Hey, nice to see someone interested. I would've definitely been up for collaborating, but realistically I don't have the time to continue at the moment (now have a small baby - no more free time).
I really want to see this game get done though, even if it means having to do it myself eventually. I think it has potential. Happy to discuss ideas for now.
At some point I found a non-TA speedrun video of this game where the runner found a way to skip one of the dragon bosses. I played around for a while but couldn't reproduce it, and he didn't provide much information about how it's done. I guess there are probably other bugs like that too.
I'll post a link if I can find it again.
Okay! This is my first attempt at a TAS, and I'd appreciate some feedback on how I'm doing so far. I've chosen this game because it's both one I enjoyed a lot as a child, and one I feel offers plenty of opportunity for variety and entertainment.
I made a brief attempt at this years ago, but my movie quickly lost sync and became useless and I gave up. This time I'm using BizHawk and haven't had any sync issues at all. I can see there is quite a bit of lag in some places, which is probably what caused the problem before, but in this emulator it seems to be reproducibly consistent.
So far I've made my way through the initial three rounds of stage one, and decided to stop here and see what people think before going any further, or perhaps starting again and doing things differently.
I found one other thread on this game (after I'd already started though) which has a few suggestions in it.
One thing I hadn't realised is that there's a (not very well) hidden options menu with a difficulty setting. I didn't enter that so I've been playing on the default medium setting, but this alone might be good reason to start over on hard.
I already knew about the other points. One I'm divided on is the recommendation of using all the magic then dying to get it replenished. I know abusing death to save time is acceptable, but just as personal preference I don't like it.
Here's a recorded video:
Link to videohttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6vqg3izOlpNVHlkNEY5NXZQREE/view
Miscellaneous notes I've made on the way (times are offsets into the encoded video):
General
Sword does double damage every 5th strike. Doesn't seem to matter about timing at all, just number of swings. This means I sometimes swing the sword at nothing, just so that the next actual attack will be a critical. If it looks like I'm swinging when there's no point, that's why.
The magic for each round is different, but based on the order you play and not tied to the individual rounds. It might be better to play in a different order if certain magic is more appropriate to particular rounds.
Left/right movement begins 3 frames after you push the direction.
Swinging your sword causes you to stop moving if you're on the ground, but doesn't affect movement at all if you're in the air (or water). Therefore there's no penalty for killing everything in sight so long as you jump, fly or swim (fun!).
You're invulnerable for a while after using magic and after being hit, which is useful for moving through things that would hurt you or otherwise cost too much time to fight.
Enemies (particularly bosses) are also invulnerable for a while after being hit. I used the RAM search feature to find the bosses health in memory, and only strike to cause damage on the first vulnerable frame.
I have no idea on the best strategy regarding coins. They aren't collectable immediately after they appear, so it's quite rare to be able to collect any without wasting time. I had hoped that I'd accumulate just enough throughout the first stage that I could buy a better sword before stage two, but failed to do so. I'm now thinking it would've been better to just spend all my money on replenishing magic instead.
Round 1-1
Didn't attack anything here as I was just getting started and learning how the tools worked, concentrating purely on going right as fast as possible.
00:17 - This boss isn't vulnerable until it reaches roughly the middle of the screen. Is my standing and waiting too boring? Magic seemed the fastest way to get rid of all the orbiting things at once. I didn't realise that there's actually another horizontal version of this magic that occurs if you're jumping whilst you trigger it - I think that version is slightly faster, so I should probably use that instead.
00:36 - Yeah... probably could've avoided stopping here by using jumping attacks.
00:41 - Timing of the platform is annoying. Tried several things, but the fastest way I could find through here is just to fall in the lava.
00:48 - Again, jumping attack
Round 1-2
I had lots of fun chopping everything up here. Doesn't cost any time so why not?
01:57 - I found that for one single frame here, you can actually jump before you fall. Using this I was able to get right over to the far right of the screen very quickly, but found there's no point; it autoscrolls down all the way before you can go right anyway, and it scrolls down faster if you push downwards, so that's faster. Instead took the opportunity to fall on some of the larger coins and pick up a magic orb. Picking up the orb cost me a tiny amount (about 5-10 frames) versus going straight to the right after the last rope, but I think it's worth it.
02:12 - Really difficult to see this damn boss and know when you're hurting it. Found its health in RAM to solve that. It spends quite a lot of time invulnerable, which leads to a couple of pauses where it looks like I'm wasting time. I wasn't able to do any damage during that time.
02:28 - Jumping or not jumping makes absolutely no difference in frames at all here, but jumping is cool!
02:38 - Had fun catching all the coins by barely touching them (one pixel away from missing), except...
02: 47 - Don't want that one or you get a 'perfect' aware for collecting all the coins, which actually pauses the game for quite a while to congratulate you.
02:57 - Yeah, probably chose the wrong order to kill these beans in, the last one got away. It let me have fun chasing some coins but probably wasn't worth it.
Round 1-3
Chop chop chop!
03:12 - Oh I hate this miniboss so much. He spends most of his time off screen where I can't get him. I tried pushing him up against the rocks to get rapid hits, but that doesn't work because although the rocks are solid for me, he passes right through them. Some particularly long pauses here, but there was literally nothing I could do to hit him. I landed damage on the first possible frame. Need to experiment more with ways to manipulate him to stay on screen.
03:47 - I tried so hard to squeeze through here without being hit (and got so close!), but just couldn't find a way. Being hit is faster than fighting the blue thing. On the other hand, it does also let me abuse the invulnerability to pass right through the next two blue things, so maybe it's for the best.
03:52 - Laaaaaag! Don't know how to avoid this. Obviously too much on the screen, but I don't have time to collect the coins or kill the blue things.
04:01 - Easy but not very entertaining boss fight. His post-hit invulnerability period is juuuuust slightly more than it takes to cycle through five sword strikes, so I took the strategy of hitting him with the critical, slashing at nothing 4 times, pausing a couple of frames then repeat. Could've done this a lot faster with magic, but I'd used it all and had been saving my coins for a new sword. Pretty sure that was a bad decision; should've just spent all my money at the shop for 3 new magics. Tried to keep this from being completely boring by getting right up in his face (most of the time 1 pixel away from collision).
Summary
So... am I doing this right? Do you think this has the potential for meeting entertainment standards? As a n00b, is there anything I should know about setting up the emulator in a particular way that I might've done wrong? Any comments welcome!
EDIT: Added YouTube video.