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I saved 77 frames by abusing death 2 more times. The new trick consists in jumping over the checkpoint crystal without touching them, see if you can apply it anywhere else.
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638051436619404664
Also, are you ok with adding me as co-author as well?
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SpaceColonizer wrote:
i'll take a look after work. but i guess since we measure by last input i could just phone it in on the last level and let military guys bomb the buildings for me. could probably even do that some levels earlier so long as the HP holds out.
Nice idea! Though I foresee that it will require some luck manipulation.
Edit: I must say though, I should discuss with the staff team to see if there is any preference. I think we usually give freedom of choice to the author, however the idea from my previous post would make inputs shorter while not wasting real-time completion.
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I think I found a possible improvement. Since the speedrunning strategy mostly consists in demolishing the the first building as soon as possible, the only stage that needs full routing is the last one, in order to be able to stop inputs as soon as possible. In that regard, I think that the last three buildings could be demolished faster.
Here is the route you used:
And here is my idea:
Basically, instead of descending to the ground level and then attacking the last two buildings, we're attacking all the three buildings in a single go. SpaceColonizer, could you try to implement this? No need to add me as a co-author.
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Thank you to feos for judging this submission.
In the eventuality that NES emulation improves to the point of being able to reproduce this game's movies on console, please contact me! I'll be working on an improvement TAS.
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In stage 28, I noticed that you left an array of balloons untouched on the bottom. Wouldn't save time to break those instead of the ones close to the top? Because the dart would take less time to get to the edge of the screen.
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Morpheus414 wrote:
Although the more advanced stuff like RamSearch and Lua Consoles are REALLY intimidating
Don't worry, just keep TASing without them until you start actually needing to look at the RAM values, at that point it will be natural to know what you're searching for in the RAM. I suggest looking into Lua scripting after that.
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Bigbass wrote:
Both movies desync on hardware for me. Perhaps RNG related? I don't have a way to initialize WRAM to test that theory. Alyosha or ViGreyTech may be able to test this.
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Here is the movie that I need to be console-verified: [3936] NES Code Name: Viper by XTREMAL93 in 10:56.62
This is important for me because currently there is a submission made with a different emulator and I'm not sure how to deal with it. I could still judge it without it, but a console verification would make it much less controversial, and I really wish to avoid controversy as much as possible.
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XTREMAL93 wrote:
Actually in hard mode some enemies ( green, black, red soldiers) move faster and can catch up protagonist. You can watch and compare it in level 3, when green soldiers jump out from behind the trees.
Oh ok, so the easy mode DOES make TASing execution easier.
Pankaj wrote:
Using passwords isn't allowed RTA so it shouldn't be allowed in TAS too(because using passwords one can directly skip to the final boss).
Here on TASVideos, using passwords isn't allowed only if you skip stages. But if you use a password that starts from the first level, it can be allowed.
Pankaj wrote:
I don't the difference between bizhawk and FCEUX.
My aim behind using FCEUX was to play the game initially then later i started TASing on it.
Yeah, it's not your fault. Please give me some time to figure out more about this problem. I hope someone can do a console verification of the published movie, that would make everything simpler...
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Since we're there, shall we also add a nice icon for Standard? Just to make sure it doesn't look "inferior" due to the lack of perky graphic. feos always wanted to make some sort of "coin" tier/class, so why not using the SMW coin sprite? It looks good to me because it gives the idea of "regularity" of the goals for Standard.
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At first I thought to judge this submission, but after a quick look I noticed a problem. I'm not going to claim this before I discuss and figure out how to judge it.
The thing is, the current publication uses BizHawk (NESHawk core) while this submission uses FCEUX. Both emulators are allowed for making submissions, however in this case it's troublesome for me to compare the two movies, because FCEUX generates less lag frames and different RNG, making it impossible to say if this improvement is more optimized or actually benefitting of the emulation differences.
One could argue that we there is no certainty that BizHawk is more accurate than FCEUX, and thus both emulator should be considered equally valid (unless someone provides a real console verification). However, the fact is, we already know of another FCEUX movie (thanks mtvf1) that we can compare this new submission to, which can be downloaded from here. If we disregard the starting cutscene, that FCEUX movie is about 30 frames faster than this submission.
By the way, using different difficulty modes shouldn't be an issue, since TASing for this game pushes the gameplay to the point that harder difficulties don't actually result in a more challenging TASing process, but affects gameplay just because of different enemy spawn positions, and thus a TASer may pick whatever difficulty mode results in a more favorable outcome for fastest completion. Note that this submission used easy mode, the published one used hard mode, and the old unsubmitted movie used hard mode 2nd quest (still no idea what's different from hard, apart from the lack of intro cutscene).
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I improved the London level by 2 frames and the final boss fight by 1 frame. 6 more frames were saved due to faster loading times of the levels after London. 9 frames saved in total.
User movie #637999882459618459
Requesting co-authorship with you all
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Thinking about it again, "Miscellaneous" sounds a bit too vague, as it could refer to both the Moons and the Playground movies... So yeah, Alternative seem to work best to me.
feos wrote:
adelikat wrote:
I'm very convinced that publication classes (formerly known as tiers) should be redone as follows:
Stars becomes a flag and then you just have 2 classes:
Standard
Alternative Goals
And I'm very convinced it needs to be "Alternative Goals", as it is clear what it is, without carrying any stigma about being a lesser class of publications.
Feels natural to also rename Standard to Standard Goals then. Even tho I still dislike that those are several words, because it makes it more annoying to repeatedly mention in judgment notes and threads as I use to do.
Maybe we should use add the "Goals" part only the home page, to list the recent publications for the separate classes, similarly on how we used to have two publication lists for Vault and Moons on the old site home page.
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All right, I think it's about time to continue this discussion. I think it's very important, because there are still misconceptions about how Moons stopped being a sort of honorific, and in my opinion the best way to fix this is by changing its name to something more appropriate to its new function.
Before I dive in, I want to point out that the names I've suggested before did include the word "Goals" just as an implied word, because each Class is basically a group of movie goals. In the practice I think that each Class should be called with a single word.
So, let's sum up the names that have been suggested so far:
Additional
Exotic
Unconventional
Atypical
Miscellaneous
Showcase
Beside the name, we'll also need to replace the Moons icon with something different, in order to completely separate it from its past nature. My suggestion is to use the note block from SMW, because in my opinion it suggests the idea of "creativity" of the goal. Also, it comes from the same game from which the Moons and Stars icons come from!
DrD2k9 wrote:
TL:DR We need to pick a name that identifies the class as non-standard goals, but that name needs to be such that it doesn't make the class sound like a higher tier. We need to be careful that the Standard class doesn't get looked at negatively (or less positively) because of what we choose to rename the current Moon class.
I agree. Thinking about it again, Showcase could lead back to the entertainment stigma, which is something that we really want to avoid. For this reason, my preference falls back again to Miscellaneous (or Miscellanea).
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Congratulations for your first accepted submission, M1D! Your TASing improved a lot from when you started, it was good to follow your progress! I'm looking forward to see your next work. 🙂
And here is my idea:
Basically, instead of descending to the ground level and then attacking the last two buildings, we're attacking all the three buildings in a single go. SpaceColonizer, could you try to implement this? No need to add me as a co-author.
It looks good to me because it gives the idea of "regularity" of the goals for Standard.
Moons icon with something different, in order to completely separate it from its past nature. My suggestion is to use the 
note block from SMW, because in my opinion it suggests the idea of "creativity" of the goal. Also, it comes from the same game from which the Moons and Stars icons come from!