Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Funny, I actually tried this yesterday. Unfortunately, I couldn't replicate it so I had nothing to post about it. It seems very situational and since Concrete Man's shots change depending on his and your relative positions, it might have to be exactly like its shown in the video to work.
I did get him to shoot his concrete shots at me at the beginning of the fight, though. And I could even get inside one after being frozen by another... but I wasn't able to zip through the floor.
On another note, this was done in time trial where supposedly you have no items so its a real mystery where the beat call came from. But it might only work in Time Trial because of that.
It looks like a great glitch... if you figure out how it works.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
N. Harmonik wrote:
Is anybody going to do a run on hard mode next?
I have thoughts of a (Warning: Mouthful ahead) Mr. Perfect, Pacifist, Buster Only, Mega Man, Hard mode run. Either that or Bass on Hard. I give my reasons in the MM10 thread.
I'll give proper frame numbers tomorrow, but for now, I'm suggesting a screenshot around this area:
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
And... FIN! :D
Alright, I made 2 movie files. One that ends after the final shot, and one that ends after the last required input to roll the credits....
Now what? lol
I'm guessing I have to put get it into a zip file, but I'm pretty sure the current submission page doesn't accept .dtm's yet.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
I agree with this as well. After the movie file is over, the A button must be pressed 16 times to cue the credits. After the credits, pushing A a few more times will display the various awards I unlocked (there are several), the in-game time, and then bring you back to the title screen. I just ran through and found the optimal frames to press A to see the credits, and even with that, it's still an additional 21+ seconds added on to the movie file. The first A must be pressed 1000 frames after the final shot, and the dialogue between Mega Man and Wily lasts 303 frames.
I will complete this movie file tonight.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
If you start recording a new movie, close and re-open Dolphin. You must also do this whenever you play your movie. This is necessary for the Dolphin to reset a few key things. If you don't do this, and you try playing or starting a recording in an old instance of Dolphin, it results in that unusual delay that descyncs inputs.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
The top path is faster by .4 seconds.
Also, I managed to hit Wily 13 out of 14 times before he dissapears. I really wanted to kill him in his first appearance, but he's only hittable for 253 frames. Since he has a 20 frame invincibility between hits, that's 7 frames shy of being able to kill him.
Also, the soonest I can fire the last shot is at frame xxxx36. This shot hits him at frame xxxx59. And then after the battle ends, there's a few more screens of dialogue I have to scroll through with A before the credits start. When does my final time end?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Yep! But I'm in no rush to finish this just because I'm near the end. I want this stage to be of the same caliber as the rest.
And thanks for the good idea on the weapon displaying, Mothrayas. I'm glad you noticed that, since that was something I was excited to work out. In fact, by the end of the game, every weapon will be completely drained except for coil (which I never needed any more uses for) and a single pixel on Commando (which isn't enough to shoot).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Haha yeah, you're right. Once the run is complete I'm sure I'll be able to give her some quality time again. I've been kind of consumed with this project.
Here's Wily Stage 4 in 2:35. 86
Link to video
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Almost time to put all that to the test!
After a very productive Sunday (or very non-productive Sunday if you ask my girlfriend, lol), I finished recording Wily Stage 4. The only thing better than how fast I finished this level, is how much further I've optimized it. As I said earlier, when I first TAS'd this level I saved 800+ frames off of Rockmanda's TAS. Well, thanks to much more efficient weapon energy conservation, I shaved another 337 frames, bringing the total time for this level down to 2:34.86!
I'll encode the stage and upload it tomorrow. But expect to see the conclusion of this TAS sometime this week!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Yup! Only Wily Stage 4 and 5 remain. And I've already TAS'd Wily Stage 4 before (2:40.48). I did that before I started my full game run.
Link to video
The greatest part is, while doing that run in the time trial, I was focused on comparing it to Rockmanda's TAS. Using the knowledge I had about the game (most notably, the Triple Blade glitch) I was able to beat it by over 800 frames.
Now I'm there for the full run, and with the experience of the entire game under my belt, I'm finding improvements to my TAS! I was only expecting to squeeze out a few more frames, but I found 26 stray frames in one screen alone!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Unfortunately not. Switching weapons cancels the current one, and both the Rebound Striker and Thunder Wool need time to "charge up". I bounce the first rebound striker 5 times to give it the maximum damage, the second one hits 4 walls, and the the last 4 hit 2. I can't even use the Triple Blade glitch on him because doing so would stop the rebound strikers from bouncing off walls.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
I'm logged in to the TASvideos site and every page functions fine except the movie submission page. I'm logged out whenever I view that page. If I go to another page from there, I'm magically logged back in.
I read the sticky and it explains how to report an auto-logoff issue, but it doesn't say where.
Anyways, here's my information:
ISP: O2 DSL
http://tasvideos.org/SubmitMovie.html
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:21:51 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian)
Last-Modified: Sat, 21 May 2011 05:19:10 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 2496
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Any help?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
That's too bad. Would be great to have a crystal clear encode of this run.
Found another interesting glitch. Some of the Mets in this game shoot 3 purple blobs instead of bullets. The blobs don't hurt Mega Man, but up to 3 can stick to him. If Mega Man has at least 1 blob stuck to him, every platform he stands on acts like ice. But all that is common knowledge.
Well, it turns out he retains this status even on rush jet. As in, I can slip and slide on top of rush jet if I have a purple blob attached. Normally, this would just be a playaround glitch, but I found a way to slide off him right before a screen transition. This gives me the speed of rush jet (which equals full running speed) PLUS the extra speed of sliding. Enough to save a few frames and should look pretty cool on top of it all. It's too bad there's really only one spot where this is feasible.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Priam wrote:
Besides, if you object to those last ten seconds, then there's always alt-f4 when watching.
It's not so much that I'm offended by the extra action. What I actually have a problem with, is that it seems like an unfair penalty to author to continue playing after the game ends. I liked all the messing around, too, but the fact that it adds 10 seconds to the final time is what bothers me. The way I see it, the final time should be tallied when the game-ending trigger is initiated (final hit registered, touching the axe in SMB, etc), and anything after that not counted. This will allow for post-game celebrations such as this with no repercussions.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Sure thing. Let me know how it turns out. And could you also tell me how many rerecords have been counted thus far? I started using r7506 about halfway through Wily Stage 2.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y25FY939
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
I'm with AnS on this one.
If the game is over, why keep playing just because the game accepts input? If the audience needs 10 more seconds of "entertainment" to enjoy the video, then they apparently didn't enjoy the last 17 and half minutes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Well, Wily 2 definitely takes the cake as my least favorite level to TAS. As I mentioned above, this level is designed in such a way that there is a limit on the minimum time this level can be completed. I found over 300 frames of improvements over the course of the level, but completing any screen even 1 frame faster would result in a pillar coming down to block my way. This would result in a loss of more than 400 frames. Proto Man and Bass should have a much better time with this level due to being able to make it past the pillars before they are at a lethal height.
In any event, here's Wily Stage 2 in 1:59:56.
Link to video
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(580)
Joined: 1/27/2011
Posts: 427
Location: Oregon
Here's the same segment, with a small improvement and the pauses edited out.
Link to video
The music skips quite a bit with the pauses removed, and I actually think its more distracting than the pauses themselves.
I may be a lone ranger here, but I don't really have a problem with the excessive pausing. The concrete shot zip glitch's ONLY use, is to shave split seconds off the game timer. By the end of that segment alone, I saved 2-3 seconds off a run that doesn't zip.
After taking all the comments into consideration, I still stand by my suggestion for this game to aim for in-game time. It is, of course, unfortunate that Mega Man 9 lacks the quick-switching of Mega Man 10, as that would completely negate this issue. But this isn't a speed/entertainment tradeoff as Sonikkustar posted. It simply has a goal to minimize the count on the game timer using every tactic available, like these movies.
The fact is, a real-timed TAS will more than likely use the buster for this entire segment. In fact, it will probably stick to the buster for the majority of the game, only switching for boss fights, unreachable platforms and unavoidable enemies.
The final time will probably end up around the 20 minute mark -- slower than the current human record of 19:18.
On the other hand, a game-timed TAS will include an incredible amount of zipping and weapon juggling, obliterating the current record on the order of several minutes or so.
