Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
I think the fastest path on 4-4, a water level, requires a P-wing. There might be a few other cases like this. Mario can't go through a wall if he can't run at top speed, right?
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Nah, he still has to accelerate of course. And at top speed, I think it just looks faster because Mario swings his arms instead of extending them out airplane-style.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
JXQ, holding down doesn't make a difference. In order to spit the shell and catch it in the air, release the B button a split second before you spit the shell and it isn't too hard to time it so that Yoshi can catch it immediately after losing a bit of altitude. Just make sure you're holding left or right as well so you won't lose the shell in the horizontal direction. I tested and this is faster than the pit stop taken in your published movie. I don't know if the vine would be faster though.
edit: Hey guess what? I think I found an actual timesaver with the Yoshi flight trick! First off, there's a much easier way to execute the trick than the other five methods. Simply fly up against a ceiling and press the A button to bounce off and on Yoshi in an instant. As for the actual TAS timesaver, in Pipe World 5, you have an annoying delay where Mario and red Yoshi must wait for those alternating piranha plants, right? Well, when Yoshi is flying he also has the property that if he hits an enemy (even these special plants that can kill Mario while he's riding Yoshi) he will just flicker and become invincible for a short period. If you run and stealthily exploit this a few times under those pipes you ought to be able to get past that part with much less delay, if you can pull it off!
edit: Check this out. Another Yoshi trick that could save time in special situations:
This first screenshot shows an alternate faster path (at the cost of losing the message block) but it isn't a Yoshi trick since Mario could do it alone. It's faster because with Mario already in the block he'll have to backtrack less after he picks up the key around the corner.
(Ignore the numbers on the timers since I clearly didn't take these screenshots from a sequential movie.) However, at the next corner Yoshi can save Mario the couple seconds it takes to swim around to under the key. On top of that, Yoshi retains Mario's swim-with-an-item power so he can come along to the end of the level. In this particular instance this Yoshi trick doesn't save that much time, if any, but these sorts of tricks are something to consider.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Cheers! Thanks so much for making this demo.
edit: Back to stuff that actually matters for a TAS, in Water Secret did you consider spitting the shell out and catching it in mid-air rather than taking that pit stop on the cloud? It's a pity that there are so many Yoshi tricks in these games yet almost none are time-efficient.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Okay guys, I made an .smv: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/291/Super%20Mario%20World%20%28U%29%20yoshi_flight.smv
In the process I accidentally stomped a live Koopa Troopa to get airborn, so now we know that works as well. Seeing this I went ahead and tried with a Piranha plant and even that worked, so this movie demonstrates airborn Yoshi four times. If you count the empty shell and live enemy methods as separate (although they're really the same), we now have five methods for initiating cape-style flight with Yoshi.
Unfortunately this shows that the screen does not scroll automatically if you don't use the red triangle, so JXQ that blows your theory of the screen scrolling caused by Yoshi alone, and destroys the potential for using this trick on that lava level.
JXQ wrote:
I'm a little afraid to stop playing Sonic, as the curse may set in. ;-) Hanzou, did you happen to make SMVs of the tricks you're speaking of?
Sounds like you're caught up with Sonic for now, so Fabian, could you look into this? I'm now pretty convinced that this will have no timesaving application in any of the SMW videos, but I'm hoping you might explore it a bit anyway. I've been wondering about this technique since a decade ago, so if you could master it and make a demo of Yoshi flying over a level that would be quite satisfying.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Hey guys. I tried out the trick on Snes9x just now, and it worked. I guess my memory from years ago isn't too far off. I didn't run into that Yoshi-item-trouble mode that I was ranting about. Maybe it's rarer than I remember or just nonexistent, so just ignore my long paragraph about keys and P-switches and carrying items on Yoshi. Just go ahead and parachute onto Yoshi when he's sitting with a shell.
What's more, I tried to initiate flight by placing Yoshi on a ledge and carefully landing just off the corner, and it worked! Now we know this flight trick can be pulled off on that lava stage or any stage!
JXQ wrote:
Plus with the nature of the flying constantly turning Yoshi backwards, I don't think it would be possible to fly under the pipes just before the lava hill.
Yes, I was hoping you in your SMW expertise could find out what the potential horizontal speed is for Yoshi flying that way and demo it. That's my request. =) Or Fabian, are you up for the challenge?
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
This is from many years ago so I could be way off with this, but here is what I remember about starting Yoshi-flying by bouncing off an enemy, or rather an empty shell.
You know how to hold a key (or purple block) while riding on Yoshi, right? Sometimes when you try this (jump onto the key and Yoshi while holding Y), it works fine and you can repeatedly do it again and again. Other times, Mario grabs the key and falls right through Yoshi, and the failure will continue no matter how many times he tries until he restarts that level or goes to another level. It's as if some programming oversight has made it so there's a strange bit somewhere that says whether it's okay for you to ride Yoshi holding the key or not. When you do that with shells or a P-switch, it can be pretty similar except very rarely will you end up with the cool effect of carrying the item on Yoshi. For these items, half the time Mario will fall through and pick up the shell/P-switch and at other times he'll be in the mode of always boarding Yoshi and smashing the shell/P-switch in the process.
Anyway, to try the flying Yoshi trick without a red triangle, first do some testing to make sure you're in that latter mode where the shell would actually get smashed. Next, place a shell on the ground and drop Yoshi on the same place. Fly up, open the parachute, then land on Yoshi's back and hopefully you'll bounce off the shell up into flying Yoshi mode.
I don't remember ever seeing this work on a generic Yoshi-bouncable enemy or even a Yoshi-stompable enemy. It had to be a shell, which probably does something strange because it's something Mario can normally pick up. Besides the red triangle and bouncing off shells, I'd like to think there are other possibilities like catching Yoshi off a disappearing platform, landing at the frame-perfect moment when Yoshi is on a ledge, etc.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Interesting! I never considered that enemies in the process of vaporizing could still get in the way of Lolo. Okay, well I tested a bit just now to try fixing this and I found a path that gets the bottom-right heart last, is faster, and yet still looks cooler.
Bad part is that it's probably only a couple frames faster because even when half a square away the vaporizing skull still gets in the way! I'm sure there's a better solution.
edit: Significantly better-looking and faster strategy that could maybe even be frame-optimized a little. Grab top-right heart last then do as shown in the pictures, saves about two squares of walking!
-hanzou
Awesome! I've been curious to see that maneuver for over a decade. I'd still like to see how fast Yoshi can fly horizontally when continually using this trick over a level, so if you have time it would be great if you could try making a demo for Donut Plains 4 or some other free flying level.
What I noticed is that the screen continues to follow Yoshi up the entire time. That might be handy in an extremely specific circumstance.
Fabian wrote:
The problem in that level is that the lava hill is so huge that Mario can't fly over it no matter what, the screen needs to be scrolled up.
Well, that sounds like just the kind of specific circumstance, right? I doubt there's any red triangle or stompable enemy to initiate the trick at that point, but maybe there is a similar situation elsewhere in the game or in Super Mario World. My guess is that the screen scrolling is due to the red triangle which always provides scrolling power when Yoshi bounces off it, so you probably wouldn't get the same benefit if you initiated flight by some other trickier method.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
... would snakey reappear next to the first medusa? O_o
Probably not. Each level's auxiliary spawn spots are purposely set by the designers. They rarely design spawn points that the player has no chance of using, and once you've blocked all of them the enemy just gets destroyed. If you'd like to test this idea quickly, put in some cheat codes so you don't need to expend too much effort with careful timing to create this setup.
Randil wrote:
Hey man, that zip file is empty! Either way, I'm pretty sure the improvement should be more than 12 frames. Take a look at this screenshot and see how it compares to what you're currently doing.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
I just thought of something for C-5. What if there was some crazy way to make leeper block the 2nd medusa statue,
Ingenious! I'm confident something like this could be very fast, but trying out all the timing combinations will be more challenging than what we were doing before. Good luck! =)
This won't allow you to kill the Snakey immediately though. You still need to first use the egg to grab the top heart. What your idea will allow you to do later is to avoid waiting for Snakey to reappear, which as we've seen is the number #1 timewaster on many levels. The work that you're trying to parallelize (and hence the amount of potential time to save) while waiting for Snakey is that of fetching the Medusa-guarded heart and walking over to the point where Snakey will or will have appeared. You can use this as a guideline to judge what your break-even point would be.
edit: With clever luring and proper use of that shot, you could grab the heart quickly and also use Leeper to obstruct Don Medusa, which would allow you to shoot Snakey away sooner. First things first though =), no benefit in killing the egg any earlier until we know if you can actually get everything done before it reappears.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Yoyo! I contacted Sivak Drac (creator of the hack Challenging Lolo) and he gave me tips on how to make that Lala graphics hack I've been wanting.
Here's Baxter kicking butt with Lala on PROD.
Lala defeats the great devil and rescues her boyfriend only to find him somewhat unusually dressed. Too bad I chose the Lolo 3 style of Lala's ribbon on her left (viewer's right) instead of the Lolo 2 ending style of it on the other side, because otherwise I actually could have prevented Lolo from looking so fruity.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I think it worked in Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu.
And now it seems this bug you're referring to doesn't really exist in Lolo 1, right? If not that or the original Eggerland, then it would have to be limited to Eggerland Meikyuu no Fukkatsu. As for 4matsy's trick, as shown in his screenshot below, I tried it as he described and indeed it works. For Lolo 2, I don't think the game has any Dons that are horizontally moving, guard a heart on the left, and aren't directly at the top or bottom of the screen. Also we probably wouldn't see the same quirk even if we tried patching our way to that situation because the Dons in Lolo 2 already have stricter shooting mechanics.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Hi. I have a request for Fabian, JXQ, VIPer7, flagitious or anyone else who has mastered the Super Mario World mechanics.
Back on the console, one trick that I could never get the hang of was flying parachute-style on Yoshi. I have yet to see this maneuver in any of the SMW videos on this site, probably because this technique is unlikely to have any timesaving application. This is when Mario rides Yoshi while still being able to gain altitude, dive-bomb, slide-tackle and perform all the usual cape tricks. The drawback is that pressing left or right actually causes Mario+Yoshi to try turning around, which leads to complications.
To initiate this trick, leave Yoshi on a red triangle (normally used for running up walls) and parachute onto his back. I recall it is also possible to start this by bouncing off an enemy, but the timing makes it much more difficult. Once in a while I've been able to gain altitude, but I've never been able to consistently perform any flying techniques in this mode.
Would it be possible that one of you might already have or would like to make a short movie demonstrating consistent control of this trick? One thing I'd like would be Yoshi flying with the cape all the way over Donut Plains 4. For something more challenging, perhaps you could try bringing Yoshi up to the top of Water Secret in Super Demo World without using a blue shell.
-hanzou
I also noticed Baxter took advantage of a spot in the Adventures of Lolo levels where the Medusas don't kill you, but I couldn't find a spot like that in Eggerland. Oh well.
I have never seen anything like this in Lolo 2. How many such spots are known to exist in Lolo 1? And if not Eggerland, what other Lolo game has it?
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
I didn't expect more than a half-second gain on 7-3, so 86 frames sounds great.
As for 6-4, your movie is amazing! It must have been quite a challenge to leave the horizontal Don Medusa free running like that, and the funniest part was when Rocky started bashing him in. Anyway, the reason this path is much slower is that you've ended up having to wait for both Rocky and Don Medusa at various points. You should instead use an emerald block to trap Don on the left side as soon as you've picked up the heart at the mid-left of the screen. Once he's bouncing over on the left, the timing becomes convenient to quickly pick up the bottom-left heart. As for using Rocky, what I had in mind was that that he would help near the end as you have to pass the top Medusa three times. This could be faster than using a fourth emerald block, depending on whether Rocky is in the right spot as you approach the end of the level.
Keep up the good work!
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Great job on 5-4!
As for the Rocky glitch, Food explained this trick to me when we were talking on IRC about the game's bugs. If you push an emerald block horizontally against a wtwall and Rocky runs at you vertically, he'll wobble up and down through you as long as you can continue holding the sideways direction. Possibly you could use it to prevent Rocky from trapping you or quickly summon him to to help shield from some hazard like Don Medusa. Level 6-4 involves Rocky and a whole lot of emerald blocks, so it seems like the best candidate level to exploit the glitch. The glitch also works with pushing eggs, so 5-4 is a possibility although it doesn't seem likely given how fast your new strategy is.
edit: Come to think of it, on level 6-4 if you exploit Don Medusa to grab the left two hearts and use Rocky to deal with the top Medusa, you can complete this level using just three (edit: two would be quite a challenge =) emerald blocks instead of five. Since it takes a few seconds to fetch each of those blocks, this would significantly speed up completion of the level. Too bad this makes it unlikely you'll find use for the glitch here.
Here is a list of tricks in Lolo 2 which could be classified as true glitches:
- Rocky walks through Lolo
- Gol fire prevention (so far seen only on PROD)
- Use egg + enemy to half-walk on water
- Use egg + egg to sit on water (e.g. level 7-3)
Probably only the first one, if any, could be applied at some point to save time on the regular 50 levels.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Randil wrote:
About 3-4... You are talking about exploiting rocky twice in your improvements-list, hanzou. I've played around with 3-4 a little while now, and I think that doing that is not possible, or at least very, very hard. You see, if you pass the center using the the rocky as a shield, he will immediately turn up and then turn right, after you have passed the statue. The only way to use him as a shield twice would be to on some way manipulate him to walk differently.
Well, yeah Rocky does turn around (due to hitting an emerald block) after you cross the divider in your latest demo. However, that demo uses an emerald block to cross the divider but it's also possible to use Rocky directly for that part in order to bring him along to the left side. Food has had this (the strategy of exploiting Rocky twice) in mind as well, although I can't say for sure it would be faster if we got it to work.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Thanks for looking into this C.A.D. Finding a better strategy for C-5 can be quite time consuming but it is very important since this stage is the game's finale!
When you say jewel box you mean one of the emerald blocks, right? Yes, you need to use an emerald block to prevent Leeper from coming to the right side of the screen. Leeper is smart enough to chase down Lolo just like Alma or moving skulls can. I can guarantee that the level can be beaten with Leeper awake, because I've managed to do it on the console long ago.
When the timing is right and Leeper is on his way to the bottom you can move that block away and trap Don if you like, but technically you don't need to trap him (and for the sake of the TAS's entertainment I recommend we do not) since Lolo can safely hide out in half of the rightmost heart in the worst case. I also don't see what this has to do with Snakey reappearing since there is another emerald block there and you have plenty of time to move it onto Snakey's spot.
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Bisqwit wrote:
After analyzing this game this much in detail, it seems like this game was designed for coin competitions.
The goal of the game (besides successfully completing the game) is to collect as many coins as possible. Genisto did of course very good job with 113 coins. Still, many were missed.
Bisqwit (published movie description) wrote:
Some coins are traps in themselves, and must not be collected, because doing so the player would not be able to return to the right path.
Considering all the usual SMB1 tricks, the ability to jump at any point, and whatever tricks for getting through walls might stem from combining these, are there really any particular coins that can't be collected or for certain would trap Mario as intended?
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
First off, props to BagOfMagicFood and CtrlAltDestroy for their contributions. More help is welcome, and in the top post I'm adding a list of requested levels and corresponding passwords for anyone who'd like to jump in and contribute.
Randil wrote:
On 5-2, I managed to pass the water the last time a little smoother, saving an additional 5 frames. So the time on 5-2 has been cut down by 905 frames now.
And I don't really see how you mean on 8-4... Could you post and .fcm that shows what you mean?
Remember you have an extra shot on 5-2. Use this to shoot the first egg away after crossing it and you'll save at least a few more seconds.
In order to help myself withdraw from Lolo this week I'm holding off on making anymore .fcm files =), but hopefully a description of 8-4 here might help. Your current strategy uses two emerald blocks on the top left Medusa first. Here is one (of many) alternate strategies: push emerald block to directly right of top-left Medusa, grab heart, push other emerald block to a point below top-right Medusa, shoot rightmost Snakey, grab bottom heart, push Snakey egg to left of top-right Medusa, grab top-right heart, walk back around, double-shoot rightmost Snakey (his egg will have hatched by then), use left Snakey to get bottom-left heart, walk up then blast him away late, then I hope it's clear what to do from there. You'll probably find a better strategy that doesn't involve so many steps, but the overall theme is using both Snakeys, more shots, more walking, but less waiting.
Randil wrote:
I'll look into 7-2 some more soon, I'll get back to you on that.
Oh and hanzou, did you see the savestates that I posted?
Used the savestates and indeed these made it more convenient to view the movies and jump to levels. For that one demo labeled 7-3 though, you really meant 7-2 right? Yesterday I played around with 7-2 and was able to make use of Leeper, but in order to gain time from such a strategy the improvement needs to equal about a full cycle of Don Medusa's movement, which seems unlikely considering your new strategy already times it to Don's movement pretty well.
Randil wrote:
And also, I've been thinking some about 4-3... On this level I wait for several seconds, and I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a way to avoid waiting this long.
edit: Scratch out my original advice; I was mixing up the two Snakeys. Here is one way to get Snakey's egg on the water slightly earlier at the beginning: Instead of pushing an emerald block all the way across the bridge, push it onto the bridge, turn around and push Snakey's egg into the water, turn and push the block down one more space and cross the egg before it's sunk.
Another thing, I came across a technique that allows you to dodge Alma even when he's right on your tail, as shown below.
I was hoping this might be the key to speeding up 1-3, but no such luck. It looks like the levels where this trick could possibly help out are PROB and more likely PROD. Baxter, please try it out when you redo the pro levels. On PROD in particular, this allows Lolo to grab one of the hearts without giving up a shot, so later you can use the shot on an Alma to quickly grab one of the bottom hearts. An overall faster strategy might even involve using Alma eggs to grab both of the bottom hearts. Good luck!
-hanzou
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(20)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Dr. Morbis wrote:
Dragon Warrior is a good example of this issue. By going through all of the dungeons/caves in the dark, it is obviously the fastest way to complete the game. But the movie would be much more entertaining if the author spent that extra fraction of a second needed to light up the caves (I don't remember at what level you get radiant, but having to buy torches would complicate things). It may make the run a bit longer, but it would be much more entertaining.
Fraction of a second? No. Genisto/Acmlm go into dungeons at least four times, I recall torches are one-use each (and besides the torch hardly provides much viewing range), and Radiant isn't learned until level 9. I have a better idea that could maybe satisfy Dr. Morbis or anyone curious about the dungeon paths.
Genisto or Acmlm: When making your movies did you use a Game Genie code or some sort of patch code that turns on Radiant (or possibly gives a full viewport beyond Radiant) without affecting the timing? If so, please post that code. We could even go as far as encoding an alternate version of the AVI with the code turned on.
-hanzou
This first screenshot shows an alternate faster path (at the cost of losing the message block) but it isn't a Yoshi trick since Mario could do it alone. It's faster because with Mario already in the block he'll have to backtrack less after he picks up the key around the corner.
(Ignore the numbers on the timers since I clearly didn't take these screenshots from a sequential movie.) However, at the next corner Yoshi can save Mario the couple seconds it takes to swim around to under the key. On top of that, Yoshi retains Mario's swim-with-an-item power so he can come along to the end of the level. In this particular instance this Yoshi trick doesn't save that much time, if any, but these sorts of tricks are something to consider.
-hanzou
Bad part is that it's probably only a couple frames faster because even when half a square away the vaporizing skull still gets in the way! I'm sure there's a better solution.
edit: Significantly better-looking and faster strategy that could maybe even be frame-optimized a little. Grab top-right heart last then do as shown in the pictures, saves about two squares of walking!
-hanzou
-hanzou
Here's Baxter kicking butt with Lala on PROD.
Lala defeats the great devil and rescues her boyfriend only to find him somewhat unusually dressed. Too bad I chose the Lolo 3 style of Lala's ribbon on her left (viewer's right) instead of the Lolo 2 ending style of it on the other side, because otherwise I actually could have prevented Lolo from looking so fruity.
-hanzou
I was hoping this might be the key to speeding up 1-3, but no such luck. It looks like the levels where this trick could possibly help out are PROB and more likely PROD. Baxter, please try it out when you redo the pro levels. On PROD in particular, this allows Lolo to grab one of the hearts without giving up a shot, so later you can use the shot on an Alma to quickly grab one of the bottom hearts. An overall faster strategy might even involve using Alma eggs to grab both of the bottom hearts. Good luck!
-hanzou