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Iriasu wrote:
Erm, Alright, let's try this again. I uploaded a improved version of that mp3.
You won't hear a horrible person singing anymore. :)
trazz wrote:
I think I recognized the tune from the "Press Start" screen of the game (possible spoiler shrunken for your protection) Maybe. I wouldn't bet much money on that, though.
Unfortunately, you lost all the money. Don't go past Start (and stuff. I suck at Monopoly).
Just go download the new mp3 and you might get better results.
I did get better results. Now I'm 100% certain that I don't recognize any of the songs. :P
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Truncated wrote:
File found.
I will make it easy for you and score my own answers: 0 points.
I thought I would rule at this. :(
I think I recognized the tune from the "Press Start" screen of the game (possible spoiler shrunken for your protection) Metroid. Maybe. I wouldn't bet much money on that, though.
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Neofix wrote:
I make a new version one day hehehe
I mean this in the most friendly way possible: bring it! :)
You'll have to finish under 7 minutes, 20 seconds to be competitive with my WIP, though. In a game as complex as Golden Axe, there's so many ways to attempt each level. You just might spot a detail I missed.
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minglw wrote:
upthorn wrote:
I think FCEU doesn't have "show input".
I can see the inputs alright, does the trick depens on which frame you must press the jump & forward buttons ? And do you have to use frame advance to do it ?
Tricks used in TASes can depend on a huge number of things. You may have to press a button in a certain frame. Your character may have to be travelling at a specific speed. Sometimes you need the background to have scrolled a specific distance. Sometimes whether or not you killed an enemy two seconds ago will determine if a trick will work or not (E.g., the enemy chases you down and ends up blocking the path you want to take.)
The reason that recording emulators work is that if you give the emulator the exact same input each time, you always get the exact same results. If you have all of the numbers in the game right--the right height of the jump, the right distance from the target, etc., the trick will work every time. If something is off, it might not.
In some scenarios, it's actually possible to be too fast. For instance, if you hit a thief at the first possible moment in Golden Axe, you may knock the thief so far away that you lose frames trying to get a follow up attack to connect. If you wait a frame or two more, the thief runs far enough on screen that you can quickly hit him twice without him being knocked out of range.
Theoretically, you could do all tricks in any TAS at 100% speed. However, many tricks used in TASes need several button presses, each during a precise 1/60th of a second. Unless you have reflexes that would make comic book superheroes like The Flash jealous, using frame advance will make it much easier to hit the right buttons during the right 1/60th of a second. Personally, unless there's at least a half-second stretch of time where I can just hold an input or I can't do anything at all--e.g., walking across an empty screen, waiting for the screen to fade out after the end of the level, etc.), I do all of my TAS work in frame advance mode.
Oh, and if you haven't guessed by now, while there are many tools that can be used while making a TAS, two of the most powerful tools of all are determination and patience.
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Highness wrote:
Hey guys. I'm planning a trip to London and I was thinking that maby you can help me with things that are worth seeing, like Camden, Picadilly circus, Hamleys etc. So please spam this thread with things that I just HAVE TO SEE. ;)
Cheers and thanks for your help!
Tip for taking a holliday in England: Do not play songs by The Clash. If you must play songs by The Clash, do not play them in a cab or anywhere else in public. London is definitely not calling you or anybody else for that matter.
(silly-and-absurd-but-somehow-still-related-news-story mode off)
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Xkeeper wrote:
Wouldn't it be a better idea to have posted this in Other Emulation?
(and I have never been fortunate (or unfortunate, your choice) enough to have played these games... I don't even know what the "PC Engine" is -- I assumed it was a ... uh, PC, but I guess it's some sort of pure-gaming console.)
The PC Engine (Japan), the TurboGraphix 16 (North America) and the TurboGraphix (Europe) are the same machine (if you ignore PAL/NTSC issues and region lockout features, of course). All are consoles, not computers. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine)
There's at least one PC Engine game that should easily prove of interest to the TAS community: Demon Castle Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, the game that was featured in the introduction boss fight of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and wasn't released outside of Japan.
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moozooh wrote:
Very nice indeed! Who knows, maybe you can tweak it to be a whole minute faster than the published version. Just like the last time. ;D
Right now, I don't think I'll get half a minute. There's two bonus stages where I might gain or even lose frames depending on the RNG function. I'm also not expecting to find much room, if any, for improvement in the first third of Stage 4, all of Stage 5, most of Stage 7 and all of Stage 8. In these cases, there's already an extremely direct pattern for dealing out damage or defeating foes is simple process of bumping the into the nearest pit.
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upthorn wrote:
DEADBEEF
BE A CAGE BAD ACE, ABE; FEED AGED DAD A DEAD CABBAGE.
Edit: Ack, as Upthorn noticed, previous attempts ("CAGE" and Edit 2: "AGED") were in septidecimal.
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Update: New tactics discovered. 7:30 boundary is breakable.
Published time to defeat Stage 1 bosses: 57:45
New time to defeat Stage 1 bosses: 51:52
Update to update: one of the biggest timesavers I just found only works in stage 1. I also lose four frames in the first bonus stage because of luck manipulation issues. I've one or two other tricks I want to try but, unless I make another major discovery, I won't be able to shave off 4+ seconds off any other stage.
Update to update to update:
Continuing on the "What the @#^@ do I know about Golden Axe anyways?" theme, first four enemies of Stage 2 redone, saving 39 more frames. Currently more than 7 seconds, er, I mean, exactly 6 seconds, 28 frames faster than published run.
Update^4:
Boss sequence in stage 2 complete. I was wrong--the trick used to speed up Stage 1 (ways to make sure AI doesn't dodge jumping downthrusts) does have practical applications in later stages. Now 6 seconds, 58 frames ahead of previous version (1:58:41 vs. 2:05:39). I may or may not lose frames in bonus stage--that depends on how generous Lady Luck (Manipulation) is.
Update^5:
Mistake in boss 2 fixed--that's now puts me at 1:58:04 at the end of Stage 2, which is 7 seconds, 35 frames faster than the previous split time of 2:05:39.
Update^6:
Unfortunately, I have to give back 12 frames. Ending Stage 2 at 2:05:39 seems to put the random number generator in a really, really bad mood and I have to spend several frames with the game paused just to get a bonus stage that's almost as good as the pattern in the published run. I'm still 7 seconds, 23 frames ahead of the published time. That's 16 frames of would-be-progress lost so far to a cranky RNG formula.
Update^7:
Pausing and unpausing and the pausing/unpausing again causes the RNG to change differently than merely pausing/unpausing once. I can reclaim 9 frames that way, reducing the frames lost in Bonus 2 to 5 and frames lost in bonus stages down to 9. I'm now 7 seconds, 30 frames ahead of the published time.
Update^8:
Past first thief in Stage 3. 9 seconds, 22 frames ahead of published time. Odd--when I submitted the previous run, I didn't think I made any major errors (and there's been at least two people who commented that they saw no obvious improvments, too) and I'm finding spare frames left and right.
Update^9:
Past final pair of thieves in Stage 3. Due to better tactics vs. the twin amazons and the twin giants, I'm currently 10 seconds, 23 frames faster than the previous time.
Update^10:
New magic trick puts me 11 seconds, 28 frames ahead of published time at the end of Stage 3. The game automatically--with no luck manipulation needed!--sets up a near perfect bonus stage, where I pick up 25 frames. This more than offsets my losses in the first two bonus stages. As far as bonus stages go, I'm now 16 frames faster overall with one bonus stage to go. Currently 11 seconds, 53 frames ahead of published time (3:15:26 vs 3:27:19).
Update^11:
New tactics vs. first trio of henchmen and the pair of skeletons allow me to kill them with fewer attacks. I'm now 12 seconds, 27 frames ahead of the published time. (3:44:17 vs. 3:57:44). I'm a bit stuck right now--I'm losing one frame vs. the thief (that is, when I'm not losing even more frames--one is just the least-worst-case scenario) and I'm not sure why.
Update^12: Stage four overhauled. I've found more ways to hit multiple enemies at once or make the enemies come to me instead of having to spend time hunting them down. Currently 14 seconds, 29 frames ahead of published time. (4:12:30 vs. 4:26:59).
Update^13: Picked up 9 frames in the last bonus stage. Overall, I pick up 25 frames in the bonus stages, with minor losses in the first two and slightly larger gains in the second two. Currently 14 seconds, 38 frames ahead of the published time (4:25:05 vs. 4:39:43).
Update^14: After the first three fights of stage 5, I'm 15 seconds, 30 frames faster than the published time. (4:47:20 vs. 5:02:50)
I can't speed up the second fight (Amazon riding a dragon) any because the Go! icon cannot appear until the screen scrolls a specified distance and there's no way to make the screen scroll any faster. I do however, manage to find a way to get past the dragon and knock the Amazon into the pit without pressing the up or down arrows. (In Soviet Russia, dragon dodges you!)
There's also an odd bug in which I attempt to dash while riding the dragon and I get a normal jump instead, despite not pressing the jump button. This doesn't lose frames and you'd never guess the (in)significance of this bug if the Display Input feature isn't turned on.
Update^15: One more fight completed. 15 frames gained. Now 15 seconds, 45 frames ahead of previous time. (4:51:21 vs. 5:07:06). Only two giant suits of armour that need to be shoved into a pit left in Stage 5. (I hate trying to TAS giant knights into pits--they don't cooperate at all.)
Update^16: Knights shoved into pit 18 frames faster than the published version. This ends Stage 5 with a time that is 16 seconds 3 frames faster than the published version (5:02:52 vs. 5:18:55)
Update^17: Stage 6 overhauled. I pick up four seconds and two frames to put me 20 seconds and 5 frames ahead of the published time. (5:56:21 vs. 6:16:26). I'm not expecting to pick up very many more frames in the remaining two stages (particularly Stage 8), but I wasn't expecting to pick up 20+ seconds in the first 6 stages, either.
Update^18: Stage 6 overhauled again. I pickup an additional 15 frames to put me 20 seconds and 20 frames ahead of the published time (5:56:06 vs. 6:16:26).
Update^19. Stage 7 and 8 overhauled. I only have time to gather 8 pots in Stage 7, so the movie doesn't use the Dragon Magic this time. Final time 7 minutes, 8 seconds, 23 frames vs. the old time of 7 minutes, 30 seconds, 39 frames.
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I've purchased two systems within the launch month, the Dreamcast and the Gamecube. I don't think I'll buy a Playstation 3 until 2007 and I'll probably need a pricedrop and/or some killer games to buy it then.
Nintendo's TNES (Terribly Named Entertainment System) looks good, especially since Nintendo is going to finally sell legal ROMs in a smart way instead of putting them on multipe eCards or putting a grand total of one tiny NES game on a too-expensive Gameboy Advance cartridge or burying them inside Animal Crossing. Yes, it's possible to download old cartridge games off the Internet but I like to buy classic game compliations periodically.
Oh, and a new Dragon Quest game sounds very nice, too.
My big worries right now:
* How many games will the Wii hold and will I have to delete purchased games to buy more?
* How well will developers use the remote? I remember this game (http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/07/arcade-title-hints-at-revolution-play/) -- swinging a sword to play a game is a fun gimmick but, after awhile, the gameplay felt very shallow.
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THe-Tekno-Project wrote:
Ok, so here is(as of this moment) the list for the games that are going to be played on the DVD.
(snip)
If you have any other suggestions that you would like to have on the DVD please let me know by tomorrow.
I'm not a big fan of the TMNT run--it's a very well done run of a very repetitive game. A+B, A+B, A+B....
Have you considered using Pit Fighter? It's not a very good game but the combos in that run are hillariously absurd.
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Baxter wrote:
Hehe, I'm currently fighting those mousers at level 3, and obviously I will make them more interesting ;)
What did you mean by the manhole trick?
The manhole trick: The enemy throws an manhole and you hit it at the first posible frame, making it look like the enemy took the manhole and threw it straight at his own head. Quite cool--that trick's a keeper.
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Baxter wrote:
As far as I know I used:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II - The Arcade Game (U) [!].nes
Do note that this movie was made with Famtasia and for it to play correctly, you should use Famtasia.
I am currently making an improvement to this movie, played with FCEU.
I watched the previous movie--about %20 awesome (the manhole trick was great!) and about %80 I-think-Don's-going-to-do-the-A+B-attack-and-hit-one-opponent-again. I literally groaned at the appearance of a mouser popping out of a wall because I knew that it was going to be another sequence of stand still, A+B, stand still, A+B...
I know that a TMNT 2 run is going depend heavily on A+B. However, don't the mousers come out at a constant rate no matter what you do? If so, would it be possible to use that extra time to find some more creative ways to kill the first few mousers in the series (e.g., dodge the first mouser and then kill the first two mousers with one blow, use other attacks)?
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Phil wrote:
seanbaby's list isn't reliable.
Deadly towers , Legend of Kage, Hokuto no ken(not Fist of north star, they are not the same game), Pro wrestling, MUSCLE and Renegade were all good games
(Oh. Oops on the North Star game.)
Well it's his list--bit hard to call an opinion unreliable.
Are you refering to Pro Wresting (that one was fun if you had a second player, even if one player mode tended be repetitive) or Tag Team Pro Wrestling? Tag Team Pro Wrestling is on Seanbaby's list; Nintendo's Pro Wrestling isn't.
And, while I wouldn't call Deadly Towers the worst NES game ever, Deadly Towers was still pretty bad--it got quite a few bad reviews from critics and players alike, even though it's a cult favorite in some circles. Oooh, you stepped on the wrong pixel! Off to the dungeons you go!
(Gauntlet II was the worst NES game I had the misfortune to buy or rent--nice voice effects but the rest of that port stunk. The AI was so bad that the game offered zero challenge.)
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Phil wrote:
Though, he could have chosen a better game.
Aw, come on--this game is not only bad, it's nearly legendary how bad this game is (e.g, http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/w20-02.htm).
It's also not the only it's-so-bad-it's good submission out there. Super Pitfall, Deadly Towers, Fist of the North Star and Legend of Kage all are both in Seanbaby's list of worst 20 NES games ever and the list of published NES TASes.
I'd like to see this published if only to have an .avi of this piece of garbage get completely thrashed.
(I'm not sure why Seanbaby hates Legend of Kage so much. It's not a masterpiece, to be sure, but I thought it was pretty fun. Of course, the only reason I had LoK was the Legend of Zelda was sold out and when Mom went shopping to suprise me with a NES for Christmas, well, she was a bit misled by some idiot salesclerk. I didn't mind at the time--I saw the completely awful TV comercial for the Legend of Zelda that featured some wierd guy saying the names of Legend of Zelda monsters in a shrieking, nervous high-pitched voice and was convinced that Legend of Zelda had to be a terrible game. I wasn't convinced that LoZ might be a fun game until I read Nintendo Propaganda, er, Power.)
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Atma wrote:
Wolfman2000 wrote:
Hmm...is it better to go for high score or high level for this game?
Definitely high score. high level is simply clearing one 'tile' of the core over and over, as one exposed tile is all you need to advance to the next level from what I understand. that would be the epitome of boring imo.
I could be completely wrong, but, it may be that the best way to get a high score is to get the x20 multiplier, pass as many levels as quickly as possible and then do the last level in one gigantic overtime combo.
(This is just a wild guess but it's based on the fact that Acmim's score in level n+1 is always much larger than his score in level n. I don't know anything about how the scoring system works but I must wonder if level 5 grants even more points.)
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I'm not sure that this movie can be given a star--it's an excellent movie but it's almost impossible to comprehend.
Can this movie be given a Gold WTF Medallion?
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AngerFist wrote:
*off topic*
Will trazz ease our pain and work on Golden Axe 2 and 3? ^_^
Actually, this got started off as a Golden Axe 2 project. I watched Neofix's GA 1 movie for ideas, got jealous over the B+C move in GA 1 (which got a severe downgrade in GA 2) and decided to switch to making a GA 1 movie.
GA 2, unlike GA 1, also has a hard mode which gives all enemies extra hitpoints, so it's much harder to quickly kill enemies in a GA 2 run. I'm glad that I did GA 1 first--I've learned quite a bit while making this run.
I've taken a look at GA 2, GA 3 (picking a character in GA 3 is certainly not a trivial choice as each character has very different attributes), and Alien Storm. I'm also curious if Rolling Thunder 2 would make a good TAS and I think the author of the Altered Beast TAS thinks that movie can be improved as well. (After watching my Shadow Dancer submissions sit in limbo, I think that previously published movies are better targets for getting a movie published on this site.) However, there's another movie--which I'm not going to mention just yet--that I'm considering first.
edit: "author of Altered Beast" -> "author of the Altered Beast TAS"
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IdeaMagnate wrote:
This one had a much more efficient feel than Neofix's. I also liked the variety of magic and how many enemies fell over conveniently placed cliffs.
Also, thanks for that JXQ.
I hope it looks more efficient. After all, it's two weeks faster than the previous version.
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upthorn wrote:
I read the description of the submission, and saw it boasted a full minute time improvement, so I just watched this video, and the one it will be obsoleting.
After watching Neofix's run, I was pleasantly surprised that this one was both speedy and entertaining. Neither of which I would expect of any Golden Axe run.
Definitely a yes.
Thanks for the compliments but I feel compelled to comment (for the second time!) that I made no boast about "a full minute time improvement".
59 seconds, 50 frames < 1 minute.
Really, I like that people like the movie but, as someone who's taking graduate courses to become a math teacher, all of this number-mangling is drIviNg mE cRazY. :P
59 seconds, 50 frames < 1 minute.
59 seconds, 50 frames < 1 minute.59 seconds, 50 frames < 1 minute.They're coming to take me away, ha ha,...
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Wow--it's been accepted! Thanks, Truncated!
notBowen wrote:
Not as funny as the last one, but obviously speed matters more. Nice run.
If you're looking for odd stuff, look carefully at the death animation for the last boss. Using magic while the boss is in mid-air confuses the game. The giant axe, which is supposed to strike Death Bringer's chest, ends up getting wedged into thin air instead.
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LSK wrote:
I have to do a personal project for school. So I'm making a TAS. Are there any good ones that I can do impressively in under 20 minutes? I'd like a game that won't take 8 months, like Mega Man supposedly did.
1) Have you discussed this with your teacher?
2) Have you considered making a "How a TAS is made" documentary instead of making a TAS? Running an entire game takes a long time. Just about any TAS will have moments where not much happens. Most people won't at your school probably won't understand what a TAS is. Also, while making a TAS is certainly a fun hobby, it's not very scholarly. A report that provides and in-depth explaination an unusual activity to those who haven't heard of the activity before, on the other hand, can be quite scholarly.
You could make a documentary video that explains concepts like save states and slow motion. You could then use short clips of various games to demonstrate TAS techniques and, instead of having to go through a long run of one game, you could pick and choose moments from games that best illustrate a particular concept.
Examples of games that would make for good clips for illustrating a particular concept:
* Monopoly--Show a non-TAS first turn that ends up with the player rolling some random number. Then, show how one can manipulate luck and get any die rolls you want, whenever you want them.--e.g., you can roll 6-6, 4-4 and 5-3 and buy both utilities on the first turn.
* Almost any console RPG: Set up a fight that's too tough to beat normally. Show how playing the fight normally leads a quick, overwhelming defeat and the Game Over Screen. Then show a clip that demostrates how one can manipulate luck in a TAS to make that same fight an overwhelming victory by having perfect offense and defense.
* Pit Fighter--show some normal non-assisted attempts at combos and then string together one of the many insane combos one can make using frame advance. Dr. Kong Jr. is also another great game for showing how frame-by-frame precision can grant entirely new abilities.
* Mega Man 1--show a nonassisted run of a room where Mega Man goes from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen to move to the next room. Then show how using the Elec Beam and frame advance lets you skip all that running around by jumping so far above the screen that the game.
* You might want to show a clip that demonstrates how a TAS run can keep a boss in permanent hitstun. I do this on boss #4 in my unpublished Shadow Dancer run (http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3510) but there might be a better example in another game.
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sargon wrote:
wow! improved over a minute! neofix's movie was about 3 minutes faster then the previous published run. Impresive that, and even more improving it another minute. yes 4 sure
Er, how do you get "over a minute" out of a 59 seconds and 50 frames improvement? :P
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moozooh wrote:
Although not all of the tricks suited my taste, this movie was great. Some of your moves were cooler than in Neofix's movie, and some were just faster (but didn't look so fun). I guess it's impossible to show all the funny moments in the game without slowdowns… but hey, that was awesome nontheless.
The frame counter is a harsh mistress.
Not using the enemies-walk-off-the-bridge bug at the start of level 4 is a loss. It's a great trick that really shouldn't work but it's too slow to set up.
moozooh wrote:
Yes vote, and… how about a star? :)
Thanks but if any Genesis beat'em up deserves a star, it's Streets of Rage 2. This movie is extremely simplistic compared to the combos that Max can do.
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I submitted this ( http://tasvideos.org/1064S.html ) and I got the following error message. There's also no corresponding post in the workbench forum.
________________________________________________________
Submissions
SQL select submission.*,system.abbr from submission,system where system.id=systemid and submission.id>0 order by systemid,gamename,gameversion failed: " Got error -1 from storage engine "
Fatal error: Call to a member function MoveNext() on a non-object in /home/WWW/wikisites/nesvideos-site/inc/moviefun.php on line 548