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Warp wrote:
I haven't tried your program and that's probably why I just don't get it. Why would people want a 380k executable in order to divide one number by 60? You don't need a specialized program to divide a number by 60. Just use the calculator. And don't tell me it's because "it's too much trouble to write or click on '/60'."
Determining time from frames is not as simple as "dividing by 60." That will give you a crazy decimal number in terms of fractions of seconds, which, at least in the US, is not how we keep time. We keep time in terms of hours, minutes, seconds, so a tool that easily and clearly informs us in those terms is useful. If you'd rather divide by 60 several times and convert from decimal to base-60, then I guess you like math more than me, and I'm a math major.
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I noticed this a while ago, but was too lazy to mention it. Why exactly is this game listed as "Legend of Zelda 2..." when its title (in the US) is "Zelda II..."?
If it's for grouping purposes, maybe they should all be under "Zelda," instead of "Legend." Or something. But in my opinion the names of the games on this site should be accurate.
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mikwuyma wrote:
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.
Ditto (I didn't feel like writing the same disclaimer).
I think this debate is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe a year or two ago, this controversy might have been valid, but now there's so many disclaimers all over this site, and all over most .avis that this debate is completely trivial. Making a short video universally explaining how these movies are made is redundant. Saying "tool-assisted" somewhere with a link to the FAQ or whatever is completely sufficient. Demanding anything else is a bit arrogant and excessive. Any average person who watches one of these movies with no prior knowledge of this controversy has the information to find out more readily available to him. Spoon-feeding 3-4 years of history of altercations between the two communities and how they're disparate is unnecessary.
That said, there will always be people who don't bother looking up how these are made. But no amount of words and/or pictures is going to change self-imposed ignorance. You can't fix one person's stupidity by demanding a change on someone else. As long NES/TASVideos makes the information on how these are made available somewhere and makes the link known, there's really nothing more they can do, aside from calling them at home and reading the Why and How page to them.
I don't know why so many speedrunners think TAS runs try to steal the spotlight.
I agree with this, too. Anyone who cares about spotlight is playing video games for the wrong reasons.
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
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I've never done it myself, but I've read about it. You have to choose 'Save' instead of 'Continue,' and you might have to choose a different save file. And also, whenever you up+a, your experience reverts back to zero, so that would totally nullify the leveling strategy in this run, so instead of getting to upgrade attack or magic, he'd get the opportunity to upgrade his life to 2 every time he used this trick.
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JXQ wrote:
They won't be missing out on much, because the differences are so minute that they had to be outlined in detail in your submission text.
I disagree. People who know the game can spot the differences immediately, like how the level upgrades are different, some enemies are in different places, experience points are occasionally different, etc. Since your levels revert back to your lowest level every time you up+a, this changes the route and strategy drastically, which is fairly obvious if you compare Arc's and Rising Tempest's runs. While it's difficult to say which one is more entertaining, I don't think it's necessary to obsolete Arc's. The runs themselves are different enough that watching one won't replace watching the other. And it's cool for the people who haven't played the FDS version (most of us, I imagine) to see what it looks like.
I'm guessing most people are indifferent about this since myself and Arc are the only ones who have said anything about it.
Most people are probably indifferent because Zelda II gets no love. :) But I did post my opinion in the Zelda II thread in the NES forum.
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I think it's improvable in minor ways, but easily well-executed enough to warrant publication. Very well done. I've been looking forward to this since I found this site. Oh, and yes.
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The experience you get for placing the crystal in the stone-face-thing doesn't roll over when you up+a. When you up+a, your experience goes to zero and stays there.
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This looks much better than your old run (not that the old one didn't look good). If my eyes aren't deceiving me, it appears you're hitting the enemies 3-4 times with that crazy jump-whirl slash. I think the red axe-throwing things in Death Mountain take 11 hits, and you killed it in 3 (maybe, I wasn't keeping a close count). Very cool. A few comments/curiosities:
-I'm glad you found a way to incorporate the glitch that sends the little beetle thing (lowder?) through the wall.
-How come the first orange axe throwing-dog-thing (daria?) in Death Mountain didn't spawn?
Looks very good so far.
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Rising Tempest wrote:
I'd like to watch Arc's run too to see if I get any more ideas, but it's being difficult to watch for me,,, I cannot find the rom used, the avi from archive.org is broken, and the bittorrent avi has no seeders. If anyone can help me here, I'd appreciate it.
Here you go:
removed
I'll leave it there for a few days, but after that it'll be gone, since my school's webmaster seems to think that anything with a .avi extension is illegal. I suspect he's an idiot.
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I don't think Adventure of Link should obsolete Link no Bouken (or whatever). They're very different, and not just because of the loading times. Enemies give you different experience points, you can't up+A as much due to your level upgrades resetting to the lowest ones, you have to hit things with your sword to pick them up, can't use fairy to get palace treasures, graphics are different, some palaces have more enemies, music is different. Some of these differences change the route drastically, so it's not like you're watching two runs and one of them is clearly inferior. There are a lot of dissimilar things between the games, and it's not like Arc's version is poorly played. I think it's cool to watch Link no Bouken, because I would never have had a chance to see how it's different from the English version otherwise.
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Helmethead gives you 200. If you have 928 before you fight him, you'll have 128 after you fight him, since you'll get the 4th attack upgrade at 1000. Therefore, after fighting Helmethead, you'll surpass the 50 and 100 for the level 2 life and magic upgrades, and your "next" will be 2000, for the 5th level attack. Or am I forgetting something obvious?
Also, you should read Arc's comments: http://tasvideos.org/303S.html
which mysteriously is now called Legend of Zelda II, instead of Zelda II and took me some time to locate. Interesting. Anyway, if you swing your sword at the wall while riding an elevator (going down), it will place you closer to where you want to go. Hence, saving frames, or something. Looks good, so far.
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Your WIP looks good. I have a few suggestions:
-Is it faster to get the first magic container when you have downward thrust (i.e. after Death Mountain)? I don't know if any time is being wasted when you have to swing your sword like that, and you don't need the extra magic container until you get Fairy.
-I'm pretty sure that isn't the optimal path after leaving Bagu's Cabin. Go right one tile after leaving his house and then down until the you get to the path.
-Lag in Death Mountain is hideous. Is it really faster to not kill the Moblins in the first cave?
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It played fine for me, even though it didn't really play by the rules to be accepted here. It was more of an aesthetic demonstration. He applied the cheats or whatever to give the enemies 1000% health, so they all took about 20 head shots to go down. Amusingly, a little computer explosion will do what 10 bullets to the head could not.
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GuanoBowl wrote:
It seems like my run should be a lot faster in comparison but I dont know. Someone tell me where improvements can be accomplished at.
Looks good. Energy Zone was particularly good (very little waiting). The only thing I noticed was it looked like you missed a platform in Waterfall when getting Rapid Fire. But I'm not very good at critiquing these runs at a frame-precision level.
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architorture wrote:
Anyway, as for the waterfall glitch, I did attempt it
Cool. Thanks. I figured having two-players would screw it up. However, if I can remember your run without re-watching it, at some point in the level Bill and Lance were synched up, so theoretically, you could do the jump glitch/trick with both of them jumping at the same time, and hence one wouldn't be ahead of the other. For example, you could have done it after all the moving platforms, in the same place that Genisto did it in his one-player run.
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AngerFist wrote:
2. It is slower than Genistos run but here is the problem. Which run should we compare your run with? You are using two players and Genisto used one. I would vote yes if Bisqwit would accept another category for this game, namely, a two-player run.
Why are you trying to compare this with anything? The other two runs are obviously a different category, and this wouldn't obsolete either of them, unless I'm misunderstanding something.
I liked it, although it would be nice to know if the Waterfall jumping glitch/trick worked or not. The author didn't do it, but I'm curious if he tried it out at all. There's at least four places you can do it, which means four less jumps, which might cut the time down enough to be faster than the one player run. Anyway, this was very entertaining, and the wormy Alien's Lair was pretty dope. :)
Voting yes. 2-player Contra is sorely lacking from this site.
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Well, where the tank stops is dependent on how far you scroll the screen to the right. So, if Genisto stopped the tank chronologically earlier, I don't know. But you might try experimenting with how far you scroll the screen, and maybe that will make the tank stop at different times.
When I did my run for SDA, I always ran to the same spot (I used one of the lines on the ground as a marker) and turned around. That way, I was always sure that the tank would stop in the exact same place every time.
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4matsy wrote:
I just tried exactly this after reading Boco's post. I got within 1 sub-pixel of going to the next room, then let 'em knock me in there...no go, they simply drained the usual max of 10 points. I even tried doing various jumping/moving/attackingactions at the same time, but nothing... :/
Well, that's not exactly what happened. If I did indeed get hit by the moa as I transitioned into the next room, then I got hit AS I transitioned, not before, since the moa is part of the room I was entering, not the room I was exiting (if that makes any sense). So, I suppose what would have to happen is that you'd have to somehow get hit by one of the orange-ish things from the room you're entering, not the room you're exiting. And the more I think about it, I don't think that will work either. Those things in the first (and third) palace(s) don't immediately spawn off screen; there's some delay. As far as I can tell (and remember), the moas immediately spawn as soon as you enter the screen, so that might have had something to do with it. If this glitch is truly dependent on entering a room that has a moa, then that would mean the earliest you could possibly do it would be in the 2nd palace, I think.
Or, it might just be some conditional anomaly that will never happen again. Which would be sad.
Also, if people actually want to continue to test this, I jumped right before exiting the room (and entering the transition), so that might have something to do with it. There was no visible evidence that I got hit by anything, and I don't remember if my health was lower or not. This is all very curious...
Edit: So I did some testing myself on the console. I went to the same place in the 5th palace where it occurred the first time. I couldn't duplicate it. However, I'm becoming more and more dubious that this glitch actually had a logical reason for occurring and am beginning to believe it was just divine providence. I observed the path of the orange moa in that room, and if you enter that room (with the falling breakable blocks) from the right, the moa doesn't even spawn until you get to the third column of breakable blocks from the right. So, it doesn't seem possible that I got hit by a moa on my way in, unless something random occurred when transitioning from room to room. If you enter that same room from the left, the orange moa will spawn immediately from the right side of the screen. In fact, the moa will spawn from whichever side of the screen that Link is facing. So, to even get hit by the moa during the transition, Link would have to be facing right. But the game automatically makes Link face the opposite direction of the side he came in on (if you enter from the right, you face left), so there doesn't seem to be a way to make the moa spawn from the right, and hence, Link can't be hit by it.
I went to the next room, where there are three orange ironknuckles, and also an orange moa flying around. When you enter that screen from the right, there is a high ledge that is right at the level of the moa when it exits the screen. So I tried the same thing as 4matsy, and let it hit me as I transitioned, but nothing happened. It stole my experience, but nothing cool happened. Also, moas steal 10 experience.
In conclusion, I have no idea.
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/*- wrote:
1-can anyone verify it?
I started that thread at SDA, so I suppose I could verify that it did indeed happen. :)
I wrote a response refuting Boco's theory, but as I was writing, what s/he wrote sounded more and more logical. There is an orange Moa (the flying eyeball that drops fire) flying around in the room I entered, and they DO steal your experience, so that honestly sounds like what happened. I guess I got hit during the transition by that thing, it stole ALL my experience (somehow, which was at least a couple hundred), and then caused an under/over flow. Does that sound plausible?
If this is true, you could possibly accomplish this in the first palace, since the running orange-ish things that are in nearly every room steal your experience. Or even before that, since in the forest, the orange moblins (sp) steal your experience as well. And having your attack, life and magic all maxed out in the first minutes of the game would speed this run up considerably.
Also, since I'm here, somebody needs to finish the tool-assisted run of the US version of this game. Please? :)
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Kyrsimys wrote:
When jumping, Pit is always two blocks high, even when ducking. Pit's height doesn't change while jumping even if you duck.
That's... interesting. I didn't know that.
Kyrsimys wrote:
tmont wrote:
5600- you can make that jump to the right, so you don't need to screen wrap (probably faster, I did it in my run).
I did this intentionally. It allowed me to get in a better position to kill those red flying thingies. If I had done it the way you suggest, the monsters would have been able to fly out of reach and I would've had to drag them along for a while without any good spots to kill them. This would've delayed the appearance of the next group of monsters, which I needed to kill to get enough skill.
Ah. I thought Sleepz did it, so I figured you knew about it.
Kyrsimys wrote:
I found that the spiny thingies attached to walls rarely hit. I think the little circle in the middle of the plant is the part that's most likely to damage you.
It seems to be really fickle. Kind of like how the lava sometimes does damage, and sometimes does not. Also, the green stuff in 2-3 and the little red bushes in stage/world 3 are also fickle. Probably any part of the terrain that can harm you is the same way.
Kyrsimys wrote:
tmont wrote:
15700- Could you have killed some of the reapettes to eliminate lag?
Maybe, but thinking about it now it probably would've been weighed out by the point tallying in the end. The point tallying takes a really long time. I'm not sure if the reapettes give points though..
They give you 100 points. The lag in this game is rare, but absolutely hideous when it happens.
Kyrsimys wrote:
There, I hope my answers are satisfactory. If there's anything else, ask away.
No more questions, your honor. Thanks for indulging!
By the way, your name is really hard to spell (for Americans, anyway); too many interchangeable i's and y's. I had to look it up everytime I wrote it. :)
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Here's my slightly detailed comments:
1-1
You could probably use the wall-jump glitch around frame 3000, so you don't have to screen wrap.
Do you really need to take damage around frame 3300?
1-2
5600- you can make that jump to the right, so you don't need to screen wrap (probably faster, I did it in my run).
6200- nice use of poor physics. :)
1-3
15000- how does the collision detection work with those spiny-plant things? I've always been curious.
15700- Could you have killed some of the reapettes to eliminate lag?
1-4
Were the rescued soldiers actually helping in the fight against Twinbellows? I couldn't tell.
Is it really necessary to get hit by his projectile? (his fireball-thing is more damaging than his body)
2-1
How come you don't get the earlier weapon upgrade? Lack of 'skill'? Or is it slower? Not that it really matters, since you don't waste time killing stuff, but I'm just curious.
2-2
The rokmen massacre was nice. :)
2-3
Very nice. Nothing to say. I think it's possible to get hit a little less, but no matter.
2-4
Very nice. Again, it looks you get a hit a lot, and some of them might be avoidable.
3-1
Well done. I think the moving platform is more manipulatable, so you don't have to wait on the cloud with the reaper.
3-2
On the first moving platform, it looks like you waited so you didn't have to get hit. If you hadn't waited, could you have made the jump immediately to the next higher platform?
3-3
Nothing.
3-4
This level suffered a little from you being careful due to you trying to avoid taking damage.
Pandora was beautiful. Good movement manipulation.
4-1
4-for-1 shots rule.
Good work! This was a fun watch. I know very well how incredibly tedious this game is to play for speed. It seems like you got hit a lot in the early levels for insignificant gain, which hurt you in the later levels, but you knew that. That's really the only negative thing I see about this. Everything else was well played.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Now, firing the spread shotgun constantly can be helpful, can't it? Because it narrows the stream by putting out shots in fewer directions when there are too many shots on the screen?
But there's still the same amount of bullets on the screen. Maybe. At least according to this theory.