Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
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InfamousKnight wrote:
I have added ONE restriction to this run: No escape. You're not allowed to escape any random battles. You can avoid world map encounters, but not run from them if you encounter any.
????????????
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
Posts: 1199
PikachuMan wrote:
We could do a 3D Zelda Quad Run that consists of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess.
If we use the GameCube, Ocarina of Time will be the one alongside Master Quest, and Majora's Mask will be from the Collector's Edition.
If we use the Wii, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask will be from the Virtual Console, and in place of Wind Waker is Skyward Sword.
If we use the Wii U, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask will be from the Virtual Console, and Wind Waker HD, and Twilight Princess HD will be used.
Or we should actually make finished TASes for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess before we worry about something that would take decades.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
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Joined: 8/25/2013
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Fishaman P wrote:
This makes it sound like the goal is to collectively complete the Pokédex, but not necessarily a single game registering all 150. Is this what this submission does, or am I missing something?
The goal is to get the diploma. With 2 movies. You get it by getting all 150 Pokemon in one game, obviously excluding Mew because its a legendary. That's what the trading part was for, after all.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
Posts: 1199
Link to video
Hey, hey! Hoth's done. This was done by a combination of me, Samsara, and Exonym, but the input is primarily mine after Level 3.
General Information
- The X, Y, and B buttons are used for manipulation. The X button is used in most cases due to being a dedicated Force/Thermal Detonator button, which means it's blank input most of the time.
- Luke, Han, and Chewy run at a speed of 2. Luke's slide peaks at 6, Han's roll at 4, and Chewy's at about 3. Riding on a Tauntaun is a constant speed of 3.
Level CommentsLevel 1
Easiest level in the game by far. A bird is manipulated to speed the climb up a bit. The slide done at the very end is actually frame perfect, discovered by Samsara. Combination of people did this one, but mostly Exonym I believe.
Level 2
This level is literally hell on earth to optimize due to the amount of enemy spawns, almost comparable to Dagobah. Luke gets off the Tauntaun to grab a gun upgrade, and the level is sloped enough that proceeding as Luke alone for the rest of it is faster. All input except for the very beginning was done by Exonym.
Level 3
Also complicated, but not nearly to the level of..level..2. Samsara discovered the quick gun grab, which saves half a second. Overall 144 frames faster then the WIP posted above.
Level 4
Very simple level. Not enough slopes to justify getting off the Tauntaun this time.
Level 5
Long and annoying level, not much else to say.
Level 6
Killing the first probe droid before he fully gets onto the screen causes some strange glitches. I won't spoil it.
Level 7
Hanger bay. It's worth noting that slide canceling doesn't save any time with Luke in this game, unlike the first game. Shooter section at the end is heavily manipulated to keep all enemies off-screen so they don't lag when they die.
Level 8
Hoth battle. Unfortunately enemies seem to run on a timer, so manipulation wasn't possible.
Level 9
AT-AT part 1. Like level 7 enemies are manipulated to stay off the screen, only in this case you don't need to shoot them. Probably the least lag out of all the levels, only about 40.
Level 10
AT-AT part 2. Annoying level, enemies can't really be despawned so it's just a gauntlet of preventing lag.
Level 11
AT-AT part 3. I manipulate a thermal detonator off one of the randomly spawning Stormtroopers, and then wreck shop on the boss. Due to what appears to be a glitch, using a thermal detonator on a turret with low HP instantly kills the boss, saving some time from the screen scrolling.
Level 12
Heyo Han finally makes an appearance in a SSW TAS! Slide, or in this case roll, cancelling saves time at the end of rolls due to momentum, saving 2-3 frames per roll. Enemies can be despawned via shooting in a specific part of the screen just before reaching their spawn point, allowing me to disable some laggy turret enemies. For the boss I manipulated a Thermal Detonator off a crate to skip his first phase, leaving him incredibly vulnerable.
Level 13
Literally the same as Level 12, only replace 'off a crate' with 'off a storm trooper'.
Currently 56 seconds or so ahead of Apparently Pants' theory TAS. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Edit: current WIP for safety space purposes http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/30464576637465066
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
Posts: 1199
Samsara wrote:
Besides, considering the points you've been making in this thread, wouldn't it be more entertaining to challenge yourself to do the research and provide the evidence instead of just waiting for it to land in your lap?
Tangent wrote:
To respond to both of you, in that thread, it was literally posted "I don't care how much evidence you post" after videos showing damage rates on different difficulties were posted.
There was a hell of a lot more to my choice of difficulty then damage rates, which is something you would know if you actually did any research into these games.
Tangent wrote:
I have a hard time believing that the situation there was going to be improved by posting more evidence. Furthermore, "time saving skips couldn't be used" is the very definition of vague. People had to ask what those skips were, and when they were stated, the justifications for why they couldn't be used appeared to be incorrect because, as you said, health was never an issue and that was the only real limiting factor. To my knowledge even now there aren't any skips that couldn't be used on a higher difficulty. It was also stated that "more enemies spawn", which is only true for the few Mode 7 stages. Those statements were absolutely too vague and/or inaccurate.
Further proof that you didn't actually do any research. More enemies spawn in the regular stages, alongside more enemies having to be killed in the Mode 7 stages. Enemies lag the game. That's bad.
Tangent wrote:
I also do not agree with that if the outcome is the same, but requires more manipulation, strategy, and effort on a harder difficulty, that is a reason to not use it. That is the very definition of a harder difficulty. It is harder to do things. If anybody tried to use that as an excuse on games like Civilization, Street Fighter, or Gradius, it'd be rejected straight out because the manipulation and gameplay then IS so easy. What makes other games special?
This makes zero sense. Super Star Wars games are already probably the worst games out there to TAS due to the amount of luck manipulation required to get drops, kill enemies, and get boss patterns. Hardest difficulty doesn't actually make things harder, it just makes things more annoying because you're still doing the exact same thing, only with a poorer end result because bosses have more health and the boring shooter sections take longer.
How many times do I have to repeat the exact same points, over and over, until you get that? Just because I did Return of the Jedi on Easy doesn't mean I was actually taking the easy way out. The over 100,000 rerecords, all done without TAStudio may I add, should be ample enough proof that I wasn't bullshitting it.
But what do I get in return? Just constant nags that, oh, you did the run on Easy. How DARE you do the run on Easy. This run is shit because you did it on Easy. What's that, you have REASONS for doing the run on Easy? Screw you, I obviously know the game MUCH BETTER then you, even though I don't know anything about this game. Over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.
So needless to say, I'm sick of explaining myself to you. This entire freaking topic was created because you couldn't deal with the fact that Return of the Jedi was on Easy, and had to go vent about it because people were getting pissed at you in the actual topic for beating a dead horse.
In summary:
Tangent wrote:
I also think "enemies cause lag" should be taken out entirely, as that could be used as a reason to not use the highest difficulty for just about every SHMUP, as well as tons of the crazy-ass things like IWBTG and clones or Princess Pitch ultra difficulties which thrive on screen-filling pandemonium. I'm not sure I can think of any games where I think that would apply well. Do you have any examples of which games in particular you were thinking of with that bullet?
This is literally the exact reason difficulty is a case-by-case basis.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
Posts: 1199
Warp wrote:
There's a difference between what we find "entertaining", and what the wider public (mostly consisting of gamers) finds "entertaining".
Yeah that's totally fine, people have different worldviews. I mean not everyone is a Democrat or Republican, for example.
Radiant wrote:
Samsara wrote:
I'd like to stress for probably the 10th time that the difficulty guideline was not changed. It was rewritten to be more clear. We are not operating any differently than before.
Rather, certain judges are operating differently than other judges. Some judges expect a run to be in hard mode and will generally reject easy-mode runs as being against site guidelines. Other judges except a run to be in easy mode and will likely reject hard-mode runs as being slower. So effectively, runs are being treated very differently depending on who ends up judging it.
Can you give some examples to this? I find this hard to believe.
goldenband wrote:
there's ample evidence that casual viewers, i.e. the semi-mythical "general public", strongly prefer runs on Hard -- or, at the very least, not Easy -- and care more about the mastery angle than the entertainment angle. In other words, they find mastery more entertaining than, er, "entertainment". So whose tastes are we really catering to here?)
Yeah, this is accurate. But again, Samsara didn't actually change the ruling on this by, uh, rewording the description. It's the exact same as before, only less vague. Runs are still judged on a case-by-case basis so it's not like it really matters in the long run.
Tangent wrote:
I doubt at least the RotJ submission would have blown up like it did had the difficulty choice actually been clearly explained instead of met with vagueness, followed by hostility and unresearched claims. Other submissions were treated similarly when questions about the difficulty were asked at all, which ended up being answered by other people, and/or the submission immediately canceled without an author response.
"Met with vagueness"
First post I made in the discussion involving it:
arandomgameTASer wrote:
jlun2 wrote:
Ok, isn't that the entire point of hardest difficulty? Seriously, of course easy mode will be fastest. How come no one bothered questioning this? By that logic, might as well quickly do a TAS of a game, say spongebob and obsolete it by using the easiest difficulty.
Ok, I guess I poorly explained that.
Jedi Mode in the Super Star Wars games are not suitable for TASing because:
*They give bosses more HP
*You take more damage
*more enemies spawn
So point #1 means all the bosses are slower, #2 means less cool speed tricks, and #3 means more lag optimization, just for a movie that is virtually identical to the Easy Mode, only slower.
So in the interest of entertainment and speed, for this run in particular, I decided that Easy mode is the best option. Obviously the use of hardest difficulty should be different based on the run.
See the discussion thread on http://tasvideos.org/3779S.html and the judgement ruling for more info on that, as this applies to all of the SSW games.
So, uh, I really don't know what to tell you. You're wrong?
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
(2014)
Joined: 8/25/2013
Posts: 1199
While I completely understand why people feel the way they do about difficulties, in particular with easy difficulty over hard difficulties, I can not stand it when people use the fact that someone chose an easier difficulty as their ONE and ONLY complaint against a run. Nor can I stand it when the difficulty choice is clearly explained, but they still harp about it.
I'm not going to go too far into it because I don't feel like stirring up trouble, but I've had 2 submissions of mine get completely destroyed due to certain individuals not letting this issue go. It's annoying at best, and discouraging at worst.
It's literally the most minor thing possible involving a TAS and goal choice, but it's spiraled into this gigantic shitstorm that barely makes any sense. Let it go.
Moozooh put it best:
moozooh wrote:
The guidelines as rewritten by Samsara reflect the direction the site has been taking, not trying to establish a new direction. I.e. they reflect what has already happened in the (recent) past, and it should be clear the direction has changed from a harder, broader approach towards more of a case-by-case basis. So if you would come up with some judging decisions you disagreed with, it would probably be more helpful for the discussion, assuming you would like to be helpful at all.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
