Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
First, I'm still trying to figure what triggers the double jump bug that I use at 4515 and 4543. I already found that it doesn't trigger unless the player is not rising in altitude. This can be checked on value at address FFE4. In other words, this signed value must be equal or greater than zero. This bug may be useful because it can be also triggered in third level.
So yesterday I finally uncovered the mystery!
When the player begins falling by walking off a platform, a 10-frames countdown will begin. during this time, you are allowed to jump even if you aren't actually standing on your feets... The curious fact is that this countdown will pause during the jump and while you're on the monkey bar. It will resume whenever you begin falling again, but you can use it again before it goes to zero so... You can jump again on air. In pratice, you can always jump if FFE4 (signed) is >=0 and FFE3 (unsigned) is non-zero.
This is going to save a lot of time in level 3!
Edit: oh and I almost forgot, here is my new level 1 WIP: User movie #39493171658302538
I saved only 3 frames because the boss got problematic with its timing. Unfortunately, it's probably impossible to fix.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
I understand, but you didn't answer to my question: "wouldn't a full run be perfectly identical to your run when clearing the same stages you did?"
My english is not very good, so I hope I didn't expressed myself in an incorrect or obscure way.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
I've done a very quick and dirty test in which I catch two monkeys and discovered two tricks!
First trick: when a level starts, you can't do anything until you land, except using the sword. And by using the sword, you can turn the character before it lands. This allows to save some time, since the more you have to turn, the more time the character will require to start walking.
Second trick: after you've catched a monkey, you can't move right away, but if you switch to the sword you can resume moving earlier.
By the way, I've yet to figure the best way to move, but I got the impression that both camera direction and character direction are necessary to know, so I've made a pretty script that shows them on screen, along with positions and speed values. Enjoy! https://pastebin.com/tmjAzcRU
Edit: I found a video featuring some RTA strategies:
Link to video
Edit 2: I think I found the base logic for micro optimizations.
The game uses 16-bit values for X, Y and Z values, and since the movements speed consists in very small numbers, the value rounding while walking diagonally can make a difference. For example, walking straight along an axis (0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°) results in a maximum walking speed of 28 space units, but when walking with a different angle, the travelled space (calculated by Pythagorean theorem) can go up to ~30 units. So, by using precise analog input values, we can exploit the game's poor calculations to save some frames there and there.
And in order to make this simpler, I've made a script that shows multiple frames' speed values on screen (just like I did for GBA Crash)! Enjoy. https://pastebin.com/DHtHF0J4
Edit 3: Some videos I found, just for documenting strategies.
Link to videoLink to video
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
maglevtrain wrote:
That ending spot is correct. We decided that timer ends when the screen goes black after the final level but I felt weird leaving the TAS to stop right there so took the extra seconds to return to the menu
For any%, games are considered beaten when the credits are triggered, if the game provides. Why stopping playing without clearing the whole game? I don't understand. Also, wouldn't a full run be perfectly identical to your run when clearing the same stages you did?
maglevtrain wrote:
I guess failure on my part, but lower spin decreases control of the beyblade making precision not really work and therefore lowering the entertainment value. It would make the run either be watching a wobbly top or I could do slightly less than perfect and save maybe 2 seconds overall
I'm sorry but I don't think it is a good idea to sacrifice speed for entertaining purposes on a game that has so low popularity. Also, it looks like charging the spin to maximum makes things easier, and thus lowers the technical value of the run.
Also, your idea about full charge spin being more entertaining looks very subjective to me. Most times getting huge handicaps like using a suboptimal character or picking up the highest game difficulty is what is considered a good speed/entertaining tradeoff, because makes the game harder to beat and thus requiring a lot more of work to optimize the TAS.
Edit: thinking again, my argument about the tradeoff being out of place is quite poor, though I still think that it was a very bad one. Though, I'm not sure how much my opinion does matter since I'm not familiar with this game and how it works technically speaking.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
First, have to note tha the correct name of the game is Beyblade VForce: Ultimate Blader Jam.
maglevtrain wrote:
It saves so little time I decided to stick with the "superhuman" perfect launches.
Actually, I would find way more "superhuman" (and entertaining) to use the minimum amount of launch charge necessary for clearing each stage, because that would require to be carefully calculated, in order to get an overall faster completion time.
Tough I'm assuming that the charge does not affect your movement speed or anything, since you didn't mention anything of the sort in your submission text.
Spikestuff wrote:
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
lapogne36 wrote:
I am currently on another project, but I will come back at ZX4 after if it's not over yet in the meantime (seriously, I need to take a break from this game...)
Don't worry, I perfectly understand, I also need to have breaks and get to work on different projects very often.
By the way, I have news: as I thought, it was possible to prevent that enemy to spawn in stage 8. This resulted in 7 frames saved, tough due to frame rules this made the boss battle to desync a lot and get 2 lag frames. I don't feel like fixing it right now, so here is the desyncing movie file, just for informational purposes: User movie #38889985897884222
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
I just had a conversation with FatRatKnight about lua, and he mentioned that BizHawk used to provide a global GBA memory addresses region like "system bus", that now is no more. I had some uncomfort too because of its lack, so I ask if it would be possible to implement that again in BizHawk.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
FatRatKnight wrote:
Sub-22 looks possible, with all the skips we've been finding. However, it's becoming increasingly apparent that I'm just not getting into the mood to try. So, while I'm still thinking about it, I'll give out all my routing thoughts on every stage before I completely fall off.
Don't worry, you've already provided enough data for making a very good run. I just hope you'll consider picking up this project again later before it's done.
I also want to point out that until now we had less partecipants than what I've expected. I ask to anyone who is reading this, to please consider contributing to this run; every tiny help is welcomed.
And about that, we should beginning to list anyone who is contributing, for authorship referencing. Since this is not a trivial matter, I need FRT to specify every single person from which he got help, strategies, and data that he didn't already had by himself.
Now getting back about the work.
In my opinion, stage 0 is impossible to improve further, except in the eventuality of new glitches or tricks behing discovered.
Then there is level 8, in which I spotted a place that may be improved by preventing an enemy to spawn, by using camera trickery. For this reason, I've written a quick script based on the External Radar by FRK, which only features spawn borders and enemy spawn positions, by using the game screen instead that using a new window, resulting in a very lighter script: User movie #38787806393105666.
Apart from this, I have currently no other things to add to what FRK already said. The route 8-7-1 looks very solid, and there may be changes only about later stages, for very minor time saves.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
gordonX wrote:
question, If I upload the bk2 file, how its possible to watch the movie without the ROM ?
If you want to show a work in progress or a complete TAS, you can upload a quick encode to YouTube. Here is a guide: http://tasvideos.org/forum/t/16971
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
This is probably useless, but i want to point out that I noticed something strange in stage 0. Look at the terrain map:
In the right up corner, there are four ceiling tiles to prevent Zook from jumping above screen. It is actually pretty easy to pass through them but still, nothing in particular happens.
I wonder if they did put these four ceiling tiles as a quick workaround to some bad glitch, then later were fixed by an actual improvement of the code: that would explain why they did not implement such ceilings in level 6 as well.
I still hope to discover some way to walk above the screen like in Super Mario Bros.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
Alyosha wrote:
Also, are we sure this game is emulated well enough that all these glitches are valid? Some of the glitches seem to strain the system pretty hard, and debugging utilities are currently pretty limited.
Actually, there is a graphical glitch in E Mo Dao, a GBC game by the same developer, which is visible on Gambatte, and not on VBA. So no, there is no way to be sure that there aren't any emulation inconsistences... The only way would be to replicate the glitches on actual GBA, which could be a bit difficult since the actual cartridge is quite rare.
Another drawback is 15DC is decremented every time MurderBarrier erases an enemy. If this value is not exactly zero, you can't switch weapons or pause the game. This, and the fact we can't complete the stage by erasing a boss, means there are no known speed uses as of this time.
This is not true anymore. I've found a way to disable Murder Barrier after having erased enemies. Here is the procedure:
1) Charge Bubble weapon;
2) Release and swap to Fire weapon in menu;
3) Charge and use Flame Dash;
4) Release and swap in menu to Laser weapon to enable MurderBarrier;
5) Erase as many enemies you want;
6) Charge and use Laser attack;
7) Change weapon by pressing L/R or via menu to turn off MurderBarrier.
Note: if you erase an other enemy after firing the Charged Laser, the weapon will be locked again, and if you don't have enough ammo to fire another, you're stuck again.
And here is a quick movie from savestate demonstrating it: User movie #38674058536568982
This works thanks to the ability of Fire weapon to fire multiple times in a row: you're always able to fire as long as you have ammo, even if you have a "Flame Barrier" on Zook, and after using Flame Dash, the weapon gets unlocked and you can do anything you want. Then, after changing to Laser Weapon, you still have the ability to fire again despite the barrier, and so you're able to use Charged Laser to unlock again, even after having erase enemies with MurderBarrier.
Edit: Well. It looks like it is possible to charge Laser after having erased one enemy with MurderBarrier. This makes the procedure a little simpler.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
Not only that: before the contest start, I didn't know of any glitches.
My main reason for picking this game, was because of the huge amount of routes. Every weapon has its own quirks, and every level layout is very different, so the possibilities looked countless to me at first. And in fact, most submitted runs resulted very different (tough that was mainly because of the different glitches discovered by the teams). The fact that the weapons deal the same damage to every boss, makes the routes less oblivious, and thus makes it more challenging.
The second reason, was the extreme enemy density. Except for some segments of some levels, the enemies amount is such that forces you to come up with very clever manouvers in order to travel throught as fast as possible. I also tought that this would have made the TAS more entertaining to watch.
And about the crappyness of the physics and stuff... I really didn't care about this, and I personally still don't feel it like a problem. I see this game is horrible to play, but we're talking about TASing here, so I really don't understand what's the problem here. On the contrary, having a game that works in such an... unconventional way, makes it even more interesting to TAS, because you have to deal with something you're not used to.
And lastly, about the musics: I perfectly understand that it isn't appropriate to use GB/C sound engine for a GBA game, but that shouldn't be a problem for GB/C entusiasts like me. I really like the soundtrack.
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
So, I've noticed that in level 8 is used a trick to make despawn two different enemies. I wonder if that would be possible as well for the green enemies with shield in segment 9. Those are two enemies perfectly overlapping, and one of them is already killed in the current WIP movie, so making despawn at least one of them would save some frames.
About the boss fight, I still didn't tried anything.
Edit: I couldn't improve the boss fight.
By the way, there is a place where I managed to save 1 landing lag frame, but then it caused to have another soon ahead. Maybe there is something that could be done about it, I've tried but I'm not sure. It's during segment 2 of level 8: Movie #38635348763866312
Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Skilled player
(1278)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
So today I visited this link: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3114&start=1875
And I noticed an avatar being enormous: http://imgur.com/emcKDw1
So I reported the avatar for exceeding the maximum resolution allowed, but everyone except me do see this: http://imgur.com/saUXeXM
I also tried on Android. Same result: http://imgur.com/9sKatqR
This is the image link: http://i43.tinypic.com/a1srdd.jpg
So, what is even happening?
Edit: I've tried several browsers, also on private mode, also tried clearing cache. it does appear the right, little image only when I open the direct image url first, after having cleared the cache or pressed Ctrl+F5.
Edit 2: Even after clearing the cache or pressing Ctrl+F5, it remains the wrong, big image on the forum.
In the right up corner, there are four ceiling tiles to prevent Zook from jumping above screen. It is actually pretty easy to pass through them but still, nothing in particular happens.
I wonder if they did put these four ceiling tiles as a quick workaround to some bad glitch, then later were fixed by an actual improvement of the code: that would explain why they did not implement such ceilings in level 6 as well.
I still hope to discover some way to walk above the screen like in Super Mario Bros.
