Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
So here's a button file without FM sound used. Can this please be used instead of the file on the submission? https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638173343366217052
It took me a while to resync this but it mostly came down to re-manipulating RNG. This saves 76 frames over the FM sound version both due to loading but also because I could incorporate a new timesave at the start of level 7. Threecreepio found a way to get over the lava pit without hitting it, which saved about 50 frames.
When Resyncing, I also noticed that I was wrong about level 7 loading slower on Master System, that turned out to be a typo on my spreadsheet. It's exactly the same as GG, meaning that Master System and GG are nearly identical speed-wise for this game.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Yeah I was pretty torn on the sound situation. It is pretty easily resyncable by just inserting a blank frame each lag frame, so definitely a possibility.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Thanks Challenger, this TAS wouldn't have been possible without your prior work on it. There was some very clever stuff in your run. Silver Castle 2 was nearly identical in speed to be honest (a tiny bit faster), the speed building strat there was so cool that I was very glad it worked out this way.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Nice work, yes vote. I remember playing this on PS2 as a kid, so this was a fun nostalgic watch. Love seeing it broken open with the speed tech in this TAS.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
I've been made aware of a 1-2 second timesave found by Sonikkustar on the Cannon in Scene 1. Holding jump with some particular timing can make you shoot higher, saving a little bit of time on the movement after. With the nature of this game I'm unable to resync it without redoing the whole TAS.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Thanks for the yes vote! Unfortunately this game is very not sync friendly. The lag kills it, but also global cycles cause some big issues too, even with subtle things like exactly where an enemy is when you bounce on it. You can sync up maybe the first 5-10 seconds of a level if you're lucky but resyncing anything long term is basically impossible.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
I finished the 100% TAS! https://youtu.be/Hw-fQAW10Ho
Just preparing the submission text and also a version with audio commentary. That should come up along with the TASvideos submission in about a week
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
So I've had a look at this possbility. 0x0BDB holds the timer that tracks his cycle. Freezing it stops the level from finishing and poking it can increase or decrease the time of completion. This byte is used by other enemies to track their cycles and can be manipulated by killing enemies for example, but it always seems to reset to the same number when Wile E is loaded (even if I poke it to something completely different beforehand). Once Wile E is loaded, thje byte increments by 9 each frame. Wile E will only come on screen each time when it wraps around to 0, so there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to 0 any sooner (e.g. having him off screen earlier). This means that rather than a global frame rule, this acts more like a local cycle that starts when Wile E is loaded. I checked by delaying my movement by 6 frames before loading Wile E and the level took 6 frames longer to complete.
While this seems pretty conclusive, this would be worth looking into for any future TASes of this game in case I've missed any ways to manipulate it. I can't get Wile E to load any sooner as it appears to be based on your x position, but I have noticed that having a drastically different y-value can cause him to load in at a slightly different point in the cycle/framerule. This is probably the biggest potential for timesave, but might not be useful as routing through the level requires you being on specific platforms with specific y-values. To get him to do anything different I had to move essentially a whole screen up or down from my previous position.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Thanks! I noticed that the difficulty switches had some impact, but I kept mainly to the 8 default modes that it boots up on. Part of the reason for this was to align with the 8 RTA categories.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Oh that reminds me, I forgot to mention about 2 player in the submission text. This TAS intentionally just uses 1 player to more closely align with RTA standards. This is also because 2 player would just make bosses slightly faster due to increased firepower and not much else interesting would happen. Also with 2 players, you are forced to both do the virtual sections one by one which would be slower unless you intentionally game over player 2 in the platformer - meaning you could only use player 2 for a couple of levels before running out of continues.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
Thanks for the yes vote!
Those openings look possible, but in all my testing, I couldn't get through. The problem is they close by the time you could make it to them. It's a weird kind of optical illusion which makes it look possible.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2627)
Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia
I've finished work on an any% LOTAD. This uses bitclips to achieve a much faster time than previously possible. It also uses position hacks to achieve the floating point precise position, as TASing it normally would take several days or weeks per bitclip, but everything in the TAS is possible to do.
Video with commentary: https://youtu.be/mszPuW6n9aI
Video without commentary: https://youtu.be/AMdodBJBzKo
Button file: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637771986164365069