arandomgameTASer, it works in a lot of areas using a lot of different enemies. Freezing the enemy to the correct spot is key: it needs to be at just the right height, and its hitbox needs to reach inside the block.
I've been looking at possible uses, and honestly, there hasn't really been anything yet. All the things that naturally come to mind (like getting any of the Power Bomb containers in Chozodia early) just don't work, the areas just manage to be just the right shape to prevent this. You can potentially (haven't tested it, but should be possible) get to the Power Bomb tank outside of Pirate Mothership, but that is blocked by a single Power Bomb block.
The only interesting things I've found thus far are the video I posted and getting from Brinstar to Crateria without the Ball Launcher. You can go Out of Bounds, wrap around the entire area and hit a loading zone at the top. Normally, OoB stuff isn't any useful, since you can't actually get back in, but there are a hadful of exceptions to this rule... namely, the elevator shafts.
EDIT:
Oh, yeah, you can also get past the gate that blocks your way to the Escape Ship, but, since you can't actually use the ship before Mecha is dead, that's also useless. You could skip killing the Black Pirates by skipping the gate, but I'm pretty sure that'd be slower than just killing them, since you'd have to wait for a Red Pirate to get into position.
More stuff.
Link to video
TAS can do this with just regular missiles, by running against the lip, shooting a diagonal missile downwards with such a timing it'll clear the edge, getting damage boosted immediately afterwards, and then chaining a few pause buffers to keep the momentum. That also means TAS can do this same trick at Kraid and enter in reverse there as well.
http://pastebin.com/cNUBPuAS
Right, here's a script to encode only the correct frames (by default only manual pause frames are filtered out). Credits to Phase4 for the original avi-recording script, and to JRP2234 for modifying it.
EDIT:
while true do
pause = memory.readbyte(0x03000032)
unpause = memory.readbyte(0x03000005)
if pause == 0 or unpause == 2 then
joypad.set(1, {start=1})
end
emu.frameadvance()
end
And here's a little script I made to automate the pausing and unpausing for frame-perfection. The flag I used for unpausing goes through numbers 0-4 during the pause, with "2" being the value it gets the first frame you gain menu control.
Might as well drop this here:
Link to video
So what you don't see in the video is over 7 minutes of pausing and unpausing frame after frame. The in-game timer in Zero Mission is really wonky it seems, it's possible to chain together pauses while keeping the timer frozen. However, the game still progresses by one frame between the pauses, only Samus herself doesn't.
From TAS point of view, this means every time you can make any kind of progress without Samus herself having to perform some action, that progress can be made instantaneously, as far as the in-game clock is considered. So, bombs explode instantly, your projectiles will hit the targets instantly, doors open instantly, bosses die instantly, crumble blocks disappear and re-appear instantly, enemies can be manipulated to be in favorable spots instantly... yeah, whatever you wish basically.
The downside is that a TAS dedicated to in-game time would be UNWATCHABLE, unless the constant pausing and unpausing is edited out... like in the video. And yeah, it distorts the music, cause naturally when you pause the game, the music doesn't stop.
EDIT:
A very useful RAM address for this.
03000032 (one byte) - Pause Flag.
values:
0 ----> game is running.
2 ----> game manually paused.
4 ----> map pick-up.
6 ----> new item pick-up.
I'm not actually sure how to make the encoder exclude stuff based on RAM values (probably need to learn some LUA scripting?), but yeah, this allows you to figure out exactly the right frames to encode.
Link to video
This by itself is not very useful for a TAS, or anything else really, but it is a nice obscurity.
Maybe there's a way to trigger the sprite limit somehow for other areas, and actually despawn something that'd be really useful. One thing that comes to mind, is perhaps doing a yet another unique Relic Skip, by preventing the Drac Chamber door from spawning... maybe by stacking candle drops by duping them or something.
So a quick update. If you kill Talos with a damage glitch, it's possible to avoid getting multiple level up boxes, while still getting the glitched amount of Level Ups, by bringing up the map with the select-button on the frame in-between the Level Ups. This makes the game run although the Level Up box is still visible, so, Talos just dies repeatedly and you get the EXP without losing much time.
For an All Bosses run, this might be a good trick.
Right, so, every TAS I've seen (including gstick's current any% TAS) picks up the Soul Orb. Apparently the reason for this is, that somehow displaying the damage values causes the game to lag _less_... which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. And even if it did, it'd have to amount to roughly 8 seconds of lag over the duration of the whole game to make up for the pick-up time, which also seems impossible.
So, if there's someone there who's actually done some TASing for this game, could you please break this situation down for me a little bit? Soul Orb seems like something that should be avoided, and it feels like picking it up might be something that has just been taken for granted when TASing this game.
EDIT:
Apparently I understood it completely wrong. Soul Orb does lose time for a TAS, but picking it up has just been established as a common speed for entertainment tradeoff.
Here's something entirely different.
Link to video
Damage stacking / glitching is well-known, but I haven't seen Crushing Stone being used for it, let alone it being used to dupe Level Ups somehow.
Oh yeah, it's worth mentioning, that this actually glitches the Fairy damage, if Crushing Stone is the first attack to hit the target... so, yeah, it's a ton of chained damage even at a low level.
EDIT:
Apparently it's possible to get multiple Level Ups against Death as well. It's only happened once, and I got just two sets of levels, from his first form.
Also, uhh, the stuff I've found doing this (only a little bit of it is included in the video) is explained in the video description. It might actually be possible to achieve total control doing this, as you can modify your file name and other values, at least to a limited degree: if you could modify your file name, or some other memory value, to be a bootstrapper, and then execute that, that should do the trick.
Yes, Aria has something like this as well. 0HP glitch in Aria works like this trick: you're free to go OoB, area loading zones are disabled.
So, I guess you would just have to find a fairly open area and do the 0HP glitch there.
Link to video
So, here's 50% of all available map, and a grand access to the flags. Unless a Credits Call is found here, I doubt this has speedrun use, but there's just so much to do it's a nice place to visit anyway.
Are you talking about this one?
http://tasvideos.org/1681M.html
There's both a Level Up and a Soul pickup going on there, so, again I'm not sure if this stuff is known, lol. Or is there an actual low% TAS out there too? I couldn't find it at least. Also, if it's low%, why would soul pick ups be allowed anyway? I'd think finishing with, well, no extra souls obtained should be the definition.
EDIT:
Ok, having read the run comments, klmz definitely knew about this.
So, I dunno if this is known, but it's possible to use Soul drops for 0HP zipping instead of a Level Up. Basically, just die on the frame you collect a soul, and it works just like a Level Up would.
I'm thinking this might save time, since there's no need to necessarily manage your EXP at all for 0HP zipping.
It's debatable, I guess, personally I don't think it does. It's not any of the proper endings for Juste, which is how a run should end, and I dunno if you can count this as a Simon Boss Rush ending either, considering Simon isn't used, the ending doesn't even play properly, and whatever Boss Rush time you get from this isn't recorded.
That said, the triggers for the actual endings should also be somewhere out there. Again, I wanna be able to zip using the cutscenes, cause those get you to places that are otherwise way out of reach.
So here's the final piece of the 0 Relic Run.
Link to video
Didn't happen the way I expected it to, but this way you sure can get it. Basically, you'd have to save the 0 Relic File somewhere, temporarily collect some relics and stuff to get to the MK's Bracelet cutscene, trigger this glitch, reload the 0 Relic file and bam, we're in there.
Also, considering you can technically obtain an infinite amount of MK's Bracelets like this, I wonder what'd happen if you'd overflow that value? It'd be a very tedious process, but hey, since Patashu mentioned arbitrary code execution, this might be something for it.
So, the Furniture Room zip is sort of interesting. If you wait till Juste goes completely off the map screen, and you then bring up the map, the map screen will be replaced with a bright blinking orange after a few seconds. If you then push select again, the emulator will crash. Also, after a certain while, your subweapon will seem to be unequipped by doing this zip, however, if you quick save and load the game, the subweapon will be back (so, basically it's a pseudo-unequip, like what happens when you trigger a cutscene or a boss door).
After certain periods of time, if you do nothing, the game (or, again, the emulator) will crash, but you can skip these crash periods by either bringing up the map screen, or the pause menu.
I have no idea what's actually going on, though.
Link to video
This is pretty neat, lots of new stuff to try out.
Also, turns I gotta redo my Max Map file altogether now, considering not only are there already a couple of spots where this can be used to obtain new squares, I also found a zip to the Furniture Room: if you zip inside the wall there, the cutscene that normally plays in that room stops the camera.
What this does, is basically the exact same thing as the Maxim cutscene does for the File Select Warping: Juste just keeps on going off-screen. In this case, however, you can't cancel the cutscene, since the beginning of that cutscene is Juste walking forward, which he is unable to do, considering he's inside a wall going upwards at break-neck speed. But still, you can do this all the way to the top of the map, and then just save the game with the quick save feature, and bam, you got a whole bunch of new map.
Also, any of the other cutscenes should work the same. There's very few cutscenes where Juste actually needs to walk at the start to a certain spot, so I'm thinking it'd be worth it trying to find some zips to trigger some cutscenes, since technically speaking, all of them could be used to teleport to a certain location, just like the Maxim cutscene for File Select warping.
Oh yeah, if you have enough speed to out run the camera, things act just like with the Camera Lock glitch: stuff that is off-screen simply doesn't exist.
EDIT:
Apparently the moon physics are already known. Upon my rewatch of the All Furniture TAS by sksk1990, I noticed he uses this very glitch, quite prominently even... it just never stuck out as anything on my first watch, sometimes it's difficult to figure out the TAS shenanigans. Also, this now explains how the TAS is able to zip into the ceiling using the Griffin's Wing and the whip, and, well, it's not particularly difficult to do even in real time :P
So, I figured out the warp rooms, finally, and this is probably information every TASer already knows.
Basically, there's two flags: one to activate them at all, and one to activate the teleportation from one warp room to another. The first activation trigger is watching the Death cutscene at Clock Tower A, this allows you to use the warps rooms to change castles. The second activation trigger is picking up either Hint Card 3, or the Moon Armor, and this allows you to warp in-between the visited warp rooms, if you've already watched the Death cutscene at Clock Tower.
While the second trigger may seem arbitrary, here's the thing: Hint Card 3 is in each and every warp room at Castle A, except for the one on Castle Top Floor, where it's replaced by the Moon Armor. For casual play, you'd most certainly grab the Hint Card when you first visit another warp room, at Sky Walkway.
Another thing. Using the camera lock glitch and entering the Death fight from the wrong direction produces some interesting results. You can move during the cutscene, and pausing or bringing up the map highly screws up to the graphics during the cutscene. If you watch the cutscene, exit the fight, and re-enter, Death will not spawn at all, making it impossible to beat him at all.
Beating Death's first form, and then exiting the fight during the second form produces the hardest of hardlocks, it flat out crashes the emulator... no idea what'd happen on an actual cartridge / console, but stuff like this might not be exactly healthy :P
Oh yeah, I also noticed the zip many a TAS use from Marble Gallery A to Wailing Way B is actually doable in real time. This is pretty cool, considering now 0 Relic bad ending, and 1 relic good ending runs are possible (Lizard Tail is required for the good ending, cause Crushing Stone is needed to get MK's Bracelet).
So, a tiny update on some findings. Don't think I'll make a vid, since there's not really much more than just, some info I guess you'd call it, nothing particularly fancy or anything.
- If you have camera lock, you can cancel it by activating the rolling skeleton head in Skeleton Cave B. Would be interesting to know what would happen if you could zip out of that room while the head is rolling, but doesn't seem like there's a way.
- By using the Griffin's Wing, you can use the drawbridge to zip to Clock Tower by smashing yourself against the ceiling right before it closes.
- Getting MK's Bracelet is pretty annoying if doing Relic Skip. Not only do you need Crushing Stone for it, you can't even pick the bracelet up while the camera is locked, since the cutscene with Maxim won't trigger. Maybe there's some zip to the left side of that room?
- Picking up items on the same frame as you Level Up doesn't seem to do anything interesting. If you pick up a Life Up, only "Level Up" is displayed. If you pick up a Heart Max Up, both the texts are shown, on top of each other.
Also, some stuff I'm wondering:
- Warp rooms are kind of weird, I'm not even sure I understand completely how they work. Basically, the trigger for the warp rooms is watching the Death cutscene at Clock Tower B, after that you can use them to warp from one castle to another or in-between them. However, it seems sometimes if you get a warp room visit before watching that cutscene, you cannot warp to that warp room yet, and I'm not quite sure what I've done differently to make it so. If I visit another warp room after watching the cutscene, I've always been able to also warp to the warp room I got before I watched the cutscene... but sometimes I've been able to do it right off the bat too.
- Testing whether or not it's possible to do the Talos warp to Clock Tower at the start of the game, in such a way you'd be able to get in the Save Room, might be worth it for All Relics or something.
Is this stuff known around here?
Link to video
I dunno if there's anything particularly useful you can do with this yet.
EDIT:
Here's one idea, at least: grabbing some save point early for a "Saveroom"-warp. For example, you could warp to Castle Top Floor, save on the save room there. Then you'd do the "copy file" type of a warp, which can be used to return Juste back to the beginning of the game, while still keeping the Castle Top Floor savepoint as the return point for the save warp.
I dunno how this'd work route-wise or anything, but hey, at least it can be done :P
Another possible use would be getting the Floodgate key from Skeleton Cave early, and similarly just teleporting back to the start. Again, no idea if this means anything for a run.