Contra III - The Alien Wars TAS "Pacifist" in 14:06.70 by McBobX
Goals
Aims for fastest time possible
Pacifist Version
Uses death for fun not to save time
Uses hardest difficulty
One player in a multiplayer game
Genre:Shooter
Genre:Platforme
About the Run
This run improves the pacifist run by 1527 frames or 25.45s,but 414 frames was lost due to the use of snes9x 1.51,and that makes this run faster by just 1113 frames or 18.55s.Most of these improvements comes from more optimization on every stage
Special Thanks to:
Cpadolf for his glitched run
AshWilliams for his pacifist run
hero of the day for his 2-players run
Enjoy the "Pacifist" run
Nach: This run looks decent. As for definition of pacifist, in terms of this run: Only destroys enemies and obstacles that prevent advancement. Since those floating weapon things are neither an enemy nor an obstacle, I do not find destroying them in violation of the pacifist goal. Accepting as improvement to existing run.
This should probably be judged by the number of things you destroyed, not its' time. You destroyed almost twice as many things in Stage 1 as the old run did, a number of them for no significant reason.
Convince me to vote Yes.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
This is a really good run! I like the entertainment choices during the downtime, such as the boss celebration dance in Stage 2 and the musical firing at the beginning of Stage 4. Shooting the Stage 3 boss from above was a nice touch too. (And I like the way you ended the run :-) ).
One optimization that really caught my eye was the map movement in Stages 2 and 5. I think that's the first run of this game which properly rotates the map to make turns faster. (I think this was called "dual-vectoring" by Spider Waffle in the published movie's thread?)
I have a few questions or comments though:
1) In Stage 4, when you kill the gray guy underneath the big ship, you shoot up from underneath. The published any% run shoots diagonally. Which one is better?
2) The Stage 4 boss seems a little slow. Can you do more damage to the guns at the top and bottom by shooting more when they are off-screen?
3) With the brain boss, you only get the gray stone attack. I think it's been shown that this is not optimal; don't you beat the boss faster if it uses the attack that surrounds it with little brains?
EDIT: boct, when you comment on the objects in Stage 1, are you talking about destroying the weapon containers? I don't personally have a problem with destroying them in a pacifist run, but I guess I could see where some would have an issue with that.
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.
The run is okay, the game is cool, the sound effects make just no sense!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
EDIT: boct, when you comment on the objects in Stage 1, are you talking about destroying the weapon containers? I don't personally have a problem with destroying them in a pacifist run, but I guess I could see where some would have an issue with that.
Yes, that's what I'm taking issue with. My understanding of Pacifist branches here is that shots that hit anything destructible are to be minimized. Back when Soig submitted this Super C Pacifist movie, people were objecting that he shot enemies (without killing them) for luck manipulation.
I don't really object to getting weapons to speed the run up, but at the WORST, you should match the number of things you destroy to the previous movie, NEVER exceed it.
Being a pacifist is about not killing life. Weapon pods are not alive. I dont see the issue with killing something that is not alive. Weapon pods, and in CV games candles, are the runners self limitations.
I have not seen this yet as prolly wont till an encode is made. So I can only ask questions. Does the tas damage any enemy that does not need to be? Does the tas kill anything that does not hinder forward progression?
Look at the Contra pacifist tas discussion (page 2) and tas itself:
moozooh wrote:
Should we also care about enemies who jump into bottomless pits in stage 1? How about those who get scrolled offscreen in stage 3? We know getting scrolled means certain death in that stage. What about item carriers and stuff like spiky walls in stage 6—should we save those? What if saving enemies in stages 2 and 4 from being caught in the explosions cost several seconds per screen, increasing total time of the TAS by minutes? What if we need to "sacrifice" an enemy or two so that more could survive? That's a completely plausible scenario if you really want to push it that far with the pacifism idea.
I think it's not as important to truly live up to some fun idealistic concept such as being pacifist in a shooter, as it is important to make a movie that is fun to produce and, most certainly, fun to watch. It may be closer to the any% that way, but if it means I won't have to wait for meddling enemies to escape with their lives every time, that's totally fine by me.
Still killed shot extra pods and had many on screen deaths not attributed to the player directly. Why does this seem to come up every time? If the player does not kill enemies unnecessarily, what does it matter?
Let me see if I understand your thoughts on what a pacifist run should be. Kill nothing. Well, good luck beating the first boss in any stage.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Both "kill nothing unless necessary" and "destroy nothing unless necessary" are, in my opinion, acceptable ways to do pacifist goals. I personally favor the first goal more (and it seems Heidman does too) while boct is more in favor of the second, which is the stricter goal. I don't think there's anything wrong with having that perspective... the Castlevania pacifist run did meet that stricter goal for the most part.
I guess it makes sense to me if you think in terms of action movies. There are plenty of action movies where the heroes mow down tons of bad guys along the way (such as The Expendables). There are also plenty of action movies where the good guy causes lots of property damage but doesn't usually kill people (such as Terminator 2 or First Blood). This category of action movies is what I think of as representing pacifist runs. In contrast, there are fairly few action movies out there where property destruction is minimized as well, since it's harder to be entertaining under such strict guidelines.
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.
I am in favor of the runners ideas, no matter what they set the goal as. I am opposed to others not accepting the runners ideas and trying to impose other ideas on them.
So collecting weapon pods would be out, so they should be done low% style?
My personal thought on it is not killing anything that can kill the player. I know everyone has their own opinion, but it really does come down this one simple thing: If you think it should be done a different way, do it yourself. Till then, accept what other people put their hard work into for your entertainment and dont try and bring them down.
It will still come down to personal preference. But it would be nice if TASVideos did make an official ruling on it as they keep it really vague. But I kinda like that they keep it vague so people can have fun with the idea on their own like the CV minimalist tas did.
Forgot to start uploading. Will be here
Link to video
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
This was rather cool. Overhead stages were no optimal, player was moving using angles but did not rotate the camera to steer in the proper direction (walk in a strait line). This is not alot of time lost due to this but still something worth noting for any future attempts.
Fun watch = YES vote
PS: Thanks feos
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Nice run, and a great improvement over the published run. Voting yes.
Do you have any plans on doing any other Contra 3 runs? I know my 2 player tas can be improved by reducing lag throughout and by "dual vectoring" in the top down levels. It would be nice to see the run on a more accurate emulator too.
Voted yes, with a few thoughts and questions:
First, at about 49 secs, there's a enemy on the very left side of the screen who spontaneously dies. Why, and is that avoidable?
Second, I agree with the others here, that in a pacifist run, the fewer things destroyed, the better. Won't stop me from voting yes, as I loved other parts of this run (especially timing shots to the music).
Finally, I think for this game, using Barrier for a pacifist run is cheating. The idea is to dodge around obstacles, not run through them. I'd like to see the next version of this forgo the use of Barrier, even if it means a slower time.
The Pacifist category is open to interpretation and I haven't watched this movie, but I think the pacifist strategy should fall in line with the official description of the currently published movie:
Current Movie Description wrote:
Due to budget cutbacks, the guy who destroys the world bare-chested has been ordered to conserve his ammo. This run completes Contra 3 without shooting anything that isn't mandatory for winning the game. This includes enemies' projectiles.
The description is inaccurate because the published movie, in addition to every enemy it can't bypass, does shoot some weapon capsules. The problem I have with this run is that it shoots more of them than the published run.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Fair enough. I think we've established that a number of us don't count the weapon capsules in the usual pacifist goals, though I respect your call on this. You're right that the current description is inaccurate... I'll see if I can find some replacement that is more in line with what the current movie does.
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.
