Finally.

Here it is, Kid Chameleon for the Genesis - probably the game with the most submissions of which none have been published. In retrospect, I can admit that it was fair to reject my previous submission - this one is more than a minute faster. I never expected it could be improved that much.
This platformer is generally considered pretty hard. You die easily and often get lost and go in circles because of the ways the levels are set up. Some levels are just impossible (i.e Bloody Swamp, some of the Elsewheres) but you don't get to see those in this run because they are too far off the optimal path.

Making this movie

This movie was made by me in Gens 9a, and later i 9c. I played at 6-10% speed to make frame-precision manuevers, but switched to frame advance when I got 9c. The quality pre- and post-9c are hopefully the same, only the time required to perform and test different things was improved.
All of this movie was made on weekends on a computer I borrowed from my lab. My own computer only accepts two simultaneous keypresses, which makes almost every game un-runnable. As a result the movie took a very long time to make. In total, 115 backups of the movie file were made. Yes, I really hate losing work for pressing the wrong button.
Hexediting was used once to try to understand how the spawning of a block worked (see Bad points below). By hexing in the jump from my old run and still getting a bad spawn I could deduce that the gamepad input probably had no bearing on the randomization.

General improvements

  • Everything now at frame precision
  • Making all jumps as short as possible (most characters run faster than they jump)
  • Much, much better climbing with MicroMax (the fly)
  • A lot better cornercuts
  • Not landing or jumping unless needed with SkyCutter (the green surfer)
  • Taking a shortcut with the Samurai on Woods of Despair 2
The total level-time is 9:51, or 55 seconds improved. Judging from the time bonus, the game thinks that a run-trough 4 times as long is very good.
For a detailed levelwise list of improvement, see Truncated or the thread at Forum/Topics/354

Bugs used:

  • Sword jump-hit - you are not supposed to be able to hit with the sword in the air. By striking first and jump directly afterwards you can get around this and do an extra hit when there is no room to stand. See it at Bagel Brothers, the first boss I meet.
  • Sword jump-cancel - when you land from a jump the animation of the sword stike is canceled so you can do a new one, but any object in front of you still recieves damage a few frames later. By repeatedly landing you can buffer up a lot of stikes. Also seen on Bagel Bros, the third head on the bottom floor.
  • Sword backwards strike - you can turn around just before the stike connects. This way you can run in one direction and strike in the other. Also on Bagel Bros.
  • Air-jump - at the beginning of every level the game assumes you are standing on the ground. If you hold jump as the level fades in you will jump even if you start in the air. This is abused in level two and on Elsewhere (the intermission level where I get the flying pink guy for the first time) among others. You can also see it when I come out from a crouch in the third to last level.
  • Mushroom blocks (the ones that create three new blocks above when hit) have erratic behaviour when there is a wall to the left of them, making a shortcut possible in Ice God's Vengeance (long vertical ice level with the fly).
  • When you end up inside a dis/reappearing block, the game warps you in some direction. This is used to go up quicker in Elsewhere and Woods of Despair 1, and to go right in Alien Isle (columns and alien ship level with the fly).
  • The sound code messes up when some sounds are played together. Other than the out-of-sync music, listen when I take damage on Black Pit (dark horizontal level with lava fountains) - the "Ow!" is one octave lower than it's supposed to be. Not of any use, though.
  • On the final level the fly begins to spasm when I let go of the platform. Also not of any use.

Tricks:

  • Jumping on enemies gives a boost. Jumping on many enemies gives a lot of boost.
  • The fly fits in between the spikes that some blocks shoot.
  • Alternating sides when climbing with the fly to get a new jump sooner.
  • Ducking - the hitbox is wider and flatter when ducking, so you can touch the flag a little sooner, or duck to pass small gaps. Usually one frame of ducking is enough.
  • Objects first appear on top of blocks, if you're quick you can jump and get them there earlier.
  • Jamming the bosses to the ceiling means you can score hits very fast.
For a full list of bugs and tricks, see GameResources/Genesis/KidChameleon

Bad points, or "Why did you do that?"

  • I take damage twice in Valley of Life (grass themed samurai level) and not at all in Woods of Despair 1 (first level after flashy warp). This gives me a better actual level time but means longer score counting for no hits.
  • I am forced to walk for 31 frames in Final Marathon (next to last level), so that I will get a better spawn for a moving block on the next screen. This looks retarded but it's actually faster than moving at full speed and waiting for the badly spawned block to move. I found no other way of manipulating this.
  • The first three levels can be done a little faster if you take damage, but the flashy warp later on will only work if you got all bonuses, including no hits. There is no way around this.
  • I was unable to get the behaviour I wanted out of the last boss, so I take two hits and I don't end the movie as soon as some other submissions. Note that my level finish time is two seconds faster than previous submissions, I just don't end keypad input as soon as I wanted to.

Favourite levels:

  • Bagel Brothers - improved 11 seconds, a lot of glitchy sword tricks.
  • Wind Castle 1 - fastest level, 2 seconds.
  • Ice God's Vengeance - a lot of bouncing and jumping around with the fly.
  • Final Marathon - except for the intentional delay, I'm very satisfied with this level. I take damage all the time but manage to refill my health without it costing any extra time.
  • Alien Isle - I finally got good random on the pesky alien ships and killed this level until it died.

General info

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • No death
  • Uses warps
  • Abuses glitches
  • Abuses randomness (monster behaviour)
  • Genre: Platformer

I would like to thank:

  • Nifboy for setting the ball rolling with his first submission and discovering some tricks which I use in one way or another during the movie.
  • x0u, and later on Highness for lending me webspace so people could see the WIP.
  • My brothers for help with mapping the levels. This game has a lot of levels and different paths, but I think we found the best one.
  • Bisqwit and the rest of Nesvideos community for giving me a great way to spend my time.
  • Whoever invented frame advance.
See you next mission. Over and out.
お疲れ様でした。

Bisqwit: fixed links.
Phil: Wow what a novel ;)

Moving improvement data from user page here:
Improvements for new Kid Chameleon video: (format shamelessly stolen from Bisqwit)
Level New time Seconds Diff Notes
Blue Lake Woods 1 2:43 17 +-
Blue Lake Woods 2 2:46 14 -1 Abused air jump glitch at the start and
corrected a (stupid) mistake when jumping a slope
Highwater Pass 1 2:22 38 -2 Better corner cuts and one jump less
Highwater Pass 2 2:42 18 -1 Takes damage to avoid a jump,
new double bounce
Elsewhere 2:48 12 -1 Abused reappearing block glitch
Under Skull Mountain 1 2:37 23 -1 Two jumps less, better cornercuts
warp to after second boss
Woods of Despair 1 2:45 15 -1 Abused reappearing block glitch
Woods of Despair 2 2:41 19 -9 Skipped taking SkyCutter and took a
shortcut with the samurai
Valley of Life 2:49 11 +4 Lost four seconds due to not having SkyCutter.
Black Pit 2:38 22 +1 Lost one second due to not having SkyCutter.
In total 4 seconds gained on this.
Lion's Island 2:45 15 -1 Managed to pass a pesky block without hitting it
Wind Castle 1 2:58 2 +-
Wind Castle 2 2:52 8 +-
Blizzard Mountain 2:44 16 -3 Fast helmet pickup trick and better climbing
Caves of Ice 2:30 30 -3 Better climbing route
Nightmare Peaks 1 2:44 16 -1 Better climbing route
Nightmare Peaks 2 2:55 5 -1 Now picks up helmet on correct side. Doh.
Bagel Brothers 2:31 29 -11 Previous strategy was pretty much crap.
Glitchy samurai sword > jumping on boss :D
Diamond Edge 2:20 40 +- Early improvements lost to unaffectable
reappearing blocks later in level. :(
Hills Have Eyes 2:41 19 -2 Managed to squeeze between two moving bars.
Window of opportunity: 2-3 frames. :D
Secrets in the Rocks 2:38 22 -3 Block destroying trick, 1 attack instead of 4
Ice God's Vengeance 2:27 33 -6 Better climbing and a new shortcut
Beneath Twisted Hills 2:21 39 -1 Slightly different jumping path, nothing major.
Also got some secret extra points instead of waiting at the end.
Alien Isle 2:31 29 -6 I killed this level until it died.
The Land Below 2:36 24 -2 Some minor jumping optimizations.
The Final Marathon 2:20 40 -2 Better start, better cornercuts
and solutions to some passages.
Plethora 2:25 35 -2 This boss is highly nonlinear.
TOTAL 9:51 -55 I never imagined my previous run was this bad.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #479: Truncated's Genesis Kid Chameleon in 14:17.63
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden
Very good run I must say. You even showed places I didn't know about, and I have played this game ALOT in my days. I got nothing to complain about. But I feel that a discussion about early movie ending will take place again. :D It doesn't matter to me though, cous I'm not touching the keyboard while watching. And the outcome will not change unless someone fiddles with it. I voted YES on this how ever because I think it's very niceley played.
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (966)
Joined: 4/17/2004
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>But I feel that a discussion about early movie ending will take place again. :D Yeah, I figured that. I asked about it but got no definite answer. But in this case, the level ends only 3 frames later because I stop input early. If people don't like that I can always add 1 second of mainly meaningless movement and gain 3 frames. I'm curious: which places didn't you know about? And do you know which level I mean when I say Bloody Swamp? :D Everybody loves that level.
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 706
Location: Elyria/Oberlin, OH
Fannnnnnnnnntastic, an obvious yes vote. Someone needs to improve the "warpless" run with all this knowledge, I would *love* to see that as well... -Josh
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
Player (36)
Joined: 9/11/2004
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Josh, a warpless Kid Chameleon is a crazy undertaking, I think it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 levels.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day, Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Player (70)
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Location: Sweden
Hehe.. I have never even found all those levels. :D
Editor, Experienced player, Reviewer (966)
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>Josh, a warpless Kid Chameleon is a crazy undertaking, I think it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 levels. It depends on what you mean by warpless: it's possible to do it without taking any of the big warps, such as directly to final boss or skipping the first half of the game (which my submission does), but it's not possible to do it without the teleporters - some levels just don't have flags. Some ordinary teleporters skips ahead several levels - do they count as warps? According to the FAQ at GameFAQs, the game has 104 levels, but you'll never see all of them in one run. Nifboy did 51 levels in his long submission (http://tasvideos.org/queue.cgi?id=19). It's possible to do more levels (mostly Elsewheres, but some "real" levels too) by taking less flags and more teleporters. Sometimes a teleport will take you back one or two levels; indeed some levels are only accessible this way. I guess the problem is that there isn't any real main path (i.e 1st, 2nd, 3rd... final level) - just some shorter ones and some longer ones.
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Joined: 10/9/2004
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Entertaining game with a lot of variety, I am totally lost to as wtf was happening most of the time tho :P +Yes.
Active player (277)
Joined: 5/29/2004
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Wow, that level setup sounds a little like Umihara Kawase.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (70)
Joined: 8/24/2004
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Location: Sweden
Would it be possible to plan a rout to go through all levels?
Joined: 6/27/2004
Posts: 550
Location: New York
Should this run get published, it will probably end up under my favorites. A yes from me. There were some notes I jotted down, but given how thorough your points are I'm not sure how many are possible. Sometimes I felt like you didn't jump on a monster as soon as you could, to get a boost earlier. This first became obvious to me at the end of the 2nd(or maybe 3rd) level, where you jump on the last monster towards the center of him- it may just be that the hitboxes are irregular. There were a few times I wondered if you could have used the bouncing squares to your advantage, by hitting them from the side to get a boost. You didn't seem to hit the first bagel brother as soon as possible, actually passing through him before beginning to strike him. This could have just been due to the wacky needs of the sword, though. Also, it seemed that while sometimes they remained white, showing that they were always taking damage, they often flickered brown as well. You said you had to always get the no-hit bonuses early on for one of the warps, but I think you got a few later on, as well. And lastly, personally I would prefer that the movie be ended as early as possible, before you(as the fly) are even stuck in the 1-square hole. But as noted, this would be debatable. I agree with all your favorite levels- the fly levels were my personal favorite. Were there any suits that we never got to see? I played this game a lot awhile ago, but can't remember much of it. I also thought that the first skateboarding level(through the long, horizontal level) could have had more in the times when you were just gliding along the top. But that's not a big deal. Great job.
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@Bag of Magic Food Yes, a lot like that. There are four bosses around which the levels typically converge to a bottleneck (so you always have to play them) and then diverge again, but there are ways to skip 1, 2 or 3 bosses. @Highness No. Some levels exclude other levels (for example Hills of Illusion can never be in the same path as Valley of Life). It's possible to make very bad path choices and play a large number of levels though. Which you usually end up doing the first few times you play this game, since the "bad" exits from levels are usually obvious and easy to find. >:( Evil game designers.
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@Blechy >Sometimes I felt like you didn't jump on a monster as soon as you could, to get a boost earlier. This first became obvious to me at the end of the 2nd(or maybe 3rd) level, where you jump on the last monster towards the center of him- it may just be that the hitboxes are irregular. Bah. You might just be correct on this one. :( Darn it. >There were a few times I wondered if you could have used the bouncing squares to your advantage, by hitting them from the side to get a boost. I tried this at all places I could think of, but I only found one place where it was actually faster - the beginning of Blizzard Mountain, the ice-level where I switch from Surfer to Fly. If you could give me a specific situation maybe I could explain better. >You didn't seem to hit the first bagel brother as soon as possible, actually passing through him before beginning to strike him. This could have just been due to the wacky needs of the sword, though. Yep - it's not possible to strike in the air usually (you do the destroy-blocks-below move showed earlier in the vid), you must be standing to start a strike. If the enemy is close to the ground you can use the jump-sword bug, but the first head is too high. >Also, it seemed that while sometimes they remained white, showing that they were always taking damage, they often flickered brown as well. Hm, I'll have to check this thoroughly again before I can say anything for certain. On the lowest head, you cannot strike all the time in the beginning because he moves too fast. You need some running frames to not lose too much speed so he'll hit you. Is it this you're thinking of? After that I use the jump-cancel bug to hit him more rapidly than I usually can. >You said you had to always get the no-hit bonuses early on for one of the warps, but I think you got a few later on, as well. Yep, but it's inavoidable. I don't want lose my helmet (takes time and I need the powers it grants), and there is usually no way to refill it. I tried to always lose the maximum amount of hitpoints possible and spread them out so I get no-hit bonus on as few levels as possible. (Except for the one place noted in Bad Points). >And lastly, personally I would prefer that the movie be ended as early as possible, before you(as the fly) are even stuck in the 1-square hole. But as noted, this would be debatable. Not possible. You need to move to where the flag is after defeating the boss, otherwise you'll just bounce up and down until time runs out. It's possible to end input earlier if the small heads are in a better position (See Nifboy's latest short submission), but I was unable to get the random for this. >Were there any suits that we never got to see? I played this game a lot awhile ago, but can't remember much of it. Yep, three of them: Maniaxe - hockey mask, throws axes Juggernaut - tank, shoots skulls EyeClops - green guy with visor, reveals hidden blocks Maniaxe has a bug akin to the Samurai to land repeatedly and throw lots and lots of axes, but wasn't around when I needed that (i.e Bagel Bros). The others aren't of much use in a time attack, what I know at least. Thank you for all the feedback! I love it. And thanks everyone who voted yes so far. (When will the mysterious no-vote return? Don't miss the next episode of "NESVideos voting mystery".)
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>Bah. You might just be correct on this one. :( Darn it. Checked this again. There are good reasons for hitting everything the way it is in level 2, but the last stone tank in level 3 might be able to hit a few frames earlier. Because of computer suckage I am unable to test this at the moment. Anyone who feels like it, be my guest. I also checked Bagel Bros again, and everything appears to be in order... with sword only it's not possible to keep the boss constantly "white", this is only possible by rapid bouncing near the ceiling and landing glitch.
Joined: 6/27/2004
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Awesome, then the only question remaining is about the bumpers. The first time(and only time I remember) I noticed this is was the first level, where the bumpers are in a U shape. I was wondering if hitting the most upper left bumper from the right, and using the velocity to then hit one of the bottom bumpers to bounce back up before you reach the other wall.
Joined: 8/15/2004
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I've never played this game before, but I enjoyed this movie nonetheless. Exciting and good usage of the environment. This movie gets a Yes vote from me.
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>The first time(and only time I remember) I noticed this is was the first level, where the bumpers are in a U shape. I was wondering if hitting the most upper left bumper from the right, and using the velocity to then hit one of the bottom bumpers to bounce back up before you reach the other wall. I haven't actually tested but it sounds like it would be slower. As far as I know, the bumpers don't give any extra speed horizontally, only vertically, so you would lose time turning around and gaining speed in the opposite direction without any gain. One place I tried was Diamond Edge (ice level where you go zig-zag downwards) - at one of the turns there are rubber blocks in the wall, but it's faster to just turn around instead of bouncing into them.
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. ---- [273] Genesis Kid Chameleon by Truncated in 14:17.63
Zucca
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Location: KUUSANKOSKI, Finland
I've never actually played this game even I still own a Megadrive. Anyway really nice work. This game reminds me of James Pond II. A lot of secrets. But I think this is way more difficult to complete. Sad, because it would have been avoided just by modifying levels (telling developers to make levels a bit easier). Many platformers from 8- and 16-bit era have failed because of the too high difficulty. This is more common in 8-bit games. (Imho)
trazz wrote:
Killing the skeletons sooner or letting the skeletons live (unlive?) won't affect that at all.
Player (120)
Joined: 2/11/2007
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Many current era games fail because of too low difficulty :) As for older games, I blame the "arcade" mentality that drove publishers to make games that require constant quarter feeding. And, I love this movie and look forward to the upcoming improvement!
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Zucca
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Joined: 8/22/2008
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Location: KUUSANKOSKI, Finland
Well maybe I wasn't that good player back then, but for example I managed to play trough Alex Kidd in Miracle World only twice. And R-Type (Master System) was so difficult that I couldn't finish it at all without cheats. Somehow I still don't categorize R-type as failed game because of it's difficulty. It gave me enough pleasure to even get to level 7 (If I remember this right...). But that's why it's even cooler to see speedruns of these hard games. Altough R-type speedrun wouldn't be that cool because its steady scrolling speed. Now this is going too much off-topic... I better finish this post now. ;)
trazz wrote:
Killing the skeletons sooner or letting the skeletons live (unlive?) won't affect that at all.