Excellent run. It's too bad the any% doesn't well show off what the game has to offer.
Well, it's about time the holy grail of PCE gaming showed up with a TAS, and I'm glad to see it here. I see very few places for improvement.
Yes vote.
A 100% run would have you not increasing your rank at all. Read through some of the FAQs. There are ways to make sure you rank up as little as possible, among them never fully refilling your life.
I really like how you use the vines to increase your speed for a time. I wonder if it would be worth hanging onto the vine in stage 1 a bit to get it moving in the right direction in order to get a fast-track to the end of the level.
Were there no axe power powerups in stage 3 anywhere? 'Tis a shame.
Ideally, a quality TAS would rank up as little as possible, since ranking up is basically a measure of how much you have to heal. The lower your rank when you finally beat the game the better.
In fact, fruitbane has a good taste. I'm pretty sure he didn't forget it, but rather purposefully didn't include it.
I think that is quite possibly the first time I've ever been singled out for having good taste in a message forum. Thanks! ; )
I didn't think of RS, but I don't think it would be a great TAS title from an entertainment standpoint. It's not just fast enough.
There are a number of Saturn shooters which are visually impressive and would make for excellent "perfect" TAS runs. Some are original and some are arcade ports, but the best of the arcade ports are worth TASing on the Saturn since they may not play in FinalBurn.
Thunderforce V
Soukyugurentai/Terra Diver
Keio Flying Squadron 2
Battle Garrega
I also second Guardian Heroes and Silhouette Mirage.
The Saturn sound is lower quality but the music is of equal quality. Has to do with the Saturn lacking the ability to use certain compression routines on sound samples. Disappointing considering the sound chip otherwise blows the PS1's sound chip out of the water.
I've been unable to play any mcm movies these days, even if I am using exactly the same command lines with the same games and movies (including adelikat's Dragon Egg!) as before. I've tried all available mcm files around here, and all of them have been stopped as soon as the emulator starts.
Hint: I know how to use command lines correctly.
I've been loathe to admit this, but I'll do it because it may help you. The files weren't corrupt. You have to have "-play 1" in your command line. Try the command I now use.
mednafen -play 1 -pce.xscale 3 -pce.yscale 3 -mov "path to mcm file" "path to ROM file"
This will scale the movie to 3x along both axes and will play the move rather than loading it stopped.
I think there are some minor improvements that could be made but this is easily good enough for publishing. That just means perfectionists will have some oneupsmanship with which to occupy their time.
I'll take a look tonight and see if I can offer you any useful insights. Whether or not my desktop is planning on working is still a crapshoot and until I get the new one ordered and put together all TASes are off.
Edit: Watched this. Pretty good. The area with those hopping caterpillar dragon things is obnoxious. You seemed to handle it pretty well. And you got one of those Golden V-Wing speed power-ups I mentioned earlier. They don't speed up the swing of your axe but they speed up the charge on it. Once you get to the highest axe level fast-charging will be critical, though you'll have to weight the power of the attack against the screen-pause effect that comes with landing the blow. A max attack sorta slows things down.
That's a good point. I don't know. I was able to watch Kato and Ken. When I get home I'll try your file from FileDropper and hope that there's not something more going on : ) I wonder who else around here uses Firefox and if they have trouble, too.
Update: OK, it worked. I can read the file, now. Excellent...
I run adblocking and popup blocking on Firefox, as well as extra cookie management. On both my computers the download corrupts from sendspace.com. IE can do it fine, but then I have to put up with popups and advertising.
FuzZerd, while this isn't your fault at all, I would recommend a new free file hosting service. Try out the one I used for my movies.
I wonder if my particular Firefox configuration doesn't get along with the site FuzZerd is using to host his files.
FuzZerd! We might have it! Blarglslelelsel!!!! Frikkin stupid crap problems...
I did granzort, remember? so you already have one of my file ;)
If you have 666 files, it mean i was correct... stop searching further...
You know how to use command line, probly, and this is not an insult to say to you to double check coz there is like 99.99% chances the problem is there
Im sure if you try just a little more youll make it trought
666 file = unreconized movie argument
Its very sensitive on quotes ect... try to change your path and files name to shorter ones (and remove spacing), also try to use relative path (i know your not suppose to... but anyway)
I just noticed you use quotes on the movie itself, wrong idea imo, clean your emu path and dont use quotes on the -mov argument
I forgot a word there. There are NO .666 files on my hard drives. Sorry 'bout that. No 666 files anywhere. Mednafen is reading in the movie file. I'm using the same script for all my movie files. It's loading the movie file and the ROM and then as soon as it goes to play it it stops.
I did some testing with copies of mednafen, ROM files, and MCM files in locations right off C: with proper 8 character directory names and 8.3 file names, no spaces or odd characters, and it still didn't work. For all movies except FuzZerd's spaces and quotes are not a problem at all.
No, the command line instructions are correct. If there is a problem on my end it must have to do with the actual execution of the mednafen program itself. But I still find it odd that movie files from you and Adelikat work fine with no problems. Whatever is the incompatibility here appears, so far, to be very specific to me and FuzZerd.
FuzZerd,
I'm going to keep trying to get this to work. It seems like you'd be good to work with on a Legendary Axe run.
Whoops. Actually, I made a Dracula X movie, to see if the recordings would successfully cross CD access gaps. Sorry 'bout that. There are .666 files anywhere on my hard disks.
Some time this week I'll download Mednafen, my ROMs, and FuzZerd's movie files to my laptop and see if there's a problem there. The laptop is much newer and has much less software installed on it. If there's a problem there then it's not me, unless there's something wrong with my ROMs.
arukAdo, could you help me test? Make a quick movie file of Bonk's Revenge and include at least a couple re-records. Shouldn't take but a few minutes. I want to see if I can run a movie from you for the same ROM file.
FuzZerd,
That hex edited movie also stops right at the beginning. And what's interesting is that it actually says "stopped" (as did all the previous movies). I'm going to do a little rearranging and see what happens. I don't think it's a ROM file difference because you've been able to play my mcm files just fine.
arukAdo,
I appreciate you trying to help, but I DO know how to use a command line. Here is what I use to play movies. This is from my batch file that I use so I don't have to retype it every time.
mednafen -pce.xscale 3 -pce.yscale 3 -mov "D:\Console Emulation\TG-16\mcm\bonksrevenge_TAS_FuzZerd.mcm" "D:\Console Emulation\TG-16\ROMS\Bonk's Revenge (USA).zip"
Changing the locations or names of Mednafen or the ROM file seems to do nothing. I am using the latest version of Mednafen from the Google Code page.
I was able to play the sample MCM file from Dracula X that was posted some time ago somewhere, your Dragon Egg submission, and the Granzort submission (wasn't approved) with no problems. But both from Fuzzerd failed for me.
Well, I don't know for a fact that changed key mappings will cause a problem. I was kinda shooting into the dark. At the same time, I find it odd that only your movies (so far) don't work for me.
FuzZerd,
My desktop decided not to be completely dead just yet so I tried to watch your MCM file. Just like the Bonk's Revenge MCMs it stopped at frame one and I couldn't watch it. I wonder if you're using any custom key commands that might be messing things up. I simply can't watch the file. So far, only MCMs from you have this problem.
