I'm looking to clean up on my run, hopefully for the last time. The way the game throws bullets and objects (in all different directions) at Quaid makes the game more compromising and tougher to TAS through. But as long as I have at least 2 whole units of energy to clear damage from falling rocks in Mars (going toward the end / very hard to avoid and even get a damage boost from), the rest of the game should go through smoothly.
My three main objectives that I believe would shave at least another second or two off my previous WIP, are:
To have 5.5 to 6 units of life ready to face the trenchcoat man at the cement factory just so I can set a faster time of hitting him quicker. I may need to hold off getting a damage boost or two from the red guards to make sure I am ready.
I am also looking to get damage boosts from UFO bombs in Mars' 1st stage, but that is only if I have enough life to do that. However, I still need to make sure I have enough to clear the falling rocks.
My other main objective is to try to score more saved frames by slightly improve the driving in Mars. In the 1st and 3rd sections, I slowed down, waited, and then punched the gas again. In the 2nd stage, I slowed down, went up, and punched the gas again to barely clear that.
Altogether, I might look at a shave-off of at least 140 frames. Beyond this, please accept as my contribution. =(
Glad you're still working on this. Another thing to look at on the driving stage is lag -- this seems to be one of the most laggy areas. Don't know if maybe killing off some enemies would help (if you can even do that)
Indeed, that driving stage can be lag. There is no way I can reverse it using glitch techniques either. I was only able to kill one car per section, the rest I couldn't reach.
Alright, 5:30.58[/color] - I only shaved off 31 more frames. But if this is finally the run everyone wants to see, I'll submit! =) I'd be going into exhaustion if this requires more work than I have already done and discovered. I don't know if I can push this any further. =/
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1047136218/total-recall-symbolic_X.fcm
The game's looking a lot more broken than the last WIP I saw. Very cool how Quaid now jitters like a monkey on crack. The only thing I saw that might be improvable is the stoppage on those steps around frame 17,000. You might be able to climb up more smoothly if you time the jumps differently.
Sorry if that's already been addressed and/or doesn't work.
Good job, anyhow. :)
Very cool how Quaid now jitters like a monkey on crack.
Talking about the first stage of Mars? By now, I should know exactly how to make Quaid dance while waiting for the doors on that stage to open. Get down! Get dirty! Boogity-boogity-boogity! It took a lot of frame advance to perfect that.
It looks better. But at the risk of "exhausting" you, I still think it can be significantly faster (in the range of a couple seconds)
Twisted Eye wrote:
(I have a fight with the gun girl TAS that's a couple hundred frames faster than yours; remember to follow her and punch her in the air every other frame because they all count)
Well, you've made it a lot faster since then, but here's an improvement: Demo
From the frame when the boss appears on screen, to the time that the screen goes totally black after leaving, this method is about 75 frames faster. It would be even more if the door didn't delay "opening" for some reason. With more patience you could definitely improve on the demo as well.
A big help is watching the boss's health. In FCEU, go to the Tools menu and choose Memory Watch... In the window that pops up, there are a bunch of places to type stuff. In the very top left hand box under Address, type 2c2 Then, keeping the Memory Watch window open, go back to the main window and continue recording your movie. The corresponding Value box will show that memory addresses value, in this case the boss's HP.
Well that was more lengthy than I had intended to post. I hope you continue to work with this!
Insane! I might try this again. Thanx alden. I can't wait to get this done.
About your demo, though. It wouldn't matter if her gun was far from Quaid's reach while he was making his way to the door, right? I'm talking about moving forward after Quaid gets through raping the woman. I mean, I can still TAS through the game using fists and definitely not trusting bullets except in Mars.
Yes, in my movie you wouldn't be able to exit the room any faster by not getting the gun, because the door does not let you exit for a while. I think in general fists will be better, but I'm sure bullets will still be useful (probably on the last boss for example). If you feel like working on it more I could look for more memory addresses for the hp of other things, and position and speed etc.
I make another attempt again, but this time, I tried that apartment boss trick you showed me and it did work like a charm. Then I found out just now that the apartment door does not allow Quaid to exit until the small monitors (on both sides of the big screen) reveal Richter coming out of an elevator. I'm afraid that is how you know the stage can be beat. The image below is the exact frame where Richter starts coming through the elevators (monitors):
And what's funny is sometimes if Quaid keeps fingering the gun lady between her legs, more than she could take within mid air, she may not be able to give him her gun. For the run I'm doing, I did a little entertainment by "power-punching" her to the ground like it was real. She didn't drop her gun, and as soon as it came to the frame where Quaid was free to exit, the stage was complete and little to no frames were needed to get to the exit. It was within precise!
And now, I have to get serious with the rest of the run, I am trying not to give away a lot of frames plus I seek a little further improvement. I might score 5'29 but that is hard yet extreme work. We're gunna keep tearing up this game without holding back!
Okay, it wasn't 5'29 like I thought. It's 5'22.87 instead! Can it get any more extreme than that?!
Two sources of improvement (from my previous WIP) include a quicker defeat over the apartment chick, and that I didn't have to trust a higher platform to get to the 2nd exit at the mining stage of Mars.
As I look back, I can tell that I cracked EvilHeart's run by more than two and a half minutes! I give thanks to Yarkie (out of YouTube), Alden, and Twisted Eye. =)
Hopefully this will show exactly how this game is broken. =)
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1660299824/Total_Recall_symbolic_X%20%5B2%5D.fcm
I did a breakdown between my newest run and my previous WIP. The numbers in the first two columns are the frame numbers of starting points for each stage.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/2/4/1739991/TR_compare.txt
I have to admit, I don't see in what way that I would somehow give up 71 frames. My only screw up could likely be around the Subway. It looked like I did okay everywhere else, hmm...
Looks really good. One last thing to try - in the red cave, you have to jump past the one door, to jump up - could you use the same punch glitch to get there faster?
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I just discovered a weird new glitch in Quaid's apartment! It can't be used to advantage for long-term, but when Quaid gets up to the door, he can do a right, down, right, down per-frame to go past the exit and into the wall. If he continues the right/down/right/down, he will fall into the lower section of the screen where the chairs are at. I'll try to put a movie on this later.
For now, I am focusing on fixing the subway part where I felt I was a little bit slow. I might try to pull or at least take back about 30 to 60 frames based on what I lost in my latest WIP. However, I have to mock the remaining part of the game and not lose another frame!
Nice glitch :) I got it to work the way you described, but it doesn't seem to work anywhere else I tested. That's too bad. Maybe you can find somewhere though?
Also: I think you can still improve the apartment fight if you want, by at least 5 frames.
Yeah, I tried that at the cement factory, Mars welcome center, and even the end of the security checkpoint toward the subway. It wouldn't let me pull it. If it did, I would've pulled more time off my latest WIP and probably score about 5:10 to 5:20. I have not tried right/down/right/down at Digger Dan's stage at Mars, but I have a gutsy feeling that will hold me back like some of the others.
And one more thing about Quaid's apartment. Quaid will likely get stuck once he glitches through the side wall for too long. However, he can do a left/down/left/down per-frame to go behind the couches! BUT, he won't be able to jump back into the stage.
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
Interesting, I'll have to look into that one some time.
One time I was doing the 'punch rapidly in the air' glitch while falling down into the next screen and instead it took me somewhere else in the game entirely, frozen. I was in Mars first and then suddenly I was in the cement factory and it was very strange. I've been meaning to double check if it's reproducible and if it's ever functional as a skip.
I've been away from my computer too much but I'm tempted to make a full TAS of this myself and see what happens.
I've been away from my computer too much but I'm tempted to make a full TAS of this myself and see what happens.
I'm giving my research a break at this point, but I'll get back into the hunt sometime soon. Be sure you look at my latest WIP (5'22.87). Since I felt a little slow at the subway, you might save frames out of that. And be sure to watch and carefully learn from the other places I pretty much did a stampede through. I project that this is close to perfect.
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
I guess I'll just come out and say that you're a little slow everywhere. the one wip I made forever ago is faster at the very first stage than your very newest wip by 9 frames already, and that is the simplest area to do. I wanted to keep letting you knock away at it but I don't know. I really see a full effort knocking off at least 12 more seconds, if I can maintain full-on precision. Also thanks ahead of time to Alden for the memory address for the apartment fight.
I just can't get the time to do this run, even if it's easy and short compared to most other runs. Okay I'll do it in the morning, I don't care if I wake anyone up, ha ha! It's just been bugging me the last few weeks real bad; I want this game finished and out of my head FOREVER!
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Twisted Eye wrote:
Okay I'll do it in the morning, I don't care if I wake anyone up, ha ha! It's just been bugging me the last few weeks real bad; I want this game finished and out of my head FOREVER!
Twisted Eye: any progress? Just curious. I still got my latest FCM movie where it's 5:22.87 but I'm not going to do anything with it until I see/do another optimized attempt. Thought I'd play it safe. =)
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 632
Location: Seattle, WA
Nah my life has been pretty stressful, and when I started over I was already behind by two frames. A single lost frame means a total start-over of the relative area. I can try again when I get the chance. This game isn't really worth any special attention so don't worry about me. I really should give it another shot though soon.
this rom Total_Recall_(U) dont work fine here
does this needs a special config?
im using fceu-rerecording-0.98.28
because im getting the screen all mixed with other elements. i cant dewscribe, but its like half of the screen its good, and other its bugged
And what's funny is sometimes if Quaid keeps fingering the gun lady between her legs, more than she could take within mid air, she may not be able to give him her gun. For the run I'm doing, I did a little entertainment by "power-punching" her to the ground like it was real. She didn't drop her gun, and as soon as it came to the frame where Quaid was free to exit, the stage was complete and little to no frames were needed to get to the exit. It was within precise!
And now, I have to get serious with the rest of the run, I am trying not to give away a lot of frames plus I seek a little further improvement. I might score 5'29 but that is hard yet extreme work. We're gunna keep tearing up this game without holding back!
