"Destroying Angel: Reap & execute divine judgment upon el Castillo de Salazar"
Artist's Cut (Weapon Swaps and Item Grabs removed):
Goal: Highest Score
- This is accomplished by achieving Maximum Kills & Highest Bonus Chest Kill count.
Secondary Goals:
- Maximum Kills in a Row (Combo)
- Speed, based on In-Game Timer (To extent necessary to determine time saved for incorporation into improvement strategies)
- Entertainment (This became higher priority than Speed once the Speed baseline was determined)
Result:
- Score: 411770
- Enemies killed: 348 (Maxed)
- Bonus Chest Kills: 41+42+42=125
- Max kills in a row: 348 (Maxed)
- Rank: 5 Stars (Maxed, Granted for scoring at least 60000 points)
- The last frame necessary for this movie to get to the result screen is 23139 frames (48208 VI) @ 13:26.47.
About The Mercenaries
Mercenaries is unlocked by completing the main game. It is a timed minigame with the objective of scoring the most points before time runs out. Per the intro of a map "Eliminate as many Ganados as you can before your evac chopper arrives! Successive kills will result in earning you more points!" Initially only Leon is selectable. There are four other characters playable when unlocked after scoring 30000+ points in one of the four (unofficially named) maps:
- Ada from the Village (Stage 1)
- Krauser from the Castle (Stage 2)
- Hunk from the Base (Stage 3)
- Wesker from the Waterworld (Stage 4)
Each map starts with two minutes of gameplay time, and time extensions are spread throughout the map. The Castle map has a total game time of up to 9 minutes. Item menu, item grabs, and cutscenes do not consume game time. Gameplay ends when the player dies, or when time runs out (the player is "rescued").
Each map has three Bonus Chest timers. Each gives 31 seconds during which time extra points are awarded for each regular enemy kill. The majority of effort put into this TAS was spent optimizing the Bonus Chests, with kills being registered with few, if any, frames to spare.
The USA(NTSC) GameCube version using Wesker is optimum for achieving Highest Score in this stage. The enemy AI is aggressive. Enemies run into the player's line of sight, meaning less time is wasted hunting, and more time is focused on killing and moving to the next objective. Wesker has the best weapon selection.
The score for a good run on this stage is 26270+1000*(Kills)+300*(Bonus Chest Kills).
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details
HERE.
A maximum possible score for this stage has not yet been found, and probably won't be found in this Age, but competition was fierce. See "Iterative Optimization" below.
Spawning:
The enemy spawning is difficult to predict and control. Here are some general tips.
- Some enemies appear only once when a zone is entered.
- Most enemies re-appear in a zone at certain time intervals, usually 10 seconds.
- If an enemy is killed too slowly, it may not appear during the next zone re-spawn.
- If a spawn group would result in more than ten enemies on screen, the whole spawn group will be delayed.
- Each spawn group will respawn a fixed number of total enemies.
- Most points of the map are in one spawn zone.
- Some points of the map are in no spawn zones. Examples: Between the archway and stairs leading to the 1st bonus chest, and in the final doorway.
- Two very small points on the map are in two spawn zones: The stairs from the main upper level to the archer level and from the main level up to the final room level. These points greatly simplified the upper level gameplay.
- In all but a few instances I entered the minimum distance required into a spawn zone before turning around.
Manipulations: The reason for high Re-Record to Frame Ratio
Luck (RNG) is based on actions the player takes. RNG was heavily manipulated throughout the run by trial and error. When Wesker pauses, or turns in an odd direction, pulls out a weapon for no apparent reason, it is usually because I was manipulating ammo drops. This manipulation achieved the following:
- Critical Headshots- In high scoring real-time runs, the pistol is only used to shoot barrels and to get emergency kills if Rifle and Magnum ammo runs out due to unreliability. With a Crit probability of about 50%, TAS effectively turns it to 100%.
- Desirable Ammo drops, primarily Hand Grenades used for blowing up enemies outside Wesker's line of sight.
- Plagas (Bug like monsters which pop out of the mouths of a few specific zealots) were not allowed to appear until the end when plagas were spawned for entertainment.
Enemy AI was manipulated to:
- Keep them from damaging Wesker (except for two points where getting grabbed protected against a close blast and interrupted a slow animation)
- Keep postmortem movement to a minimum (for quicker respawning)
- Get them in position for certain gunshots and grenade tosses.
Enemies:
- Bald Zealot: Easy pickings with the handgun.
- Shield Zealot: Very defensive. Using A-stick+D-pad aiming lets me headshot them with the pistol before they can protect themselves.
- Helmeted Zealot: The most annoying enemies to deal with in this TAS. Can't be efficiently killed with the pistol, and the Killer7 takes too long to kill near the end of bonus timers, leaving the slow Rifle as the only option to end the 1st and 3rd bonus chests.
- Leader: Has ram skull mask. High health. Two appear (one during a cutscene during 2nd bonus chest, the other is in the group at entering the final room).
- Garrador: Two appear, one after kill 25 on lower level and one in final room. Can be killed with one rifle or magnum shot to its plaga (weak point).
- Armored Garrador: Higher health. One in final room. Killed with one magnum shot to its plaga.
Wesker's Arsenal:
Firearms:
- Silenced Handgun: Primary weapon used in this TAS, it shall hereby be known in this write-up as the "TASER" CANNON (don't forget the quotes). The silencer is usually discarded in high score runs to free up more space in the weapon inventory (attache case), but it is kept here for aesthetics. It is the fastest and weakest gun, quick to draw and lower. It's effective only for getting critical headshots against non-masked Zealots, and stunning zealots for melee attacks or follow-up shots. It cannot shoot through any enemies.
- Killer7: A powerful magnum. Primarily used for killing helmeted zealots. Used to kill two Garradors during the 3rd bonus chest. Limited ammo. Quick to draw and slow to lower. 3 enemy penetration. Body shot kills register when body stops moving.
- Sniper Rifle: The primary weapon in real-time runs due to its power, instant kills, and 5 enemy penetration. Very slow to draw and slow to lower, making its use limited in TAS.
Granades:
When a grenade used is the last of its type in Wesker's inventory, there is very little immobility after the toss. If there are more in inventory, there is a huge delay. This is why I discard 4 grenades before the last grenade toss during the 1st Bonus Chest. Before grabbing the 3rd Bonus Chest, hand grenades were planted so that the last one was used in inventory multiple times. The character runs faster with a grenade equipped, which is the purpose for swapping to grenade in many instances.
- Flash Grenade: Used twice for stunning enemies. Can also kill plagas. Kept in inventory for increasing run speed when no other grenade is available.
- Incindiary Grenade: Lingering area of effect, kills register slowly after burning enemies drop.
- Hand Grenade: Used for taking out large groups and for killing enemies outside player's line of sight. Vital for maximizing Bonus Chest kill.
Aiming:
Dolphin's TAS input was used extensively to minimize aiming time.
- Analog Stick: Most Precise (Slowest), Has radial conversion (i.e., full right tilt with full up tilt will result in slower movement right than full right tile alone).
- D-Pad: Faster than full tilt A-stick. No radial conversion.
- D-Pad+Analog Stick: In opposition, this can fill the speed range between Analog Stick alone or D-Pad alone. Used in combination aiming is quicker than either individually. Constructively using this technique, the Rifle can swing 180 degrees in the time between shots. Used during immobility period after firing a shot to turn toward next objective.
- C-Stick Quick Aiming: Tilting C-stick left or right and pressing R will cause the player to rotate while drawing a weapon, which is faster than turning with the weapon drawn.
- C-Stick Multi Turn: A C-Stick turn can be interrupted by releasing R for 1 frame, and holding R again. This can be chained together for very quick turning over large angles.
Iterative Optimization: The Cooperative Pursuit of the "Perfect Score"
Real Time Runs:
- Yankichi's 332970 World Record (The score I was gunning for), can no longer find video.
- My 333870 WR (Short-Lived, Yankichi beat it shortly after), OCT-2006 PART 1 PART 2
- My Personal Best 341270 (600 points from tying Roxus and WAVE's WR at the time) 26-AUG-2007 PART 1PART 2
- Roxus' 351270 WR 14-JUL-2008 (He was so good I quit) PART 1 PART 2
- 95krauser's 342770 w/Krauser (highest non-Wesker score I've seen, and with Wii's tame enemy AI) 7-SEP-2013 HERE
- Derek Taylor's 366070 WR (Longstanding Champion, go-by for my Original TAS) 7-MAY-2010 PART 1 PART 2
My Previous TAS Iterations:
Potential Improvement:
- The greatest potential for increasing this score will require the entire run to be redone from scratch. If I went full speed to the final kill(#348), there would have been about 30 seconds left, which is roughly 29 seconds better than my RevC iteration. It takes about 23 seconds to run from the starting point of the map to the 1st or 2nd Bonus Chests. If a bonus timer is active before the 1st kill registers, there is a potential 4630 more points to gain, assuming bonus chest kill counts remain the same. This is the nature of this stage: A maximum score has not yet been found. Each run brings more improvements in efficiency to use in the current run, the next run, or for other player's to incorporate. These ideas improve the score next time. Mathematically, if all 348 enemies are killed in the 93 seconds of Bonus Chest time, Max Score is 345*1300+3*11500=483000. At this point I'd estimate the max actually possible with programmer level knowledge to be about 420000. I will call this run "good", not perfect. If a perfect score is determined, the goal could then be changed to "Reach perfect(max) score in the fastest time."
Highest Score Links:
Cyberscore This site was briefly used before Shin's site for some players like myself
Shin's Site(No longer exists?) This used to be "the" place to log Mercenaries High Scores and Main Game Speedrun Times.
Special Thanks to:
- Derek Taylor, whose World Record run (above) served as the route for my best TAS iterations.
- Dolphin Developers, who made available the amazing Tools execute this Tool Assisted Score-Attack.
- SoulCal, whose amazing captioned Full Game run taught me many tricks.
- RachelB, for the AV Sync patched Dolphin 4.0.2. [/Forum/Topics/12601&start=100|HERE] & RGamma for the Dolphin Encoding Guide HERE.
- Fog, for verifying my verification run and publishing this submission.
- Capcom, for making such a great game!
Playing the .dtm file on Dolphin:
I recommend using Dolphin 4.0.2 x64, DSP LLE recompiler, DSound audio back end, Direct3D11.
Use the following memory card file with Mercenaries and Wesker unlocked [dead link removed]
Verification run to generate above memory file:
- Play MAIN GAME DISC 1. A memory save file Movie.raw will be generated. Stop the movie when complete.
- Rename the generated memory card file from Movie.raw to MemoryCardA.USA.raw
- Play MAIN GAME DISC 2 PART 1. MemoryCardA.USA will be modified. Stop the movie when complete.
- Play MAIN GAME DISC 2 PART 2. This completes the main game and unlocks The Mercenaries. MemoryCardA.USA.raw will be modified. Stop the movie when complete.
- Play UNLOCK WESKER on Disc 2. This unlocks Wesker. MemoryCardA.USA.raw will be modified, and now has the files needed to play this submission or future post-main game submissions. Stop the movie when complete.
Play this Mercenaries:Castle submission on Disc 2, to be safe. It worked for me on Disc 1 as well.
Ilari: Changed length from 06:57.883 to 14:28.35.
Ilari: Replaced movie file with one that supposedly syncs with verification movie
feos: Updating the file per author's request. The empty frames at the end are cut out.
feos: Accepting to Moons. It is a run of only a single map, but the 4 maps aren't built as a united game, the ending is the same after beating them separately and all at once. So I accept it as a category for this map, within the Mercenaries minigame.
Ubercapitalist: Thank you feos & Fog!