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On the NewMovies page, I noticed this run appear as a "random pick". But that movie has been obsoleted (twice)... aren't only currently-published runs supposed to be selected from there?
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Gained 5 time units. However, I encountered terrible luck in 4-10 as a result.
How does this work? I don't know how the randomness in this game goes, but did you try things like sacrificing a few frames in 4-9 to get better luck in 4-10, or is it just not that kind of randomness?
Also, since you jumped across that pit in 4-9 going left, why not jump across it going right beforehand? That would cut out all that waiting at the top, I think.
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I don't know if this will help find a strategy, but here are some damage numbers:
breaker: 4-5 damage per firing
twin fire: 1-2 damage per firing
overdrive: 1-3 damage per collision
thunder: 2-7 damage per firing
no magic: 1-5 damage per pass?
Boss's HP: 64, at address 0446
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badrad wrote:
Wrong. L + R + SELECT + START = Reset.
That's what I thought, but I tried it to make sure and it didn't work (because I was being stupid and also pressing Y). It still takes some time to do all that, though... yet another thing to test if it's worth considering.
badrad wrote:
I tried in both ZSNES and Snes9X and couldn't get it to work. I really wanted to see it. I tried it on the (U) rom and everything.
You're probably not using the right version of Snes9x. Try getting the one here.
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badrad wrote:
That's the question, if killing just the bosses will give enough levels/magic levels to be enough. If not and a leveling session would be needed, then perhaps whacking em as you go would work.
Have you watched Zer0's (apparently abandoned) run? There's a short leveling session already in that, but I'm not sure how necessary it was.
badrad wrote:
It cant take too much time to save and reset the game.
Well, there doesn't seem to be a reset sequence... EDIT: ok nevermind.
badrad wrote:
Avoid magic attacks using pygmy hammer/Moogle belt
Whenever an enemy character casts an attack spell on you or an ally use the pygmy hammer / moogle belt on the character being attacked , do this twice before the spell animation ends and if done correctly the character will completly avoid taking any damage. This trick is especially useful when you are fighting the Mana beast.
Wouldn't it be faster to use some attack magic to stop the enemy from casting the spell in the first place?
badrad wrote:
And I know its been mentioned, but obviously the more places you can use 2-3 players the more entertaining the run would be.
Yeah... for traveling it would probably be fastest (most of the time) to keep switching characters to never stop running, except when their AI would do something dumb. In battles probably 3-player is fastest except for the consecutive magic trick that I think requires at least 1 CPU player. Good thing it's so fast to switch characters and activate/deactivate players.
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Finally got to watch this. I liked it. Makes me wonder how different a strictly-fastest-time run would be, though.
One question: why skip so many crush items, do they just waste time or something?
Zurreco wrote:
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Shinryuu wrote:
Why the real life doesn't have savestates, slowdown , re-recording ? :'< *Sobs*
If it did, and if some of the movies on this site (Gradius?) are any indication, somebody would figure out a way to dodge all the raindrops in a downpour (for fun) and record it.
(Uh, you know, without an umbrella or anything like that.)
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I'd like to know if there's any excuse that could justify whacking the monsters while running by. I'm guessing there isn't (unless it could avoid a leveling-up session somewhere?) but I get the feeling it'd make it more fun to watch than just running by everything.
Also, maybe the biggest unknown is if critical hits can be manipulated / how to manipulate them. I know that multiple hits can stack additively (into a single big damage number) if timed well enough, I'm not sure yet if physical attacks can combine with magic damage but charged hits and (I think) criticals can combine with other normal hits.
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Phil wrote:
Seriously, General information about the game is really not necessary. Unless you desrcibe how exactly it does amount of damage etc..
The submission instructions say to describe the game. They also say to (optionally) provide help for describing the movie. He was doing both of those things, nothing wrong with that. Probably he wanted to make sure that people who don't already know the game very well can get a better idea of what it's about before watching the movie.
Now, the instructions do say to briefly describe the game, but what "brief" means is entirely a matter of opinion... he could've made it twice as long if he really wanted to. And so is what "imaginative" means a matter of opinion, for that matter.
BTW, out of all of the top 10 movies with longest submission text, JXQ only has one (half of) a movie on there. (Huh, looks like I have 2 there somehow...)
Phil wrote:
And that's all. In no way I force him to write short text. I don't mind about long text but...
OK, but it sounds a lot like you are complaining about it, which isn't necessary to do.
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mikwuyma wrote:
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?
Wow, I hadn't noticed that. My guess is that I put the in-game time below 10 minutes, but the display isn't capable of showing only 1 digit for the minutes so it shows a bogus time (since they assumed sub-10 minutes is impossible, which it is, but not in their crazy unit of time they call a minute). Or maybe something Mazzeneko did more than me (slamming enemies?) stops the in-game timer. Either way I wouldn't rely on the in-game timer for comparing performances - timing it in real-time would be a lot more accurate.
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Well, he sort of un-answered it by saying
I'm sure the remixed version has a buttload of stuff you could use to make it a quick speedrun.
But it'll take more justification than that. Such as: they changed so much stuff that it'd be like running a completely different game. (I'm not entirely sure that's true, but it'd be a good reason if it is, assuming the game didn't also become terribly speedrunning-unfriendly.)
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I always thought that this game had a lot of randomness in it (what special items appear, what bubbles appear, etc.) but didn't realize until recently that almost nothing in this game is randomized. I wonder if this run's author realized that? I can't quite tell if he's purposely controlling which powerups appear or just fooling around between levels. (My guess is the latter since wouldn't it help to get both players the running shoes sooner?)
Also, BTW, I've never seen so many unread posts suddenly appear like this. Looks like quite a run-watching spree for cideprojekt...
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A Runnelid wrote:
The speed increment from coins only applies upto 10 coins, no?
Yes, each coin increases your max speed by 5, up to a total of 50 extra speed units.
I wonder, if a 2-player run was done, could one player go for speed and the other for playing around and just barely getting 1st place? The only bad part about that would be the time between when the two players finish the last lap (I'm not sure how big a gap there would be considering the better items the other player is getting).
EDIT: Found another interesting thing: When you hit an obstacle or another player, not only does it not decrease your speed, but it actually stops your speed from decreasing even if it would normally go down. So you can ram into other players on purpose after a boost to maintain boosting speed for longer. Possibly 2 players could jump into each repeatedly to stay at boost speed indefinitely, although that would be really tricky to say the least.
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/*- wrote:
if this IS in the windows version (meaning i wont need this patch?) how do i get it to show the input? i checked all through the options.
It is in the windows version already. First, make sure you have the right version. Choose Help->About... from FCEU and it should say "FCE Ultra 0.98.15". If it doesn't say that, download the new version from the emulators download page.
Now, you should be able to press comma (,) to turn on input display in that version. But it's a configurable hotkey, so there's a chance that its hotkey isn't set right. Go to Config->Map Hotkeys... and scroll down to something with type="Misc." and Command="Toggle Input Display", and set that if it's not already set. (Or you could just hit Restore Defaults if you don't mind resetting the hotkeys.)
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Here's something for anyone that wants to attempt to TAS or just analyze the game:
Player 1's speed is stored in the 2 bytes at memory address 7E10EA.
Player 2's speed is stored in the 2 bytes at memory address 7E11EA.
So, you can set Snes9x to watch these values and use them as a very accurate speedometer. It goes to 0 when stopped, and the initial maximum speed of Bowser or DKJ is about 1135.
So far, I've been a little surprised to find that:
- Each coin you collect increases your maximum speed
- Turning does not reduce your speed, even if you skid (of course taking short paths is still important)
- Colliding with another character or an obstacle such as a pipe does not reduce your speed at all if you are in the middle of an L/R button jump at the time
- When you do an L/R jump and turn, the behaviour is drastically different depending on whether you tap L/R for 1 frame or hold it for the duration of the jump. You'll keep going along a normal path if you tap it, but you'll swerve in mid-air in the opposite direction of the turning if you hold it. If your speed is above the max speed (from a speed boost) then for some reason this jump-swerving will also prevent your speed from decreasing as fast as it normally would.
- It's possible to get the speed boost at the starting line without waiting until the intended frame to press the accelerator. (But either way doesn't change the boost's speed, it just changes when the sound effects happen.)
- L/R jumping on its own doesn't affect your speed, so you can bounce repeatedly on a straightaway with no speed reduction. When going over sand or rough ground, being in the air prevents your speed from decreasing, but once you touch that ground then jumping more won't help.
Saturn wrote:
I'm also thinking of doing a TAS for this game in the next time maybe as I know it pretty well too.
However there is one question: Should we make a exception for this game and use a SRAM save-file ONLY to have the 150cc mode enabled because without one you can only play on 100cc and this is slower and surely not that entertaining and hard.
I would start from SRAM, with the gold medals necessary to unlock 150cc mode (which I agree would be better to play than 100cc mode). I think if the resulting movie is entertaining enough then an exception would be made for it, and if you're going to make this movie (and I hope someone does) then of course you'd want to make it entertaining anyway.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Yeah, Foda claimed that tapping A to swim when Mario's hands are at the back of his last stroke is the key to fastest swimming, but I always thought the hyperstroke was better.
He's right. Specifically, tapping A every 20th frame is the fastest swimming stroke you can do, as far as I can tell. That's about what FODA did most of the time, but not always (I can see how someone could do it more consistently in real-time). Also, some of the turning underwater looks really slow - isn't it faster to turn while swimming than it is to stop and turn like that?
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badrad wrote:
several videos of games I like have been updated with new faster versions. What is our plan here, to simply upload the new version and mark the old one as obsolete, or actually delete the old one?
I would delete the old version when a newer one "goes live".
badrad wrote:
no one has added "watch at google video" style links. What access would I need to add these, and who would decide whether I got that access
Anyone with editing priveleges can add mirror links, which would add an entry that looks like:
. . . . .Download from mirror site (video.google.com)
But it would probably take some change by Bisqwit to allow for wording it differently (such as "watch low-quality streaming version at Google Video"), and you'd probably want to get his approval first anyway. (He might not like this idea - I don't know, he hasn't said anything about it in this thread yet.)
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What about doing a 2-player run in GP mode? I think you're more likely to get interesting items in 2-player even if both players in 1st/2nd place, and the game doesn't run slower since it renders as split-screen anyway in 1-player. (It would probably have to be Bowser + DK Junior.)
Sure, it'd be harder, but probably more likely to result in an entertaining movie, and less likely to be criticized as being too similar to non-assisted time trial times.
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franpa wrote:
not sure if this was allready posted...
Probably everyone following this topic is already aware of that, or at least FODA definitely is. (The 120-star run there pales in comparison to the 70-star one, anyway.)
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Um... sorry, I guess? I think you'd be able to improve it more, especially with another frame of reference. Didn't mean to discourage this run from happening...
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I'll re-post my reply to Phil's question here:
Here is how to play the movie without desync: Start up Snes9x. Open the ROM and pause it immediately. Make sure the emulator speed is set to 100% and don't use fast-forward. The sound should be set to 44Khz. You should have WIP timing off, VEHR off, and fake mute off. Play the movie, and pause it on exactly frame 100 (the exact number probably doesn't matter but that is what I tested with and got it to work to the end of the movie reliably.). Now play the movie again from the start without closing Snes9x. Remember not to increase the speed above 100% or use fast-forward or that will make it desync a couple levels later.
sargon wrote:
all settings off and I don't know if it makes a difference but I had mute sound
No, muting the sound doesn't change anything and isn't necessary. But I'm guessing you didn't start playing the movie right away, didn't use fast-forward, and weren't encoding it to AVI.
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King Of Chaos wrote:
Nitsuja, is there anyway you can fix the "There is no disc in the drive. Please insert a disc into drive" error whenever you try loading a game? It's highly annoying, expecially when I'm having to hit Cancel 10+ times...
I think you can fix it if you run "snes9x.exe -restore" from your Snes9x directory. Besides that, there's no way I can fix it in Snes9x unless you can give me instructions on how to make the error happen (or unless somebody else already has a fix, of course). I've never seen it happen before.
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It was entertaining, and shows that this game is pretty good for TASing, but the optimization is what I'm least sure about. I wouldn't be surprised if extra precision throughout it could shave off over a minute of time from this run.
EDIT: I'll be more specific. This game has "edge boosting" when you dash or slash off an edge, which isn't taken advantage of as much as it could be. There are several snow barriers that you triple-slash through that you could have simply jumped on top of and kept going instead. When you have to slash through a barrier, you could have gone into rage mode beforehand without wasting time to finish it in 2 slashes instead of 3 while still moving. In the first boss fight, it would've been faster to kick all the guys coming out of the left door directly into the pit, and either kill the other guys without rage mode or also knock them into the pit. When you have to jump across a pit, it's faster to dash-slash across it instead of dash-jumping if the pit's small enough. When you get the diving-slash powerup later, you should've abused it a lot more everywhere since it's faster than any other form of movement and can be combined with that left+right wobble move for an even better speed boost. Some of the wallclimbing looked clumsier than other times you climbed up walls.
