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With SOR4 coming soon, I got to thinking about this game again. It's not strictly TAS-related but I figured it still belongs here.
I don't know exactly why but there's something that always drew me to SOR3. Maybe it's the game's quirkiness and its tendency to be a bit out there with its ideas and characters. It could be the Japanese version's fairly ambitious and dark story about selling weapons to the highest bidder and using Wood Oak City as the testing site. Maybe it's the nostalgia I had in the early 2000s looking for information on hidden/missing content like the removed motorcycle stages and other oddities (much like Sonic 2, another treasure trove of beta content). Sadly the site I used to go to for this info (Streets of Rage Online) is now defunct, which makes me glad for the Wayback Machine that much more.
The funny thing is SOR3 isn't even my favorite Streets of Rage. And yet I come back to it far more than SOR2 for some reason. Whereas SOR2 is polished to a fine sheen with its near-flawless execution and soundtrack, SOR3 took it upon itself to go farther than its predecessor and go into territory that at the time was unexplored by other beat-em-ups. Some of it worked and some of it sticks out like a sore thumb, but the game really tried and you have to admire it for that. It was the "experimental" touch on SOR2's "safe" formula, which for me has gotten a bit stale over the years despite its technical excellence.
With that in mind, I finally got a boxed copy of this game after all of these years, sat down and did something I was never able to do before, complete SOR3 on Hard mode and get the good ending. On that note, I'd like to give a very special "screw you" to Jet for costing me 6 lives and being just about the hardest boss in beat-em-up history.
It only took 15 years, but I feel like my journey with this game has finally come to a close. I do feel it's a shame though that no one did another 2-player TAS of this. That would've been fun to see and I know mine is horribly unoptimized so the time wouldn't be tough to beat.
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Yeah. Technically, it should work with any type of non-knockdown attack, but because of how the bug works, downward attacks are by far the most effective because their hitbox lasts a long time.
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Nice WIP, looks very optimized. It seems like Axel will be quite a bit faster due to the instant/more powerful downward attack, and his infinite combo/back attack (I can already see Jet being much faster if you use this).
The only issue will be entertainment, since most of the run will be using the multihit glitch. Keep in mind that after each scene, you gain health beyond what the bar displays, so the players can hit each other without appearing to lose health.
Interesting that Gens would desync. I don't recall ever having that problem (the times it did desync, it was because I loaded a state in the wrong order).
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Spikestuff wrote:
atro city wrote:
Are you fucking kidding me? I make just one post in almost a year, asking a reasonable question, and of course I get railed on it. Fuck this forum.
atro, I'm going off based on how you wrote it.
Especially commenting on something that uses an emulator which hasn't been updated recently for a long time (compared to pcsx-rr stares at pcsx-rr)
Hence on how my attitude was towards you.
So I will apologize.
Sorry.
I asked because if I'm not mistaken there are videos in which the music has been corrected in post. I didn't know if that would be possible in this case, or if it was a requirement for acceptance/publishing, hence why I asked. Note that even if the answer was no, I still would have watched the video.
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Spikestuff wrote:
atro city wrote:
Will there eventually be a video where the music is fixed? If so, I'll wait to watch that.
(._.)
Now listen here.
You get the video there shouldn't care much on the audio and that is that.
Privileged little sh-- to quote myself.
Spikestuff wrote:
Shame the music doesn't give it justice... little emulator issue.
In other words ... DEAL WITH IT.
Are you fucking kidding me? I make just one post in almost a year, asking a reasonable question, and of course I get railed on it. Fuck this forum.
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No, I think I'm done with TASing. There are quite a few arcade beat-em-ups I'd like to see TASed (The Punisher, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Alien vs. Predator, etc.) but I remember trying to use FBA-rr and getting nothing but desyncs. Plus, with the rate I finish things nothing would be completed before 2020.
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Radiant wrote:
atro city wrote:
If Blaze grabs an enemy before her blitz is over, the sword doesn't lose energy.
Interesting. Is that something you can pull off reliably in normal gameplay, or does it require frame-level precision?
You can do it in normal gameplay, but it's tricky and requires accurate timing/spacing. I believe the way it works is Blaze cycles between some non-knockdown frames and a knockdown frame. In order for the knockdown frame to not hit, the enemy needs to still be in hitstun from a previous hit. If Blaze hits the enemy on the very first frame she goes into the blitz (by being close enough), then it works every time on regular enemies. Otherwise it's essentially luck-based in normal gameplay.
Floogal wrote:
By the way, atro city, please don't take my musings on more character variety as whiny complaints. Your video is very entertaining!
I didn't take the discussion as a complaint, don't worry. I'm glad you found it entertaining.
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Also, one of the main reasons why SOR3 Hard is so ridiculous is because enemies can take off 3/4 of your lifebar in one combo. So not only is is a slog, it's a slog that heavily punishes mistakes. Unfortunately, BK III on Very Hard is too easy because it doesn't resort to cheap tricks like scaling up damage and dumping 4 or 5 lifebars on enemies in a game where all the characters are weak.
Fun fact: There's a Goldie in the City Hall route that has over 5 lifebars on 2P Hard. That's more than any boss in SOR2 Mania had.
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Which particular instance are you referring to? The screen doesn't scroll unless both players are on the right side/running from middle, so if Blaze is busy in the middle/left the screen won't scroll until she's done and catches up.
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Usually that's because there's nothing player 1 (Zan) can do to speed that particular part up while player 2 (Blaze) is finishing enemies with her more powerful combos and quicker slam. In the scenes where Blaze is using the sword blitzes on ninjas, if you add in punches or anything else in the middle with Zan, the hits don't stack and Blaze ends up knocking down the ninja prematurely due to how her sword blitz works.
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Truncated wrote:
Will you get all the racing robots in beginning of the factory? I don't know if it's possible, but it probably is. You can get the robots on screen to stop temporarily by grabbing and throwing a different robot.
I believe letting the robots pass is much faster than killing them. I was planning to do a dancing segment for that anyway that I think will be more entertaining. Also, their explosions will probably lag the game a lot.
Truncated wrote:
Any plans for Robot Y? It would be cool if you didn't just cheese him with constant jump kicks like everybody usually do.
Slamming him is faster than jump kicks. Since he's invincible when he gets up, I'll try to get him to do stuff like kick in the wrong direction. Unfortunately he has 9 lifebars so it'll be a slog regardless.
One trick I'll have to figure out is one I saw in Bestiajerules' TAS. He jump kicks Robot Y on the final hit and it skips his death animation (where he spins around while exploding), making "Stage 7 Clear" immediately display on the final hit.
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It's going fine so far. I'm at the bikers right now, and in 2P Hard they throw another gray biker at you, so it's 1 gray + yellow bikers, then 1 gray again, then 2 gray + ninja.
Looking ahead and testing with the robot AI, it seems that the white robots don't self-destruct at all (or at least I can't get them to). All the other robots can, but only if they have 1x or more starting health, and they only gain the ability to self-destruct when their health drops to a certain value (just above a lifebar). For example, I grabbed a robot with that much health as its starting health, let go, and it instantly self-destructed.
There's also one last piece to this puzzle, and I think it may be a random factor. Sometimes robots self-destruct after interaction with the player, sometimes they don't (unless you change what you're doing), and sometimes they'll explode only because a player is close to them (like in Stage 6).
This is just what I've observed, so it could be inaccurate. There's only so much I can determine without looking at the game's code/memory.
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Stage 6
Link to video
The input-copying didn't work so I had to do the switchboard room again.
I've been wondering, does this run qualify as "takes no damage"? The players do hit each other but due to the lifebar overflow bug they don't lose visible life.
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Stage 5 is done.
Link to videoI'm still not sure exactly what makes the robots explode, so I'll have to see what I can do. (Edit: Apparently they explode when their health reaches a certain value [just over a lifebar])
Also, how do you copy a block of input in Gens? In the interests of actually finishing the run, I'll probably copy the input from switchboard room #1 to #2 since they're identical.
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First test:
Your Type is
ISTJ
Introverted 89
Sensing 50
Thinking 62
Judging 33
Second test:
Introverted (I) 89.66% Extroverted (E) 10.34%
Sensing (S) 54.55% Intuitive (N) 45.45%
Thinking (T) 58.06% Feeling (F) 41.94%
Perceiving (P) 56.41% Judging (J) 43.59%
Your type is: ISTP
Well, that sucks. A lot of the questions were vague and very hard to answer. Having to guess about yourself and your preferences is never a good thing.
Also, "Often you prefer to read a book than go to a party. Yes/No" Where's the neither option?
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It depends on what you classify as being the ending. If you don't get all the golden frogs, the ending movie won't play, but the movie with the credits will. I would encourage you to get them anyway, though. None of them are excessively out of the way.
Glad to see you're working on this again.
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Going over Exit Fate's story, I can't help but try to piece together one of my favorite characters in the game, Yan Angwa. Here's my hypothesis as to what's up with him (spoilers - highlight to see):
(there are a few optional tidbits about him, particularly the Shadow Yan Angwa fight and when you talk to Nashal at Elysium Castle)
I think that many generations ago, Yan Angwa made a pact with a spirit named Chronos, who granted him reincarnation after death. After dying many, many times, now he just wants to rest, but Chronos won't let him. So he searches for a way to break the pact (aka his "research"), which leads him first to the real Yan Angwa (the group of scholars) and then to Daniel. Note that the first thing Yan Angwa asks Daniel before he joins the party is if he's the one being controlled by the Hand of Fate.
Of course, this doesn't answer everything. There's still the issue of why he's using a fake name and refusing to identify himself. I have a feeling that his real identity has some level of significance to the overall story.
Any thoughts?
