Voted yes. Very nice run you have there (I especially like your elemental golem and phoenix magnion battles), but why didn't I get any credit for helping?
Just adding another yes vote. I also think the two players as one is overused, but besides that the run is great.
Now I really need to improve my speedrun :-/
The run had a lot of nice parachuting and optimized movement, but I have to vote no. The speed run on SDA kills Jaffar faster than you. http://speeddemosarchive.com/DisneysAladdinSNES.html
If you're too lazy to watch the run, you wait until jaffar summons the 4 winged pots. Then you bounce off of one and jump on Jaffar's head (make sure Jaffar is as high as possible). You can now repeatedly jump on Jaffar's head as long as if you're using the parachute.
Also, quoted from the SDA runner's comments:
"As of the date that this run was completed, the battle against Jaffar is faster than that of the TAS at Bisqwit's site. The Jaffar trick that I use to stay above him can be difficult to pull off, but it can be done without getting hit every turn."
Hey Xaphan, sorry for being silent for so long, but I haven't had much time to watch your WIP.
Now that I've watched it, all I can say is...very impressive! I especially liked how you killed Harpuia and Fefnir before they could use their A/S rank attacks. Pulling off those little "taking damage to avoid deadly surfaces" tricks in Magnion's and Fefnir's stage was nice to see. Didn't know you could do that.
To anyone complaining about the damage taken in the guardian battles:
Sorry to say, but it's all necessary.
First off, Fefnir and Harpuia will use A/S rank attacks if you let them attack more than 3-4 times. These attacks waste A LOT of time (around 10 seconds).
Harpuia: If Xaphan jumped over Harpuia's head after the second charged slash, then he would be wasting the time he used hitting Harpuia. You might not realize this, but Xaphan did a very good job manipulating Harpuia into using the waves every time Harpuia was hit (Harpuia can also use an invincible dash attack).
Fefnir: He actually did a very good job manipulating Fefnir. All of the other attacks Fefnir can use either involve air time (the jumping shot, the ground pound), or force you to jump over him (the dash, the triple shot). Manipulating Fefnir into using his spread shot allows Xaphan to triple slash him with ease.
Leviathan: Leviathan actually uses a fixed pattern that can only be maniupulated by two things.
1. When you hit her with a charged fire attack
2. Your positioning after she attacks/after she's hit with a charged fire attack.
In other words, he really can't manipulate a better Leviathan battle. The one he has already is quite fast, so I'm not complaining (honestly I'm impressed she can be killed that quickly)
Wow, very nice run Gigafrost. I see none of the stuff I told you helped at all :P
Anyways, something I found interesting in my S-rank speed run comments.
-There is one trick I learned after the run that would save a few seconds on some of the bosses...
I loved all the hyperspastic jumping, sliding and dashing. The good planning didn't hurt either.
Yes vote for making a bad Castlevania game look much better than it really is.
About SDA timing: What tub said, that's the exact standard we use. If a game needs to be manually timed then we start when the player gains control of the character, and end when the player loses control of the character.
Whether I think this run is real or not. I'm confident this run is real.
A. The arm pumping is nowhere near frame perfect or turbo controller speed. I don't know where people are getting this notion from.
B. The small mistakes make a lot of sense once you think about it. The guy is so precise throughout the whole run, that he didn't make very good risk/reward judgments. He tried to be as precise as possible on every single manuever, and that's why you sometimes see him screwing up wall jumps (even in places where he didn't need to wall jump) and barely missing ledges .
With that being said, the run kicked ass.
Frezy_Man: Somewhere around 16:30-16:40 is definitely possible in Contra III. My run isn't that close to perfection. There are minor mistakes throughout the run and the second boss can be killed much faster.
I guess I'll throw in a few times.
X4 with Zero 100%: 46:00 (any% is around 45:30)
Mega Man Zero Hard mode, S-rank: 32:00 (a lot has been discovered since my run)
Contra: Shattered Soldier: 36:30
Metal Slug: somewhere around 15 minutes, my run has a lot of mistakes.
Metal Slug 3: sub-32 (in-game timer, you need ridiculously good luck)
Metal Slug 4: 23:00 (again, in-game timer)
Metal Slug 5: 25:00
With that being said, most theoretical times are horribly inaccurate, either due to new discoveries or the fact no one has speedrun the game yet.
Voted yes because the bizarre teleporting was amusing.
I agree with Kyrsimys, this run doesn't deserve a star. The run is entertaining, but the game is very repetitive. The bulk of the run is appearing in random spots and jump slashing enemies to death. I started to fast forward through some parts around the 6th stage because there was so much jump slashing.
Personally I think the SOR2 TAS is a lot more entertaining because the game has better move variety (that and mania is impossible to beat on one life normally).
I agree with Angerfist about one thing though, bring back S3&K's star.
Voted yes, though the only improvements I can see are the flame man and blizzard man fights. Still, it is a very well-optimized run on a moderately entertaining game so it deserves a yes vote.
Nice run, you show a couple of new tricks and strategies while destroying the game as quickly as possible. I'm now thinking of improving my run on SDA.
Yes vote
I was just wondering why this hasn't been published yet. It has well-optimized movement with some entertaining dodging in hectic situations. The run was even accepted by Truncated.
Oh wait, I know why this hasn't been published yet. It's a Genesis game =(
If you're wondering, I voted yes on this run at least a month ago.
Guanobowl:
I tested whether crouching increases your firing rate using a rocket launcher. It definitely does, meaning you could kill the mummy spawner faster by crouching while firing your iron lizard.
About using the shotgun on the second stage boss, I think you could hit the boss twice while jumping. Once as you start the jump, then again as you're about to hit the ground.
Two more things I found in the third stage:
You skipped the fire bombs the first prisoner offered to you. I'm almost positive they would save time against the plane. Yes, more than the time it takes to pick them up.
I think you could have chucked one or two less grenades at the helicopter and finished it off with an enemy chaser, which would save a grenade or two for the plane.
Shadow Byrn: Try it yourself, but I'm sure only flame shot damage increases when you get fat (though maybe in X it's different).
Shameless self-plug:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/MetalSlug.htmlhttp://speeddemosarchive.com/MetalSlug4.htmlhttp://speeddemosarchive.com/MetalSlug5.html
I will admit that the Metal Slug run is pretty bad, it has a lot of execution and planning errors, but I think the other runs are good.
So far you've done a good job. I'm not a huge fan of collecting all prisoners (especially since you missed one), but it doesn't waste much time.
About getting fat: Contrary to popular belief, getting fat only increases flame shot damage (at least in 3-5). Getting fat only increases the size of the hitbox, meaning the flame shot will do more damage simply because there is more flame to hit the enemies with. I do remember there is a flame shot in stage 4 so it probably will make the boss fight faster, you might not even need the tank.
There were a couple of instances where you were firing at an enemy but it wasn't doing any damage (like the start of the 3rd stage boss battle)
Stage 1: Looked really nice and smooth, except you should have chucked some grenades at the first helicopter when you jumped instead of shooting it.
If you got up closer to the bomb roller and threw more grenades at it, would it be destroyed slightly faster? You did have 9 grenades left at the mission complete screen.
Stage 2: In the beginning, wouldn't it be faster to drop down to the left and then shoot the barrel? Your firing seemed sporadic when jumping.
Does crouching make special weapons like iron lizards fire more quickly? I know pistol speed isn't affected by crouching (though it is in 3-5), but I have a feeling other weapons might be. If crouching does make special weapons fire more quickly, then you could have destroyed the second mummy spawner faster by crouching.
Why did you jump so far to the left when you shotgunned those mummy dogs? You were far away from the door.
I liked how you just leaped through the whole climbing section.
Is it possible to hit the second boss with the shotgun or flame shot? If it is , then it might be faster to crash your slug walker as soon as you run out of cannon shots and start shooting at the boss (remember, you don't have to collect the heavy machine gun on the way).
Stage 3:
I liked how you handled the boats; faster than I would have ever imagined.
Did you test using heavy machine gun on the plane miniboss? You spent a lot of time shooting the plane with a pistol.
You did a great job of manipulating the planes right before the boss.
Personally I think it's a bit of a cop out to miss a prisoner here, but you're right, it would be boring to wait 25 seconds.
So far you've done some pretty good work and I'd like to see more.
Well I'm no leader of the unassisted speedrunning community, but I have a couple of runs on SDA and I figured I should throw my opinion in, even if it isn't well-written.
Like Kennyman666 said, please don't view Nate's opinion as representation of the speedrunning community as a whole. He never really consulted with anyone when making his TAS solution post.
I do agree with adding a little more text to the description of every TAS video, like Boco's example. I know there are people who won't read anyways, but there are probably a couple of people who will read the disclaimer, yet wouldn't bother checking out the link provided with each video. Yes, it would add a little more space to the video, but is 1-3 seconds really going to make much of a difference in the filesize?
Omega: I noticed you said something about Radix and his view towards TASes. Though Radix dislikes TAS, he spends all of his time working on SDA. He doesn't focus on trying to "fix" or destroy TASes, he is simply trying to run SDA. The last anti-TAS remark he made before that MTV news article was around 6 months ago. Just want you to know that Nate doesn't speak for Radix and vice versa.
The people who are making these requests are to realize what they are asking us to do and think about whether it would be fair to us. This is not fair. It will not be fair until the unassisted community ceases to act as though we are stealing their prominence.
I agree 100% with this, many speedrunners don't treat the TAS community with respect and think they are trying to steal the spotlight. There are also speedrunners who have respect for TASes, but they don't post too often about how much they respect TASes (like me, I hardly post). This is one of the reasons why Nate's proposals stick out so much (besides the fact they are ridiculous), none of the speedrunners who like TAS really say much . I don't know why so many speedrunners think TAS runs try to steal the spotlight.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we should start being more accepting of TASes and less condescending. You guys have done a lot of work into separating TAS from speedruns, and the unassisted speedrun disclaimer isn't a bad idea if we want to make the distinction clearer.
Two things:
Just because you don't like charged shots doesn't mean other people don't like charged shots either.
You mention using dash slashes against enemies with higher hp. This is a very bad idea. You should either wiggle slash (alternate left and right very quickly while slashing), or do a jumping dash slash, land, then cancel a moving slash into a dash.
I'm not going to vote since I can't watch this movie, but requiring sram to watch a movie is generally frowned upon unless if there is a good reason.
I was surprised by how effective the kick can be. Lots of fast-paced action equals yes vote. It seems like you calculated your usage of EX cannon well, but there were two places it seemed like it should have been used more.
-When you fought the giant bee mini-boss in stage 2-1.
-When you fought the train mini-boss in 5-3.
Would getting a point in sensor help with the slowdown in the foggy room in stage 3? I guess even if it did help, the loss in attack power might not be worth it.
How does the in-game timer work in this game? I'm curious because Nitsuja's much faster run has an in-game time of 15:33, but Mazzeneko's obsoleted run has an in-game time of 13:10. Can anyone explain why?