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Thanks for all the positive feedback.
dwangoAC wrote:
Yes vote, nomination for Star, and a request from the author - keylie, may I exhibit this TAS at an upcoming *GDQ event (now that I've set in motion the possibility of showing TAS's that are not being replayed on the original console)?
Yes, I would be very honered to see my TAS presented at the GQD.
Andypro wrote:
Would you mind sharing the GC netranking code for this run? I'm interested to see if the algorithm for encoding the score still works for a score that high. I don't think we ever located the most significant bit. :)
Well, it appears only 1p runs are eligible for net rankings.
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Sir VG wrote:
Also kinda curious why you let the chain counter get so lopsided in Final Chapter?
There are two reasons: first it gives overall more points to give as much chain as possible to one player. Also, thanks to this, player 2 got a 7th extend, which means 500,000 extra points at the end.
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Je pense pareil que Grincevent.
C'est en effet assez déprimant de faire un meilleur TAS qui ne batte pas le précédent record, à cause d'une différence d'émulation. Cela dit, Bizhawk est probablement plus fidèle que Gens, donc c'est plus juste d'utiliser le premier. Dans le cadre d'une soumission, ton TAS sera accepté s'il est meilleur que l'ancien TAS, même s'il fait un temps légèrement plus long à cause de la différence d'émulateur.
Après, rien ne t’empêche de faire jouer le précédent TAS sur Gens pour pouvoir comparer les phases de jeu (même si les comparaisons sont plus pénibles que si le même émulateur était utilisé).
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Yes, the extend bonus is given to each player based on their own lives stock.
So for chapter 5, I'm giving all the points to player 2 so that he should reach 23m (7 lives) and player 1 18m (6 lives).
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Ok, section 4-2 is done. The rest should not take that much time.
Edit: Here it is.
Link to video
A few comments:
- The big bullets at section 4-1 gives 100 points per frame for a total of 500 points.
- Section 4-2 is really a mess, sorry.
- In that section, black turrets have a rotating pattern, so sometimes in the cycle, the orientation of these shots are very good so I can absorb almost every bullet from all turrets. That is why you will see me staying longer in black.
- Also, the hitbox of the central dome does not match the sprite, so you can get into the dome by the top, absorbing more black bullets
- For the first mini boss, I found by trial and errors a location where my 12 lasers don't break the chains. From there, I waited as long as possible before killing the rest of the turrets to have 30s left (optimal)
- For the second mini boss, I intentionally left one turret when releasing the lasers. In the classic route, you can kill the top left gun (6 lasers) and the two bottom black pods (3 lasers each) in one pass, with a precise location. By having a left turret, the top left gun is not killed (5 lasers), and I can leach his 7-way shot for a few frames and still get the maximum time.
- Not much to say about the boss, I killed him at the exact frame where the timer went from 93s to 92s, so I got 93s :)
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Patashu wrote:
In that case, will you be timing out any of the stage 5 boss phases in hard, 2 player?
EDIT: And what is the criteria for getting the maximum amount of chains at the end of stage 3? You seem to take it rather leisurely.
I don't think any stage 4 or stage 5 midboss is worth leeching. Maybe the first midboss of stage 5 is a good candidate, we will see.
At the end of stage 3, bonus enemies come by waves of 6 black and 6 white enemies. Each one separates in two when shot, and each resulting enemy separates also in two. It makes a total of 42 white and 42 black targets per wave. The triggering of the next wave does not depend on how fast you kill the previous wave. The number of waves you get depends on how fast you killed the previous miniboss. In this case, I got 3 full waves, and the boss triggered in the middle of the fourth one. So I can take my time on the first three ones, as soon as I'm ready to start the fourth one. As a note, when you kill an enemy that separates in two, you cannot target the two childs during the first half second.
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Andypro wrote:
keylie wrote:
I just realized that the stage 3 boss with two players must be leeched for maximum score. I kinda don't like that :/
I'm surprised to hear that. I guess that'll be another major difference with a 1p run, because 1p alone certainly won't be able to absorb enough to make grinding worth it.
Well, lasers give 100 points per frame. With two players, and 60 frames per second, it gives 12000 points per second which is higher than the 10000 points per remaining second given at the end of the stage. I didn't check if the boss is firing lasers during the whole fight though.
Stage 4 boss can also fire multiple lasers, but he doesn't fire all the time, even after an opening was made, so I hope I won't have to also leech him.
Here is stage 3 boss with 92s:
(Video removed)
EDIT: Nevermind, I'm stupid, the boss bonus is given to *both* players, so every second is worth 20000 points. No grinding then...
EDIT 2: Stage 3 completed:
Link to video
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Ersatz wrote:
would it be possible to get an encode of that level in its current not so awesome form?
Well, I'm almost finished with stage 3, so you will have to wait until I'm done with the boss.
I will post the boss 3 fastest time in a separate video. Time remaining will be 92, but 93 might be possible. I'm not sure I will spend time on the 93s since it won't stick in the final TAS.
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I really enjoyed this tasblock as well as the one from last year, thanks dwangoAC and all the people involved in this.
I have however one small piece of criticism to say: I feel we should take time at the beginning to explain exactly what is a TAS and the basic concepts, so that we are sure that people who have never heard of it can understand what is going on.
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Stage 2 finished:
Link to video
I will upload a YT higher quality version soon. Edit: done.
- after the first part, I ended up with an incomplete chain on both ships, which was annoying
- I let one white box alive because killing it would require to keep the laser gauge very low, resulting in less absorbed bullets
- For the first two generators after the boxes, you will see me not absorbing many bullets. This is because I need to keep my laser gauge low, and I have emptied them as late as possible without destroying the generators
- The last portion with the 6 generators was a real difficult puzzle to solve. You have to kill the enemies going in rounds as quickly as possible, because killing all of them triggers the spawning of the two big enemies. Killing the two big enemies and the two next ones quickly gives you bonus enemy rows. There are basically two routes here: if you keep your laser gauge full for the big enemies, you can get 16 bonus rows, but you cannot kill the last enemies from the generators. With empty laser gauge, you can get 15 rows. I took the second route because it gives more chains in the end. You will notice that there are 2 black enemies remaining. I couldn't get a third one unfortunately.
- I'm not very happy with the boss fight :(
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Patashu wrote:
Could you make a detailed explanation of the 'chip enemies before homing missiling them' mechanic, and how to maximize point gain using it? A few people I talked to were confused about how exactly it works.
How many shots should you fire?
Should you use same colour or different colour?
If you only half overlap with an enemy you hit it with only one half of your shot, is this useful to get more points?
Well, I took a look at it again, and I couldn't get any difference in points between using the shot, the laser or both to kill enemies. So it must have been a mistake in the first place, you cannot get different points by how you kill enemies, sorry.
Basically, one shot gives 10 points when on the same color and 20 for opposite color. One laser gives 100 points for same color if it doesn't kill the enemy, 200 points for opposite color. If the enemy has low heath, the laser gives the amount of points depending on the remaining heath.
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You are right, it feels a bit sloppy. I was concerned that if going on top too soon, the suicide bullets from the two white boxes above could hit the red box and vanish. But yes, on the 5 black bullets lost, I may have saved some.
Edit: Damn, this stage is so hard.
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Well, having the game running very slowly is not very harmful for me. You should try to see if it syncs at least.
Keyboard input not working is a bad thing. There is a lot of games that seems to have this functionality lacking. I tried once to investigate Super Meat Boy which also lacks keyboard support, but I couldn't find how the game fetches the keyboard status. For now, hourglass supports input events (WM_KEYUP and WM_KEYDOWN), input API functions (GetKeyState, GetAsyncKeyState, GetKeyboardState) and Direct Input functions (lpKeyboard->GetDeviceState)
If the xbox360 controller works, you could use it to record your TAS. Controllers are supported in the hourglass-resurrection project, but there is no release of it yet afaik.
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I may know what is going on, I think the dump feature is skipping frames.
Here is the screenshot of VI 635, 636 and 637 in the ikaruga WIP (http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/18954596001392115)
And from the video dump, frames 1132 and 1133:
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Spoiler of the upcoming stage 1 WIP: 144 chains! (afaik nobody achieved more than 138 chains unassisted). I spent about 10 hours on the last bonus enemies :(
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Catastrophe wrote:
Finally, I would have loved to finish the game escaping from Tier 1 using Engulf, stop the timer at the fadeout just as we do in the speedrun of the game and loop back to Zone Eater's belly, getting again to Kefka's tower and loop back again and again during tier 1. Unfortunately, we have proved that it is not possible to do so.
Would've been great! haha. So what goes wrong with that plan? Do the credits just start anyways? Or does it hang?
Being Engulfed to the Triangle Island cave can only be done from a fight on the world map. If done during a fight inside a dungeon, it only ends the fight like an escape. BTW, forcing the Engulf flag to 1 with the emulator is very useful for route planing, because you will instantly "escape" every fight by killing yourself (except those of the world map). Very useful against bosses.
And from the video dump, frames 1132 and 1133:
