking Frog to Spekkio to get Magic before Magus also saved some time. Keep up the good work and even if it is your first run for only 750 rerecords in 2 hours the movie is very good so far. And being the first player who makes a complete Chrono Trigger TAS-run that can get published on this site should be a good motivation to complete it and to set a new time-record in this game so far.
Good luck!
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JXQ:
Right, I don't make 100% and our paths will split at the room where I get the first Super Missiles in Brinstar. Until this part I will see how much I can improve which is a good thing.
Highness:
Sure! I would say at least 1 or 2 WIPS will be done until Christmas (1st WIP will be after the Torizo fight where I get the bombs).
Thank you guys!
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OK. I finally decided to delay working on the hack until next year as I got more interest for TAS'ing again.
I picked up the Metroid run and finished Ceres-Station. Once again I managed to improve Michaels run by some frames. As mentioned a while ago I saved 6 frames before Ridley and during the escape even 23! more Frames because of a better route and by optimizing the moves even more to make a total of 29 frames now. The in-game time counter shows 00'48"97 left after I reached the elevator (for comparing Michaels time: 00'48"67 - 0,30 sec slower).
Now I will definitely record this run further in the next days as I finally finished my exams!
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Wow, never thought someone will have the patience to make a TAS for such a complicated game. Very nice work guys! I watched the run partically and it looks very nice. The many new tricks there have fascinated me, great job!
I vote YES.
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I watched the movie. It looks really nice and very professional. Except the attack-sliding in the exits you forgot in the early parts, the first 3 enemy killings and the text scrolling without auto-fire I don't see any errors. Maybe the boss fight in tower 1 could be optimized a bit more by pushing all 4 Huballs in one line to damage them in one swing, but I don't know if it would be faster then. The spider-boss fight was very nice. Didn't thought you can dispatch his claws that fast with a weapon since I always used a Fire Ring here.
The most important question in the early stage is: Is resurrecting "Mu" really worth the 1-2 minutes delay in the underworld? Doing a TAS it shouldn't be a problem without this mighty weapon and now I'm not 100% sure if this 2 minutes can be catched up later due higher damage. In a skill-based run its out of question to take it but in a TAS everything is possible.
nitsuja wrote:
I would be aiming for real-time, because in this case I think it is more entertaining to do so, and I don't see the point of sacrificing both real time and entertainment just to make the in-game timer lower. (Even for competition purposes, real-time would have to be taken into account anyway if you don't want to ignore the amount of time that the final battle takes, and it's possible to go through the entire game without seeing the in-game timer.)
I think you are right, I agree with you now. Aiming for fastest real-time wouldn't hurt your in-game time that much anyway.
Graveworm:
I don't think you will get that much control-advantage in a japanese version that it would make a major difference.
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nitsuja wrote:
BTW, what does "Text" do in the options menu?
It is the text speed. You shouldn't change it as it is already set on "1" for fastest speed. Try to set it on "4" and talk to someone, you will see how slow the text will scroll (just like at the end where Ark is talking to Yomi before he leaves in the Pandora's box again).
nitsuja wrote:
This is what I meant - the time it takes you to kill the 1 quaker and leave/re-enter seems to be shorter than 18/44 the time it takes you to kill 2 lizards and leave/re-enter. If that's true, then it should be faster to move all of the lizard leveling back into that room with the quaker, even though it'd be even more boring than usual to go up that many levels in one place. Maybe it's just an illusion or wouldn't be true in a TAS though.
Thats the problem about time/exp. amount. The best way to find the fastest leveling in real time (which however is not always similar to the in-game time) is to set yourself a mark of about 1000 exp. you have to get and then just mark the total time to reach this amount of exp. in both rooms. I think it was pretty similar so I decided to also level up in Zue to avoid boringness.
nitsuja wrote:
OK. I would take the screen blackout time into account, because it won't be particularly entertaining to do otherwise if it makes a difference.
You're right. However if this game has a in-game time we should aim for it instead of the real time as a in-game timer is always a standard time-meter for competition (just like in Super Metroid or Chrono Triger).
Now the author will have a hard decision between speed/entertainment.
nitsuja wrote:
Wow, actually I just found a backup of the run from a search of a bunch of directories. Watching it again, I'm seeing lots of mistakes... Anyway, I went from level 2->3 during the spider boss battle, and it died on frame 90000, which is 2 minutes and 48 seconds faster if not counting the name entry screen.
Hmmm... almost 3 minutes faster after 25 min sounds interesting. Could you upload the movie somewhere? I would really like to see what you did to save this amount of time (if you don't have a reason to keep this secret). You can just use DeHackEd's Micro-Uploader to upload .smv files easy in one step (if DeHackEd don't mind): http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.phpnitsuja wrote:
My goodness, somehow it never occurred to me how long this game really is. I saw your movie title said 4:34 minutes at the last save, but the total recording time is over 6 hours! It'll take quite a few miracles just to get the real-time under 4 and a half hours.
That explains my intention to aim for in-game time. I abused the screen blackout (as it doesn't count the in-game time) to level up quick. Best example is in Sylvain castle where I defeat 2 skeletons (2x 32 exp.) in one swing to exit the rooms after about 3 sec (64 exp. in 3 sec) to save plenty in-game time which however is boring of course.
nitsuja wrote:
I wish a US version of this game had been released, that way it wouldn't be necessary to decide between PAL+English and NTSC+Japanese. There is a PAL->NTSC patch for the English version, but I don't think that would be allowed, and far too much of the movie consists of dialog for me to want to try the Japanese version.
I too. However I would definitely stay on the english PAL version just because of the many text-dialogs and because "Terranigma" sounds more popular and recognizeable than "Tenchi Souzou" (at least for me).
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nitsuja wrote:
But the poison isn't immediately fatal. Does it also make the boss invincible? When I first played, I think I didn't realize I was supposed to get the Ra Dewdrop and beat the boss anyway (although it was very hard and took lots of healing items).
You can't even start the boss fight without Ra-Dewdrop. Its programmed that if you enter this room without it you get KO automatical and appear in front of the boss-room entrance again. Its not the kind of poison you get where you lose your HP constantly but just a blocker which can't be got around in any case.
nitsuja wrote:
note also: those two lizardmen in Zu actually don't give very much experience for how long it takes to kill them - I think they give exp at a lower rate than even the leveling spots in earlier dungeons.
Before recording movies for this game I did a dirty test-run and wrote a list which enemie gives how much exp. to find a better leveling up system.
The Lizards give you 22 exp each which is the most you can get per enemy in this time. In the previous dungeon (Grecliff) you get only 17 for a stone golem and 18 for a quaker/mini quaker. You should know that it takes continuously longer to get a higher level up than a lower, this is the reason why the leveling was a bit longer in Zue. But I also doubt it is the fastest way in the 2-Lizard room. I wasn't creative enough to seek/calculate other possibilities so I just picked a small room with the most exp-giving enemy and this was the only that came in question at first thought. You can also kill them fast even at low levels compared to the turtles for example which have a much higher defense.
nitsuja wrote:
Yes, actually I started one quite a while ago. I put it on hold when I accidentally erased most of it, but mostly because I wasn't sure of a leveling strategy (not because I'd gotten very far; I hadn't). In that test run, I was at the minimum possible level (2, or maybe 3) when I beat the last-tower guardian boss (and it was a much faster fight than the one here where you're at level 5(?) - manipulating luck goes a long way in this game, although I'm still confused as to how the criticals work and would need to analyze them more before making a run).
I was at level 3 before killing both claws with a fire ring (not sure if just hiting them with weapon would be faster) and level 4 before killing the boss himself.
If you worry about the leveling up you should make or get a list (I think GameFaqs has one) of all enemies to see how much exp they give and just seek for a as small as possible room with as many good enemies as possible in there. If you aim for a in-game time you don't have to worry about exiting and reentering the room since it doesn't count the time during the screen-blackout. The leveling up is still the main problem IMO so it just needs to be tested.
Also do you know the time (in-game or real) you have reached in your test-TAS at the point after you defeated the spider-boss in tower 5?
I'm curious to compare it with my own non-TAS time to see if I did well in this any% run.
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- In the intro, it's faster to say "No" twice and let the other guys try to open the door themselves (there's less text to scroll through that way).
I knew this but never had an idea it would be faster in the end. If I will do a TAS I will definitely check it out.
- You don't have to throw the pots straight at the front of the door. You can throw them through the wall without even moving much from where you pick them up.
Nice, never come to the idea to try this out.
- When exiting any area of a dungeon (going in a door/stairs to the next level), it saves some time to do the run+attack move into it.
I will test it.
- You don't need to equip the Crystal Thread to give it to Elle.
Cool. This one is very useful and would probably save at least 10 sec. Didn't knew that too.
- When climbing up the chains on the side of a tower, you can jump then press up to grab onto the chain higher up to skip a little climbing.
I used this technique while run-jumping to a climbing tree/chain in the surface world. However stand-jumping like in the tower should save some time too. I will keep it in mind next time.
The room with the stone-heads (known as mini-quaker) is a very clever choice but hard to pull off without tools because they appear only 1 time and if you miss them you can't get them again. They also shoot at you and it requires much concentration to avoid the shoot and still hit them. But in a TAS it is definitely worth a check for leveling up.
You can't skip Ra-Dewdrop. It is needed to survive the poison-gas that is in the room with the boss. Ra Dewdrop makes you immune against this poison gas.
Resurrecting Mu is definitely worth IMO because you get the very useful and 2nd strongest weapon in the game, the Enbu Pike which decreases your defense to increase the strenght by full 7 points which makes Ark about 3 levels stronger. It will save alot of time in the later leveling up and against many bosses doing a much higher damage but invokes a much higher risk of geting damaged deadly which however shouldn't be a problem in a TAS at least.
I will test the jumping/running trick while doing a action.
About making a TAS: Aren't you interested to make one yourself for this game? After all you are a very good TAS'er and have a good knowledge of this game. I already have 2 games (Super Metroid and Chrono Trigger) in the queue so I could only start a TAS for Terranigma after about 1 year. I would be anyway glad if someone else could do one instead.
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Didn't knew it was a test run, that explains it then.
Now I'm seriously thinking of starting a full any% TAS for this game soon. I feel that the experience I got for it in the last years must be recorded somewhere.
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The main problem against lavos is status protection. Even if you survive the "Destruction Rains from the heavens" he will confuse all of your characters with his chaos spell. At the same time all your status will decrease and since all 3 characters are confused you won't even be able to heal yourself and just await the killer blow. You are basicly without chance in any case to win against lavos until you have Armor that protects status and this Armor you can only get after the Ocean Palace disaster where the sidequests start.
However you could easily defeat Lavos continueing Tilus run by just geting the needed equipment and some MegaElixiers in the Black Omen which wouldn't take more than 20 min in total. I still can't understand why someone works so hard for this game and just stops so close to the end without a real reason, but well not everything is logical.
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In last time I got an interest to try a skill-based any-% speedrun for this game to see how much time I can save compared to a 100% run and to get some experience in this mode for eventually making a any-% TAS in the future as many requested. And finally I found the time yesterday to record one.
I managed to get a in-game time of 4 hours and 34 min at the last savepoint just before returning to the underworld to fight Dark Gaia. Get the movie in the Skill-Based Section:
http://www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/snes9xmovies.htm
I completely forgot to buy some large healing bulbs for the final boss which forced me to switch to a much riskier battle-strategy. Read the comments there to know more. I'm very glad I survived this fight since I battled Dark Gaia with a extremely low level (level 30).
I also feared the movie could go out of sync after the known bug before and because of the very high movie-lengh but thanks god it didn't. Nitsuja did a great job fixing this bug, thank you alot for this!
As we discussed a half year ago the leveling up in some parts was absolutely necessary and unavoidable, and I hope I did it on the best locations. If someone thinks there are even faster ways to level up please tell me.
For those who are interested, enjoy the run!
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I know, sorry. I just got the idea and interest to make this run. I best would like to make TAS for all games I know but the time and my patience don't allow that. Although I would prefer to do Chrono Trigger first, I think I will keep on Metroid as I promised that a long time ago already.
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As DeHackEd said I beat the SDA New Game+ run by almost 6 min if comparing the full movie-lengh.
Sabikage wrote:
Second, the console speedrun on SDA is fully two minutes faster - if you can't do it as fast as someone playing it without the benefit of savestates and frame advance, you probably put very little effort into the run.
I recommend you to use your brain first before posting such untrue crap here... I put so much effort on this one that its completely frame-perfect in any part. I'm sure makeing a 9:56 is impossible in this mode.
Of course its clear I use a SRAM file here (I mentioned that in the comments) but this is the only way to start a New Game+. I personally think that we can make a exception about the SRAM since I don't get any warp of it but only use the items and levels of it in the New Game. This would be a great challenge for everyone to first make a optimized SRAM and then a frame-perfect movie to get the best result and I'm sure I totally reached both goals.
I made this movie because I think Chrono Trigger deserves at least one run on this site as its such a great game. If we mention it in bold text that it uses a SRAM save-file (which is clear anyway if you read the word "New Game+") it should be ok IMO. Again its just a different category compared to the normal game which also can be timeattacked for competition but of course the judges should decide themself. The run itself is absolutely perfect and pretty unimproveable, thats fact at least.
EDIT: Alright, then maybe I will do a complete run for this game soon as I got some interest and experience using Frame Advance on it.