What a horrible game to have a TAS... hmmm...
Summary
- Colors a Castlevania
- Takes Damage To Save Time
- Manipulates Luck
- Emulator used:
VBA-RR (v22)
- Length:14:59 Frames:53922 Lag Frames:13137 Re-records:20396
About the movie
This is my second attempt at TASing this miserable pile of lag, (
00:15.12) faster than previous
rejected movie, and a total of (
03:08.48) faster than
2006 movie.
This is also probably my final attempt with this game.
(some copy paste from wiki)
Castlevania Adventure takes place before Castlevania events, you play an ancestor of Simon Belmont, Christopher.
The game consists of four stages, and unlike other Castlevania games, there are no sub-weapons, hearts are used to restore health.
Whip can be upgraded with crystals, but any enemy damage will downgrade an upgraded weapon. (start with leather whip, then chain, and chain+fireballs)
There are no stairs, unlike other Castlevania games. At the end of each level, there is a "primary evil" to confront.
There is also a point counter, and at 10,000 points, a player receives an extra life, and also receives one for every 20,000 points after that. Each stage also has a time limit in which to complete the level.
The main improvement come simply from trying to manage the lag instead of fully submitting to it, the 2006 movie yielded 23676 lag frames, this one 13'000 less (506 less than last movie).
Lag is the main problem while TASing this game, the previous runner just ignored it, although i think he didn’t have a lag counter, he obviously didn’t care about the issue.
In this game, even if there’s nothing on screens (no enemy, no candles) it can still lag a lot.
Basically the main strategy for lag reduction i used was to kill enemies as fast as possible, destroying candles when possible, don’t "land" jump on a lag frame etc... etc... nothing too fancy.
Taking damage is not very cool since you would loose whip power, except for Dracula where it was very helpful, this shortened the fight considerably compared to 2006 movie.
Although the quality of the rejected run is more than doubtful, he did find some neat trick (luck?), depending on sub-pixel adjustment, you can jump toward a rope and get to the bottom of it, this sadly don't work in every place but save a bunch of frames.
I didn’t took care to note it, but i get a higher score than the rejected movie.
Improvements
Ill link a spreadsheet that cover frames differences between this movie and the previous (15:14)
Some details:
- The sub-pixels on ropes can be optimized to make shorter decent or ascent. This is not limited to place where you can jump (and skip the whole/most rope), it also work where you need to "walk" to grab the rope, by pressing backward for 1 or 2 frames you can adjust sub-pixels or speed, apparently TheAxeMan did found that in his WIP, i figured only latter while re-watching it, but anyway i founded it too myself so ropes should be fine now.
- To manipulate luck you can press start (used a few times in the run), I use it to remove 2 enemies in stage1, this might be abused further, I'm not sure really.
- Manipulating boss in stage2 to get nothing to appear from top hole didn't saved 200 frames ("only" 23 frames).
- The boomerang guy in stage4 that shoot while your climbing have the optimal timing now.
- The biggest improvement in term of frames is in the autoscroller and the part right after it, by stopping to move while enemy dies, or ducking more often, i saved lag, which apparently speed-ed up spikes. Duck save often lag in the run.
- 7 rooms in the run are "slower" than previous movie, i don't know why, ill call it random bullshit, you can track them on the spreadsheet, the total is 44 frames, Dracula apparently went few frames slower, meh.
Closing
This movie is probably improvable, by small amounts, i hope you'll enjoy it, i have to say I'm quite happy of the run and now i hate this game.
Its really not fun and extremely rigid controls, on top the lag is the biggest i ever had to deal with, this is also the worse Castlevania game on consoles i think.
Btw, the reason I'm not using the Konami Collection (J) is simply VBA hang on loading games, there’s no USA release, also the color game is less laggy than old gray USA one (not by a lot thought).
Special thanks to fsvgm777 for pointing me a rope shortcut in stage4 while i was broadcasting :p Also thanks to Nach for convincing me to do this TAS.
Nach: After many uncompleted runs, canceled and rejected submissions, this is one that the audience, as well as I are quite pleased with. Accepting. Let the frame wars begin!