So since there's some TAS work being done for this game right now (AWESOME!), I'll drop this here:
Link to video
It's an older discovery, and chances are it's already known about, but since I never actually publicly shared this due to lack of proper opportunity (not that I can remember anyway), might as well do it now.
Due to resources needed, and the slow execution duration of the special, there'd have to be a fairly significant skip for this to save time anywhere. Doubtful, but something to be mindful of I guess.
The other seemingly useful thing would be using the rinkas as a quick transport elevator after killing all the Metroids in the last Metroid room. Beyond that, I can't think of any other locations where this would be useful, unless memory corruption in some particular room turns out to be special somehow.
All of this seems to make sense, yeah. To add a little bit to what Fangs said, you get transported to the spawn location of the enemy you landed on the frame it died. Object priority has no direct relation to this, it's just A LOT easier to land on a lower-priority enemy than a higher priority one. It is possible to land on the higher priority one as well, but for this to work you have to time your movement to frame perfection... not an issue for any TAS, sure.
For the RTA setup, both enemies are in perfect vertical alignment. I guess in this case, it all does boil down to object priority, and the inner workings of the game, when rendering the next frame: the higher priority enemy dies first, and you land on the lower-priority one. And thus, that's why the red orb has to be killed to clear the slot, so the first pipe bug has a lower priority (since that's the only pipe bug that immediately spawns).
EDIT:
Also, both enemies do not necessarily have to die, only the one you land on has to.
We're not entirely sure on the exact specifics, but the basic gist is, that you're on top of two enemies at once, and you kill them on the same frame. This causes the game to put you on the vertical position,where the respawnable enemy spawns... in this case, that vertical position is right where the speed booster blocks are, which allows you to clip through.
It's a little more finicky in practice. For example, for this RTA method, killing the red orb, and collecting the drop, if there is a drop, is _required_. The only thing this does, is open up a slot in the memory, since an enemy was killed, which causes the second respawnable bug here to be placed in that open memory slot instead of the default one. That memory slot has a higher priority than that of the first pipe bug, and this influences the glitch in a useful manner somehow, among other things giving the second bug a higher freeze priority.
So, standing on two dudes, blowing stuff up, object priority, clippity clip. There, I'm sure this helped :P
So, finally something that can be useful happened.
Link to video
Again, credits to ScroogeD for the warp glitch, and Dragonfangs for figuring out pipe bugs worked for this. I just added some finishing touches.
This clip here would most likely negate all the time lost getting the Ice Beam early for 100%.
Ahhh, I see. Thanks for the input everybody, much appreciated! How does the boot skip work for the PC version, 4N6? Is there a video reference of some kind?
I wasn't sure where to put it, so I put it here. Now that you mentioned it, it's totally my bad for not searching for a low% topic before I posted... Sorry about that.
EDIT:
Actually, apparently there's no low% topic (at least none that I could find), but there is a general Mega Man X topic, which would certainly have sufficed for a question. So, sorry again.
To put it short, could phantom grab be used to bypass the Dash Boots somehow? I have no idea how the mechanics for that glitch work, but at least there's some woodchipper dudes who fling platforms at you in that level, so, maybe it'd be somehow possible to phantom grab one of those and get by somehow without the boots?
Another possible way would be somehow getting the buster upgrade without the boots, since charged Sting and Shield allow you to pass through the container freely. I dunno how you'd get the buster, but yea.
The reason why this'd be very neat, in my opinion, is cause I feel a TAS without the boots would sort of feel like an extension of the classic series. Don't get me wrong, the MMX TASes look amazing, and I wouldn't wanna substitute any of them for a slower paced TAS like this, I just think this might make for a fresh new take on Mega Man X and how it's played.
So uhh, if you got any info about possibly skipping Dash Boots, in any way, lemme know.
Right, I couldn't find anything special about it when I messed around with it, it didn't seem to do anything different than just regularly pushing right. RIGHT.
Well, yeah, it can only be activated while on the ground as morph ball. My guess is he had done exactly that, and only noticed the glitch had triggered once he started jumping.
Maybe there's another explanation, but I'm kind of doubtful.
Well, as a matter of fact I do have info about it, heh. It's a Left+Right glitch.
Morph into a ball and push Left+Right on the same frame, and this causes the Left-input to be Right. Morph Ball by itself doesn't per se fix the glitch, it gets negated if you're at stand-still as Morph Ball, and then start moving again.
Link to video
Ok I'm gonna drop this here with a little description just to share the tech.
Basically, this is a pretty simple clip to get partially inside of a slope. It works in, I'd say most of the areas where you can freeze an enemy right above the point where the slope ends, or switches angle (or something to that nature). The enemy doesn't have to be airborne, it can traverse the slope, pop off the ground or whatever, it just seems the horizontal position is a key factor.
The angle of the slope determines how deep you clip: for 1x1 slopes, you get one block deep, for 1x2 slopes, you only get half-a-block deep. If you try to move to any direction after clipping, you will get pushed back up, so, it's not possible to actually entirely clip through anything with this.
So, what's the point? Well, you can do a reverse shine recharge, demonstration here:
Link to video
The above video actually uses a different type of a clip, that we haven't been able to recreate anywhere else in the game (there's two slopes in that particular area where this is possible). But you should get the gist of it anyway: once inside the slope a little bit, just shinespark the other way and you get a speed boost.
Most of the time when clipping inside of a slope, you will not be falling per se, so you can't do a mid-air spark off the bat. However, once you land inside a slope, you can just plant a bomb, unmorph the frame it explodes, and that gives you a frame of airtime for a low-height spark.
Also, this sort of works in Fusion as well, I guess. I messed around with this a little bit, but I haven't been able to stay inside the slope after clipping... thus I haven't been able to get a reverse shinecharge. Concept-wise, reverse-shinecharging in Fusion works just fine: if you'd be a couple of pixels inside of a slope, you could just do 1 frame of ball jump, and then immediately spark the other way to get a speed boost back.
EDIT:
Oh, yeah. If you're wondering why the videos are lacking content or description, it's just because they're just very crude demonstrations of a mechanic. If I ever find something neat to do with this, I'll make a better vid and make it public.
Ohhh, cool. Yeah, that's pretty much how it looks in MZM as well... is all the OoB area in Fusion solid ground? It looks like there's no open area out there at all, which is a stark contrast to Zero Mission: In ZM, generally speaking there's just two blocks of solid wall right outside the controlled play area, and after that, it's a wide-open vertical space.
Also, uhh, Mobiusman was actually the one who found the tile corruption for ZM, messing around with the debug rom sometime last year.
EDIT:
OK I tried some OoB action in Fusion, and actually the OoB area is exactly the same in both games: a wide open vertical shaft on top of the play area, and then walls on the side. It's just that, in ZM we can't get inside those walls cause we can't clip sideways.
Also, it's possible to create physical objects using Fusion OoB as well. Regular breakable blocks can spawn at least, even inside the floor.
The only way I've found for moving while inside a wall, is by chaining Space Jumps together (this allows you to clip straight down). Using Spring Ball sounds really interesting, but I'm pretty sure I tested it and it didn't work. Maybe you could list the actual inputs used for it in Fusion and I can properly check it?
By corruptions in other areas, I mean for example that barrier near the Crateria elevator: It turned unbreakable. Actually, every single PB block in Crateria turned unbreakable, and most of the 2x2 normally breakable blocks as well.
Uhhh, by a physical block I mean a block I could actually interact with. It was a regular block I could shoot, and it respawned when I broke it. It was also able to interact with water-droplets dropping from the ceiling (they hit that block instead of a platform they normally hit).
Mmmm, the clip through one block (ceiling) thing works like this:
- Freeze two enemies near the same height (there can be some pixel / subpixel variance, but it's kinda close anyway).
- Roll off from one enemy to other using morph ball. At some point during roll, the game auto-unmorphs you.
- If there's a ceiling or something above you, your head will stick out through it a little bit.
- Get either damage boosted, or perform a shinespark to get high enough to grab the ledge, then just climb through the ceiling.
EDIT:
Got the block to spawn again
This time it's a little more to the left, and higher than the first time it spawned. It's possible for this block to also overwrite already existing blocks: it appears in their place, and you can still break the block and pass through.
Also, apparently some of the tile corruption gets saved in the savefile too, so when you reload it, stuff is still messed up. Saving and reloading also made some tiny corrupt looking things appear in the water in the area I did it in (same area as in the picture).
EDIT2:
There's definitely at least some notable changes that happen in other areas. The pillar near the Crateria-elevator is now _unbreakable_, I can't destroy neither the shootable blocks, nor the PB blocks there.
So there's some potential for memory corruption. I believe this was first discovered by Mobiusman like a year ago using the Debug Rom hack, if you go Out of Bounds and plant Power Bombs there to certain locations, it can cause the visible tiles to be corrupted. Now that we can actually go OoB, maybe it's worth messing around with to see what exactly can we do.
So far, beyond messing up the tiles, I've managed to screw up the map, and actually spawn one physical block on the map. That block makes me a little bit hopeful.
Oh wow, thanks for notifying me about that mistake. It wasn't even copied wrong or anything, the HTML on TASvideos actually screwed up the code, so I had to disable it :P
And yeah, sure, I know this is basically useless as far as making an actual run goes, but hey, if you wanna get dumb stuff done a little bit easier, here's something to help with it :P
Ok, it's worth noting, that IF the door on the left-side of the Power Grip pit wasn't grayed out (and if there was actually a loading zone behind that door) when the crumble block bridge is there, THEN you could get to Tourian. You can build a speedboost by running across the crumble block bridge.
joypad.set(1, {A=1, B=1} )
while true do
pause = memory.readbyte(0x03004DEA)
unpause = memory.readbyte(0x03000B85)
bombtimer = memory.readbyte(0x03000B7E)
bombloop = memory.readbyte(0x03000B72)
if bombtimer > 46 then
joypad.set(1, {A=1} )
end
if unpause == 2 then
joypad.set(1, {start=1})
end
if bombloop < 3 and bombtimer < 47 and bombtimer > 0 then
if pause == 0 then
joypad.set(1, {start=1})
end
end
if bombloop == 3 and bombtimer > 0 then
joypad.set(1, {A=1})
if bombtimer == 10 then
joypad.set(1, {B=1, A=1} )
end
end
emu.frameadvance()
end
This allows you to automate the infinite bomb jump process. Not really that useful for anything, considering it's slow as hell and Fusion has a very strong sequence, but hey. It's a little bit finicky at start, but once it gets going, it should give optimal boost per bomb.
You can try tweaking the bombtimer values and whatever and see if you can get better, currently it gives 43 subpixels per mid-air bomb and keeps it steady. At the moment the script only goes to a direction you point it to, but if you wanna manually steer it (a little bit anyway), you can just remove "joypad.set(1, {A=1})" from LINE 25, and instead hold down the A-button, plus a direction you wanna go. It really only allows you to change a straight IBJ into a diagonal one at some point, but still pretty neat.
You wanna get mid-air as morph ball, and have a fairly even amount of velocity (not traveling too fast up or down), then just turn on the script and let it work its magic.
Yeah, BioSpark is correct on both counts. In ZM bombs don't give you any boost whatsoever underwater, so getting the PB tank from Norfair is still out of the question. And yeah, while shinecharge itself can be held infinitely, since you can't progress while doing so, it doesn't really let you cover any extra distance with the charge.
Not to mention, as it is, entering Tourian from the opposite direction would sadly be useless unless some other major skip is found, since the door leading to Mother Brain is gray. The loading zone is there, and if you could get inside, you could get straight to MB, but yeah, too many obstacles on the way still :P
Well, there's a couple of ways to activate it. You can drop down from Power Grip onto a frozen enemy (it needs to pretty much touch your feet), or you can plant a bomb, get on top of a frozen enemy and unmorph on the same frame the bomb explodes. All this recent stuff uses the bomb-unmorph method for the glitch.
The bomb method is frame-perfect on the unmorph, but enemy position is not strict at all.
Speaking of Fusion, maybe it's worth checking if chaining damage boosts with rapid pausing-unpausing can get you to places. At the very least, it should be possible to clip through one-block thick ceilings using two frozen enemies.
This time it's a little more to the left, and higher than the first time it spawned. It's possible for this block to also overwrite already existing blocks: it appears in their place, and you can still break the block and pass through.
Also, apparently some of the tile corruption gets saved in the savefile too, so when you reload it, stuff is still messed up. Saving and reloading also made some tiny corrupt looking things appear in the water in the area I did it in (same area as in the picture).
EDIT2:
There's definitely at least some notable changes that happen in other areas. The pillar near the Crateria-elevator is now _unbreakable_, I can't destroy neither the shootable blocks, nor the PB blocks there.