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Very nice run, I'm glad someone finally went ahead and improved mine :) Definite yes vote, and the spike-climbing in Doppler 2 was really really impressive.
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gather wrote:
In this run, taking damages is actually harder than avoiding them as every risk must be calculated and you use avery bit of life the game give you. I Vote Yes. good job!
Agreed, the way that he got down to basically 1 HP in the underground waterway, and then later ended up beating hte game with nearly no life left, was very impressive.
Definite yes vote.
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mikwuyma wrote:
Wow, I really like what you have so far, the run looks a lot more fluid, precise, and less jerky than it used to be.
Thanks :)
However, there are some things I still noticed.
-I don't really care about this, but you should probably hide the shots you use to charge up your buster by charging it while going through a door, or make sure the shot you use to charge hits an enemy.
Hm, maybe. Some of them I can't really do anything about, like at Blizzard Buffalo where a shot is going to have to miss or hit him while he's flashing anyway, but I'll keep that in mind.
-In the very beginning, would it be faster to kill the first enemy and then climb up the wall using dash jumps?
I think I timed it so that I hit the ledge as soon as possible, so I could dash as soon as possible... but yeah, it might save 1-2 frames to do that.
-I really liked that hit you took with Zero, is there any way you can do it more?
I took a hit similar to it in the last run in Volt Catfish's stage, so I might end up doing that again. In general, I think it's just that if you get hit during the couple frames you're attached to a wall, you don't really go into a hitstun or anything. So I'll see if there's any other opportunities to use that. Hopefully I'll be able to exploit this while climbing "the wall" in Doppler Stage 2.
-After you freed X from Mac your positioning was a little off and the game automatically forced you to walk a bit to the right before the cutscene was triggered. Also, wouldn't two shots take an extra frame to kill the robot holding X? Maybe you should use a charged shot.
Ah, good points.
-In the beginning of Blizzard Buffalo's stage is there a way to kill the enemies and jump higher off the first slope, so that you land right on the second slope?
Yeah, probably. Again, another good find.
-In toxic Seahorse's stage the first time you go up with the vertical air dash, why doesn't the little flying robot notice you? Is it because you are too low? (this isn't a criticism, more of a speedrunning question)
Yeah, I think I was just too low. I didn't do any special manipulation to make him avoid me.
-Is it slightly faster to climb up walls using non-dash jumps? Also, those stutter jumps are used to gain height, right? (again, not a criticism a speedrunning question)
From what I can tell, climbing walls with dash and non-dash jumps are equally fast. I think I prefer non-dash jumps when just climbing because dash wall jumps look pretty jerky, but that's just personal preference. And yeah, the stutter jumps are for gaining height.
-It looked like you chose good places to air dash in Toxic Searhorse's stage, nice work.
Thanks!
-When you fall down from the ladder just before Toxic Searhorse would it be faster to air dash or dash jump off the left wall before hitting the ground?
I tried air dashing and ended up getting to the exit door later than just falling, then dashing. I probably screwed up on that somehow, though, since yeah, it would make sense for a partial airdash-then-fall to be faster.
-All I have to say against Toxic Seahorse is wow, I'm guessing he goes into hit stun after a while, which means you can't kill him in one barrage of frost shields. BTW, is this doable (at a slower rate obviously) at full speed with no rerecords?
I really don't know what's up with Toxic Seahorse, honestly. It might seem like I'm just spamming autofire on him, but IIRC I'm actually waiting 3 then 5 frames between pressing the fire button. I actually ended up having to make of the chart of the frames that he'd take damage. And even then there were patterns to when he would take damage, i.e. if you shot him at frames xx417 then xx419, he wouldn't be vulnerable until xx428, but if you shot him ant xx417 then xx420 he'd be vulnerable at xx425 and xx427.
But yeah, at full speed just spamming auto-fire into him will work wonders.
-I liked what you did against the drill boss, even if it is slower it looks a lot better than your last run IMO.
Thanks again.
-About manipulating Tunnel Rhino, it seems like he doesn't use the invincible dash when he shoots a lot of drills, try to make him shoot drills before you hit him with the shot that will trigger the invincible dash (hopefully you know he will charge with an invincible dash when his life gets low enough).
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to experiment with him more.
Stuff for the future:
-You did a decent job of manipulating Volt Catfish in your last run, but it seems like the best possible final pattern to get out of him before he goes invincible would be: jump, jump with bouncing, then the triple spark attack. You got jump then triple spark in your last run.
I'll keep that in mind, thanks.
-You should try out and see if you can take damage and climb up the wall with zero waiting in Doppler stage 2.
Of course! If I hadn't seen you taking damage to skip most of the spikes in your SDA run, I don't think I'd even be remaking this time attack ;)
-I never thought of this until now, but the explosion animation when you kill Byte takes really long, would it be shorter to hit him with buster shots? You would still get Godkarmachine (Bit, Byte fusion) if you did this.
Yeah, this is something someone mentioned on the first page of this thread, I think, and yes, it'll probably be faster.
You should also try out if that new method of killing Toxic Seahorse is faster than Beam Sabering him, if nothing else, it looks faster.
Yeah, haha, pretty strange, but it might be true. I'll have to test it out.
Don't be discouraged, I really like the improvements you made to this run. Slightly over a minute faster only this far is impressive and it looks like a sub-40 minute time is possible. You might not want to optimize this fully and make this a test version so you don't stress yourself out too much, then make a final version with everything optimized.
Thanks, though keep in mind that in the first run Bit was in Tunnel Rhino's stage, so it's more like ~30 seconds of improvement so far. Sub-40 is definitely possible though, especially considering that Doppler Stage 2 will be improved by at least 40 seconds, most likely.
As for optimization, well, I'd consider the run already published to be the test run for this :P I don't think I'll be redoing anything before the Tunnel Rhino battle. I really do appreciate your input, but scrapping what I have so far for minor improvements would be a pretty quick way to demotivate me and NEVER get the run done :P Just make sure whoever does version 3 looks at this thread before they make it!
EDIT: I tried out the Toxic Seahorse glitch at 100% speed, it works and I can take off roughly half his life doing it. Nice find Prower :D. I really want to see more from your new run because I want to see what else I can improve over my existing run.
Cool, I look forward to seeing it in more of your unassisted X3 runs :)
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Actually, Mike, your X3 run on SDA inspired me to remake my timeattack, even before I read any of this thread :P Really great run, by the way, and of course I was planning on including all of the tricks you discovered and used in that run.
What I have so far you can download here. It's from start until about 1/4 of the way through Volt Catfish's stage, though since you say that you can manipulate Tunnel Rhino to only go invincible once, I'll probably try and redo him before I go any further. Some notes:
- Overall, it's much much more precise and better-looking so far thanks to frame advance.
- I get hit by one of the spiked balls at the end of Zero's segment in the intro because you lose only a frame or two if you get hit while you're gripping against a wall. I don't think the hit sound even plays. This is preferably to jumping to the other wall, where you'll lose a bit of height.
- I do the little air dash "hooking" at the very end of a wall stuff a couple times in Toxic Seahorse's stage. The first time, not hooking just ends up with you landing on the platform below, so hooking is faster. The second time might be unnecessary, but it doesn't lose any time. The third and fourth times are in the big water area and they're used to bypass some stuff (if I didn't do the third hook, I'd be stuck behind the black boxes at the bottom; if I didn't do the fourth hook, I'd have to wait until I fell then jumped again to get across the pit with the spikes at the top).
- Toxic Seahorse is definitely the high point of this run so far. He is very strange about when he will and will not allow himself to be hit, and I did a LOT of testing with this... I think the result is well worth it, though :)
- Tunnel Rhino's miniboss might be slightly slower (probably not more than 10 frames at the most), but I thought the strategy of jumping into the body and spamming autofire was too sloppy, so I stood just outside him instead. Not quite as fast, but much better looking.
- Tunnel Rhino only takes 2 points of damage from a tiny acid ball, as opposed to 3 points from a big acid ball. This means in my previous run, I ended up having to hit him more times than necessary. Oops :P Since he'll end up with 2 health bars left anyway, it does make for a cool-looking finisher. Again, I'll play with him some more and if I can get him to only go invincible once I'll redo him. I don't think you can make him not go invincible at all, since it seems like after he gets to a certain amount of health he goes for an invincible dash.
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I'm pretty sure what Bisqwit was talking about wasn't a randomly generated sequence of buttons which may be the fastest route through the game. I think he was talking more about manually editing the .fmv (or .smv or .gmv or whatever) instead of having to go into the emulator and record as most people do it. This kind of thing would be extremely useful for editing movies, as right now for most people if you find a trick to speed things up near the beginning of the game, you'd have to redo the whole run. By editing the fmv you could just change the input that needed to changed. There's the whole randomness factor to deal with, though, which really complicates things.
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A 14% Super Metroid run would be very cool. Personally, I'd prefer it if it were an Ice beam 14% as opposed to a speed booster 14%. The speed booster run would be faster, obviously, but the ice beam 14% requires a lot of very difficult but very impressive glitches.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that you get started moving faster (i.e. at the beginning of a stage) by jumping and holding forward, instead of just holding forward. For example, I was able to break down the wall (where you had to destroy the shield and ring boxes) without breaking any of the boxes by standing right next to the rightmost ring box, jumipng and holding right, then pressing down right before the wall that needs to be broken.
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Voted no because it's only Green Hill Zone, and there's absolutely no reason why the full game shouldn't be done.
What you did do was pretty nice, though. I'm not sure why you got the shield and two ring boxes at the start of act 2, but other than that, I couldn't spot any noticable mistakes or anything.
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asteron wrote:
After seeing your run MMX3 seems like a much harder beast to time attack compared to MMX. The run was good and I think it uses the optimal path but there is still some room for improvement.
One thing that I think might be a problem is that I have the feeling the air dash might be over used. In sections where you are falling down the corridor, and the objective is to get down as fast as possible, air dashing certainly looks cool but it does stop your vertical movement. A standard daash jump leaves you with a lot of dexterity while in the air and I think it can be used more effectively.
Watching back, you're right. For the most part I think I did an OK job when deciding when and when not to air dash but yeah, there are some times I use it and it might not be the best choice (the last drop before the green spike ground-eating things in Neon Tiger's stage comes to mind). But for the most part air dashing did speed things up, especially in Volt Catfish and Blast Hornet's stage.
Most of the boss battles look pretty spot with some exceptions. The first Rhino battle since he goes into his invulnerable charge a couple of times (cant luck be manipulated to stop that). You also were able to do a quick combo on toxic seahorse somehow but werent able to exploit it again.
I thought Tunnel Rhino went into an invulnerable/not invulnerable/invulernable dashing pattern when his health got low, since it seems like that's what he's done to me, but I'm not entirely sure. The Toxic Seahorse glitch is really, really picky. I'm not sure if it can be manipulated or how. Sometimes he'll just simply refuse to get hit by the Frost Shield if you put it above his head. If someone could figure out how to make it so he'll get hit everytime you put the Frost Shield above his head, that'd save a lot of time in that battle.
One more thing... can luck be manipulated to avoid the battles with Bit and Byte? I seem to remember them just occupying random stages and you plan on fighting their combined form later anyway.
Like Megafrost said Bit and Byte aren't completely random, they will show up during the first 8 stages eventually.
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Cazlab wrote:
I saw ur timeattack prower, really great except one thing.. Why did u press start instead of using L or R when u met Vile? :/
You can't use L/R while the "broken" Spinning Blades are in the air.
Though--and I can't believe I didn't think of this while making the run--it'd be easier just to switch to the X-Buster with L/R at the beginning of the second Vile battle, fire 5 charged X-Buster shots, then switch to Spinning Blades with L/R to finish him off. Saves time, and eliminates the whole going to the start screen thing.
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Healblade wrote:
First post, let's hope it doesn't end up sounded stupid, heh...
Excellent video, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Thank you :)
However, I do have a few questions:
(1) When battling Volt Catfish the first time, you use the item from Tunnel Rhino just over halfway through the battle. I understand that this is to interrupt Volt Catfish's move that gives him a lengthy period of invincibility. However, I don't understand why you only began using it then as it seems to deplete his health as fast or faster than the X-Buster. Is the item from Tunnel Rhino actually slower prior to Volt Catfish's low health attack pattern?
I'm pretty sure this is the case. From what I can tell, Tunnel Rhino's weapon makes Volt Catfish invulnerable for a long time, much longer than the X-Buster does, and even longer than it takes for the X-Buster to recharge.
(2) In the battle against Vile, why do you access the menu to switch weapons?
The L/R buttons won't work while a destroyed piece of Spinning Blade is in the air, and I think it was faster to go to the menu rather than wait for the piece to disappear, then switch to the X-Buster and start charging.
(3) In the vertical shaft following Zero's near destruction, you pause before jumping to the final snail. Is this intentional or just a minor slowdown?
It's intentional, I don't think the the jump could have been made earlier.
Again, awesome video, very impressive, I would definitely recommend it.
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Blechy wrote:
Some mistakes here and there, but a great run which should definitely be published.
The most consistent mistake would be that on the bosses which require using X-buster, a dashing uncharged shot does as much damage as a level 2 shot, without having to sacrifice time after the boss' recovery.
I know that the dashing X-Buster thing exists in X and X2 but it's fixed/doesn't exist in X3, as far as I can tell. Just tried to do it against Blizzard Buffalo and it didn't work.
Thanks for the compliments though :)
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soolisen wrote:
I usually kill either Bit or Byte with a regular shot to make them combine at the end. Very easy and fast boss to kill, if you compare to the evul waste disposer.
Yeah, I just played through the first Doppler stage again, and man that waste disposer is hard. Definitely going to leave Bit alive.
Vile might be worth it as, you need to kill him anyway. And at Volt stage, the Vile portal is almost at the beginning of the stage. But I don't like the non-destroyed Sigma 2nd stage, instead of the destroyed one.
The Z-saber makes quick work of any boss in the game, two hits from it is enough to kill them. But don't you need the upgraded X buster for it?
You're right, I forgot that the destroyed 2nd Sigma stage is water-filled and has less enemies, making it a lot easier. So overall I guess taking out Vile would make things easier.
You don't have to have the upgrade X-Buster to get the Beam Sabre, I'm pretty sure. 1455-6863-6427-7185 is a password for no upgrades but with the Beam Sabre so I assume it's possible to get it, as long as Vile is dead.
And I play the PS version of the game, so some stuff is changed there. One big big difference is that you can get the upgraded Air dash from Toxic's with nothing more then the Air dash.
Damn, that would have been helpful to have on the SNES version :p
EDIT: You just need to jump when Buffalo turns around to get him charge in the wall again.
Yep, just tried this. Timing is a little more difficult but it's not like that matters in a timeattack :) Thanks!
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I'm surprised nobody's started a thread about this (awesome) game yet. Seems like there's a lot of speedrunning opportunities, and it should make a really fun time attack game.
Right now I'm going for pure speed, though I'm still in the planning stages of it. Any feedback or input would be appreciated.
My route so far:
Intro Stage - Nothing too special here. Kill Mac with the Z-Saber insta-kill move, and kill the boss with 1 charged X Buster shot, the rest with normal X Buster shots.
Blizzard Buffalo stage - The main reason I do this stage first is for the Air Dash upgrade. Yes, this is a pure speed run, but the Air Dash capusle is right along the route you have to go on anyway. Actually getting it takes very little extra time, probably 15 seconds at most. It saves a LOT of time in other areas (being able to skip the first part of Neon Tiger's stage alone makes it worth getting, in my opinion).
For the boss, I found a fun AI exploit--the first thing Blizzard Buffalo does is charge at you. Jump over him. When he turns around, jump and do a vertical Air Dash, and he'll turn back around and ram into the wall he's already at. This makes for a very quick fight using just charged X Buster shots.
Toxic Seahorse stage - For the mid-boss, just using X Buster shots should kill him quickly enough. He does the animation where he puts his hands out, and it looks like he's blocking your shots, but I'm pretty sure those shots hurt him anyway.
I use the Frost Shield for Toxic Seahorse, but there's a weird glitch. After you hit him with the Frost Shield, he'll go into the "I got hit" animation, and then jump. However, if you place a Frost Shield right above his head, he'll take damage and go into the "I got hit" animation when he's supposed to be in his invulnerability frames. This makes the battle very fast.
Tunnel Rhino stage - The Frost Shield kills the green wall-making drills in 1 hit, and is probably the easiest way to get rid of them.
Regular X Buster shots do best against the mid-boss, from what I can tell. He blinks, but he's not invulnerable during this period. It's probably fastest to let him ram into the left wall over and over, being careful not to actually touch the wall when he rams it because you lose control of X for a while.
Tunnel Rhino will just dash repeatedly if you use the Acid Blast on him. Simple enough battle, but luck would have to be manipulated to make sure he doesn't go invulnerable.
Volt Catfish stage - The airdash is very useful here. It makes going up the elevators quicker in the first page of the stage, and helps with the corridors with sharp turns in the second half.
From what I can tell, it's faster to use the X Buster on Volt Catfish before he goes to the middle and starts powering up. Using the Tornado Fang gives him an assload of invulnerability frames, and only does 2 damage (the same as a charged X Buster shot). Switching to the Tornado Fang when he goes to the center to charge up is good, though.
Crush Crawfish stage - Not really much to say about the stage. Though Volt Catfish's weapon really does tear through pretty much every regular enemy in the game, and it could be put to use here.
Triad Thunder makes quick work of Crush Crawfish. In fact, he's even vulnerable to it during his blinking invulnerability frames. I have gotten Triad Thunder to do double damage to Crush Crawfish a couple of times, however I'm not entirely sure what causes it, so I'll need to look into that further.
EDIT: Volt Catfish stage (pt 2) - It seems like killing Vile for an easy Doppler Stage 2 and the Beam Sabre is the way to go. The entrance to Vile's Lair is pretty close to the start of this stage, so it shouldn't waste too much time getting there
Neon Tiger stage - The vertical air dash really pays off in the first big open area, since you can avoid going right, then back left. Frost Shield again does really well against those green drill guys.
The miniboss dies VERY quickly to Frost Shield. He blinks, but isn't invulnerable, so just spamming them at him will kill him extremely fast.
Neon Tiger is pretty simple, just hit him with a Spinning Blade whenever he's vulnerable, and dodge his jumps.
Gravity Beetle stage - Really simple stage, and really simple boss. Tiger eye will kill him extremely quickly.
Blast Hornet stage - Acid Blast is the best way to defeat the miniboss, who is (surprisingly) actually invulnerable after he gets hit.
Gravity Well makes Blast Hornet himself really easy. The only hard part is positioning it--if you're right over the ball, it won't have to travel back to you, making things faster. So the only problem is making the ball stay out of Blast Hornet's path, really.
Byte - Tornado Fang makes him very, very easy. He'll take 4 hits from a Tornado Fang when he's in the corner, and you can launch another as he dashes to make him take a 5th hit. Then repeat the process.
Bit - Harder than Byte. Frost Shield seems to be the best way to beat him, but I'll have to experiment more.
That's what I've got so far. Again, comments would be appreciated.
Questions:
- Is it better to kill one of Byte/Bit with the X Buster? Kill as in deliver the finishing blow. If you don't beat both of them with a special weapon that they're weak to, they'll replace the acid shooter boss in the 2nd Doppler stage. So my question is, is it faster to kill the acid shooter boss, or is it faster to kill the combined Bit & Byte boss?
Edit: Apparently the combined Bit & Byte is much easier to beat than the waste disposal, so keeping one of Bit/Byte alive is worth it
- Is killing Vile worth it? Vile takes a long time to beat, especially on this route where a stage would need to be revisited to get to his lair. However, getting the Z-Saber would make all the bosses after much, much faster.
Edit: Seems like he might be