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josh l. wrote:
Ohhh.. Well, I can't argue with that. =|
nitsuja wrote:
josh l. wrote:
Videos of infinitely more boring games have already been published on this site
This is probably true, but that doesn't mean we want more of them.
THAT'S A LIE AND YOU KNOW IT. >=3
Maybe it would be fine if more of the things that look like mistakes and time-wasters (such as jumping twice to get over walls and going back a long distance to retrieve a knocked-away sword) can be avoided somehow...
I tried everything I could to get over those damn walls. If anyone else manages to find a way to do it, I'll pay them a million dollars.
It's not really a big deal if this run isn't liked, but frankly I am a little shocked and appalled at how few of you seem to remember or know about Kid Niki. =(
I remember Kid Niki quite well--as an arcade game at a local supermarket and at the amusement park. Getting to Death Breath was fun and it wasn't too hard but I didn't fare too well against him. I may have gotten to stage 2 occasionally--it's been too long and as far as I know, Kid Niki was only a minor and very brief hit in the arcades. Unlike other platformers like Strider and Rolling Thunder, I don't remember any Kid Niki machines in arcades for well over a decade. I played the NES port once or twice years ago and wasn't very impressed. Too bad MAME does not support rerecording yet.
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mikwuyma wrote:
I was just wondering why this hasn't been published yet. It has well-optimized movement with some entertaining dodging in hectic situations. The run was even accepted by Truncated.
Oh wait, I know why this hasn't been published yet. It's a Genesis game =(
If you're wondering, I voted yes on this run at least a month ago.
1) This whole site is volunteer work. It's kind of neat that any publishing happens at all.
2) The game does have some unresolvable issues that make it harder to automatically accept the movie--the main issue is the game consists brief periods of action packed around rather dull parts. About a third of the movie is either boring bonus stages or non-interactive stuff like pre-stage intro screens.
3) The how-to-encode documents could use some work--this may discourage new people from becoming publishers.
4) I tried to encode this game into a movie a long time ago. However, my PC (a several years old laptop) just does not seem to be powerful enough to encode the game without a generating an AVI file with severe lag.
5) Maybe the fact that it's summertime has something to do with it. It's not unusal for internet sites to have less participation by members during the summer. Few movies of any kind have been published recently.
6) There is no rule six!
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Warp wrote:
Foda raised an IMO good point in IRC.
For a not-very-obvious reason his Rolling Thunder video has got an average perfection rating of 5.4. It would be interesting to know why it was voted so low in that category. (I would say that voting 5 in perfection means "it can be improved"; however, can it?)
What I fear is that, regardless of the guidelines given in the voting page, some cross-contamination of categories has happened. In other words, since people didn't find the video very entertaining, they also voted low on the perfection. This is not very objective.
I do not trust the technical ratings very much.
Call me jaded if you will but I managed to find over 20 seconds of wasted time in my first published Golden Axe movie even though it was described as having "no obvious [room for] improvements". Over 5% of that movie was wasted time and yet nobody said that a specific segement could have been done more efficiently. That isn't the only case where a "near-perfect" movie has been found to have significant room for improvement, either.
Personally, I'd focus on the Entertainment votes. If the movie is technically bad, it shouldn't have been published. If the movie is technically good but not perfect, I think the ideal response is to create a faster movie.
(I also think that, in an ideal world, cheese would not have high fat and high cholesterol and I could eat pizza frequently without feeling guilty about it--but that's an entirely different story. In other words, don't take the above comments too seriously--I recognize that there isn't a large group of paid TASers who can make perfect versions of all published runs. If nothing else, the technical votes serve as a rough guide for anyone who wants to beat a published movie.)
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RetroHolo wrote:
Definetly an improvement on your last run! there are still some points that could be improved and i'd love to see a pacifist run of this. The only thing I think could be improved is the bonus stages...sometime you miss one of the two ninjas that can be hit with a single shuriken. But that's me being a perfectionist...and i've never had the patience with this game to have a stab at it! The grand finale of the boss is clever...and you only used your special once...to great effect!
-J.
Bonus rounds:
They're slow, not very interesting and a bit weird to TAS. The kill-two-with-one-shot trick is much harder to pull off than it seems. If the two ninja in question do not overlap just so, you cannot get the two-in-one-shot to work--one ninja will absorb the shot completely and thus protect the other. It might be possible to fix such shots by moving to the right or to the left some but, in the movie, if I do not hit two at once when it appears such a trick might be possible, it is not possible to do that trick from Shinobi's current position.
Other improvements:
It's been awhile since I've seen this movie, but, offhand, I'd do the Statue of Liberty level differently. Granted, I'm aiming for a so-bad-it's good sort of theme, as killing all of the ninjas normally is boring but that level could still use a bit of polish. If nothing else, I'd cut out the strobing. I would definitely keep the main theme of that level--all ninja must fall off the elevator!--intact, though.
Pacifist run:
Well, it's not exactly possible. Boss stages require the player to slay the boss. Also, some stages appear to require at least use ninja magic once if for no other reason than to keep a hostage from disappearing due to glitches that can occur when there are a large number of enemies onscreen. (If there are lots of sprites on the screen, it is possible for a hostage to just disappear. If this happens, Shinobi cannot get credit for rescuing all of the hostages without resetting the level by dying.)
Also, I do not think that the themed rooms of Level 5 can be completed in pacifist mode--between the shots fired by the gunmen and the deadly-to-the-touch green monsters, there does not appear to be a Shinobi-sized gap through the stream of deadly-to-the-touch obstacles.
However, it is possible to clear all non-boss stages from 1-1 to 4-2 without using the normal attack button--it is possible to earn a Peaceful Bonus in all of these stages. I haven't made a TAS of this because of several reasons. The main reasons are:
* lack of enthusiasm over the normal run
* the pacifist run would have large parts that merely duplicate the original run (all bosses, all of stage 5, all bonus rounds)
* bonus stages are boring
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Xkeeper wrote:
Maza wrote:
Warp, you are quite a writer. You must be getting straight A's from your mother tongue test :)
(btw, how do you write "A" in plural? :D)
As
According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, the plural of A is either As or A's. ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/A%27s ) "A's" is one of those wierd cases where an apostrophe does not indicate the posessive form nor a contraction.
The answer to this question can vary from style guide to style guide. The Associated Press does require one to use an apostrophe whenever one makes a plural out of a single letter. ( http://www.bu.edu/com/writingprgm/ap_styleguide1.pdf )
However, the European Union says that using an apostrophe in such a situation is optional. ( http://ec.europa.eu/comm/translation/writing/style_guides/english/style_guide_en.pdf )
Incidently, the Oakland Atheletics, an baseball team from the United States, uses the word "A's" as part of their team logo as well as an abbreviation of the team's name.
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Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
moozooh wrote:
Nice SMB2 movie, sir! 8/9 rating and a yes vote from me.
o.o? Am I missing some joke here... or are you being deprived of sleep and think every new movie is SMB2?
And JXQ thinks that every new submission improves the previous one by at least a minute...
Deliberately saying false things about a submission that indirectly refer to another submission seems to be a trend here. These references are just inside jokes, that's all. It could be worse, mind you--I don't think I've seen any All Your Base jokes here recently.
/e likes how the new movie manages to get the motorcycle to disappear off the top of the screen and land back on the track after reappearing on the bottom of the screen.
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To whoever changed the screen shot: many thanks. I wouldn't have used a picture of stage 7--I thought that would be too much of a spoiler--but I must admit that is one strange looking frame. Nice choice!
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Sir VG wrote:
"It's not luck manipulation. It's stupidity manipulation!"
I like that term. I can just imagine the new tag now: "Abuses stupidity".
To be fair to the programmers, some of the enemies end up in pits for semi-legitimate reasons. The first two enemies in Round 2 are trying to use the pit to instakill the player. However, there are some cases, such as the first two foes of Round 7, where the deaths are a clearly cases of the AI being completely unable to detect the pit and react accordingly.
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Minor details:
* The screenshot is obsolete--I never hold 9 potions at once during this new run. Personally, I'd go with a screenshot of Tyris=Flare in midair as the second enemy of Round 2 throws himself off the cliff.
* The description has an error in it--the enemies go off of cliffs because of incomplete AI, not because of luck manipulation. Enemies advance towards the nearest target (either the player or a riderless animal although they will move up or down under certain circumstances to avoid potential player attacks). I cannot find anything random about where they go. If an enemy with a dash attack is within a certain distance from the player and the player is a within certain distance from a pit, the enemy will always charge. If the player is within a certain range and moving forwards, the enemy will move down slightly and, if there is a pit there, the enemy will always march into the pit.
Thieves are another story--they do move randomly and must be luck-manipulated for good results.
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AngerFist wrote:
Stop with this shit! Is it really hard typing in my opinion instead of IMO? Anyone typing that is one lazy bastard :)
Lol? Laughing out loud? what the hell man = wtf? Look even I can't stop with this shit. STOP!
(hi11, dud3. N0 n33d 4 t3h m455iv3 5w43r4g3. C41m d0wn b3f0r3 ur h34d 3xp10d35.
/just had to do that
//blames MegaTokyo
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Zurreco wrote:
Chances are, the bottom 10 movies could be a 'this is what you should avoid' to all future submitters.
I must say that I really like how I can qualify how my opinion compares to others on these runs, but it also confuses me how some people can like game Y over game X, and vice versa. Internet, why can't you just agree with me?
I'm still trying to figure out how adventure games like Uninvited got published. I know that fast menu manipulation is necessary skill for making a TAS but, even after watching the Uninvited run, I'm not sure why a game that is 100% menus and no apparent opportunities for luck/bug/glitch manipulation should be the subject of a TAS.
On the other hand, the people who gave the Monopoly video a low score just don't appreciate uber luck manipulation.
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moozooh wrote:
Then, puzzle games like Monopoly. They are a challenge to TAS but completely uninteresting to watch. "Wait, did he… oh, wait… and that's all? Oh…"
Different strokes for different folks--the Monopoly runs are among my favorites. They're fast and extremely brutal demonstrations of luck manipulation. You don't have to like them, of course, but I certainly do.
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Golden Axe Movie ratings:
My movie in 7:08--Still waiting to be published.
My movie in 7:31--Average rating of 5.8
Neofix's obsoletle movie in 8:30--Average rating of 8.9.
Ouch. That kinda hurt.
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Another feature that you could add--a built in frame<->minute:second:frame conversion/calculator. When I'm analyzing Gens runs, I find myself doing a lot of mm:ss:ff subtractions by hand.
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Bablo wrote:
WHO CARES ABOUT HOCKEY NOW THAT WE WON EUROVISIONS!
What's all this "we" business? I estimate the odds of you being a member of this band to be rather low...
(looks up Lordi in Wikipedia and finds a link to http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2006/04/24/world/24finn.html )
New York Times wrote:
" 'Finland, zero points' has become a source of deep embarrassment in the nation's psyche," Ilkka Mattila, the country's leading music critic, said. "So Lordi's success must be understood as a vote by people who feel we have nothing to lose."
Finns are so uncomfortable with themselves, says Alexander Stubb, a Finnish member of the European Parliament, that when they meet someone for the first time, they stare at their own feet.
Oh, you poor things.
I think my country, the United States, can help out here--we could swap your awful musicians with our awful President and Vice-President. I'm certain that Hollywood can do something with your singers, especially if they are of limited talent. You'll have keep our embarassments away from guns, booze, pretzels and anything resembling political office, but, if you can keep them safely preoccupied for the next decade or two, I promise that you'll have the graditude of many people worldwide.
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Atma wrote:
Just out of curiosity, would it have saved a hit on death adder if you had used level 6 magic at the end (or instead of doing a down thrust a normal one then magic?)? I figure it'd at least be worth asking, as I think I saw you miss a pot somewhere along the lines there.
I did a bit more research. The final boss's hp is exactly 48 greater than the damage done by the level 5 spell. A level 6 spell does four additional points of damage. Downthrusts do 8 points of damage each and a back attack does 6 points of damage.
Therefore, you can kill the final boss with 6 downthrusts and a level 5+ spell or 5 downthrusts, one back attack and level 6 magic. However, since a back attack->magic combo is slower than downthrust->magic combo, I don't see a reason to use the second combination. (The downthrust takes some time to set up but it recovers quickly. The setup time isn't an issue as one must wait for the boss to rise off the ground before he can be hit again.)
The only other melee attack in the game that does 4 points of damage is an animal attack and animals aren't allowed in stage 8. Jump attacks (3 hp + forced knockdown), dash attacks (2 hp + forced knockdown) and basic attacks (1 hp each, 2 hp if the attack knocks the foe down) are all too slow for this situation.
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Qlex wrote:
Even better than before, but I liked the entertaining "tornado" frame-perfect thing after having stolen the thieves that is not in this one.
Lots of congrats about the rest of the movie, everything seems even more PERFECT!
EDIT : Oh... and yes vote
Ach--now that move gets support. I'm afraid I got rid of it with almost all of the rest of the strobe effects. (Too many complaints about left-right-left movements and all.)
Just for future reference, the "tornado" move is (using the keypad as a joypad, 8 is up, 9 is up-right, 2 is down, etc.) 943943 (to get some righwards momentum going with a bit of spin) then do 943761 repeatedly. Your character will then do an imitation of the Tasmanian Devil from the Loony Tunes cartoons.
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FODA wrote:
i dont know why that movie hasn't been published yet. it should have been instantly, automatically published.
oh wait. i know... it's genesis.. :(
Golden Axe movies get published quite quickly around here. I'm not sure if boobs and a chainmail bikini have anything to do with this.
(On a less sarcastic and more realistic note, I must admit that Shadow Dancer does have a noticably slower pace, due in large part to the tedious bonus stages.)
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Callmewoof wrote:
I love how hordes of enemies go cliff diving, it's so funny, I couldn't stop laughing. LOVE THIS!
All this violence followed by all this laughter? I worry about you people sometimes. :P It does seem that the enemies learned how to fight from ACME, no?
Anyways (100% blatant plug alert!), if you want to see more bad guys fall off of tall objects, I submitted another movie that's currently stuck in unjudged limbo. I cause an entire level's worth of ninjas to fall off the Statue of Liberty in that one.
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Atma wrote:
Just out of curiosity, would it have saved a hit on death adder if you had used level 6 magic at the end (or instead of doing a down thrust a normal one then magic?)? I figure it'd at least be worth asking, as I think I saw you miss a pot somewhere along the lines there.
The difference between Level 6 and Level 5 magic is exactly 4 hitpoints. I think the final boss has about 42-44 hitpoints (edit--er, I mean, he has 42 or 44 more hitpoints than the damage done by the Level 5 spell, whatever that number is). It takes takes 6 downthrusts to kill the final boss if you use either Level 5 or Level 6 magic. It might be slightly faster to use Level 6 magic and a 5 downthrusts and a non-downthrust melee attack but I doubt that the frame savings would be enough to offset the frames needed to pick up the 9th pot.
Oh, and I miss at least two pots in Stage 7. One goes offscreen to the left, the other one is barely onscreen on the left side and can only be reached if an enemy is nearby--you can't walk to that potion but, oddly enough, you can collect that potion by kicking it. There's no way to do a kick unless you're very close to an enemy, though.
I do lose 2 frames collecting the 8th pot--I could get the screen to scroll just a bit sooner if I skipped that one. I gain more than 2 frames back by being able to use a Level 5 spell at the very end so those 2 frames are well spent, though.
1ntru wrote:
Btw..was it bad luck at the end of Stage 7 (near the Green statues) with the Skels or there is simply no way to avoid that?
I could defeat the two skeletons at the end of Stage 7 more quickly but it wouldn't affect anything in the long run. The living statues won't come to life until they have been on screen for a specific amount of time. Killing the skeletons sooner or letting the skeletons live (unlive?) won't affect that at all.
Since there's no reward for completing those two skeleton kills quickly, I take my time and use two slightly slower combos for a bit of variety. I get to demonstrate the otherwise unused throw attack and I still have time to spare for setting up a trap for the statues.
Edit: math error corrected
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notBowen wrote:
Aw man... that one frame has to be in there somewhere.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if there were over 100 frames in there somewhere. Trying to plan a route with three enemies on the screen is extremely more complicated than fighting one at a time.
Anyone trying to find those frames won't have an easy job, though. You cannot make a minor edit to an early stage without redoing other sections as well. Golden Axe is more hex-edit resistant than one might assume. The Bonus Stages are highly likely to break due to luck manipulation issues. I've also had multiple hex-edit attempts suddendly desynch in the middle of a stage--I think the game has lag issues that can change how soon an enemy appears by a frame or two.
notBowen wrote:
edit: Mass suicide has never been so fun! Nice improvement, only downside I saw is that magic looks sort of lame, like a giant flaming pimple was popped. Other than that really good job.
No argument there--that is one ugly spell. Level 3 is worse, though--it's not ugly, but it's certainly s-l-o-w. Glad you liked the pimple-free sections, though!
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minglw wrote:
LocalH, thank you very much for the detailed explanation with screenshots.
I think info and pictures like these are excellent material for a TAS tutorial.
They're nice material for a Super Mario Bros. TAS tutorial. However, this trick won't work in most games at all. Many of the tricks you need to do a TAS are extremely game specific.
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keith_phillips wrote:
Not sure if it has been posted, but I picked up one of the USB FourScore conversions from http://www.retrousb.com/ and an old set of original NES controllers for FCEU etc. because I *really* dislike the old painful D-pad on the PS2 controllers I have been previously using. (Not that the original NES controller was without pain after long gaming stints!) ;)
What stuff do you guys prefer to use for controllers when you use them? :)
Right now, I'm using a Thrustmaster digital 8 button + d-pad controller for making single player TASes. I use the face buttons to control the A, B and C buttons and the shoulder buttons to control Start, Frame Advance, Toggle 50% Mode and Pause Emulation buttons. For everything else, I use the standard DualShock for normal PS2 games and Cobalt Fluxes for the arrow stomping games (DDR/In The Groove).
I've dabbled a bit with creating two player TASes in Gens by using two keyboards, one on the table and one on my lap, so that I can register 7+ keys at the same time. It's a clunky solution to the problem but it works--well, sort of. Sometimes I have to keep trying different combinations of keys and keyboards to get all the keypresses to register.