Breathtaking. Some solutions even seemed a little counterintuitive, such as in level 30 where I would expect significantly more time for the balls to be spent in the upper half of the screen. But very entertaining throughout.
Going into this, I knew it was (semi-)bruteforced, but it wasn't until I finished watching that I read the text entirely and realized what it was exactly that you did with the game to achieve it. Recreating the logic perfectly AND spending a year of CPU time running the simulation? Jesus almighty, that is some insane dedication. Certainly a TAS of the year contender in my opinion. Submissions like this are a real gift, and I'm continuously impressed by the quality of works that pop up here on April 1st, of all days.
But you know what? One of the best takeaways from this, for me personally, was that Baxter wasn't far behind the optimal solutions to a set of incredibly hard problems. What a lad!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Huh, I expected more from this game. Alright, I have two questions on the basics.
1. Is there a particular reason you keep adjusting your angle on the way rather than immediately?
2. Is there a way to manipulate the enemies to converge on your location sooner so you can, say, kill two at a time (even if it takes slightly longer to engage them)?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
We did this in the form of a world record progression video for warm up mixing cheated, tool assisted and live runs.
The video was a bit on the longer side, but it was interesting to see all four major style decisions—stumping vs. stretching at the apple, front vs. rear wheel at the flower—constantly changing between different the records without a conclusive statement as to which one was faster. Even the very last 13:88 clip used pretty much the same style as the 14:33 from 2000, and not the one from the 12:99 TAS.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think "manipulated" is just a misnomer in this case. It looked like the drops were punched-in based on the monsters' loot table. So if a monster could drop something, igloosPat would simply choose what exactly the monster would drop, and disable all else. Or at least that's the impression.
Note that it probably won't affect the legitimacy of this particular run because its legitimacy claims extend over the possibility of an item being able to drop with particular affixes from a particular enemy (which it adheres to as far as I can tell), but not that it would actually drop in a reasonable amount of time if you tried replicating it. There's probably no way to replicate all of these drops in an actual TAS in a way that would make it faster. Unique/set items and runes would be by far the easiest ones to procure.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, it's not something you'd be able to submit to TASVideos, because 1) there are no means of reliably reproducing the run on another person's hardware by means of a player input file; 2) you have tampered with the game's RNG by means other than providing it input as part of the run. These two disqualify it right away.
But it is something we at TASVideos are thematically interested in and want to see more of.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Ohhhh, this is some good shit. It wasn't that long ago (less than two years I believe) that I was thinking what would a theoretical TAS look like. I did not envision javelins, however! That was truly refreshing to see.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Note that the turrets in stages 4 and 6 are different; the ones in stage 4 spawn once and leave a ground star on destruction while the ones in stage 6 respawn continuously until scrolled to the bottom part of the screen. This may or may not be relevant. Both spawn within the scrollable area, however.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The setup to full chain stage 1-5 is now known. I managed to pull it alone using FBA-rr (with an unrealistic route for a live play); and the Japanese players found a way to get it in live runs.
Oh wow, now that is some good news! Do you have a video of that anywhere?
blackisto wrote:
The maximum bonus no longer gives any point after the 2-6 boss.
The reason why I'm thinking this is that in DOJ you get a very substantial bonus for carrying the max bonus through Hibachi, but as I'm not very active in the community anymore I don't know if anyone has ever confirmed if there's a similar one for DDP.
On a slightly unrelated note, have you been to Stunfest this year? I heard fufufu played DOJ WL there for the big screen.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
- It is confirmed that the new 862 millions World Record is some kind of bug. The old World Record was 755 millions and the new run is essentially as "good" as the old one, with an extra ~110 millions obtained from the bug.
That's disappointing, even if not unexpected. It also potentially means one could possibly trigger it in other places once the exact mechanics are known, so basically any score targets are off for a proper TAS until it's fully researched. That said, it should still be possible to reach some 790–800 million points not counting the extra score from the bug.
blackisto wrote:
- forget about playing underpowered
For triggering the score bug, maybe, but a TAS doesn't have to forget that; that is, local techniques do not in any way invalidate the rest. You could still score extra on certain stages this way. It might also be the only way to full-chain stage 1-5 (at least in unassisted conditions), which I don't think has been solved by the Western community yet. Given the complexity of DDP and stage 3 design in particular, there might be quite a few loose millions to be discovered by applying a TAS-exclusive approach in addition to the score bug.
blackisto wrote:
carying the maximum bonus all along (this was already the case, by the way)
Do you mean WTN has actually no-missed/no-bombed through Hibachi? I don't believe that. His previous score would've been over 760M if that were the case, just from the normal life/bomb bonuses.
blackisto wrote:
(b) the base point can be manipulated by killing more than one enemy at a time. We already know that when you do a chain, the hit count can be slighty increased by lasering two enemies at a time. So maybe the game does not handle well multiple simultaneous kills.
This seems very likely. The basic hypothesis that comes to mind is that a value from one (expensive) enemy or destructible object is assigned to a much cheaper enemy/object. So either killing or spawning a cheap object at the same frame as killing/spawning an expensive one should prove or disprove this hypothesis. Since most enemies actually spawn offscreen in an invulnerable state, this might indeed be exclusive to enemies that only spawn inside the scrollable area: the turrets in stage 4 and 6, Hibachi clones in stage 6, possibly some others. It could be a combination of two enemies that spawn in the scrollable area, e.g. the Hibachi clones spawn near the respawning turrets, so both could be involved in the glitch.
I would also suggest focusing on testing setups that can be sustainably reproduced in unassisted conditions, because I'm not 100% convinced WTN would bother with a very low-probability bug in a game as long and hard as DDP where the first instance of its application is about 20 minutes into the run.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Doesn't seem to work, same as in r81. I tried different threading and sub-process creation settings, but couldn't even get the game executable to load; movie counter remained at 0 frames throughout and the game process didn't get created (according to Windows Task Manager). Any specific settings I should try fiddling with?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Good shit. Some of those spaceboosts were super nice. Makes me think what could be possible with full precision; think morphball everywhere except when you need to jump/shoot/charge.
DruidVorse wrote:
I would like to TAS the full game but I'm waiting for someone that is going to work on the tools once the unnoficial 1.4 update gets released.
What can we expect from the tool-enabled version? Will it have all the basic TAS functionality (savestates, slowdown/frame advance, RAM watch), or will it do less/more? Ideally I'd want it to run in Hourglass, as I'm extremely interested in tinkering with the game myself, but that's up to the Hourglass devs...
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
That strat for the sandpit Gamma at the top right was hella slick. Also never realized you could hit Zetas from behind. Is that usable in unassisted runs?
Also, what are you using for saving/loading?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The question is simply which did you find more entertaining. If your entertainment opinion is somehow tied to what other people might think of your opinion, then you're not providing an opinion.
Way to misread my words right after chastising me for ascribing a motive to yours. I don't care what other people think of my opinion but I care about the consequences of giving any.
E.g. if you ask me whether I would prefer having my arm or a leg broken and then proceed breaking one of those depending on my answer, that wouldn't count as an informed choice (and you'd be a dick). It's an example of something I would regret giving any preference for at all because the person asking didn't provide the relevant context.
You will most likely get feedback of higher quality if you provide specific context for your question.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
There's a lot of different reasons why I could be asking my question. Such as if we want this run to replace an existing run on a top list (stars, newcomers). If you have an opinion on entertainment please provide it instead of attributing motives as to why I'm asking it, none of which I mentioned.
You might want to provide those motives instead of being needlessly cryptic, because answers might be different depending on consequences. The concept is called informed choice.
E.g. in case of what I presumed could be dual obsoletion (because of the context surrounding the reference to your post that I received from elsewhere) I wouldn't want it to happen regardless of which run I find more entertaining. For the star list, sure, this run deserves one. For the newcomer list, possibly but not too sure.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Those are different categories with different goals and different room strategies, etc. Are we in a hurry to get rid of the maximum amount of categories? For what reason?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
real question is , does the 7min xray scope run warp directly to the ending (aka it change memory until the ending flag triggers )
or does it ZIP to the ending (reaching a room that triggers the ending flag) ?
The current 7-minute run doesn't even use X-Ray scope. The 7-minute run goes OoB using pause/unpause, then moves towards a block that enables ACE access and messes with it, thus closer to your former guess I suppose.
This is the last X-Ray run, it was just under 13 minutes.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I found myself not all that entertained by the platforming of previous Super Metroid TASes. It's good but it's not that good. Meanwhile these "superjumps" allow for crazy fast movement speeds unseen previously.
I don't intend to force unreasonable expectations on you, but it's really a shame that you don't appreciate the smorgasbord of smaller improvements that are, at times (perhaps most of the time), far more creative than the big things that are easy for everyone to notice. One of my personal favorites is the inverse CWJ into a morphball float during the early LN break-in. Most people wouldn't even notice it without pausing, let alone think of it themselves if they were TASing it, and it doesn't make the run per se, but it's one of the things that give it a reason to exist in my book. Damage boost ledge grabs are also amazing, and are also something that takes a lot of experience to notice.
Memory wrote:
I would have figured it would have gone away because it was slow, not because of entertainment but ok.
Terimakasih made a new version of his penultimate run because people complained about the Murder Beam (he said as much in the submission text). That was the impetus, the realtime improvement was a side-effect (indeed, SM was very IGT-oriented at the time).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
You gain some and you lose some when changes like this happen to a game's TAS. A bunch of older players are definitely less pleased with this run, but at the same time you will also gain new fans. I wasn't as enthralled with previous Super Metroid TASes as some people, but I absolutely adored this one. It's a tradeoff.
Care to explain why this tradeoff is necessary and how it contributes to the nature of the category?
Superjumps fill the screen with garbage and allow going through platforms—which feels counterproductive in a game with platforming as rich and entertaining as in Super Metroid.
Using X-Ray to stop time is a realtime trick known since about forever—it actually made the boss fights far less technically impressive than they were previously.
What is a "Super Metroid any%" as a category to you?
Memory wrote:
Honestly most of these glitches aren't that much worse than Murder Beam from back when the game was IGT oriented.
Murder Beam hasn't been in the category on this site for over 13 years—and the reason it went away was precisely because the audience found it too unappealing.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
