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There doesn't seem to be any advantage to making him throw it at you. It can't be directly destroyed while he's holding it without using items, and destroying it indirectly doesn't damage him. With using that V item it was easy to get 0'11"16, but maybe it's better to save that until a later fight.
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Lardarse wrote:
You probably already know this, but the type of bonus stage that you get is solely influenced by the number of rings that you have whne you touch it. Depending on your strategy, you might have a reason for wanting one over the other.
I don't think he's playing any bonus stages at all. Only special stages, to get emeralds. There's only 1 type of special stage that I know of, the collect-blue-orbs kind.
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They could both go in the same movie with a reset in the middle. But Tornado is like an Easy mode and it means playing through the game twice so I'm guessing that would be more boring than a Falcon-only run to the credits.
EDIT: Here are some times I've gotten, not using Tornado or any bombs or taking damage:
Garan2: 0'04"55
Siamang: 0'08"30
Wong: 0'06"63
Griffin: 0'09"80
Viscount: 0'17"60
I could be missing some weak points. Shouldn't Viscount go down faster than that?
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Is it possible to alter the layout based on either the window size or an option in the user's profile? I like the way it looks, but I wouldn't if my screen were any smaller.
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AKA wrote:
How do you solve desyncs? is it possible to do minor hex edit to prevent that.
It might be possible to push the desync further back into the movie by adding or removing frames in the last screen transition that happened before the desync. But chances are it's an emulator savestate or emulation bug, and the only way to guard against such desyncs is to watch your progress every few seconds from multiple past savestates that you don't use for recording.
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I'll try making it an option in the .cfg file to have it always allow it.
Question: Should it change the movie to have the same recording date as the movie that the state was originally made in?
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That would be incredibly easy but some people definitely wouldn't want that, that makes it likely for someone to accidentally overwrite their movie with a different movie they're comparing it to, and continue recording for a while before realizing it.
The only additional thing that could be done safely is to allow it if the state you are loading matches the input that's been recorded so far (which incidentally means that if you start recording and haven't recorded anything yet, it will always allow it).
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Would an example help? I hope so, here is an example:
Let's say your character is walking right towards a door, and you want to be sure that you press up on the first possible frame that will open the door. For the sake of argument, holding up while walking right would not open the door, so it requires frame precision to open it as soon as possible.
With frame search:
1. Pause and frame advance right for 1 frame as you're walking toward the door. (optional)
2. Hold up, and keep pressing the frame search button until the first time you see the door open.
3. If you accidentally press frame search too many times, use the frame search rewind button to undo the extra presses. (optional)
4. Finally, press the frame search finish button, and save the state. You now have a state that's guaranteed to open the door on the first possible frame, saved at the earliest possible time after opening the door.
Notice that there is no need to load a state, frame advance some frames, and switch buttons for each frame you test this way. That all gets reduced to a single press of the frame search key per frame being tested, which does that stuff automatically and shows the result.
This works great for things like menus, jumping on the first possible frame, hitting the attack button on the frame that gets the best luck, etc. It's trickier when the action is more complicated than holding a button (you can't use it to spin dash in a Sonic game, for instance).
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I don't know what could be done to make the levels more interesting. Aiming for fastest time, there's not much choice of anything except dashing constantly in as straight a line as possible and killing the minimum enemies necessary to prevent lag, and rebounding off of the other player at some places. A "100% kills" goal might not work very well (some enemies just keep appearing or take many hits to kill), but it could be worth trying.
That WIP would have to be restarted anyway because I didn't/couldn't luck manipulate a green special attack from the frog.
He must have been using frame advance for most if not all of his second version, unless he was somehow more efficient at using 6% speed to approximate frame advance than he was at using frame advance.
I wrote:
That run is at a different level than the one this was improving, and would be much more of a chore to improve.
On second thought, that S3&K run can probably be improved by several minutes, especially if Tails comes along. That game has more glitches than SprintGod found...
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upthorn wrote:
Edit:
After the high jump it's only saved 7 frames. But hey.
Here's 14 frames saved there: S3KWipV3_demo2.gmv
But I'm done looking for improvements for now.
Random question about special stages: If holding up saves a small amount of time, doesn't that mean walking backwards wastes time because you're not holding up then? What about holding down when you're walking backwards, does that help? Also, I am guessing that holding up only helps for 1 frame of each turn you make; if it constantly changed anything it would save more than 30 or so frames, and turning is the only action you do that few times throughout the stage.
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Hydrocity 1: After breaking through the first wall, you can glide left and wallclimb until you can glide over to the 2-propeller block. Also, Knuckles glides faster than he moves along those conveyor belt things even when they're moving in the right direction. Saved about 220 frames here.
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I don't know how much of this you've already changed your mind about (judging by the edits), but:
upthorn wrote:
5000+? Were you testing with Sonic? I haven't hit speeds that high even with Hyper Knuckles.
The ramp speeds you up a lot. SprintGod hit 5459 there with Sonic, and Sonic isn't inherently faster than Knuckles. Knuckles could be at a disadvantage here since his jumps aren't as good, but I've still seen him reach ~5040 there.
upthorn wrote:
The jump on frame 5278 got me to the log 2 frames faster as compared to not jumping. The log seems to have a speed cap -- no matter how fast I was going before I hit the log, I don't make better than 4023 running up it.
Getting there a little sooner is no good if you're going slower when you get there. The log doesn't seem to have any speed cap. 4300 isn't too hard to reach getting there as long as you don't jump up the loop there and you do roll(?) and jump from the top of the loop. I didn't test extensively so more than that might be possible. Look at SprintGod's movie there; Knuckles ought to handle those loops very similarly.
upthorn wrote:
I tested every frame where it was possible to jump after the jump I did, and they each caused me to complete the loop I was on slower by at least 1 frame.
In this case it's better to compare which one gets through all 3 loops and hits the upward slope faster (it's hard to find a good frame to compare speeds on in loops). The speed cap for rolling is 4096, so once you reach that it's best to jump out of it on a steep downard slope to start going even faster, and only running and sometimes jumping after that point.
Truncated wrote:
I'll check the new WIP in short while, but I doubt that I can come up with more improvements than nitsuja.
I stopped looking once he reached Hydrocity zone.
Found another one in Angel Island 1: After you get the 2nd emerald, you can land on the ledge with the star post directly from the spring (you were 1 frame away from doing it), and from there go through the spikes and spindash away past them before they even start to retract.
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Sorry to bring up improvements pretty early on again, didn't notice them before but they're adding up to quite a bit and I'm sure most things, at least the special stages, can be hexed back in.
The jump on frame 5278 only slows you down, and you can get slightly better jumps from the top of loops by rolling at the top of the loop as you start going down and then jumping a few frames later, at the optimal frame for each of course. The speed should show at least 4300 running up that log, and 5000+ on that ramp jump over the water before the spring, for about 10 frames faster to reach the level transition.
When you fight the boss at the end of act 1, taking damage is definitely not fastest. Beating it about 45 (maybe 50) frames faster is possible by repeatedly spindashing at it.
You can jump around frame 13564 to get running and jump again from the platform to come to a stop under the spikes ~5 frames sooner.
The triple loop around 13935 can be done much faster (~13 frames) by doing more jumping and less rolling. Rolling has a speed cap.
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Maybe every non-obsoleted run that has had a star in the past should get a moon icon. It seems odd that some went from a star to nothing, while others that didn't get a star in the first place keep a moon.
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There's also a GBA version (and probably some others). I was going to suggest it because the NES clearly has a lot of trouble handling this game, but he has made it a lot faster than I thought it would be with all the lag.
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Well, it worked for me the first time I tried to play it and that trick worked for upthorn, so... make sure you're using the right version and try following Ouzo's submission comments more closely, is all I can think to suggest.
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Keep in mind that if you know how to improve it or are sure it can be improved, especially from the early stages of making it, you will probably need to redo it if you want it to be accepted/published here.
Also, I think you should post your progress so far (using microstorage) in case other people will have comments on what you've done.
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