TASVideoAgent, or Bisqwit himself, or someone else wrote:
>Nuts & Milk is a platform game deriving influences from a number of famous Nintendo games, including Mario Bros. (green and red fireballs), Donkey Kong Jr. (spring platforms, jumping from ladder to ladder and fruits) and Wrecking Crew (barrels). And as Kirby shows us, nothing can go wrong when you start with pink blobs.
This movie is a small improvement of 821+94=915 frames faster i.e. about 00:15.22 seconds to the published movie by the same author.
Note: The submission file has been updated once with a 94-frame improvement on Round 48.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.1.4a
  • Finishes the game as fast as possible
  • Acquires PERFECT ending (completes all bonus rounds without failing)
  • Acquires all fruits in all bonus rounds (not required for PERFECT ending)
  • Plays in the hardest mode (mode B)
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Manipulates enemy movements (which seem to be deterministic)
  • Uses no warps
  • Uses no level editor (for the concept, see this demo)

Tricks

Wall-Jump Tricks

Some wall-jumps requires your character to be positioned at odd x-coordinates which can be only reached with stepping off a cliff and bump into a wall or doing a short-jump and bump into a ceiling 1 block high.

Wall-Jump & Double Wall-Jump

Under a ceiling corner, short-jump outwards, and jump after 8 frames again.
Your character will begin to fall after 2 frames. You may wall-jump for the second time at this frame.

Long Wall-Jump

Requires odd x-coords.
Under a ceiling corner, long-jump outwards, and jump after 8 frames again.
This is an old trick found and has been used since my previous movie.

High Wall-Jump

Requires odd x-coords.
Under a ceiling corner, jump outwards, run left or right 8 after frames and jump after 2 more frames again.
This is not used in this movie.

Triple Wall-Jump

Requires odd x-coords and a ceiling that is at least 2 blocks tall.
Under a ceiling corner, jump outwards, jump after 8 frames, jump after 2 more frames and jump after 2 even more frames again.
This is new in this movie.

Other Movement Tricks

Recover from Stun without Jumping up

In order to recover from the stun from falling down a long distance, the jump button (A or B) has to be pressed down after a fixed period. This usually causes the pink hero to jump in positon as well. The jump can be avoided in two ways:
  • By falling down onto a rope ladder. You can't jump on a rope ladder.
  • By holding down the jump button since the last time you are on the ground. This is new in this movie.

Zip on Rope Ladders

You may seize to and start to climb up or down on a rope ladder even before you get to the middle point between the two ropes. When you are climbing up or down a rope ladder from its leftmost or rightmost tile block, the game will set your x-coord to a value aligned to the ladder's x-coord, centring you at the ladder horizontally, which effectively makes you zip on the ladder horizontally.

Enemy Movement Manipulation Tricks

You may manipulate the enemies to perform some favourable movements.

Keep on Going Forward after You Jump over Them

If you perform a successive jump after jumping over your enemies, they are likely to ignore you and keep going on. Whether this happens depends on your cycles (2 frames) and and theirs (3 frames).

Stall Another Enemy Passing-by

If two enemies are walking/climbing past each other toward opposite directions, one (depending on their order in the memory?) will be stalled at position until the other one gets past.

Quickly Fall Down into Water upon Round Completion

This animation costs quite some time as long as the enemies are falling. This can and should be minimized by manipulating the enemies to get to the water surface as close as possible before the you complete the round.
Note: On Rounds 32, a longer route was chosen over the shortest one for this very reason.

Comments

Some Stage-by-Stage Comments

Round 01

It is possible to use the level editor from the title menu to shorten this round as demonstrated before. However, that would confict with the rational of collecting all fruits in all rounds, and is therefore denied.

Round 09

I spent some frames to manipulate the enmy's movement and saved time in the end.

Round 11

I simply mistimed the shortest route in my previous movie. The mistake is corrected this time.

Round 12

There is no fast way to prevent the upper enemy from either respawning after drowing or simply following me up. The former situation is faster than the later and presented in this movie.

Round 16

The solution of this round including the manipulation to lure the enemy to fall into the water was the excatly same as in my previous movie.

Round 23

I do have acquired the last banana. The scores may prove this.

Round 24

In my previous movie, I stated that the two trampolines were too far away from the house and two successive bounces on them would stun my pink blob when it landed in front of the house. However afterwards, I found it barely possible to land slightly inside the house, and that saved quite some time.

Round 29

Any way to manipulate the upper enemy to jump down earlier would be unfortunately slower in the end.

Round 32

It would be a shorter route to go left after falling down to the lowest floor. However, taking that route would also cause the enemy to be positioned at a great height above the water level, which would cost quite some time at the end. Therefore, the second shortest route was instead taken in this movie, which turned out to be the fastest as the enemy was positioned right on the water surface when the Round was finished.

Round 37

It would be slower to zip on the leftmost ladder because that would delay my landing.

Roung 39

The edge-collsion abuse leads to this new interesting strategy. Enemy manipulations were perfect.

Round 41

This new strategy is exactly as fast as the old strategy. I just intended to make it look different.

Round 44

The enemy was manipulated to stay on the lowest floor at the cost of several frames. This saved time in the end.

Round 45

It is amazing that I was able to save time so much time even on such a seemingly straight-forword stage.

Round 46

Again, it is amazing that I was able to save time so much time even on such a seemingly straight-forword stage.

Round 48

This was the first place where the newly discovered Triple Wall-Jump Glitch could be used to save time.

Round 49

There is no enough time to get the fruit on the lower-left, jump back up the second floor and avoid the enemy there before it goes down the floor. The Triple Wall-Jump Glitch saved time again.

Thanks

Special thanks to Hisatoki for the solutions of Rounds 11 and 39.

DarkKobold: I'll take care of this.
DarkKobold: Easily accepting, nice improvement.
klmz: I have replaced the submission file with an updated one that improves Round 48 by 94 frames. Sorry for the trouble.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3164: klmz's NES Nuts & Milk "100%" in 14:06.07
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Oh gee, way to strum at my nostalgia cords. And my juvenile humour cords. Yes voted on account for the fact it improved an already good TAS.
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2154)
Joined: 5/22/2007
Posts: 1134
Location: Glitchvania
A level-by-level comparison encode would be great.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Skilled player (1440)
Joined: 12/30/2007
Posts: 486
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klmz wrote:
A level-by-level comparison encode would be great.
I want to see this.
Do the work.
NitroGenesis
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Joined: 12/24/2009
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X2poet wrote:
klmz wrote:
A level-by-level comparison encode would be great.
I want to see this.
I have a crazy idea on how to do this. But I'll need some time, so first, expect an SD + HD encode from moi.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
NitroGenesis, you're gonna hate me. I'm already uploading the HD encode, and the SD encode is done. As well as that, I made a scaled encode.
NitroGenesis
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Fine with me. Oh, and have a yes vote klmz, I really love this game, and the run is entertaining.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Standard encode can be found here and a special scaled encode can be found here. I'm interested in seeing audience reactions to the encodes... but I know you are all just going to watch it on YouTube. Feel free to embed when it uploads. I gotta sleep.
Joined: 11/3/2010
Posts: 22
That was a pretty solid run, a good example of an NES TAS, I'd say. Yes vote from me.
Post subject: Re: #3164: klmz's NES Nuts & Milk "100%" in 14:07.64
Joined: 7/24/2007
Posts: 74
TASVideoAgent wrote:
TASVideoAgent, or Bisqwit himself, or someone else wrote: Nuts & Milk is a platform game deriving influences from a number of famous Nintendo games, including Mario Bros. (green and red fireballs), Donkey Kong Jr. (spring platforms, jumping from ladder to ladder and fruits) and Wrecking Crew (barrels). And as Kirby shows us, nothing can go wrong when you start with pink blobs.
This game actually predates Wrecking Crew.
Joined: 5/30/2011
Posts: 29
Loved it. Now that I'm no longer a Lurker after this post, I'll be voting yes. ;)
mklip2001
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Nice improvement. The game definitely looks more broken.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
sgrunt
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An up-to-date encode (i.e. using the new submission file) for everyone: http://www.archive.org/download/NesNutsMilk100ByKlmzIn1406.07/nutsandmilk-tasv2-100p-klmz.mp4 YouTube up above; 512kb in the same place as the above encode.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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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. ---- [1821] NES Nuts & Milk "100%" by klmz in 14:06.07
Joined: 1/8/2011
Posts: 74
Location: Saturn Valley Medical Center
Very good run klmz, and a beautiful encode flygon, I enjoyed the enemy avoidance maneuvers in this TAS. Yes vote from me.
Samus plays the SA-Xaphone