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"Vocal samples for music and FX provided by: Minions"
I'm not familiar with the game at all, but it's obvious at first glance that what you're doing is TAS quality beyond what people can do. I liked this.
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The game looks fun and the run blasts through it really quick. You did a really entertaining job handling the beat-em-up stages quickly and in style. I was confused about the game being in Italian at first, and then more when I saw the explanation why, but the run's really really good so I didn't care I got disney plus i'll go watch the movie later
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Okay these are some good ideas and I had a spare evening so I thought I'd whip a couple tests together to see what they looked like.
Link to videoThe Dreadnaught Factor
Shooting down all the cannons is fun to watch but it's slow and unnecessary, just weaving back and forth and bombing the key targets is all a TAS would need to do. Still looks cool. Curious if the second dreadnaught would be faster if I just wove back and forth faster instead of what I did in this video--do one side, die, do the other side.
What would make this game a pain in the butt to optimize is the super laggy movement. Each directional press takes up to several frames to have an effect on your momentum, so it's not easy to be where you want to be when you want to be there without inertia sliding you away from the next target in line. Also, the manual kinda makes it seem like difficulty 7 has exactly 100 ships to destroy, so would the Infinite Loop clause not apply making this TAS like an hour long?
Link to videoHappy Trails
Trivial puzzle game for a TAS, optimizing the route would be the main work to do. When I rewatched this at full speed, though, I kinda liked how it looked. I wonder how a Locomotion TAS would compare?
Shark! Shark! would probably have to have more of a goal, because growing to max level would just take a few seconds I'm sure. Diner would be fun to try, I don't think I've played it in 20 years and I've still got the music stuck in my head
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I kinda wish some more time was wasted before starting the loop. Time it so that the counter wraparound gets exactly to 1 when the time runs out, so that the one death in the "Maximum Lives" run actually leads to a game over
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oh hell yes five whole minutes hot damn
That new usage of that Guo Ji killer glitch surprises me, I wonder what causes it. Love all of the other improvements. Awesome to see this!
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can you believe I used to play this at my cousin's house, for fun
Nice work updating this! The new tricks and routes surprised me, I may be biased (thx for the s/o) but I enjoyed the watch.
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not sure why but there's something blowing my mind about a Sega Genesis game advertising a web address in its opening scenes
This was a good run! I liked the action, it was clearly well optimized, and I was surprised it was over so soon! Good stuff.
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I hadn't looked up what the other versions were like, and it turns out that yes this is actually an NES-exclusive oversight. Other versions of Ultima V are more like earlier Ultimas, where battles take place on a separate screen from the world or dungeon. The NES port messed this up by trying to become more like Ultima VI, where battles are real-time on the map. Oops!
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Awesome! I'm curious to read about how that glitch works. Even without that glitch this run definitely deserved a huge update, so thanks for picking it up!
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sorry for not getting back to you earlier. Yeah there are some ways to mess with the RNG. With the windows functioning as framerules, there's room to alter your location on screen, collect/not collect the heart, destroy/not destroy barrels or pests, waiting a couple frames for a framerule to pass can change the windows and the timing for the next screen I think.
For difficulty loop, I did some testing and it looks like it stops increasing after climbing the building for a third time. But if the rule is to end the loops after new content, though, it might be best to climb the building five times before ending the movie: There is a congratulatory GREAT that appears above the building number from then on. Between that and the difficulty plateauing I think five times is best.
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To show off what pain in the ass the RNG is in this game, here's a run that I did a couple years ago for my own entertainment when Intellivision in Bizhawk was released. It beats this one by 202 frames, even though it looks slower at first: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/52675738424819386
The difficulty loops question is legit, though--After the first loop, barrels can break into two after they fall a level, and things do move faster. I'm preeeetty sure that every loop after the second is the same, though I can't back that up right now. The gameplay really doesn't change all that much.
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what in the world is this game? Just oozing personality out of everything it is made out of! It's almost like everything is a reference or a parody to other fighter games, or just a joke in itself. Incredible music, too. The run itself looked really good, everything moved fast and there was decent variety. Absolutely never slowed down or got even the slightest bit boring. Good stuff.
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ahh yes, a game called Puss in Boots, starring "Dog in spanish" shooting a gun what even is this terrible game
Decent run, though, I can tell you pushed the game to what it's capable of. There is a spot a bit over halfway through where you have to stop to avoid death--I wonder if there was a way to manipulate damage better, like a couple screens earlier when all those british soldiers run into you from behind?
edit- oh
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oh, i didn't realize some of Eversion's awesome music was from an NES game I'd never heard of. Customizeable characters is cool, otherwise this seems like just a decent quality platformer, and a solid looking run through it. Not bad!
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I believe it's only "invisible" in that it's entirely the same color as the background. There are very brief places in the encode where you can see little bits of its sprite, and it's the same as the previous robot but in the dark blue of the background. So yes: The robot can be killed after three shots, it'll explode, and then respawn, forever repeating without change. ...unless there's some killscreen caused by score overflow or something
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oh MAN I put *hours* into this game when I was a child, and you get to the final robot in 3 minutes? Damn, I shouldn't have questioned how cool a TAS of this would be when I was looking at the INTV library.
The constantly exploding robot parts made this entertaining to me, especially with how it was so nonstop that the "music" can't even play at all after the first few seconds. I gave this a Yes vote, with noted nostalgia bias. Good vid!
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Thanks for the encode (and the "sorry for the meme" warning)
The game is good, and the run seems like a great start. I'm not sure if that was quite enough rerecords, though, because the whole run felt slightly inefficient throughout. I'm not familiar at all with the game, though, and only watched the encode.
Ostrich boss fight: you only took the left block to hurt it with, would it be faster to just use the right block?
Pirate boss: the first time, you'd usually wait for your hammer to recharge some before hitting him again. The second time, you hit him a lot more repeatedly. Which is the faster play?
Octopus boss: when he's swimming in from the right side, you were letting most of its body in the screen before swinging the hammer. Is that the earliest it was vulnerable?
And just general movements going through levels were sometimes iffy.
These are nitpicks though. The run is mostly alright, and the game is colorful.
Now, the real question is: Is there a 2P mode? Faster, longer, better movie potential there?
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okay cool, I wasn't the only one that thought to work on this too
I don't have a lot to add beyond what Meshuggah said.
- Trolls randomly fly backwards or don't depending on when you shoot them, often like every other frame. If you're at a precise distance from them when you shoot, you can make it through the no-damage period if they don't get pushed backwards.
- Shots stopping your momentum is actually a blessing for when you want to get passed a corner at the highest speed if you couldn't otherwise fall passed it/jump over it without bumping into it.
Here's a demo movie I threw together in an hour the beats the whole thing in 1:28 and is still improvable: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/45839714382497456
This isn't the best programmed game, which makes me wonder about the engine it's showing off, but shrug!
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I used to place this game a lot when I was SUPER young, so I'm really impressed with the final result here. The game has a ton of complexity and variety for such an early game system. A hardest difficulty run would be worth something, though. If the Minotaur can't be one-shot at the higher level, more pickups would have to be spawned on the path. The run would mostly be just more ladder descents and rng manipulation otherwise.
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Co-Op Qix? Fascinating.
The run is definitely repetitive, though--if only the game had meaningful bosses where you had to draw over them or something. Still, a sub-10 minute time helps.
