(Link to video)

Raccoon Forest, july 1998, Stars Alpha Team, a police elite unit is doing a reckon after a serie of unresolved murders.
Join Jill and Chris to uncover the root events of Raccon City. Welcome in the prelude to the horror.

Summary

  • Use Suboptimal Character
  • Abuse Programming Error
  • Takes Damage To Save Time
  • Manipulates Luck
  • Emulator used: psxjin (2.0.2)
  • Length:57:42 Frames:207757 Re-records:32208
  • Doors Opened : 172
  • Zombies Killed : 1


About this movie


Ive been contacted on irc last month by Uroboros who did a Hunk run for Resident Evil2, I was pleased by the quality of the run (especially for a begginer) and convinced him that first it would be better to do the main game, we decided to co-op and do the 4 A/B movies (outch!).
Soon afterward Ajax decided to submit his run, while at first look the movie looked great I figured it was missing precision when looking closer to the input file, we decided then with Uroboros to optimize this movie before going further with RE2.
This is 03:41.85 faster than the canceled movie (note that the canceled movie end 63 seconds too late, if the movie ending doesnt fit audiance/judges this can be changed easly). Id like to give Ajax proper credits for doing a good draft/test run, it wasnt very hard to optimize our movie with that reference, yet no input was kept so I dont put him as a co-author. We use original mode because it is faster.
Thanks also to Spider-Waffle for pointing out the glitch with the plant to get the armor key without chemical, i dont know with precision how much this saved but its over a minute, and this is the main twist compared to Ajax's movie. It might be possible to optimize further the skip and damage itself, but thats the best we nailed down so far.
The difference route wise with canceled movie is that you dont have to get the chemical so it avoid the whole right wing exploration of the mansion in the begin, but this also prevent the meeting with barry (giving acid rounds), this switch the set of cutscenes, forcing you to listen to barry behind 002's door, note that if you get the key before listening to that dialogue, then you can open door and get an extra cutscene with barry, leading also to barry not saving you at the plant boss.
If it wasnt for that trick we would still been about a minute faster, while following the older route we did save ~20seconds for reaching the serum room trought various optimizations. To be totally frank the canceled movie was poor technically (but still pretty good on route), just on the main menu we could save over 100 frames, you can even notice real time the intro starting after menus.
Im not going to be a lot verbose on the technical aspect of this movie, I dont think this is "perfect" but I think we did quite a good job and explored many strategies, the menu "trick" that Ajax did use prooved to be slower in most cases, Im not even sure it save anything for real time speedrunners because the time it take to go menu is higher than the time it take for Jill finishing her animation (and yeah the time in menus is counted for final time), this is usefull for snake basicly it save a few frames because you are forced to switch guns, if you press menu too fast then damage doesnt register.
We founded a few tricks, but you can hardly call them "tricks", for exemple when you USE an item, instead of letting the menu disapear by itself, you can press start after waiting one frame and remove about 6/7 frames from the fade out, rapid shooting works like in RE3 (turbo the R1 key and hold X), Jill doesnt run faster with a one handed weapon in this game.
The snake boss required some luck manipulation to register full damage with grenades, but otherwise we arent really needing to manipulate luck, the ammount of rooms affect by rng is very small (4 or 5 by memory), it affect usually the AI of the zombies, otherwise the game is flat deterministic and its one of the most syncable game I tased so far, probably due to the fact this game is a nest of frame rules (cameras, menu, doors ect...).
The range for further optimization depend of the ammount of route change involved, if the route is stricly the same i dont except more than 5-10 seconds to be saved, unless we did some errors that we are not aware off. The complexity of the cutscenes sets may allow for route based time savers, but it require long and tedious testings, maybe avoiding the bazooka could save time but thats probably tight.
Now one more question you guys will want to know about is why PSX and not NDS, well, im all for having the 2 versions published, the games are quite differents with the cutscene removal and extra movements ect... Yet, i dont feel like the screen split would make the NDS version prefered _over_ PSX, if I had to choose only one then I would go for original PSX full screen and cheesy acting.
Then finally why Jill and not Chris, I believe both should be published, Best ending would require several more minutes not sure if its worth to do it, we went for Jill first simply to reuse the draft from Ajax, we are now going to do Chris before going further into RE2.


Uroboros Comments


This is my first TAS submission, first of all sorry for my poor english, i need to use translator sometimes.
Well, i decided to start re1 with arukAdo for being much simple than re2, first for not needing the "RE2/3 fix," and second for reusing a draft from AjAX, by the way i have an undone project of re2 which i really hope to finish after we're done with re1 stuff.
About the spider boss, (not sure if already quoted) i believe its the second easier boss in the game because we don't need to kill it, the first one is the plant boss because his hp isn't random Original mode, it always will be defeated with 3 grenades in this mode.
we needed to use a slightly different method in spider as well, shooting grenades in front of the door or else the spider throw us venom, even this way we saved a few frames.
I don't have much things to say here because arukAdo already tells everything you need to know about the movie.


Enjoy !

sgrunt: Replaced the submission file with one that has the correct frame count of the header.
Mukki: Judging...
Mukki: Accepting as an obsoletion of the currently published run of Resident Evil Deadly Silence. Full opinion...

GabCM: It's been a while since I've published something.

TASVideoAgent
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I voted yes cause I watched this already (I uploaded this) and this is a much better TAS than my utterly bad looking one I did. EDIT: Ok, Technical Side of my TAS sucked, is that better now :P
Joined: 4/3/2005
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Playing with Jill is like playing the easy difficulty setting. I'll wait for the Chris version.
No.
Warepire
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Nice tricks and execution, looked a lot better than AjAX run. Though all the door cinematics etc really kills the entertainment. I have to vote meh on this.
Sir_VG
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No Jill Sandwich? What kind of run is this? :P
Taking over the world, one game at a time. Currently TASing: Nothing
Hoandjzj
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3 shots and the Monster is gone =)) is this really an easy difficult?! Anyway, voting YES for the very interesting run! :D Jill shows her true face at the very end =))
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 31
I voted "Meh" because I encourage people to go faster then this. I would like to see more games added to the site, even if they have horrible room transitions/load time. This game is a classic. However, I did see one part where you pause, check the map, and back out again. (11:35) I don't see this as optimized, and I'd like to see a quicker version. (Granted, there may have been manipulation or a wierd equip glitch.) I honestly didn't watch after that. This must have some of the worst voice acting ever, but I remember being freaked out by this game when it came out! :D
Joined: 3/13/2004
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If you publish this, may I suggest "Only one zombie was harmed in the making of this film" as a tagline?
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fap @ 58:53
Working on: Legend of Legaia, Vagrant Story
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Banarak wrote:
However, I did see one part where you pause, check the map, and back out again. (11:35) I don't see this as optimized, and I'd like to see a quicker version. (Granted, there may have been manipulation or a wierd equip glitch.) I honestly didn't watch after that.
The game actually forces this, as well as forcing certain actions in a couple of places (entering the dining room for the first time, and departing Richard to get the serum).
Hoandjzj
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feitclub wrote:
If you publish this, may I suggest "Only one zombie was harmed in the making of this film" as a tagline?
I think it's 2! The 1st one was hit with Bazoka in the beginning! The 2nd one is the last boss :P
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Warepire wrote:
Though all the door cinematics etc really kills the entertainment. I have to vote meh on this.
Agreed. The DS run also uses Jill, but is much more entertaining because of the lack of "door cinematics". =P Would the GameCube version be better?
Joined: 6/30/2010
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Make runs for each character and version... and publish them all!
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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jlun2 wrote:
Warepire wrote:
Though all the door cinematics etc really kills the entertainment. I have to vote meh on this.
Agreed. The DS run also uses Jill, but is much more entertaining because of the lack of "door cinematics". =P Would the GameCube version be better?
Gamecube would be longer than this, around 10 minutes longer and would contains more door transitions.
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The GC version still does have merit for TASing, because the puzzles are so different, the route will be different, and there are features not in the original like the quickturn, and self-defence items. Not all of these will be useful for a TAS of course, but there's enough differences to warrant it alongside this I feel.
Joined: 1/23/2007
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Yeah I know that no worries, I was referring to the doors cinematic, I wasn't stating that the NGC was not a good candidate here :)
Joined: 12/6/2008
Posts: 1193
DrJones wrote:
Playing with Jill is like playing the easy difficulty setting. I'll wait for the Chris version.
Yeah that's what we all want to see. Two less inventory slots and managing small keys. That is going to make for a lot of fun and interesting item managing! Anywho. This TAS is a lot better optimized than the last one and you guys showed me things about the game I did not know before. Which is pretty hard. However for a TAS I still think this is not a good game choice. So it's a meh from me. Btw. had "Kansas - Carry on Wayward son" in the background for parts of this TAS and it fits awesoe with Jill playing the piano. I'm kinda temped doing an AMV now. Damn you! :D
Jungon
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Sir VG wrote:
No Jill Sandwich? What kind of run is this? :P
If Jill was to get the shotgun, would the run be more interesting? I voted Meh because of the second half ... x.x
Banarak wrote:
I voted "Meh" because I encourage people to go faster then this. . . . . This must have some of the worst voice acting ever, but I remember being freaked out by this game when it came out! :D
Me too, Meh and encouraging \o/ The nostalgia wins on me, I know the voice acting is one of the worst ever, but.. I kind of like it, even when Richard is talking.. XD
Hoandjzj wrote:
feitclub wrote:
If you publish this, may I suggest "Only one zombie was harmed in the making of this film" as a tagline?
I think it's 2! The 1st one was hit with Bazoka in the beginning! The 2nd one is the last boss :P
One zombie shot, one exploded (both inside the dining room), one plant burned, one biological weapon bazooked,... I think that's the final count o_o
andypanther wrote:
Make runs for each character and version... and publish them all!
I would like to see the fastest Jill run saving Chris, and the fastest Chris run making Rebecca die in the library... xP
Slowking wrote:
DrJones wrote:
Playing with Jill is like playing the easy difficulty setting. I'll wait for the Chris version.
Yeah that's what we all want to see. Two less inventory slots and managing small keys. That is going to make for a lot of fun and interesting item managing!
I doubt it will be faster than this, but,... if Chris can bypass plants, get no small keys, and have Rebecca whipped on the butt to work faster, .. I would definitely watch the entire run.. +D
*Jungon*/*Johnnyz* smilie weirdo =P ^^ o.o @__@ +D
Joined: 1/23/2007
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FYI, Chris run will be faster, Chris scenario's always was faster, by at least 4 minutes.
Joined: 6/9/2011
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The new route is amazing and unexpected, and realization is much less sloppy-looking than in the cancelled submission to say the least. Is it possible to make a doorless encode? Seems like the abundance of door transitions is the only complaint so far.
Banarak wrote:
I voted "Meh" because I encourage people to go faster then this.
This doesn't make any sense. It's like saying "i dont know how to improve this and whether it's possible at all, but you guys should do it". The only "flaw" that you pointed out isn't a flaw, as was pointed by Toothache already.
Banarak wrote:
I honestly didn't watch after that.
oh, wonderful.
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abyrvalg wrote:
Is it possible to make a doorless encode?
I dont think this will be allowed for a publication, also please note that there is almost 50 less doors than in RE3 For those wandering about chris, it should be ~~ 52-54 min range, dont take this estimation for granted tho but yeah hes definitly faster (less cutscenes), he also benefit from the tentacles skip. Given theres "only" 3 boss to fight and that we wont kill any zombies, the whole "item management" thing doesnt apply much, there sould be only 2 extra chest access i think. If you look at jill inventory youll see she still have keys from mansion at the end, so yeah theres nothing seriously problematic from that aside to drop useless items.
sgrunt
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arukAdo wrote:
abyrvalg wrote:
Is it possible to make a doorless encode?
I dont think this will be allowed for a publication
Not for the primary encode, but if there's demand for such a thing I'm sure someone will be willing to work on one as a secondary encode (in the spirit of, say, the Sonic Advance camhack encode).
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Oh yeah right, in that perspective it could be more enjoyable to watch indeed.
mklip2001
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Nice job with this! I found this pretty interesting, though I do wonder if it makes sense to have both this and the DS remake included on the site. I would probably suggest that this obsolete the DS version, as it is the original, and the route in this run is also better. In any case, I'll give this a Yes vote. Also, AjAX, don't be hard on yourself about your prior run. It seems it was a big help to have that run available for reference.
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.
Joined: 1/23/2007
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Hey no worry My TAS sucked and I know it by now, I didn't have the knowledge and even though I took the criticism hard at first it made me realized a shitloads of thing about TASing, arukAdo is of great help lately so I ain't sour about this :P