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moozooh wrote:
Fabian wrote:
In other words, what you're saying is if you're driving on a regular highway, then switch to driving on ice, it's the drivers fault not being able to control the vehicle, rather than the ice's? Am I interpreting your analogy correctly?
No, because SMR's physics allow for perfectly precise controls, while a vehicle designed for driving on highway doesn't have the capabilities of driving on ice (and thus doesn't allow for perfectly precise controls). -1 for you!
Technically, because higher gravity causes faster acceleration, and even if the game checks input multiple times per frame, no SNES emulator allows for subframe input, any maneuver where gravity is involved will have slightly less precision possible than in standard Super Metroid. Though in a TAS this can probably be compensated for by subpixel optimization. So that's really a nonissue. But I think JXQ's point is really less about the precision than the fact that he doesn't like how different the controls feel because of it.
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AngerFist wrote:
upthorn wrote:
and let you know about another newly discovered glitch in launch base 1 zone. (By damage boosting into the spinning tube things, you can retain control and exit while they're inside walls to initiate zipping.)
How much time will this new glitch save?
It isn't known. It takes about 20 seconds in order to get an enemy into a position where it can get you into a tube from damage knockback, and I'm not entirely certain how the glitch works (I've only seen it done in a youtube video), so I haven't been able to perform it in order to test.
[edit]
For clarification: I have been able to retain control into the tube, but I haven't figured out how to use this to exit the tube early.
Also, a link to the video in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfmijVW3x5w
It seems to have been performed in real time, without the use of debug mode.
[edit2]
I managed to make it work, but I haven't been able to duplicate it. When it did work, Sonic appeared in Knuckles' boss area at approximately 0:50. The bad news is that Knuckles' Act 2 route is about 3 seconds longer, and Sonic's act 2 has a higher water level than Knuckles which Sonic would be unable to survive without making use of a checkpoint bonus stage to reset the drown timer. The good news is that it's possible to get to that checkpoint the end of level boss with an ingame time of 0:08, which would make a total savings of 0:35 seconds real time, or 1:34 game time.
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Nitsuja, glad to see this from you. I didn't realize you were back to work on this, or I'd have given you my camhack improvements (now with clean audio and 90% less graphical errors), and let you know about another newly discovered glitch in launch base 1 zone. (By damage boosting into the spinning tube things, you can retain control and exit while they're inside walls to initiate zipping.)
But this is still a solid improvement, so I'm voting yess.
N. Harmonik wrote:
I wonder if some of the tricks you discovered can be utilized in the Hyper Knuckles run.
No, they can't. I've been aware of them for as long as he has, (since before that run was submitted) and was unable to put them to use.
Though Knuckles can get zipping from the moving wall in Hydrocity 2 in the same manner, if he levelwraps there, he gets stuck underwater, unable to reach the boss, and drowns.
The ice cap glitch requires tails to break the ice block when Player1 is standing on it, and Knuckles can't make use of Tails.
The LR1 glitch that improves LR1 time in this run isn't relevant to Knuckles' route, and the LR1 glitch that improves the LR2 time is already used, in a slightly faster variant.
If I were to make a run that didn't use death, the HC2 glitch would be helpful.
If I were to make a run that didn't use super/hyper knuckles, the alternate method of LR1 ending would be helpful.
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Xkeeper wrote:
Is this an actual improvement or a joke submission?
I can't tell; the text itself makes it seem like it's just the first level, copypastaed with the rest of the run.
The idea is that people will have to watch to find out. It will all be cleared up in 8 and a half hours, though
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I said it before, and I'll say it again.
upthorn wrote:
A proper april fools joke is all of the following:
1) Original
2) Funny
3) Performed on April 1st.
This submission meets none of those criteria. Boo.
By the way, I voted yes, because this run is funny and original and awesome. Nice touch with the "juggling".
[EDIT] Since it is now April 2nd in my timezone, I have unhidden the text explaining how I actually felt.
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You should be able to destroy everything else on the ship even if you do have to hit it all the time, and I would recommend doing that. But playing with the worms some before that would probably be entertaining.
You could time it so that the battleship releases the first helicopter the frame before you kill it (the battleship). Then, you can destroy the helicopter on the last possible frame.
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stickyman05 wrote:
That is a good question... I think we would have to go to Bisqwit for that one. Would using a splice to create one movie file be legit, or would there be too much possibility of cheating in some way, shape or form to be even considered for publishing? I think after homework is finish I will be whoring myself out the the website's faq, and, possibly, kissing Bisqwit's a... I mean, asking Bisqwit if it could be legit.
Just so you know, hitting "hard reset" won't allow you to complete the game. Therefore, neither will starting a second gmv and saying "record from start". Manually resetting the 68000 and the z80 might, but you'd still have to start the second movie from a savestate, which is definitely not accepted.
It seems like you're going to have to wait for the next version of gens movie, and unfortunately progress on that is a bit stalled at the moment due to real life issues.
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For one thing, the number of rerecords here is obvously -256, not 16777215. (encoded in the wrong endian, to boot).
Secondly, a proper april fools joke is all of the following:
1) Original
2) Funny
3) Performed on April 1st.
This submission meets none of those criteria. Boo.
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mmbossman wrote:
mike89 wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
There would be a problem using the damage boost on horizontal levels, because damage automatically reduces his speed to 512. I haven't tried it on Bog Jam yet, but I have my doubts because there's something special about the fire extinguisher guy that gives him a tremendous upwards velocity which is transfered to vectorman when he's hit. I'll certainly keep it in mind though.
I said vertical levels >_>
Additionally, in Night in the Swamp there's enemies with similar properties to the fire extinguisher. The reason I mention this is because Night in the Swamp normally forces you onto a lower path twice which takes time to drop down and go back up. The top path is blocked by large walls on those two paths, and that would be a handy way to bypass them.
I know you said vertical levels, but you also mentioned Night in the Swamp also, and unfortunately in that level I've already sped up the first above ground sequence (by dropping down later than you did), and there aren't any enemies close to the elevators that would provide the required damage boost up from underground. Still doing some route planning for Bog Jam, but I'll try and keep everyone updated in the Vectorman 2 thread.
I believe that what mike is saying is that you might want to go back and test if it's necessary to drop down at all. Just make a backup of your current progress first in case that shortcut isn't possible, or proves to be longer.
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My internet handle is unique to me, and an obscure place in the Huntingdonshire district of England's Cambridgeshire county.
But that other upthorn is so obscure it only has one google hit, and that google hit is in German, and it's unclear whether it is a town, or a forest, or a meadow.
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arkiandruski wrote:
What about Sid Meier's Civilization? Was that DOS.
Yes, but there are also several TASable console versions that have been possible for a while, but noone has done. I suspect that luck manipulation in that game could easily drive the author quite mad quite quickly.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Yeah, it does take some time to play it from start, especially considering the tremendeous amount of time spent gathering minerals to be able to afford those ships which get destroyed in battles, and weapons, and everything else; and the time it takes to gather all the necessary information from various aliens.
That reminds me, I noticed that you moved very very slowly on your mining exploits in the beginning, in order to conserve fuel.
Since the speed you go at through this sequence seems to be less than half the maximum speed attainable at start, wouldn't it have been faster to use more fuel accelerating and slowing down, and make more stops at the starbase?
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KennyMan666 wrote:
Boco wrote:
I'd like to see the dialog that was skipped here instead
The quote isn't about this site, but I think it's applicable here anyway:
Radix wrote:
This is SPEED Demos Archive, not PLOT Demos Archive.
The essence is the same for both sites - what can be skipped, will be skipped. Especially if it's skippable dialouge.
So your statment doesn't make much sense. And don't give me the "trades speed for entertainment" thing, it's not really applicable here.
Which is why I vote no on the run, because of game choice.
The only easy way to make a tool assisted speedrun of this game entertaining is something that it doesn't make any sense to do in any sort of speedrun.
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I have had previous experience with this game, or at least a freeware windows port of it, and I loved Star Flight (the spiritual predecessor to the star control games) but so much of this run is spent in transit that I can't vote yes on this run with a clean conscience.
I really really wanted to vote yes on this, because it's the first PC game TAS, and it hopefully heralds many great things to come
But, as was said before me, this is like a pokemon run, but the entertaining parts are shorter.
I do think that this game might make an interesting TAS if some glitches were found, though.
Edit: After some rest, it occurs to me that taking some extra time during the dialog sequences, so the viewer could actually read what's being said, would greatly increase the entertainment value of this movie.
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The problem with Dr. SMS isn't a matter of hacks or valid TAS techniques. It's a matter of emulation accuracy.
Even if the core emulation is fundamentally accurate, Dr SMS has many graphical and audio glitches which run quite contrary to making AVI files of its output.
We don't want a repeat of Famtasia.
Furthermore, because Dr. SMS itself is being emulated, the issue of emulation accuracy is compounded such that any subtle inaccuracies in VBA's emulation could lead to great inaccuracies in Dr. SMS' with little rhyme or reason.
Additionally, because Dr. SMS is not open source, there is no way to correct the sound errors, or any emulation errors which may pop up.
None of these are issues which DOSBox suffers.
I am working getting SMS emulation TASable on the PC, which should be acceptable to this site. A run of this caliber would surely be accepted under those circumstances.
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emu wrote:
Bad News: Please don't kill me, if I say that, but I'm starting to doubt, that this should be a 2-player run :( I checked on the papaya-thingy-boss in the movie and not only does it receive the same damage (4 p/frame, I assume that only one weapon at a time can harm an enemy) as attacked with a single player, there also was a lag every third frame (in the boss fight, the level itself scrolled smoothly as far as I checked). However, I don't know, if this is only at this boss. But if no boss takes addition damage, the main reason to do the tas in 2 player mode doesn't exist anymore. The only use the second player will have is destroying more normal enemies (which is not that important, since they respawn infinitesimally) and for throwing the partner. That means that with significantly more work there would not be much time saved, in the worst case, it is even longer due to lag.
But maybe I'm wrong. I only saw that first mid boss.
Usually the primary reason for using 2P on a run is entertainment, rather than speed.
Even so, as previously stated, most bosses take damage from a player being thrown at them, and this damage is higher than any weapon damage though it cannot be done as often. Furthermore, a 2P run can throw one player up high and then have the 2nd player commit suicide in order to speed up vertical scrolling.
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arkiandruski wrote:
This is my first run-through. I didn't test other weapons. If you think they might be faster, tell me.
I believe that fire-fire is the most damaging weapon, but as has already been mentioned, hand to hand combat does more damage, and I believe throwing one of the players at an enemy does even more damage than that.
Only other suggestion is that it might be fun if you use multiple different weapons on nonboss enemies.
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mmbossman wrote:
Thanks for those upthorn, and that news about the boss HP makes sense. But since I'm new to RAM viewing, I'm a little lost in how to use the pixel addresses. Are they useful for hit detection and such? Any other techniques that you find useful?
The pixel addresses can be used to figure out the hit detection some, but the primary usefulness is for comparing times.
IE: If the end of a level is at the right, having a value of 1800 would generally be better than having a value of 1795 for the same frame.
If you watch this address on your run and a prior run (like nitsuja's test) at the same time, you can make sure you never fall behind. (Which you do, by the way. This WIP finishes level 1 6 frames behind Nitsuja's test. Much better than before, though)
N. Harmonik wrote:
After you're through with this, do you plan on doing Vectorman 2?
There's already an accepted vectorman 2 submission, in fact, it's been "publication underway" for several months due to encoding issues.
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Then turn it off after that frame. It's kind of a pain, but until I'm done with the next version of Gens (which will have multitrack), it's that, or not be able to do stuff.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
