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I see some improvements in the first stage. I'm doing some tests and I've already saved about 50 frames. Most of that is because I killed the big penguin.
That run would be about a 27:05 if timed comparably to my 27:17.
As an aside, I think my route would be faster in that game. If I ever take up PlayStation TASing I might just try it!
i.e., my run is 12 seconds slower than RCW. However, I recently realized that RCW does not have underwater lag, which is a crucial difference! Bubbleman's health bar still has that "stuttering and inconsistent tempo," which is a little weird. But the actual movement of Mega Man and the enemies is full speed.
You can watch Bubble or Wily 3 side by side to see paosidufygth get way further ahead during sections of identical movement.
I lose 986 frames due to underwater lag, or about 16.4 seconds. Now it seems as though my run is 4 seconds faster (RCW would be at 27:21 if timed comparably). Even accounting for framerate differences (which would put RCW a second or two closer to me), a run with vertical zips and instant switching should not be this close to a true zipless run on the NES.
I really do think this is from the Heat fight. If anyone ever wants to improve Rockman 2 on PlayStation, seriously do consider my route!
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I'm trying to follow along with your barrel glitch explanation in the submission text. Do those memory locations contain lists of action commands available to each bro, terminated by FF?
So like:
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I made an interesting discovery regarding ladder physics. No new tech, but the thing where you snap up to 8 pixels and get turned around is the result of some very deliberate instructions. So this behavior is not a glitch. Presumably this applies to the original Mega Man as well.
Here is a commented disassembly of the code in question.
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So here's the thing. Go into the menu, press updown, what happens? The cursor moves up once. The tech only works when you hold up and add down on the second frame. I only noticed it because I was doing some reverse engineering. It's a quirk in how the delayed autorepeat was implemented.
As for actual gameplay, we know about the famous floating Metal Blades and the ladder zip thing. Simultaneous L+R ordinarily just makes Mega Man go left, although Leaf Shield reads it as a right press, so that's kind of cool.
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He also found this trick. Combined with the menu tech, it was not enough to save a framerule in Zipless, but it was just enough to make the slower lag reduction egg shot reach the same framerule. So it helped save 3 lag frames 😎
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ACE definitely obsoletes screen warp since it even uses it as part of the setup.
While ACE may be the fastest completion, they usually consider it a separate branch around here. You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Link to video
The answer was right under my nose all along.
Looks like this is a zipless-only strat. Any% would have to deal with the shotmen in a weird pacifist way that somehow loses less than 8 frames, and Buster-only can't do it for obvious reasons.
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Can't wait to see what you come up with!
If you plan on revisiting the Rockman 2 PSX remake, I have some ideas. I'm too lazy to learn PSX TASing and try them myself!
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Imagine publishing Color a Dinosaur Simulator but not Color a Dinosaur. That would be legendary.
greysondn wrote:
normalized labor
I think they call that man hours, where men = 1
As an aside, I just learned that you can press B to select a dinosaur and it'll let you move the pen around in "freehand mode." I wonder if it's fast...
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Regarding the memory corruption, are you talking about Wily 2 at 12:15, where Mega Man jumps all over the screen? That's the only thing that looked sus to me.
I'm told that it's Cutman's scissors persisting when you skip the boss room. They overwrite Mega Man's coordinates.
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Link to video
Figured I'd share this here as well. It's a Mega Man 2 vid, but the velocities are exactly the same in Mega Man 1. A lot of people start off without RAM watch and don't seem to realize this happens.
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Here's this as well. It's the first thing they teach you in Mega Man speedrunning school, but I see a lot of newbie TASers expressing themselves with jumps like it's Super Mario Bros.
He also found this trick. Combined with the menu tech, it was not enough to save a framerule in Zipless, but it was just enough to make the slower lag reduction egg shot reach the same framerule. So it helped save 3 lag frames 😎