Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Noticed that SMW has 2 starred movies for it. So, maybe this could, too? It is one of the main games for the Genesis, and the movies linked to are, more or less, conceptually analogous to the existing S3K any% star and what would be my max rings run.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
After spending so much time on this game playing as Knuckles, I'm enjoying being able to do other things for a change. What time I do still spend playing it, I'm finding much more interesting trying my hand at Sonic and Tails ring attacks instead. That's all I'm really focusing on right now.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
If I may, I'd like to contribute my 2 cents 6 paragraphs on the subject.
Earlier in the thread, feos said this:
feos wrote:
TheYogWog wrote:
I would be interested to hear anything from feos to gain an insight as to what he thinks, as I've actually been wondering about that a bit.
No idea what made me read that post, but seeing my name there was 100% unexpected. You mean am I going to reject the run? For some improvement possibility? Seriously? Even without watching it, just by reading the comments, it's clear how much effort was put into this. I was even thinking of starring it, if it's decided which of the Sonic franchise stars can be moved.
He said Sonic franchise there, but according to http://tasvideos.org/StarmanGuidelines.html, "No single game deserves to have two different runs starred." So, I'm not sure whether it's a question of if the current S3K star run could be replaced or which of the 2 existing starred Genesis Sonic runs could be replaced. To complicate matters, Mothrayas had this to say not long ago:
Mothrayas wrote:
Suggesting runs for Stars should be done in this topic.
Note that Sonic 3 & Knuckles already has a publication in Stars, so it may have to compete with that run (or be substantially different to it) for the star.
I think Marzojr's any% run and mine are indeed substantially different, so maybe none of this is necessary and they would just let us have both runs up anyway. The rules are kind of blurry as to how exactly that all works, apparently.
If we had to choose, I think objectively, as defined by the guidelines on the site, Marzojr's deserves the star more than mine. I understand it's questionable if my movie's even eligible to qualify for the position: it does make kind of a bad first impression, as the first 2 zones are a little bit suboptimal; but I don't believe it should be disqualified from being starred because of that. Overall, I think there's a clear progression from beginning to end in terms of optimization and my skill at TASing the game, with a threshold being crossed somewhere around MGZ - LBZ; at that point, and for the rest of the game afterwords, while my inputs are in no way perfect, they improve enough over the first 2 zones to fall within the realm of being star-eligible in my opinion.
Also I understand that kind of the whole point of the Stars tier is having very strict requirements, to keep the quality up; but given the scope of my run, the sheer amount of extra content I had to play through compared to any% runs, the tremendous amount of effort that went into making this, and the fact that speed was in the end an auxiliary objective for me, I think that if any run were to ever deserve a little bit of leniency with regards to being starred, mine would be a good candidate for that.
For what my opinion as a non-judge is worth, aside from those issues I think my run fulfills all of the other Stars requirements just fine. I should mention that I am and have always been very happy with my being accepted to Moons. Even if nothing happens at all, I will still be 100% satisfied and thankful to the judge and the community for simply viewing my work and reacting to it in such a positive way.
But it's also true that deep down I would love to see it get a star, too. Looking at Marzojr's submission, it appears to have been published in 2010? If so, and if it is in fact necessary to only have 1 S3K run up for Stars, I wonder if Marzojr wouldn't mind if I suggested possibly letting my run take the place of his in the spotlight for a while? Out of respect for him and the impressive work he did on his run, as well as his huge contributions to the Sonic TASing scene, I would only formally request such a change with his full approval, as well as the support and approval of the Sonic TAS community in general, ie you guys.
Personally I think it would be great if both our runs could be starred, but again I want to stress that I'm perfectly happy the way things turned out. I think feos did a good job judging my movie and in the end I am just happy people have even taken an interest in watching it. Thinking of TASing as an artform, I think that's one of the best rewards people can give to an artist is simply taking the time and actually appreciating their creations.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
What about a TASVideos DVD? With the permission of any authors of the runs included, it could be organized by console, game franchise, and the site's movie tiers. Maybe we could get it sold by online retailers like Amazon, or simply through TASVideos, or better yet, it could be offered as a donation incentive at next year's AGDQ if it could be ready in time. Proceeds could go towards helping the site, helping emulator development as others have said, and maybe some portion of it could be distributed to any authors whose work was used. It should be fairly simple to make and I think there's a lot of living room appeal in having a collection of fine TASes on a single, tangible piece of media that you can easily watch with others in your home. It could even include extras like commentary on the various runs, or interviews with the authors, or perhaps a built-in frame advance functionality so viewers can slow down their favorite parts and analyze them much like TASers themselves would do when studying other TASes.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
tensor wrote:
-The bubble bounce didn't really bounce at one point. The effect depends on where the bounce hits the ground. This allows a faster descent, and may be useful somewhere, but not here. I'd like to know more about this.
On a semi-related note, that reminds me of something. I remember long ago noticing that Sonic could bubble bounce on certain positions of spikes in HCZ2 without getting hurt. I would also like to know more about this, if possible, please, as well as what you wrote. Unfortunately, I can't tell you any more about what you encountered myself.
tensor wrote:
-To get the five rings with horizontal spikes on both sides, I didn't use Sonic; I dumped Tails there instead. Probably saves a few frames and causes big problems later, since Tails is lost.
Yeah. Well, losing Tails there forces you to have to slow down at the end of the triple loops, as I think you're already aware. You have to go slow enough that you can jump to attract that 1 ring, curiously suspended in the air below the platform, while at the same time still attracting the 3 on the slope below it. In turn this reduces your launch speed off the ramp, as well as several other effects that I won't mention to avoid being tl;dr. As far as if it's worth it or not, I don't know, but I like using Sonic to get the spike rings because I think it looks cooler.
tensor wrote:
I made all of the recordings as continuations to the one I already posted; thus, I didn't collect any of the bonus rings. I'll probably switch to newgame+ in the future. AIZ2 begins somewhere around frame 9500 in each of the recordings.
This brings up a good point I've been meaning to discuss, basically all of my ST movies right now begin from a "dirty" save state. What do I mean by this? Well, what I did to gain access to NG+ mode was to play back Marzojr's verification video in its entirety, then paused Gens at some point on the menu screen before his actual TAS began. From there, I may or may not have unpaused Gens and idled a while before again pausing and creating the "dirty" savestate that I use as the basis for all my ST movies currently. I would really like to establish a clean state to start all future NG+ST movies from, so I know that any movies starting from there could theoretically be acceptable for publication here. Could anyone please help explain how to do that? I have some ideas but I'm not sure I'd be doing it right, and I'd like to be as sure as possible, please.
tensor wrote:
EDIT: One thing I probably should mention: I missed one ring in the test run, but didn't bother fixing it - I'd have remade the run, anyway.
You miss 2 of them when you finish A1 with the lightning shield, is that the part you're referring to? If not, then you're probably already aware/didn't care because it's a test run I guess. I didn't see where else it might have been.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Well, sure the potential for abuse is there. I think people who look at crowdfunding as an opportunity to make money kind of have the wrong idea about what those sites are for. It shouldn't be about making a profit, first and foremost, but rather pursuing a creative endeavor and doing something you're passionate about. The money is only a means to that end. I would never expect to be able to make a living off it.
My two cents on the bounty idea, it's a little more of a direct financial incentive than crowdfunding, where ideally the incentive is the project itself. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I suppose it's true having money involved could lead to some people producing subpar TASes, but isn't the opposite also true? Both models provide a way for people to earn income doing something they love, but in my opinion the principles behind each of them are different.
It's something I've thought about, but I'm doubtful any plans I may have regarding crowdfunding will ever come to fruition. Still, appreciate your guys comments on the subject.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Hello, not sure whether to post this in here or in /General/, I'm just wondering if anyone has ever thought about using crowd funding to "finance" the making of a TAS? To clarify what I mean by this, it seems like crowd funding sites like Kickstarter are typically used to generate funds to create a product that will eventually be sold. A TAS is obviously a little different, in that it's not so much a product as a piece of art that will (presumably) be released to the public domain free of charge. There's also virtually no financial costs involved as the software for TASing is all free; the only cost is the time required to make it.
Personally, I'm 28 years old, and I feel like my need to have a job and pay the bills drastically cuts down on the amount of time I have available to spend on TASing. And TASing can be a very time consuming process depending on the game/goal. So, hypothetically, rather than asking for backers to provide funds for compiling materials or resources to make a product, which aren't really needed to create a TAS, I would instead be asking backers for funds to help cover some of my living expenses; so that I could spend less time working for rich people, and more time working on my TASing projects.
I could see how some people might take the position of saying, "well, you just don't want to work, stop being lazy, etc." But TASing, like having a full time job or two part time jobs, really does take a lot of time and mental energy to do well and doesn't leave much of either of those things left over for devoting to other tasks. For me, the difference between working, say, 40 hours a week vs 20 hours a week could mean the difference between TASing for 8 hours a day once on the weekend vs TASing 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus additional time on the weekend.
If people want the content enough and are willing to pay to have it delivered to them faster, I could see a crowd funding scenario working out. In my mind the main problem would be reaching a broad enough audience to actually meet funding goals, considering how niche and esoteric a subject matter TASing currently is; like, I imagine most people who don't already know, wouldn't understand or care enough to donate.
What do you guys think of this? Has it ever been attempted before, and if so how did it work out?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
tensor wrote:
I don't think I'd actively take part in creating a run. It would take much more patience and knowledge than I have, and my attention would sooner or later turn to something else. The later levels being much larger and less linear doesn't really help, either. I might throw around ideas every now and then, though, if I have any and if any are needed.
I know how you feel. As much as I like the idea and despite my desire to contribute to such a project as much as I can, it does feel very daunting right now just to think about the amount of work that's still needed... literally makes my frame advance finger (thumb) hurt to consider. Yet it's still fun to do in my spare time. So... not saying I wouldn't, but at this point I do feel a little leery of fully committing to such an endeavor.
tensor wrote:
I compared these two routes: http://i.imgur.com/Na2WhrN.png (bubble shield) and http://i.imgur.com/LPkJdmK.png (lightning shield).
With these routes, the lightning shield saved ~30 frames (more if the light blue path is used, as should have been) before the z-shaped tunnel. After the tunnel, the savings are lost unless there's some efficient way to get to the water level switch. I couldn't come up with any such method; Tails would take a moment to arrive there. I'll probably test using Tails along with the light blue path someday, that might result in a positive outcome for the lightning shield. On the other hand, there's still one later place where I'd use the bubble to save some time, so maybe I'll have to extend the routes a bit to account for that, too.
With the bubble shield wouldn't it be faster to perhaps bubble bounce off the Rhinobot, or simply bubble bounce into a Tails carry to reach the platform? Seems like it would be very hard to get the rings by the rock offscreen with Tails in that route, too.
My understanding is that it's possible to finish Act 1 slightly faster with the Bubble Shield? I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly, but if so keep in mind for the sake of route comparison and frame counts that any gains yielded by taking the lightning shield would carry the cost of not taking the bubble shield. Just wanted to mention that in case you weren't already thinking of it.
I think it should be possible through careful optimization / Tails control to make Tails exit the tube a bit ahead of Sonic and help reach the switch faster. That seems to be the case in my own attempt at Act 2 so far. Here's the video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5akkgOO_vZ0.
If you don't mind posting your videos, please do it; I will take a look at them.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
marzojr wrote:
For S+T, Knuckles' area does not fully load and the camera locks too high; they can't go there. In other zones, things are better, but AIZ2 is not helpful.
Yeah, I think they might can get into certain parts of his area by glitching through the ground but doing so is pointless because the only way for them to get back out is by dying, which obviously takes away all rings. The total of all normal + monitor rings in AIZ is 520, but 97 rings are inside Knuckles' exclusive area. Since it's impossible for ST to get them, that means the max rings for AIZ for them should be 623, or 423 without giant rings. Since resetting the level boundary isn't necessary when playing as them, the overlapping rings thing isn't an issue and it's easy to calculate individual act totals too, for what that's worth. Including giant rings, Act 1 should be 343 and Act 2 is 377, or 243 and 277 without giant rings, respectively.
tensor - Okay, I just watched the run. It looks pretty good. I like the way you use Tails to get rings that are just off screen at times.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
feeuzz22 - Hey, yeah, thanks for linking that. I did watch it a number of times, it's helpful to see how others control the two. I should really stop being lazy and spend more time studying existing ST TASes, like going through frame by frame, I have a lot to learn. I only just recently figured out that you can load a state, enter the input for P1, then load that same state again, and input P2, and P1 will automatically perform the input you just entered. Previously I thought you had to enter P1 input, save that in a higher-up state, then load the lower state and enter P2.
tensor - This is great, thanks for finally posting and letting us know about your efforts to create another ring attack TAS. I'm excited to see it, but I found your description a little hard to follow, it makes me wish you had posted something like this http://tinypic.com/r/359wjl0/8 so I could get a better idea of your route until the .gmv is posted.
As far as specific route stuff your Act 1 I can't comment because I don't understand, but there's one thing I'd like to mention about shield selection for the end of the act, that might be important. Early in Act 2, there's a burning zip line that breaks half way down if you ride it, causing you to fall and miss a few rings near the end of the line. While it's in no way necessary to have the lightning shield at the beginning of Act 2 to get them, I think it might help speed up the process, as IIRC in my Knuckles run, I was able to just 6-tap spin dash off the ledge where the zipline is on (much quicker than riding it), and still collect all of the rings via the lightning shield's pull.
Of course that's assuming Sonic can even make it to the zipline without losing his shield to the puddle underneath the first giant ring. I haven't tested it yet, so who knows, and besides, with good control of Tails it might also be faster even without the lightning shield or render the difference of having it vs not pretty insignificant. But anyway, I guess basically my point is just a friendly reminder it's important to keep in mind the needs of the next act in terms of shields when focusing on Act 1 route selection. Hopefully it's helpful...
marzojr - Wow, that sounds so complicated! Maybe in time I will learn to understand it better. Thanks for explaining all that for everyone.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
marzojr wrote:
@WST: You have to delete the signpost sparkles or force the creation of new ones. To delete sparkles, you want the game to be paused whenever the byte at $FFFFFE0F ends in a 0, 4, 8 or C (hexadecimal); to create new ones, you want the game to be unpaused in those frames.
@TheYogWog: I think the newgame+ RA with S+T (without hyper) would be most interesting as it would be most different from the K RA. But even better is that you can use the savestate used in the published newgame+ run: this saves you the trouble of making the verification movie and generating the savestate in a consistent way.
Hey, Marzojr. Thanks for reading, I was worried I permanently killed the thread with that super massive wall of text. Tonight is one of the first times in a while I have been able to TAS, and I was thinking about doing just Sonic alone at first, but your comment convinced me to give S+T another try. I agree it would be the most interesting, but I had previously given up on them because it seemed so hard to control them both. I have been able to get the hang of it a little more tonight, however, so later I will post the results of tonights session.
EDIT: Okay, here is the first half of Act 1. I only really had to control both of them in the very beginning of the level, which looks crude to me, and it is, in terms of optimization, but in general I wasn't trying to be 100% optimal with this recording, since it's just for fun/practice and I didn't spend that much time on it. At this point, I know so little about playing as Sonic and Tails, that I don't even know, what I don't know, so if you know some way to help me improve, please, let me know. Other than that, I'm happy with this, and I'm pleased I was finally able to create a halfway decent Sonic and Tails recording. Hope you guys enjoy it.
Link to video
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
I did a bit of experimenting and testing as S/ST just for kicks, and in an older post I said I might mention my thoughts about ring attacks as other characters. So, in case anyone's interested or wants to discuss what possible future RA's should be like, here are some of my thoughts and findings:
It seems S/T/ST can't 100% AIZ. While the boundary can still be reset in AIZ2, they can't get past the rock to get into KTE's starting area and may not even be able to get back up the tunnel they come out of in the start of Act 2. The only way they could get in is by glitching through the floor. However, the main problem is much of KTE's path doesn't load for them even if you do reset the boundary. Small sections of it do, but they're basically worthless because once you get in you can't get out without dying. Hence most (especially for S/T, since they could only possibly get in via the camera/sprite glitch and there's less spots where that would work compared to using the carry glitch with ST) if not all (but probably all, since they can't get out anyway) of KTE's 97 rings would be unobtainable in a S/T/ST run.
ST should be able to 100% HCZ; but not S, and maybe not T. They have to fight their own boss in HCZ2 because I don't think KTE's boss loads for them, for one thing, and more importantly there's no way for them to get back out of their boss area after getting the 3 rings there. It's possible for ST/S (not sure about T, he might not be able to get on top of the screen) to get KTE's 3 boss rings by getting on top of the screen at one point, either by bubble bouncing off a flying shark or getting carried and then jumping. After dropping down into the boss area, the doors leading back into the level can be destroyed by spindashing and the long set of spikes can be crossed either by getting carried or bubble bouncing (there's certain spots where it doesn't hurt to bounce on). It might be possible to get there using other shields, but doing so would be pointless since they would be canceled by the water in the boss room if it loads (I don't remember), and even if it doesn't, S is still unable to cross the spikes and get all the rings without taking damage.
But here's where things get interesting/confusing: the only way out of KTE's route is a camera glitch through the door he hides behind during the cutscene. Shortly after doing this, he will load and break the bridge as normal, which is good because that's the only way out but it creates a dilemma for S. It means he has to choose between going into KTE's area or going down the big slide into the S/T/ST area; the only possible way he could get back to the place where he can go into KTE's area after going down the slide, is to go back up the slide, which he can't. For ST it doesn't matter since S can just be carried back out.
S/T/ST apparently can't 100% MGZ. Resetting the boundary by entering the bonus stage before KTE's boss in Act 2 doesn't work for some reason (S may not even be able to get out of the room where the cutscene takes place), and there's a point of no return along their own boss path as well. It would be necessary to pick between KTE's path or theirs, whichever has more rings.
ST could 100% ICZ easily by resetting the boundary and either carrying or using the slope glitch to get KTE's 3 boss rings. I'm pretty sure the best thing for S would be to take KTE's path to the end of Act 1, since when the boundary is reset in Act 2 he can still get back into his own area to get the ring before his usual boss but he won't be able to get all the way back to KTE's starting area in Act 2, and the rings there outnumber the 10 given by S's boss's additional signpost monitor.
That's all of my findings for now, I haven't looked into other levels yet.
Now, for character choices, consider S. As I explained above, there are times when S has to choose one route or another but what I didn't mention is on top of that there's also times when he simply can't get certain rings due to his abilities. He would miss probably more rings than any other character selection. He would have to switch to specific shields at various points throughout each act, I think that would be fun to watch and lead to some interesting routes. But I know of at least one case where it would also force him to go pretty far out of his way and cause a considerable amount of backtracking. These aren't necessarily bad things, and are generally true for all characters, but any time a level can't be 100%'d or has a lot of backtracking viewers might find it offputting, and that happens much moreso for S than anyone else.
The really good thing about S though is he can double jump without transforming if he has a shield. It's also highly unlikely his unshielded double jump would ever be mandatory in most situations. I think that makes collecting the giant rings for him actually viable since he doesn't have to transform, which in my opinion should be avoided in a RA due to the ring loss over time. In terms of entertainment getting the giant rings would definitely make up for all the normal/monitor rings he can't get. And if you played as ST, he could probably get all of the ones he can't get by himself, in addition to (probably) even more giant rings too, and in less time.
That's why I think ST would be the ultimate RA character selection. There's a couple ways to go about it, too. They could start from reset and do a "true 100%" run, collecting max rings from normal/monitor while gathering the emeralds (it only takes 1 or 2 stages in each half of the game, IIRC), then collecting max rings from normal/monitor and giant rings once all emeralds had been obtained. Alternatively, and what I personally might like to see a little more, they could start from a save state from a comparison video and do a new game+ run for "true max rings."
Such runs would also be possible as the other characters, but they would have to transform. I'm sure seeing super/hyper ring runs as anyone would be entertaining, but how publishable would it be if publication was intended? What do you guys think about the ring loss over time aspect? I think it does make the ring maxes less objective which affects chances of being published, but how much does that really matter as long as the run is highly optimal and entertaining? I mean, there's no objective best time for speedruns, initially they were accepted because they got a fast time and did a good job. It could be the same thing here, there's no objective max rings in a transformation run but they could be accepted if well done. Then, as time goes on it's possible they could be refined just like speedruns until it reaches the point they're at today, where significant further improvement is unlikely to be found, and at that point the ring maxes would be pretty much objective.
Sorry about my silly single letter name abbreviations. Hope it's not too confusing.
Agreed, but my vote for most complex map in the game goes to LBZ2. If it's ok, I'd like link to SS0 to show it, just because I think it's fun to talk about: http://www.soniczone0.com/games/sonic3/downloads/s3-lbz-act2s3&kmap.png.
And don't forget it has a buttload of bosses built in as well. Like way more than all other levels.
Other than that, I just wanted to say again thanks everyone for watching, commenting, and rating/voting. It's an honor to have my run accepted for Moons.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Zenon and WST: Thanks, it's DL'ing now.
feos wrote:
You mean am I going to reject the run? For some improvement possibility? Seriously? Even without watching it, just by reading the comments, it's clear how much effort was put into this. I was even thinking of starring it, if it's decided which of the Sonic franchise stars can be moved.
Ha, okay, maybe I should have known not to worry about it. That would be amazing if you do, thank you.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
scahfy wrote:
Yes vote! An Atlas encode like this would be amazing.
To see there is so much discussion of making a Sega Atlas of my recording, I'm honestly delighted, that would be one of the biggest compliments I could think of. I didn't even know about atlas until a few months ago when WST showed me, but I've long imagined it would be great to play the game from that perspective. Maybe someday some skilled coders will make that possible, but for now I'm more than happy just to watch that type of thing. Please forgive me for not offering to help out more, I don't know much and from the sound of it I doubt my computer would be up to par for such a task.
True wrote:
WST wrote:
P.S.: who the hell could give this a «No» vote?
a guy that watched the encode
...?
DemonStrate wrote:
Instead of making some long-winded reason why I like this run so much, I'm simply going to state it this way:
This run with the "Ring Attack" goal is going to start something big for the Sonic speedrunning community. :-)
I would love to see more ring attacks of this and other Sonic games, whether as Knuckles or any of the other characters. Maybe I will post in the S3K thread before too long and weigh in with my thoughts about some of the other characters. There is definitely a lot of untapped content still hidden in the rings of the game, waiting patiently for some TASers to attempt to unlock it. A realtime, full game ring run might be pretty cool, too, though also very hard to make.
mike89 wrote:
Well, that was awesome. Simplest Yes vote in quite a while.
I particularly enjoyed your very comprehensive notes - your knowledge of this game far surpasses mine!
I had a couple of questions, I feel like one was for something in Marble Garden but I've now forgotten it, but the other one was for the final boss: is it not slower hitting it from the left like this? It looked like Metal Sonic made four passes across the top instead of three.
Oh, and here I was worried my notes would be TL;DR for "even the most hardcore" Sonic fans. I'm glad you enjoyed reading them. About the final boss, IIRC, hitting him from the right or left made no difference; but if I stood on the right side of the screen during his 2nd form, he would lunge at me nonstop until I moved. Doesn't this boss have a few different patterns he might use that could affect that? All I can say for sure is my time matched the existing TASes times of 0:57 seconds, so I was pretty satisfied with that. When it comes to bosses I figure things like that have been pretty much worked out by other TASers so I don't expect significant improvement there.
TimpZ wrote:
There were a few things I noticed in the run that seemed off. Notably in the beginning of the TAS and also in LRZ. I have no examples of "x would be faster than y" but a number of things got me thinking if it really was the fastest option. Then again I have no idea exactly where you'd wait for trailing rings to catch up etc. so I wouldn't know.
All in all, this was an amazing TAS. My favourite Sonic TAS before this was the rejected Sonic 2 perfect score TAS but you managed to top that and then some. Obvious yes from my part! Thank you for your hard work making this wonderful video.
EDIT: I think an addendum of Death Egg is in place ;)
Link to video
Death Egg, you say? Here is a recording I made a while back. It was just for fun, so there's game genie codes on to make him jump as high as Sonic, so I could hit the sub-boss; and since I was using codes anyway I also changed his color to blue because I thought it matched better with the palette of the level.
I'm glad you liked the run, thank you (and thanks again to everyone, for voting and commenting on it), and I'm glad you asked about that as well, it is a good question. Yeah, moreso early in the run and definitely in AIZ1 there is a bit of noticeable improvement. It's just due from still learning about basic speedrunning techniques as I went along.
If you watch closely, I tend to switch between rolling and running at inopportune times (took me a while to sort of understand the difference and when one should be used instead of the other) and I didn't always loop jump at first (because I didn't even think of it until WST pointed it out, who knows how far I would have gone without implementing this if he hadn't said something...) and when I do it's likely not 100% optimal. I could be wrong about this but maybe, in most cases when I do a spin dash on top of an object, it might be possible to save a frame or two by better subpixel management. Jump-climbing up walls is only about 1.3x faster than normal climbing, and there's different methods of doing it which I guess are all roughly the same; but if you look really close, the method I used most of the time was always suboptimal in a very minor way, until somewhere around SOZ1, when I realized that pressing up for the first frame you jump away from the wall yields a 1-pixel-higher Y-position at the end of the jump in same amount of frames. Probably other stuff I'm forgetting (maybe I should add this paragraph to the description?).
I tend to agree with WST's outlook on Sonic TASes in that it's by nature a hard game to fully optimize in a way that's unlike some other games, so they should be subject to a little more leniency when it comes to judging. That's kind of what I'm hoping for in regards to my known improvements; that, and the fact that it's such a long and comprehensive run, I hope would earn it a little less scrutiny than a typical Sonic submission which zips through large parts of the levels (I enjoy those runs as well, don't mean to belittle them or anything). I would be interested to hear anything from feos to gain an insight as to what he thinks, as I've actually been wondering about that a bit.
As far as what routes I took, while I'm pretty happy with the ones that I picked, I don't doubt there are improvements to be made there as well. When I was planning them I tried to think of the most efficient way through the level, and sometimes it's necessary to take a certain route (see my notes for LRZ1, for example), but a lot of times it just comes down to my opinion. If you look at a level like MGZ1, there's just so many different glitches you can use and places you can glitch through to end up at other places that it gets really subjective. But that subjectivity also affords for a lot of creativity, which is one of the things that was so appealing to me about doing a ring run as opposed to a traditional speedrun, as I felt a lot of the best routes and stuff had already been figured out by the community, so there wasn't as much room for free of expression through what routes to pick.
As far as getting from place to place within the main route, once that's been established, I actually did do a lot of testing there too, in almost every case, to find out the best way of doing it. That's just because I enjoyed the process of TASing so much, it was part of the fun. I may not have always been right, but I'm not really worried about that as I know I did the best I could.
I know exactly what you mean about the rings. I've found using the shield to collect them generally saves frames because you can get just close enough for it to attract them and they will usually catch up on their own, eventually. But it's not uncommon to get in situations where you could potentially outrun them, causing them to get loaded out of memory and disappear without being collected, especially in bigger levels like LBZ. In those cases, it's always a question of whether it costs more frames to go a little further out of your way initially, to collect them yourself, or if it's more expensive to use your shield to attract them and then slow down later on to collect them. I think the answer is hard to say, but I expect the frame difference would be pretty small. Personally, I tended to try to find a way of collecting them that offered the best average overall speed.
Zenon wrote:
Thanks for adding our encode to the topic, but could you please swap it with this one?
We figured we had an audio desynch in the end so we fixed it.
Hey Zenon, thanks for doing an encode. I am wondering a question though. I was not planning on hosting the run on my own YT page because I'm not sure how to encode it properly for such a long video, and I'm not even sure my account would even allow such a long video, but the more I think about it the more it would be nice to have. Afterall, I have all these IL's so it only makes sense to have the full movie. Would it possible to transmit your same encode file to me somehow so I couldtry upload a copy to my own channel, please? I don't care where people view it or if other want to use it on their channel, I would just like to have it available on mine for the sake of completeness.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Thanks Patashu, yes, I understand it's possible to add captions to movies and do the notes that way. But I wonder if Sonic games don't go so fast something like that might be distracting for more casual viewers, like there wouldn't be time for them to read it without missing the gameplay? Or pausing it anyway, which sort of defeats the purpose of having captions in the first place, doesn't it? I really not sure. If I did decide to do that, I would have to look into it more to learn how it's done. Is there perhaps a good guide for that I could read somewhere?
Also isn't it true that some TASers will just record themselves talking about the notes right over the movie file? That might be something I would consider as well, if possible.
Couple more questions: Is it acceptable to sometimes include my own personal thoughts and opinions about anything note-worthy enough to make it into the notes, such as a given trick or a glitch, or is it best to always be as matter-of-fact as possible?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Sorry but I think I would also like to request a name change please, if that's possible? Made my current one up pretty much spur of the moment a long time ago for a different website, the one I go by on IRC feels a lot more relevant now, so I would prefer to use that instead. That name is spiny_ringeater. Thanks.
Edit: Actually, if it's not too late, I wouldn't mind just sticking with TheYogWog afterall. Either way, it's cool.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
Hello, for the past several months I've been working on a TAS'd ring attack of S3K with Knuckles, and as I'm nearing completion, I'm wondering if I could please get some tips on writing my submission notes.
I've actually been taking notes as I go so far. I keep everything in a simple text document and any time there's something I feel is worth mentioning, I make a note of approximately what frame it occurs on and write about it. I try to be fairly comprehensive in terms of what I include in the notes and my explanations for them, however... I have a tendency to be really long winded about stuff at times and I'm afraid the whole thing will be just TL;DR for even the most hard core Sonic TASers.
Should I go by frame # or in-game time? What kinds of things should I include and exclude? How detailed should the explanations of those things be? Also, I would like to include a table or something to show the ring data for each act in the game, how would I go about preparing this for submission? Right now all my ring data is arranged using a tab-based system in the same text file.
Thanks TASVideos.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
WST and Marzojr, always appreciate your input. Thank you. That did clear up some confusion I was having and helped save me a lot of time testing stuff. Theoretically I believe Knuckles is able to get enough speed and proper positioning to get through the floor, which seems to be the best shot at reaching the tile, but it's really tricky to pull off... and unfortunately, I don't think it would work, anyway. Upon further testing in debug mode, I can see there's very low chance he would actually be able to reach either the door object or the tile, even if he did manage to glitch through that floor.
It's a shame. In every other level there was always some way for him to get into where he isn't supposed to. I guess the developers really determined not to let that happen in LRZ for whatever reason. Unless someone figures out a way to active the slope glitch, which I kind of doubt as it probably already would have been discovered by now. So, in my opinion it just really is impossible for Knuckles to get in there.
Oh well, on the bright side it's less work for me...
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
So, basically, whoever figures out a way onto that one blue tile will make Sonic history because it's possible to glide from there onto the wall, and then climb up on top of the screen and run along the ceiling all the way back into Sonic's starting area. Which, to my knowledge, has never been done before with Knuckles.
I've spent a lot of time testing different ways to get into Sonic's area and I'm fairly certain this is the best/only possible way of doing so while still being able to finish the level. And I'm not even sure if this will work, it's beginning to seem like a long shot. I've come close to reaching the tile, but not quite enough. This is as close as I've got:
There seems to be only 3 ways of reaching it: 1. falling through the bottom step either by glide glitching or spindash jumping/the stair glitch (top pic); 2. falling through the top step to land in the wall next to it and jumping from there (bottom pic); 3. glide glitching through the thinnest part of the floor (by the breakable rocks near the steps) to land on top of the door object below and then jumping onto the tile (not pictured because I haven't managed to do it). But there's a problem with each of these.
For 1, the glide glitch almost works but for some reason I get pushed directly back up onto the step instead of going through it. I don't know why I can glide glitch through the top step, but not the bottom one? As for the stairs glitch, it probably won't work because the ceiling of the corridor to the left of the stairs is so low that it messes up the timing of the jump.
For 2, for some reason I can't jump from the very edge of the wall. I'm pretty sure there have been times in the past where I've been in similar situations to this - I'm zipping through a wall, get close to where the inner wall/floor tiles end, spindash, and then I'm able to safely inch my way towards the edge without being ejected from the terrain, and perform an ordinary jump from there. Why doesn't that work here?
For 3, I know it's possible to glide glitch through very thin floors, however I'm not sure this floor is thin enough. I was able to glitch through the floors shown below in Sandopolis 2 and I didn't think I could do that at first, either, so maybe the same will work here. I think it might help a lot if I knew what the numbers mean, usually on 2x tile floors they're labeled "FFFF FFFF". Is that hex for the value of how thick they are? Would I be able to use that values to determine if getting through a given set of tiles is possible, without wasting hours testing it manually? Unfortunately they numbers aren't shown in the pic because I didn't have time to go into the game and take screenshots of each, these are just from the map packs, hopefully it's good enough.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
scahfy wrote:
They just keep getting more impressive the further you go.
Paused wrote:
WIP is looking great, not much more to go now.
Very thanks guys!
marzojr wrote:
Paused is correct, that was a typo I missed: it should be PM instead of OM.
Edit: ah, I see what is going on: this is not a real increase, but simply graphical corruption in the rings display due to the camera hack. There is no way to really keep this increase as it only exists temporarily because of the camera hack. This was the tl;dr version; here is the full explanation:
Ok, thanks for explaining everything. So, does that mean the effect won't occur whenever the video is played back in unhacked versions of the emulator?
Also here is something I stumbled upon while working on my TAS for Sandopolis Act 2. It's not fully optimized but it is a small route improvement, saving 3-5 seconds over the current Knuckles TASes. I know there are some differences between S3K and S&K so maybe it won't work in S&K alone. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to use this short cut in my own TAS, but I think it will be useful in regular speedruns. Oh, and sorry about the sound, I fixed it in a different video but YouTube is stupid and rejected that submission, so I suggest just muting it.
Link to video
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player
(376)
Joined: 7/13/2013
Posts: 138
What is OM? Anyway, turns out you don't need my movie specifically. I just tested it some more and was able to make the same thing happen in LBZ1. So, it can probably be done anywhere you can terrain eject through a ring monitor. But I think it requires a place where you have room to get a decent distance going straight forward. It only happens at very high speeds (4,900-4,800), so I couldn't get it to work if there were upward slopes (not sure about downwards yet), enemies, or other monitors in the way. Also when I paused it right beforehand it changed the values even more. But I don't know what any of this means, and I appreciate you wanting to look into it, so for your convenience I've provided a short demo movie showing it being done so it should be fairly easy to test from there.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/950953885/ktelevelselect.gmv
So, basically, whoever figures out a way onto that one blue tile will make Sonic history because it's possible to glide from there onto the wall, and then climb up on top of the screen and run along the ceiling all the way back into Sonic's starting area. Which, to my knowledge, has never been done before with Knuckles.
I've spent a lot of time testing different ways to get into Sonic's area and I'm fairly certain this is the best/only possible way of doing so while still being able to finish the level. And I'm not even sure if this will work, it's beginning to seem like a long shot. I've come close to reaching the tile, but not quite enough. This is as close as I've got:
There seems to be only 3 ways of reaching it: 1. falling through the bottom step either by glide glitching or spindash jumping/the stair glitch (top pic); 2. falling through the top step to land in the wall next to it and jumping from there (bottom pic); 3. glide glitching through the thinnest part of the floor (by the breakable rocks near the steps) to land on top of the door object below and then jumping onto the tile (not pictured because I haven't managed to do it). But there's a problem with each of these.
For 1, the glide glitch almost works but for some reason I get pushed directly back up onto the step instead of going through it. I don't know why I can glide glitch through the top step, but not the bottom one? As for the stairs glitch, it probably won't work because the ceiling of the corridor to the left of the stairs is so low that it messes up the timing of the jump.
For 2, for some reason I can't jump from the very edge of the wall. I'm pretty sure there have been times in the past where I've been in similar situations to this - I'm zipping through a wall, get close to where the inner wall/floor tiles end, spindash, and then I'm able to safely inch my way towards the edge without being ejected from the terrain, and perform an ordinary jump from there. Why doesn't that work here?
For 3, I know it's possible to glide glitch through very thin floors, however I'm not sure this floor is thin enough. I was able to glitch through the floors shown below in Sandopolis 2 and I didn't think I could do that at first, either, so maybe the same will work here. I think it might help a lot if I knew what the numbers mean, usually on 2x tile floors they're labeled "FFFF FFFF". Is that hex for the value of how thick they are? Would I be able to use that values to determine if getting through a given set of tiles is possible, without wasting hours testing it manually? Unfortunately they numbers aren't shown in the pic because I didn't have time to go into the game and take screenshots of each, these are just from the map packs, hopefully it's good enough.
