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Link to video
In this video I learned some unexpected facts about Knuckles: he was hatched from an egg, he has a super long tongue, he has a beak, and he has a massive 4-headed cock the size of an arm .
The narration's pretty funny though.
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Anyone wanna talk about TASing in general? I would really be interested to hear others thoughts or experiences relating to any aspect of TASing.
What makes it such an enjoyable hobby? What do you get out of it that keeps you coming back, that makes it worth spending many hours just to get a few seconds of video? Any complaints or things you dislike? How did you first get into it? What games do you like to TAS and why?
My favorite thing is solving gameplay puzzles. I remember reading that elsewhere on this site and I think it's an excellent description of part of the TASing process. It's taking one's knowledge about a game and applying it in the controlled setting of an emulator in order to create a desired outcome. It's like playing a game within a game, which has allowed me to go back and experience my favorite game of all time in a completely new way all over again. And what's more is you actually get something tangible to show for it in the end in the form of the movie file. Literally a video game-movie based on theoretical button inputs... it's sophisticated.
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WST wrote:
TheYogWog wrote:
Thank you for making this.
You are welcome. Don’t forget to thank me for a little promotion boost for your original video as well :)
Yes, I see that. Wonderful, thank you for that as well.
WST wrote:
However, displaying a zoomed-out image in the Gens canvas is already on my TODO list, since it would be handy and easy to use (you can assign hotkey for zooming out).
That would be incredible. And as long as I'm engaging in wishful thinking, I should add how great it would be if it were possible to see everything on the map at once instead of just whatever's on screen.
I appreciate your interest in my videos, WST, and likewise I find Sonic Atlas videos very interesting. Check your inbox for my lattest .gmv, which includes up to MGZ1. I'm also putting my own encodes on my YT channel right now (sorry for the shitty picture quality, don't really know that much how to fix that). I'm not sure if I'll always release it every time I finish a level, but in this case I think it would be a good idea as I'm hoping you might be able to spot any lingering issues with my playing that still need to be worked out (I feel I've gotten the hang of loop jumping now)
Currently, I'm about to begin testing on MGZ1 which is sure to be an endeavor. It's perhaps the most complex map in the game, and was one of the first levels I did when I started TASing and I remember having to restart from scratch 5 different times on this act because of the path swapper. I'm not sure but I'm hoping that won't be as much of an issue this time as in this run allows the use of glitches, whereas my previous attempts did not. Anyway, I'm mainly mentioning this because of one question in particular that I know I have right now, and that has to do with the annoying drilling machines that appear periodically throughout Act 1.
What do they affect, exactly, if anything? I mean, is there any reason I should wait for them to finish drilling? I know it's possible to bypass them sometimes by going fast, but like I said I don't know if that would affect pathswappers or something that would end up causing trouble later on. Also it seems if you don't get by them fast enough and don't wait for them to finish drilling, the drilling sound won't go away for the rest of the level. If for some reason I had to find myself in that situation, would it be acceptable to sacrifice a time-loss in order to prevent the drilling sound from negatively impacting the viewing experience? Apologies for being longwinded.
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Sega Atlas is awesome.
Makes me wish it was a standard feature in Sonic games, that you could have a second camera option like that. It is great for ring attack TASes.
Thank you for making this.
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heeheex2 wrote:
"This TAS Quotes topic is real stupid"
~ everyone probably
Meh, I think it's fun. Here's some by everybody's favorite historical/political figure...
“When human skill ends, TASing begins.”
“When diplomacy ends, War begins.”
“It is not re-record count that matters, but frame count.”
“It is not truth that matters, but victory.”
“Great TASers are also great magicians.”
“Great liars are also great magicians.”
“TASing is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”
“Reading is not an end to itself, but a means to an end.”
“The art of TASing consists in savestating the essentials and re-recording non essentials.”
“The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials.”
“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of frame advance.”
“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”
“Do not compare TASes to RTSes. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
“Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
--Adolf Hitler
Maybe more to follow as he seems to have a lot of good quotes for this
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WST, thanks, that is a great tip about stopping on objects, and I probably would've kept going without even knowing about it if you hadn't said anything. It should be very useful, indeed. Loop jumping is one of those things, I know what it's about, but it fell by the wayside of things I learned to do well, as I was focusing on other aspects of the run. Not that that's any excuse not to include it in a run which I hope to have a fighting chance of being published here. I probably could have benefited from using it in several places so far, and I definitely need to learn how to use it better. One thing that would help a lot with that, which I've been meaning to ask about anyway, is this: even though I've been using marzojr's LUA HUD, and couldn't TAS nearly as well without it, I still get confused about what each of the 6 number fields at the bottom are supposed to represent. Sorry, but could somebody please just clarify this for me?
Also, I think it may be worth noting one thing I've found about ring attacking, which maybe isn't readily apparent from a purely speed running perspective, is that in certain situations striving for max speed isn't necessarily the best solution. In general, moving too fast when there are rings following you is a good way to get them loaded out of memory where they simply disappear and can no longer be collected. Loop jump is especially good for causing this issue, as it not only increases your speed (so you risk out running them) but it also changes the trajectory of any rings that are following you (so that they might miss hitting you if they do get close enough, and instead get flung out of memory in some other direction). In those types of situations, I guess it becomes a question of whether it's ultimately quicker to let the lightning shield pull the rings towards you or just get the rings yourself. Admittedly, I'm not sure I tested this very thoroughly when it has occurred so far, but I imagine the difference is minimal anyway and that just seems like more of an optimization issue that would be best addressed in subsequent playthroughs.
More specifically, for example in the bottom tube along KTE's path in the video, the first time I enter it, I have to actually slow down and wait for a few frames because otherwise he would exit the tube before the breakable ground at the end finished loading -- which is all well and good, except that it will then obstruct my path on the return trip, and result in death by crushing if I try to jump through the wall there. And I'm not sure if you guys are aware, I don't see why you would be since in a typical speedrun there is no reason to go backwards up the set of 3-loops on KTE's path, but the pathswapper for the second loop is "picky", and often it will send you floating off in the opposite direction. I'm not sure what causes it but not going too fast and staying in a ball seemed to be only reliable way of staying on track.
So, those are some things I thought you guys might be interested in knowing in case you didn't already. But yes, as I said I do need to work on loop jumping and thanks again WST for being most helpful.
marzojr wrote:
nice work, as far as I know, you are the first one to find out Knuckles can go through regular floors by gliding at the right frame. In some quick tests, it seems that the ground must not be very thick (except if you gather some very high vertical speed),
Thanks, marzojr. Yes, you're correct that it only works with unusually thin floors for a regular jump. That spot where I jumped is the only place along the entire airship route where the floor is thin enough.
I think it's actually kinda spooky, tbh, the fact that just that 1 tile is not as thick as the rest of the ground there. I'm only half kidding when I say that I swear this game has an otherworldly, almost supernatural quality about its design at times. When it was as being made they couldn't possibly have known that 20 years later TASers might use this and other similarly unlikely exploits in their runs, yet that's what happened.
I suppose the same could be said for any exploit in any game, but whatever.
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Thanks for the encouragement everyone, since you guys liked the demo I have decided to convert it into a WIP for a full game run.
I just finished revising Act 2. All the major errors from before should be corrected now, and I found a way to get the last 3 rings at the end which means 100% collection of rings in Angel Island Zone.
I'm not sure if or when I'll complete this project except that it's going to be a long time from now. Would it be ok if I continue to post updates here periodically, and also any questions I have as they arise? I usually try to do my own research but sometimes that's not helpful enough.
Link to videoWST wrote:
TheYogWog,
I sent you a private message many days ago. Could you please check your inbox?
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Thanks all. In my last post the reason some of you didn't see it is because I accidentally edited it when I probably should have just made a new post (on some forums people get buttmad if you double post so I wasn't sure, oh well)
Paused wrote:
so if you do not mind I'll post your IL of the level to try and get you a response.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdorCVlrrE4
(I don't suppose the capsules are closed with the rings you missed in them if you return in Act 2 having beaten Act1 are they? Assuming you can even do that in FB?)
Sorry, but what's an IL? Thanks for sharing a link to that video, it would really help if someone knew a way to get all of the rings there. And no, I don't believe you can return to Act 1 in FBZ.
amaurea wrote:
Personally I would like to see both a glitchless and glitchy max ring TAS and I'm not sure which one I would anticipate the most. I think both should have a place on tasvideos if somebody makes them.
Unfortunately, I have to disagree about a glitchless ring run. When I first started playing around with the idea myself, I felt the same as you. But as I progressed through the levels it became clear there's no place for glitchless in this type of playthrough. Take LRZ2, for example: what if you couldn't glitch through any of the doors here, which are normally meant to be opened from hitting a switch on the opposite side? Generally, not using glitches in a ring run means 1. you'll get less rings that are even possible to obtain in the first place and 2. those that are possible, frequently require backtracking through significant portions of the level. The difference is illustrated in the videos below, my more recent LRZ2 that does use glitches and my very early MGZ1 that doesn't.
Link to videoLink to video
Alternatively, consider this: what if I didn't use glitches in the video in my last post, AIZ? I would have had to play through KTE's portion of the level up to the check point to reset the boundary, then backtrack to the beginning to get into Sonic's area, and upon finishing that, backtrack back through there to get back to KTE's area, and then play all the way through that route yet again in order to finish the level.
The crux of the issue of glitches in a straight up speedrun in Sonic, is that they tend to "skip" much of the game's content. But in a ring attack speedrun, using glitches actually adds more content to the run. Due to the nature of the goal, players have to go through much of the level in any case to get the rings, so in a way it's even more pedantic than in a normal speedrun to still refuse utilizing glitches to accomplish that. Plus I think it's technically more impressive to watch because it shows a deeper knowledge of how the game works.
feeuzz22 wrote:
a "not really optimized" and very old try in AIZ1 (S+T) (glitchless for this one).
Nice, I just want to say I think S+T is definitely the ultimate team for RA speedruns. You get the full, longest campaign and with Tails help there's very few areas Sonic can't get into. Not to mention how much time it saves having them be able to get different rings separately at the same time. You could even include giant rings in the run if you started from a save state or whatever, since it's Sonic. But personally I will stick to KTE as I tried playing as them once and found it way too difficult to control them both for now.
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Does anyone know a way of getting all 6 rings from all 3 of the ring capsules in FBZ1? I feel pretty confident I can conclusively say whether or not most of the rest of the rings in the game can be obtained in a Knuckles ring run, but those are among the few that I'm unable to account for.
I'm still not sure/don't remember if or what the consensus was about the validity of a ring attack-speedrun for a goal in a TAS for this game. I know the Sonic 2 "perfect bonus" run was rejected, even though it was well received, and I understand why, but S3&K doesn't even have a tangible in-game reward for collecting all the rings. I think it's questionable whether you guys would allow it, but if it was done right, and well, I don't see why not. And I believe it's a nice solution to the aspect of S3K runs zipping through much of the core content of the game, which some people don't always like, while still being less arbitrary and difficult to define than something like a glitchless run.
These are the guidelines for it that I'd propose:
-First and foremost, aims to obtain the maximum number of rings (normal + monitor) possible as Knuckles (or whatever character is selected)
-Secondly, aims to do so in the least amount of time required
-Thus, the only way the movie could be obsoleted is if somebody did another recording with either more rings regardless of time, or equal rings in less time
-Since it's a full, single segment playthrough and the only thing that ultimately matters is total rings collected by the end of the game, progress should be measured in terms of rings per zone; rings per act is an irrelevant figure, and it's also ambiguous because there are some levels (AIZ, ICZ) where certain rings overlap and can be collected in either act
-Ignores special and bonus stages, except for rare instances when it's necessary to enter and immediately exit one in order to reset a boundry, and excludes from the eligible ring count for the run any rings that can be obtained through them (RA's including giant rings and/or transformations should be a separate category for everyone, due to drastic ramifications on the overall nature of the gameplay; except maybe Sonic, since he can still use shield jumps without transforming)
-Uses glitches to get more rings, faster
-Uses in-game timing, if possible
I made the following as a demo and/or a proof of concept, to show what that might look like. There should be a .gmv in my user movies, otherwise here:
http://www.filedropper.com/kteaizratasdemoyogwogLink to video
I've no doubt there's still optimizations that can be made, and I messed up in a few spots, like hitting the sign post at the mini-boss. I planned to use the invincibility to help get into Sonic's area but by the time I discovered that the monitor disappeared when I reset the boundry, I had already recorded half the second act - I planned then, to sacrifice my shield as a way to get momentary invulnerability, which I thought was needed to get past the spikes. I wasn't expecting to get up there the way I did, and in fact after that I re-did the entire second act up to that point but without hitting the sign post, but I got stuck trying to repeat that jump to get up there a second time so I ended up just going with the first version. I also used an inferior method of triggering the zip in the second act, apparently there's a way to just jump through the spikes that I didn't find out about until after I'd completed the whole video. Anyway, it's just a demo and I did my best. Thoughts?
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Patashu wrote:
However, it was rejected due to being an arbitrary goal (on some levels you simply CAN'T get perfect bonus, or no one has found out how to yet - so what do you do?).
Forgive me for not reading through the thread more thoroughly, perhaps this was covered there, but if you don't mind me asking what's wrong with just getting the maximum rings possible in those stages where getting perfect is impossible? And far be it from me to judge this site's submission guidelines, I'm sure they know what they're doing and all, but as a newcomer I'm curious: how come TASvideos attempts to regulate its own self-proclaimed art? I mean, I personally agree that TASes are a form of art, but isn't the whole concept of rejecting certain submissions for having an "arbitrary goal", in itself arbitrary? If a submission is well done, why not give the author a chance to share his work with others?
Sorry, I maybe getting off topic.
Patashu wrote:
That doesn't stop it from being an interesting TAS of course, just one that was not well defined for acceptance at tasvideos. Just keep that in mind - you can TAS to get on tasvideos, or you can TAS for some other reason
Honestly, thanks for pointing this out, thinking in these terms has since allowed me greater creativity to play around with and TASing feels more rewarding because of it. True art doesn't strive to be a certain way, I guess I had been overlooking that fact.
Patashu wrote:
For sonic 3 & knuckles, the game doesn't care how many rings you collect or how many bad guys you kill, and there is no way to prove that you collected them all/killed everything.
I have to disagree with you here, though. I would say, the game does care about those things in that they're factored into your total score at the end. Granted, there's no achievements and whatever, but this was in the 1990's and a simple points system was all they had at the time. And as for proving that all rings are collected, I imagine that would be a fairly simple task given the extensive information about the games that exists thanks to the Sonic community online, right?
Not trying to argue or anything, just my thoughts. Sorry it took so long to reply.
boct1584 wrote:
the introduction of the three-tier publication system, which is much friendlier to arbitrary goals provided they make for an entertaining movie.
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Thanks for the helpful post WST.
It's about time I started using marzojr's HUD, I've actually been meaning to look into it for some time. The jump predictor works great. I haven't spent a lot of time working with it yet so beyond that I'm not really sure how else to use it for now. Oh well, maybe I'll figure it out better as time goes on.
Apparently the author of the second video you linked to has since abandoned that project. That's too bad, it might have been interesting to discuss routes and whatnot with him sometime.
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Hey, can anybody give me some tips about... movement? I'm new to TASing and while I've picked up on certain aspects of the game, I'm not sure exactly how to optimize them.
Like, slopes: I know it's faster to roll down a slope than to run normally and jumping often seems to go even faster than that. Is there a way to optimize those results by doing it during a specific frame in Sonic's animation, maybe? I don't know. I'm probably missing out on some other basic, minor details that could help improve my videos besides that.
It would probably be best to just watch one and get an idea of where I'm at, what I'm doing right and wrong. In case you guys want to help or are interested, you can see my video for Knuckles in Ice Cap Zone, act 1 below. I guess it would be considered a playaround, or a ring run pseudo speed run.
Not my most recent work, but I think a good example to use for this post none the less since I do scale the entire mountain in the beginning (which accounts for like 1/3rd of the video (which, hopefully will find a lot more interesting during and after the descent)) and inclines/slopes are one thing that I'm really not sure I'm doing optimally.
With that said, here's the video and please feel free to comment about anything.
Link to video
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Hey guys, I'm just joining here in hopes of receiving feedback on some tool assisted Sonic 3K videos I've been working on over the past few months.
But first, a little about myself: video games have been a lifelong hobby of mine and some of my favorites include Perfect Dark, Dragon Quest 8, and Sonic 3&K. Over the years I've become something of a retro gaming enthusiast, and part of that includes watching speed runs, whether tool assisted or not, of older games. The first TAS I ever saw was SprintGod's well known TAS of S3K, several years ago. It blew my mind at the time and I've enjoyed watching TASes ever since.
Recently, I started playing around in Gens Rerecord for the first time and ended up producing the series of videos that I wanted to post about today. In them, I play as Knuckles, and the goal is to complete the level quickly and efficiently while collecting every ring that can be obtained by Knuckles without (heavy) glitches.
Here's a link to the full playlist containing all 8 videos I made so far: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHJbj1DoW994kUHiMSuK-rlhl94-IyQEx.
Here's a quick sample:
Link to video
I'm not sure if Youtube's quality is sufficient to really analyze the inner workings of a TAS, but I still have the original .gmv files in case that matters. Here are some things I hope to be able to discuss:
-Polish. I'm still new to TASing and I don't expect these would be technically impressive, but how bad (or good) are they? Is there any apparent bad habits or obvious mistakes I'm making?
-Content. I do try to utilize speed as much as I can, but it's secondary to gathering rings and, often, to killing enemies, particularly in big chain jumps. Is this interesting to watch? Is this art?
-Concept. Has the idea of a ring run-speed run been discussed or attempted here before? That's what I think of my videos as, except they also include the aforementioned killing of bad guys. If I started from the beginning and recorded a highly polished, full playthrough of the game like this, would it have a chance of being published? Or would it be ineligible to be published here for some reason?
-Tags. What kind of tags would apply to my recordings? Just curious. I did read through the tags portion of the site but I'm still confused. "Sacrifices speed for entertainment" sounded like it would fit at first, but then I read the description and it just seemed like it wouldn't apply in my case due to some technicality? What about these: collects all rings, takes no damage, uses no glitches? What about a demo or theory TAS?
-Anything else you want to discuss or comment on?
If this is posted on the wrong board for this I apologize, and if so please just direct me to a more appropriate board? Thanks.
