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Huge improvement. Same strategy as the current run, but much faster setup. If you have some sort of script setup to find these setups i think it would be interesting to see a movie that starts from level 0. The RTA community wouldn't even make a category for this because they didn't consider it to be a valid completion if you don't start from 0 (which I argued with them about).
I guess from SmashManiac's comment I think this would obsolete the current run since it sounds like MED was only chosen because it was 2 frames faster, not because it was easier. someone may want to verify that i guess.
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I probably mentioned this in the previous submission for this game, but we played it in a Big 20. Not really high on my list as a game to play, and platform hitboxes suck. I enjoyed the run though, well done. Also, I don't think you can really go wrong by making your way down a mountain using your enemy as a snowboard
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Alyosha pointed out the mechanics for the way the stages progress the thread for the previous publication. I confirmed it in the assembly myself when I started this new warps movie
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mtvf1 wrote:
link_7777 wrote:
mtvf1 wrote:
link_7777 wrote:
I'll have to keep an eye out on the later stages in case one gets out of hand, but based on my testing it is pretty unlikely that a warps run would be faster than a warpless run in movie time. If you were to warp from stage 0 it drops you in stage 1 not stage 2. The warp animation is so long that it would only be faster in two cases.
Compare the initial of 4 stages, Takanawa's wip(the 4th stage is Tokyo) is 1382 frames faster than published(the 4th stage is Frankfurt).
I think you are confusing the stage number with the background number, but they are tracked independently (background in 0xA0, stage in 0xA1). Strangely warping increments the background counter by 2, and the stage counter by 1. So if you warp from stage 0 background 0 you end up in stage 1 with background 2. You're thinking that you would warp from New York to Paris skipping London, but but actually you end up playing what should be the London platforms with a Paris background. Since the ending criteria is about stages not backgrounds the warps are a bit less helpful than they appear.
I know these RAM address, and I didn't make this mistake.
Ah, so I looked through that movie and it looks like I need to learn more about how the spawns work. The manual talks about getting an extra balloon spawn in Paris, which is what Takanawa does. He also ends up with an early spawn, and my statements about the warp being slower are based on the first normal balloon spawn when the spawn counter hits 0x700. I'll probably need to dig through the code more and see what else is possible
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mtvf1 wrote:
link_7777 wrote:
I'll have to keep an eye out on the later stages in case one gets out of hand, but based on my testing it is pretty unlikely that a warps run would be faster than a warpless run in movie time. If you were to warp from stage 0 it drops you in stage 1 not stage 2. The warp animation is so long that it would only be faster in two cases.
Compare the initial of 4 stages, Takanawa's wip(the 4th stage is Tokyo) is 1382 frames faster than published(the 4th stage is Frankfurt).
I think you are confusing the stage number with the background number, but they are tracked independently (background in 0xA0, stage in 0xA1). Strangely warping increments the background counter by 2, and the stage counter by 1. So if you warp from stage 0 background 0 you end up in stage 1 with background 2. You're thinking that you would warp from New York to Paris skipping London, but but actually you end up playing what should be the London platforms with a Paris background. Since the ending criteria is about stages not backgrounds the warps are a bit less helpful than they appear.
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mtvf1 wrote:
link_7777 wrote:
The warp animation is so long that really the only thing that would be shorter in a warps run would be in game time. I personally like the idea of the faster real time warpless run, but I think there is definitely room for both if someone wanted to make a warps run.
But warps run is still faster than warpless in movie time. Though using the warp, it didn't skip any whole stage. Because of the long animation, in most stages, it still need be completed without warp. So I think warp is worth to obsolete warpless.
In fact, in this game warp is too much more difficult than warpless, if do the 15 stage. It should find the best way to collect items, and this game has the different items in different city.
I'll have to keep an eye out on the later stages in case one gets out of hand, but based on my testing it is pretty unlikely that a warps run would be faster than a warpless run in movie time. If you were to warp from stage 0 it drops you in stage 1 not stage 2. The warp animation is so long that it would only be faster in two cases. First if a stage ran long and you could grab earlier balloons without wasting much time. Second if you go for in-game time and are not counting the time for the warp animation.
I do agree that a warps run would be very different.
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The spawns are based on a spawn timer, and I didn't see any sort of difficulty increase or variance with the spawning.
As for the warping I think that remains the same. The warp animation is so long that really the only thing that would be shorter in a warps run would be in game time. I personally like the idea of the faster real time warpless run, but I think there is definitely room for both if someone wanted to make a warps run.
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I played around with the level counter again and it looks like Alyosha is right. It looks like the levels go 0 -> 15 and then the layouts would loop 8 -> 15 over and over until the counter rolled 255 -> 0 and put you back on 0. I think i was probably fooled before because the 7th stage looks sort of like it might line up with the 1st if you shifted the middle platform. And I had checked the rollover before which does bring you back to the first stage. This probably means we'll have to revisit this and do 16 stages instead.
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Great run! Really interesting to see the differences between this and the Pugsley version for the NES. Slightly different goals, but the 2x speed shoes just make for a run that cruises on any console
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reBarbaloot wrote:
Thanks everyone for the feedback! I'm not surprised people aren't too familiar with this game, but it's really fun as a casual playthrough. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new game to play.
link_7777 wrote:
If the last dialog box, or even more of the ending will play itself out I would suggest saving the 8 frames or whatever. It can be a bit confusing to figure out where to end the movie, but in this case I'd say the boss kill is important and then you could end input early when mashing through the story text at the end.
I considered leaving off the last input, but the 8 frames are insignificant enough that I'd rather keep the video the way it is, where it gets through the entire ending as fast as possible. (Each of the text boxes has to be dismissed manually to make progress, so only the very last input, leaving the blank dialogue screen after all the text is gone, can be left off. The blank dialogue screen will go away on its own after a few seconds, but I think it looks strange to have the screen briefly hung up there after going through everything else so quickly.)
Seems like a fair argument. It is pretty insignificant anyway
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It seems like there is a lot of territory to cover, but the snap movement makes the pace look pretty fast. I don't know much about the game, but it seems fun. Nice to see the result after catching some of the progress on stream.
If the last dialog box, or even more of the ending will play itself out I would suggest saving the 8 frames or whatever. It can be a bit confusing to figure out where to end the movie, but in this case I'd say the boss kill is important and then you could end input early when mashing through the story text at the end.
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The run itself seems good, the entertaining deaths, and I liked the pummeling at the end.
Seems like the ending may need some more research, but having done none I would guess one loop through the stages on the harder mode?
We researched and discussed City Connection, and the later levels do look different, but if you look at how the game works it doesn't really qualify as new content. It is really just the same set of platforms over again the game just applies some offset to the positions based on the stage counter. It resets to the initial layout when the stage counter rolls over of course.
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Well done for sure. I looked into this game a little bit and controlling the spawns seemed pretty hard. If I recall it seemed like changing the spawns was easy, but as a result there were way too many possibilities. There also seemed to be a few cool glitches, nicely done
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Looked good to me. We did Cliffhanger in a big 20 and the controls are much worse than they look. There is a huge delay when you try to jump and the platform hitboxes kind of suck. Nice to see a run, I'm a bit surprised at how close the RTA record is, but I guess it isn't the most complicated game.
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I did look at the jpn version earlier on and didn't see any obvious differences. checking again now it looks like the between stage transitions are 1 frame shorter, but otherwise the run syncs. This means we can switch to jpn and get 5 frames for free, so thanks for the suggestion. The fact that the rest of the run syncs likely means those are the only differences, I didn't do an exhaustive check or anything though.
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Dacicus wrote:
Nice and fast, but the ending seems out of place with the rest of the run. Is there a way to end it without getting blown up?
Unfortunately no. You could probably prolong it with some manipulation, but you maintain your speed even if you don't hold up. You actually need to hit down to slow down. Without stopping you'll definitely crash eventually
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Even though there is a little less going on than in warmCabin's run I think I like this category better just because it is shorter. I guess I'd like to see both published just to show off a little more of the game, but this category seems a bit more natural. Yes vote
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I made the TAS for the NES Barbie, and I've seen john carls run this one. Yes vote from me. I was a little surprised to see so much back and forth between coins, but I'm guessing this one works a little differently. Also damage boosting isn't really and option
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I thought this run was great! I'm actually a little surprised at how negative the comments on the auto-scrolling have been so far. The scrolling seems to go at a decent pace compared to some other auto-scrollers, and as the stages go on the activity seems to get more and more frantic. A lot of the run is spent bouncing off pillars and fire bars, but late in the run there was some dodging of enemy masses while staying on the ground that caught my attention. Killing the music was also a nice touch.
Well done, and great work with this one.