Posts for The8bitbeast

Posted: 5/13/2016 1:26 PM

Post subject: Game Time is Bad

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

Optimizing for game time is bad. In BZ1 at the end, rolling on the bridge will speed you up. But since there is so much lag from the bridge falling, it is actually quicker in real time to jump which slows you down in terms of velocity! Obviously you would jump since it's quicker, but jumping gets a 0:21 on BZ1 (SMS) while rolling gets a 0:19. Ignoring this will lead to TASes which don't consider lag reduction and are suboptimal in real time as a result. With the large increments of the game time along with the lag issues like in BZ1, using game time would take away from the beauty of small optimizations of less than one second. The sensible option in my opinion is to use real time minus the time spent in bonus screens as I mentioned earlier.

Posted: 5/11/2016 10:57 PM

Post subject: LZ2

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

WOW! Thankyou so much Tee-N-Tee!, I had a look at it and I was wondering if there were any new techniques that were used to achieve this, or whether it was just optimization od the old one (D,R,D,R...). Also you needed less speed to underflow than I needed. Could that be something to do with the current animation because I found that it varied when trying to find the critical velocity. This has given me even more motivation to TAS this game, please let me know if you have any other optimizations in mind. Thanks again!

Posted: 5/10/2016 2:08 AM

Post subject: Horizontal Underflow

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

Horizontal underflow is possible in Sonic 1 (SMS). It is not possible in GHZ1 due to the final cutscene map being to the right of GHZ1, but it is theoretically possible in all other levels. There are 2 conditions that need to be satisfied for this to be useful: 1. The ground level at the start of the level is higher than the ground level at the goalpost. Otherwise the underflow will occur, but sonic falls and dies. 2. There is enough room at the start of the level to reach the speed required to underflow. This speed is around the point 0x1000 and it is possible to reach this speed given enough room. There are levels which satisfy condition 2 but not 1. For example GHZ3 has a lot more room than required: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdhRoCtrOWQ There are also levels that have the right height for underflow to occur but not enough room to reach the speed required. Eg. GHZ2, LZ2. LZ2 is the closest level. If an underflow occured, it would skip the entire level saving roughly 40 seconds. My best speed reaching the left wall was roughly 0x0060 short of the underflow speed. If I had 4 more frames worth of room to accelerate, the underflow would occur. I will try to make this better and achieve the underflow. If anyone has ideas to speed up quicker they would be greatly appreciated (I'm thinking something like pause buffering BLJ's in Super Mario 64). Also, it could be possible that the GG version has enough room, but I haven't looked into this.

Posted: 5/5/2016 5:16 AM

Post subject: Sonic 1 (SMS) TAS

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

I'm considering working on a TAS Sonic 1 on the Master System for my next project and wanted to check a few things. I'm aware that there's a TAS of the GG version and I'd like to know if there would be any interest for a TAS of the Master System version. There would be enough differences that it wouldn't be a clone of the GG TAS. There are different layouts for some levels including labyrinth and the final boss. It would also be more entertaining as the time bonus doesn't take as long in the Master System version. Also, the Master System is the original version and I feel that it deserves a TAS. My other query is regarding timing. Real time is out of the question due to the total screens (although a playaround optimizing for real time could be interesting). But there are a few issues with optimizing purely for game time. Act 3 of each zone doesn't have game time so that weakens the game time argument. Also using the death warp in Scrap Brain 2 causes the game time to be >1:30, which is longer than no death warp. The goal choice for time that I would aim for is real time - bonus screen time, so the death warp would be allowed. The main controversial thing about my timing is that I would like to stop movement at the end level sign to speed up the animation rather than having it go high in the air. So instead of hitting the sign at full speed, I would stop movement provided it doesn't add game time. This would be the main difference between the TAS timing and conventional RTA timing and I'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on it.

Posted: 4/28/2016 11:48 AM

Post subject: Correction

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

I personally consider that the Tasmanian sword is not a debug feature*

Posted: 4/27/2016 11:44 PM

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

mklip2001 wrote:

A few questions: 1) Are the charm doors a legit feature of the game, instead of a debug code kind of thing? 2) Would an any% run improvement without charm doors or Tasmanian Sword (like the currently published run) still use the swimming glitch? It's a pretty major glitch, but it's not game-breaking.

1) I think its a matter of opinion. I personally consider that the Tasmanian sword is a debug feature since it is so late in the game and it would be inconvenient to get that far just to debug. I have a similar opinion about the doors, but since the routes are so different it makes sense to seperate them regardless of whether or not it's a debug feature. 2) An improvement for the old TAS would be very similar. The swimming glitch would be used if the legendary sword would speed up the fights enough. Also it's possible to skip the pihrana man boss without using charm stone doors or Tasnanian sword. If this was quick enough it could be used. Hence a title like "all bosses" unfortunately wouldn't work for that category.

Synahel wrote:

i'm myself very interested into knowing how lucky you have to be to drop the Dragon Mail or the Hades Armor or the Tasmanian Sword from enemies

As far as I know there are only 16 item slots so minimum chance of a tasmanian sword, dragon mail or hades armor should be roughly 1/16.

Greenalink wrote:

For the actual publication I wonder if there is a way to use the Wii VC version rom as that one removes the flashing seizures, otherwise a warning before the final boss may be required

If i can figure out how the flashing works, it may be possible to have a "camhack" video with no flashes providing it syncs with the TAS. I currently have no knowledge of how the flashing works.

Posted: 3/14/2016 2:34 AM

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

Thanks for all the yes votes :) I feel like I've seen the animation on the Amiga and it looked fine, so it must just be a glitchy Megadrive thing. I'm not sure where I saw footage of it though.

Posted: 11/29/2015 2:29 AM

Post subject: RE: Tangent and Korzic

Quote

The8bitbeast

He/Him

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player (2525)

Joined: 11/26/2015
Posts: 183
Location: Australia

I tried to replicate town movement from the Niko TAS. I also thought having gear equipped might change movement speed as this is also different between the TASes. I tested movement speed when I started the TAS but I tried again today with/without equipment and with/without jumping and found that no combination of these made walking through the town any faster. So it might just be an emulation issue, unless there are any other differences that I missed. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the amulet glitch doesn't work on the SNES. Also I've seen the stair jump on the SNES but it doesn't work on Genesis, so I do have to walk down all the stairs. I was hoping the amulet glitch wouldn't be possible so early in the game because originally I had TASed the first two bosses at low level and they looked really good. But I didn't want to waste time by leaving the glitch until after them. Thank you to everyone for the support, I'm glad so many people are interested in this awesome game.