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I disagree with basically all of JXQ's points except for artificially inflated difficulty.
Visor Effects
These increase the learning curve -- the first time you go through that area they can be a distraction, the second time through they're an occassional annoyance during combat, the third time through you've learned where they are and can avoid them.
Every door looks the same
but every enterance way looks different. Every single one is different, recognizably so. Though I did get lost once or twice around the second elevator down to the lava area, that's about the whole extent of the trouble it gave me.
Artificial challenge
One of the first things I noticed when I played Super Metroid was that enemies reappeared everytime I reentered a room. Although I agree that Prime is a bit havy on the forced backtracking. Still, it's not that big of a deal. If you really want to complain about backtracking, play metroid prime 2.
Field of Vision
It may be small, but the entire game was designed with that field of vision in mind. The only times it ever affects the difficulty for me are when I have jetpack pirates to deal with. And I'm pretty sure that the high manuverability is supposed to let them swing around behind where you can't see them.
Stupid impractical visors
You're using them wrong. The xray and thermal visors are not for general purpose usage. You use the thermal visor when you need to see in the dark, and you use the xray visor when you need to know what walls can be broken, and where invisible blocks may be. At all other times you should be using the standard combat visor. Except when scanning.
Speaking of scanning, have you noticed how "scanning" computers often rewards you with data that Samus had to hack the computer for? I don't know about you, but I suspect I'd find it a bit trying to engage in combat simultaneously with doing some intense computer hacking.
The game is too dark
Turn up the brightness/contrast and/or use the thermal visor.
Most rooms in Metroid Prime are reasonably bright.
There’s too much shit on the screen
Indeed there's so much shit on the screen that you couldn't convey your message without pasting more ontop of it in paint. OH WAIT, that doesn't make sense.
The radar is small and unobtrusive in the top left corner of the screen and it's absolutely essential when there are enemies on more than one side of you. In fact, the radar is why the small viewing angle is not an issue.
The map, meanwhile, would keep you from getting lost if you referred to it and could remember which side you came in. (Here's a hint, the rooms are rarely if ever symmetrical).
The Missile count is, well, the missile count. I can't think of one FPS which doesn't keep a tally of you remaining ammo onscreen at all times.
Then you've got the geigercounter, which admittedly isn't always necessary, but it's practically transparent until it turns red and starts beeping anyway.
This leaves us with the visor and gun selectors. They're a handy quickreference for newbies, and for veterans, they're out of the way enough not to matter.
Shitty shitty shitty shitty controls
No. Just, no. You're wrong.
Metroid Prime has the easiest control scheme I've ever encountered in a console FPS. The only improvment you suggested, using the C-stick to change the view while Samus is running. would get all kinds of complicated all kinds of fast, and would require moving the fire button to a shoulder just to accomadate it. I'd much rather simply lock on.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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I started a TAS which doesn't take any extra time for bonus stages or secret points (mostly because there wasn't any way to make the bonus stages look good).
I stopped because I was having difficulty on the boss of the first autoscrolling stage, and when I played it through again it didn't look like anything special.
That's available here: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3370/UpthornDynamiteHeaddyUEwip.gmv
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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JXQ wrote:
The improvement Upthorn found in Green Hill 2 has messed with Marble 1 and I cannot for the life of me get to that platform even close to the original time because of some bat randomness screwing things up.
I have a couple suggestions about that.
1) If you pause the game for a few frames before those bats load, you might be able to get them to sync.
2) I have a hex edited version where it's only the bat that hits you which has desynced. If you make a short jump for the added accelleration, you might get a more favorable landing spot from the hit.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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stanski wrote:
Check out this, its a gmv (no optimization at all) of a maybe time saving glitch in oil ocean 2 (though not likely, since the level is already optimized well, but you never know):
http://files.filefront.com//;6469880;;/
btw, I hate filefront, but don't know anywhere else to put it. bear with me on that.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php
[edit]
Also, Nitsuja was aware of that glitch when he did his run. Though it might save time if you can use that to go left past the start of the level.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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If you read the GM2 format specification, you'll see that it calls for SRM data being saved in the movie file. So yes, that problem should be taken care of.
In the meantime, I suggest you delete the srm file, open the game and close it to generate a blank sram, then mark that file read only.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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JXQ wrote:
What allows for the spindashing into walls? Do you think anything like this is possible in S1K?
Ability to jump the same frame as releasing down
Momentum preservation
Tiny cracks where collision tiles meet
"Cornering"
There is a small possibility that, if you can cut throhugh the top corner of a tile, you can make it in to the crack (as either Sonic or Knuckles). However, the conditions which allow cornering are unknown, and it might not be possible anyway.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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Warp wrote:
JXQ wrote:
If you're going to split hours up into minutes, and minutes into seconds, why not seconds into frames? It is a used format of hh:mm:ss:ff, for example in movie
That would be really confusing. If someone sees "1:27:16" he will think it's one and a half hours long, not one and a half minutes.
There is a solution to that:
The following notation.
HH:MM'SS"FF
Hours : Minutes ' Seconds " Frames
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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upthorn wrote:
Macman wrote:
As crummy as this game is, I bet it would be pretty interesting to TAS. There has to be a plethora of new glitches to find now.
Yeah, there are a whole plethora of new glitches, and the physics are interesting, and would be fun to play around with.
But then there's the constant, mind-numbing, lag.
And, because the lag can be reduced, it would have to be managed.
And so to TAS it properly, much more time would have to be devoted to lag management than to actual gameplay.
And therein lies the issue.
So, someone in S2Beta, a Sonic hacking community forum, ported most of the changed physics back to the Genesis Sonic 1 game engine.
This results in a game that plays like Sonic: Genesis, but without the constant lag.
I'm thinking about doing a TAS of that.
Here is a list of what has been ported from S1 GBA
Spindash which gives a constant speed, regardless of revs (accurate to S1GBA)
Momentum preservation when jumping past obstacles
Holding the jump button lowers gravity, instead of your speed being capped when it's released
speed shoes double acceleration, but don't affect max speed
Sonic jumps higher
jumping no longer reduces your speed at all
jumping out of a roll leaves you in full control of movement during the jump
you don't stop moving when you land after taking damage
damage always knocks in the direction you're not facing
you can't bounce high off of item monitors or enemies
bosses don't reverse your speed when you hit them, instead it matters where you hit them
bosses push you away when you hit them even if they're still invincible
Sonic won't brake when movng backward
if you press in the direction you're already moving while running backwards, you instantly stop
in general, when moving at a high speed, the only effective way to slow down is to press forward (the direction you're running)
Extra time bonus bracket
ability to skip score tabulation at the end of levels
Things which have not been ported:
Slope not affecting jump height much
Being able to land on lava or fire and jump the same frame to avoid damage
Zipping not working
inability to push blocks while in air
inability to pass through landscape corners when jumping
inability to jump on same frame as releasing spindash
Constant lag
Bad music
Bad sound effects
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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Well, you may not be aware, but when I did my Knuckles TAS, I TASed the game three and a half times.
First once to get the hang of the engine
Then once to get the routes down
Then once for optimization
Then repeat steps 2 & 3 whenever a faster route is discovered (unless it's a level-wrap).
Basically, even if you start from the end of the last WIP you posted publically (I think you were at mushroom hill), by the time you finish, you should be familiar enough with the game engine to do a proper TAS the second time around.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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bobxp wrote:
I don't believe this... I just restarted my run AGAIN, but I still can't beat my previous record; this time, both acts are 2 in-game seconds slower than in my last run. God I suck at this... >.>
You could rerecord off of your last run...
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nitsuja wrote:
upthorn wrote:
I can make it black the screen out.
It fails to do so if any of the render filters besides Normal or Double are selected. By the way, I think nobody noticed, but there is a new render filter called "EPX" that wasn't there in 9j or earlier.
I noticed, but then promptly forgot to make a public note of it. Sorry about that.
nitsuja wrote:
upthorn wrote:
I can't find the reason it stopped doing the multicolored snow effect, though.
It's not the default anymore, that's all.
Except that when I uncheck "disable intro effect" it doesn't make any difference, and when I close and reopen gens, "disable intro effect" has been mysteriously re-checked.
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Maximus wrote:
This may or may not be a feature request (since I'm not sure if the issue is actually just a settings problem on my end). Fix Gens so that it doesn't re-initialize the entire screen when the application is started or closed (it currently "blacks" out the screen whenever I start/terminate the app).
If it's only doing this for me ... sorry, posted in the wrong place :P
This is covered under "24 & 32 bit color support"
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Bookmarking savestate system -- unlimited savestates per game
Multi-track recording
Overwrite recording mode (versus truncate)
Overhaul Ram Search/Watch for complete reliability
More robust Ram Watch capabilities -- including pointer dereference
Lag indicator (or rather "controller not read" indicator)
Toggleable "Sprites always in front" display
Additional feature requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
[Edit]
List is now color coded:
Blue = Finished features
Red = Won't be in interim release (Gens movie 9.5)
[Edit 2]
Interim release completed. See http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=133692#133692.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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xebra wrote:
Nach wrote:
JXQ wrote:
You never responded to Phil's point about SNES having a product name. Quit lying.
You shouldn't have left IRC.
IANAL, but I believe the acronym you are looking for is IIRC.
<Upthorn> You know, call it a dirty mind but whenever I see the acronym "IANAL"
<Upthorn> I mentally insert a space after the "I"
<Upthorn> and then interpret as a two word phrase, before correcting myself.
<adelikat> that is what I thought too
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Nach wrote:
In no cases except a matter of court or voting should a decision be based solely on the amount of people saying one way over another.
In the matter of what constitutes clear communication, what the majority of people say becomes what is correct. This is because "clarity" in the context of communication, is defined by what the most people will understand.
This would indicate that, in the matter of promoting the "DMG" acronym for gameboy games over the "GB" acronym, you are incorrect if your goal is clear communication. This is because the majority of users on this forum understand "GB" as meaning GameBoy, but do not understand "DMG" as meaning GameBoy.
Furthermore, even if you are arguing that people should be made aware that Nintendo's technical aspects referred to the Game Boy system as DMG, so that DMG becomes the clear communication of Game Boy; because DMG is actually an acronym meaning "Dot Matrix Game" the term would become ambiguous if/when Game Gear or Neo Geo Pocket become TASable systems.
I would advise you to reexamine your position.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
