This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3139: Soig's Genesis Vapor Trail: Hyper Offence Formation in 20:09.62

I don't feel like this is a TAS, even if it is the fastest speedrun to the ending ... I feel more like it's a Free Tour =P you take the audience to know what the game do during the stages, and you show what different weapons do, ... but in general, the music, always the same, gets boring, and even if you did get some tips from the Gradius TAS, .. I have to vote Meh But I voted Yes ... a very weak Yes õ_o because I did have fun while watching, and because it makes me wonder how shooters could be "Toured" and which ones would be better choices, because I had some time ago this crazy idea about touring Fire Shark, and I just didn't do it, maybe because of the canceled Thunder Force 3 movie, which is not like a TAS anyway, but ... measuring shots in a shooter looks hard... +D In the end, maybe there will be space for FreeTourVideos, shooters finished in less time, and less shots, but ... it doesn't look like this day will come soon.... >.>

Megaupload: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SBPQF5W1 (~100MB) I'll comment on this run later. Edit: 30fps ruined the movie. Removing Youtube.

Interestingly enough, even at 60FPS, some media players drop frames, making some parts look bad. Anyway, about the run. I found it interesting that the player left enemies on the screen and dodged all their bullets. This is much better than the previous run, for sure. On the flip side, I believe that this run is artistically lacking, which is a problem for a superplay of this genre. - First of all, there is no rhyme or reason as to which enemies are killed and when. I almost feel that more enemies should be killed. Not just merely killed, but killed in a way that shows off weapons and such, as well as in an artistic manner. - Second, downtimes are often filled with the same wobbling. While admittedly there isn't much to fill in the downtimes, wobbling isn't the solution to it, and it becomes old quickly. - Third, I think that control of the ship could be made more entertaining. There doesn't seem to be enough "close calls" (as close to enemies or bullets as possible). The tendency of the ship to move around a lot when strictly unnecessary also hastens the novelty of the run, such that the last few levels seem unremarkable after watching the first few. Also of note is the rather big amount of time lost after Stages 1 and 2 where the ship moves slowly to its set point before it says "Mission X Complete". There are other things I think could make the run better as well: - Don't necessarily aim for fastest time at all cost. But be fast, and entertaining at the same time. - There's a 2-player option. I must recommend that the run be done using 2-player. 2-player is just so much better. - There are other choices of ships at the beginning. Maybe another one is more entertaining, or maybe not. With this in mind, I vote no. If anyone has comments about this run, by all means post in this thread.

Sorry about not getting to watching this yet, especially since I commented a bunch in the previous submission's thread. I plan on watching this tonight (in the US Eastern time zone) and providing more comments. Thank you, FractalFusion, for providing your comments, so I know what to look for.

Just watched this. I think you did a good job. It was not terribly interesting, but good enough for yes vote.

Ok, I finally managed to watch this and not fall asleep partway through. I figured out the main issue that makes this run more annoying for me: the game has only one music theme in the stages. All of the good shooters need more than one theme, so that there's some sense of variety. Overall, that's the main issue of the game; for the most part, the stages were the same as each other. There are also few enough chances to pick up weapons that you don't have a lot of time to experiment with using new weapons. The effort should've still been made, though, to show off more weapons if possible. On the plus side, the dodging was superb this time, especially in the later stages. The boss fights look quite good too. (It didn't really bother me how long it took for the ship to recenter after boss fights.) I was alright with the wobbling, since it made me feel like the plane was malfunctioning or that the pilot was getting scared. It was overused, but it wasn't really ugly. In regards to FractalFusion's other comments: - I don't think 2-player would actually make this game a lot better. The two players wouldn't be able to interact very much and would probably have a much easier time killing lots of enemies. Here, with one player, the added challenge makes this more interesting, at least in my opinion. - I think that this run was pretty good in producing "close calls". - The big thing for me is that a game like this needs to have some variety to stay interesting. In Gradius, the music and movement patterns change. In UN Squadron, the choices of weapon usage are fairly complex, and the 100% kills goal keeps things tricky. In R-Type, there are plenty of different weapons shown off. This game doesn't have that level of variety. In short, I think this is a much better run of the game, but the game itself lacks some important features that make an autoscroller TAS interesting. I could go either way about having it published, so I'm voting Meh. Nice work overall, Soig, but you should probably look for a game with more varied action.

Well. This game is not suitable for TAS. But I do it fianlly. The reason is that it is my early submission. So I want to improve it. And this time I used #2 plane, too. Like my first movie of this game. Because #2 weapon is the strongest. It's S weapon can make highest damage. Other weapons is also stronger than other planes. Because the number of #2 shots is the most. So I chose #2. As for action. Such as what mklip2001 said. I should have done more varied action. Maybe I will redo this soon.

- First of all, there is no rhyme or reason as to which enemies are killed and when. I almost feel that more enemies should be killed. Not just merely killed, but killed in a way that shows off weapons and such, as well as in an artistic manner. - Second, downtimes are often filled with the same wobbling. While admittedly there isn't much to fill in the downtimes, wobbling isn't the solution to it, and it becomes old quickly. - Third, I think that control of the ship could be made more entertaining. There doesn't seem to be enough "close calls" (as close to enemies or bullets as possible). The tendency of the ship to move around a lot when strictly unnecessary also hastens the novelty of the run, such that the last few levels seem unremarkable after watching the first few. Also of note is the rather big amount of time lost after Stages 1 and 2 where the ship moves slowly to its set point before it says "Mission X Complete". There are other things I think could make the run better as well: - Don't necessarily aim for fastest time at all cost. But be fast, and entertaining at the same time. - There's a 2-player option. I must recommend that the run be done using 2-player. 2-player is just so much better. - There are other choices of ships at the beginning. Maybe another one is more entertaining, or maybe not. With this in mind, I vote no. If anyone has comments about this run, by all means post in this thread.

I haven't done so many kills. Because I learned from Gradius TAS. And this TAS didn't do lots of kills. If I redo this movie, I will pay attention in stage 1 and stage 2. When it says " Mission X complete". Other 2 planes' weapon are weaker than # 2 plane. So I chose #2 in movie. As for 2 planes option. I like 1 plane run. So I did it. But if I can redo it, I must do a 2 planes run!

Thank you for replying, Soig.

om, nom, nom... 'twas dry

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  File: Vapor Trail (U) [!].gen
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2330] Genesis Vapor Trail: Hyper Offence Formation by Soig in 20:09.62

Oh, are autoscrollers fair game for running now? I would have thought they'd only be acceptable as playarounds. Would be cool to see something more complex like Battle Garegga (esp. Harder or Extended) get picked apart. Stage 1 - .o(this game has great music) Stage 5 - .o(why didn't they have budget for more than 1 song)