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I'm honestly surprised people care about 99 lives. It's like the least important thing. Why does a TAS need extra lives!? I mean, seriously?
Couldn't you guys have gotten 99 lives by getting the leaf in 1-4 as early as possible?
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- Andrew Gardikis
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Yes! I was especially impressed with the world 2-fort p-wing trick. I hadn't seen that before. Also, I am curious as to what you are doing to catch the wand above the screen each time. That is, what is done after the initial walljump?
Amazing work. I saw you working on this at AGDQ 14. :)
Star material for sure!
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- Andrew Gardikis
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Interesting, but unlikely to replace the current tas. I mean, its more interesting to see the best of each event. The fastest is only interesting for 100m dash and 110m hurdles. However, I enjoyed the optimization using extra pauses in between events, etc.
Honestly though, pausing rapidly in 100m and hurdles hurts your goal i think. Also, it is lame for all t&f tases...pausing to gain in-game time is a bit silly. Is the timer being abused or is it actually faster? Even if it is faster in-game, if the game timer didnt stop every time it is paused, it would be slower, so it is sort of weird in that aspect. So technically, pausing when using ingame time is abusing the timer. Though clever, it defeats the purpose.
I would be fine with it if the game timer kept running the whole time. Its just strange to allow pausingif it stops the timer, and that timer is your goal.
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- Andrew Gardikis
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I currently hold the real-time speedrun for this. I'm going to examine this a bit more as well. I'll let you know if I find anything. :)
EDIT: Why was this downgraded to the vault? :(
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- Andrew Gardikis
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EDIT3: I'm doing this on wii virtual console.
So initially, I thought you said 5-1. I had something similar happen there. I retested it, and sure enough, if I game over halfway through 5-1, and go down the first vertical pipe, it warps me to about the midway mark.
I looked into 8-1 as well though. Apparently, it depends where you game over in 8-2. If you game over where the vine block is located, then continue from 8-1 and go down the first vertical pipe, it warps you to basically the end of 8-1. If you game over at the very end of the overworld section in 8-2, and then do the same, you get warped to about the midpoint of 8-1.
My theory:
The game saves your farthest location through the game. Going down a vertical pipe seems to warp you to the last spot the game saved for Mario. Usually, the beginning of the stage. But when you game over in 8-2 it must save your location somewhere through the level. Once you go back to 8-1, it keeps the memory from your last location in 8-2.
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The reason it warped you forward is because you gameover`d at the halfway point. After a continue, it will do this. I found this a few months back, and realized it was due to a game over. Still intetesting, but useless unfortunately
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- Andrew Gardikis
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Warepire wrote:
In case of the Cloud glitch you substitute some of the games code with your own in order to call the game-end routine prematurely.
But my point with the cloud glitch is that you don't have to. You can do the cloud glitch and not reprogram the game or end it immediately or anything. It's like Mario, just because the warp zone is open, it doesn't mean I have to use it.
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Dyshonest, There's skipping to the credits and there is the fastest possible time without doing so. Just because they utilize the same glitch method is meaningless. If you can skip every single stage with the glitch, do it. If it's the fastest method through the game. My only objection is when it comes to ACE, memory corruption, and the like is that this substantially changes the game mechanic and in some sense, you aren't really "beating" the game in some sense.
Reaching the credits seems meaningless in some ways. You "beat" the game. When I think beating a game, I think reaching the end, killing the boss, end of input:
Mario 1 = Hitting the axe
Mario 2 = Entering final door
Mario 3 = Entering final door
SMW = last hit on Bowser
The means to bring the game to the credits is what a completion of a game is (typically reaching a point or final hit on boss)
This is why having 100% is important, because many times the any% run becomes too glitched. Even if you could warp straight from the intro to Bowser, it would still make for an interesting run. The only problem is that at some point, if the times are too similar, the category is redundant. This is when there should probably be a category which excludes said glitch.
EDIT: In this case, I don't think so: the times are several minutes apart.
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Regardless of the ruling, I would like to see a TAS using the cloud in the inventory for the sake of interest. I think the Bowser fight could be pretty cool, as well as the several changes resulting from route change.
Basically, what I'm in favor for here is a run utilizing ACE: http://tasvideos.org/4315S.html and one that doesn't utilize it.
What I'm saying is, there should be a run that fully utilizes ACE (published already), but there should also be a run that is the fastest completion of the game which doesn't utilize it. Is getting the cloud really utilizing ACE (if you're not reprogramming the game afterward?)
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Dyshonest wrote:
Masterjun wrote:
I said if the glitches are the same, not if they look the same, have a similar effect or have the same setup.
Viewer appeal is what actually matters for the most part, and no one seemed to have actually agreed that they should've been separate runs as far as the Mega Man ones go.
"any% no skips"
"any% skips 3/10 stages only"
"any% skips all stages"
The middle one is inefficient - skip all or none.
Not exactly, because one skips directly to credits, not just skipping all stages. In my mind (and others), it doesn't effectively beat the game just activates the credits. Which in some sense, I argue that just activating credits is just activating credits, hardly "completing" the game at all. Which is why I think having an "any%" run makes sense, a run that completes the game as fast as possible (regardless that the same method is used to skip directly to credits). I think in this case, adding a "100%" category might be an effective solution.
Again I argue:
"100%"
"any%"
"Warps to credits"
Unless the categories overlap too much (redundancy), which with Mega Man I could see a point in removing "any%" in some sense, but I still think it makes more sense to have 3 categories here.
For SMW possibly having "any% - no ACE" might make sense because I'd call this the weird redundancy situation if we had both "warps to credits" and say, the april fools' submission for SMW.
Getting cloud itself is not ACE (at least it doesn't have to be used, or well this is what causes redundancy if it is used).
Confusing...
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- Andrew Gardikis
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As the "Warps" category can be improved using the cloud, it should be, right? Otherwise, the "end game glitch" should obsolete it.
EDIT: The category semantics is a bit aggravating.
There should be the following categories:
1) "Warps" - Defined as fastest possible completion without skipping to credits directly.
2) "Game-End Glitch" - Directly warping to credits.
3) "All Stages" - Completing 100% of the game - or every single stage (no stage "skips"). The orb glitch making this a bit tricky... but the orb in this case seems to very much be a "stage skip" of sorts, and I think should thus be excluded.
The fact that the same method is used to achieve similar outcomes seems meaningless to me.
Quick example:
With Mega Man 1, you can now skip directly to the credits using recently found discovery. Now, let's say you could us that glitch to skip every single stage individually. Even if the you could skip directly from the first stage to the final boss,
In this case, I think both would be deserving of different categories as one skips directly to the credits and the other does not. Despite most of the game being skipped if you warped from stage 1 to the final boss, the credits aren't directly activated.
The kicker here being that I think "100%" in this case could be implemented so that people would be able to have a run that goes through the whole game.
I believe all games should have these 3 basic categories listed above.
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Really, I think runs of these type should not be categorized by the method, but rather the location they complete the game.
It's interesting to see the fastest time to glitch to the credits, but I think it's a much more valuable run to see what can reach the true end location in the fastest time.
EDIT: 3 basic categories should exist for most all games
1) Reaches credits in fastest time
2) Kills final boss/Completes final objective in fastest time
3) Completes all stages with game ending at final boss/final objective in fastest time.
The idea of glitching each stage to completion kind of loses the point of a "full completion" run, but that point is debatable.
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- Andrew Gardikis
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There have been a few discussions on this, specifically I remember in the past TMNT and SMB1.
But I think the general agreement was that input length should be as short as one can possibly make it, but the ultimate goal be the fastest completion of a title.
I just think making the input file length the game completion time doesn't really make sense. Even the idea of ending input early seems to just skew what the actual length of the run is, but I agree that ending input at the earliest point makes sense.
I feel both timings should be noted, but the run itself should be based on actual completion time.
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thatguy wrote:
andrewg, why are you asking this question of all people? You are the real-time record holder for Super Mario Bros. Haven't you beaten that game 256 times yourself?
Not in a row... And I don't feel like spending an entire day doing so. haha
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I honestly don't know too much about this overflow, other than the fact that it occurs with 8-bit games. I just wonder if a game like Super Mario Bros would count one completion as "a stage" or something. My reasoning is that potentially 8 bit games with 2nd, 3rd loops, etc would possibly have a counter that would overflow eventually.
It's just something I was thinking about because I imagine no one has gone to the trouble of beating a game over and over continuously like that. And with SMB1, my other thought was that since the lives counter does overflow at 256, maybe the game itself would overflow after 256 completions.
Given you can start at world 8 after each completion, it would take about 13 hours of looping (if TASed) to do this.
EDIT: Anyhow, I don't think all that many games have been examined regarding kill screens, and they are interesting to me. No one has kill screened PacMan NES for example, but I assume it does.
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Theres something ive wondered for some time... If you beat an NES game 256 times in a row, do you think there could be strange outcomes or kill screen like pacman and others? I imagine it wouldnt betoo hard to do it with say Super Mario Bros by emulation. If I created an input file to beat quest 2 and start a new quest afterward to continue this, i dont know exactly how to do that, but I know you guys would. you can hex with fm2 i guess, but i havent TASed in a bit.
Anyhow, Im curious whether oddities occur for various games and may try and produce looping runs for smb1, cv1, mm1, etc
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- Andrew Gardikis
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EDIT2: My official guess is 0:03:15.xx
So:
1-1 (mushroom) -> 1-2 -> castle (leaf) -> 1-3 (grab fireflower) -> whistle warp to world 2 -> whistle warp to world 7 -> glitch
If fireflower isn't needed, then obviously the current TAS route to world 7 is exactly the same.
Fantastic stuff!
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- Andrew Gardikis
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If there's a 21 frame improvement. it's in 4-2. If there's a 1 frame improvement, it's in 8-4. However, I believe the game has been maxed to the frame rules.
If an improvement is possible, it's likely in 8-4.
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