Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Another bootleg/unlicensed game. This one, however, is developed by Vast Fame (of Zook Z and Rockman DX3 fame), which means that it is actually a pretty decent game. It's a fairly simplistic platform game, with basic walking, jumping (pretty high), the ability to fire a projectile and jump on enemies à la Mario, and the ability to temporarily Digivolve into a larger, fully invincible Digimon. The game has 8 worlds, each with three rather long stages, and with the last two stages of each world also having a boss.
You can play as one of three Digimon: Agumon, Veemon and Guilmon, the respective partners of the main protagonists Tai/Taichi, Davis/Daisuke and Takato of Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers respectively. Each of them are completely identical aside from having different sprites and their attacks having different sprites (Agumon and Guilmon fire fireballs, Veemon a V-shaped projectile). In fact, it's possible to hex edit one input at the start of the run to change the selected character (without costing any time), and the run will still sync just the same. So character selection is really just preference.
The stages are filled with all kinds of random Digimon as enemies, bottomless pits, as well as a surprising amount of spikes like it's a Capcom game. Defeating an enemy (by either jumping on top of them or hitting them with fireballs/projectiles) has them drop pickups, which vary from all kinds of fruits of varying sizes which give a varying amount of points, as well as pickups to restore HP and energy, and 1UPs. (With regards to HP: you start with 5 hit points on each stage, and any hit, including spikes, will deplete 1 hit point and grant invincibility for quite a few seconds. Energy is used to Digivolve, and is obtained by defeating enemies and collecting D-3 Digivice pickups.
Another interesting "feature" is the game's absolutely terrible and hilarious Engrish with boss dialogue before fighting every boss. Said text also scrolls ridiculously slowly, probably giving the viewer far more than enough reading time.
I found a few tricks to make clearing stages faster, and defeating bosses faster. One is where jumping one or two frames (depending on the jump) after firing a projectile in midair makes it possible to double jump, which allows for quite a few shortcuts. Another trick is an invincibility trick on bosses, where damaging a boss on the right frame when they're creating an object does some odd things with how damaging them works, including making it possible to damage them by hitting the object, and ignoring their invincibility. Most boss battles come down to waiting until their (fixed) attack pattern has them spawn an object, then defeat them very quickly after that. Lastly, it's actually fastest to, as soon as the game considers the stage "cleared", reset the game and pick Continue from the main menu in order to enter the next stage. (The only known ROM dump of the game, which I use here, triggers the credits at the end of every stage, which reset the game after clearing them anyway but which takes extra time).
tl;dr: fun game.
I made a WIP of the first world here:
Link to videoUser movie #17644344494964933
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Second WIP, clearing world 2 (out of 8 worlds total, each with 3 stages):
Link to videoUser movie #17762066519815461
For extra fun, stages 2-2 and 2-3 are both pretty much glitched through for about 2/3rds of the stages.
The bossfights are pretty interesting. The 2-2 fight (RedVegiemon) is very short, as I can immediately abuse the projectiles the boss fires with a glitch to pretty much damage him constantly. The 2-3 fight (Wormmon) on the other hand is very long; it is the only boss that has no projectile attack, so I can't glitch it for rapid damage, and it also is one of only two bosses that have 128 frames of invincibility per hit instead of the usual 48. On the upside, it does have some pretty good boss music going for it.
Also, I decided to hex in selecting another character (Veemon) for the encode, simply because I can. The characters are that identical, and it doesn't even cost time to select other characters.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Link to videoUser movie #18009144037580254 (outdated, see post below)
I like the visuals of this world. Especially the layers of blood-stained spikes, which just look so out of place compared to the bright colors, artsy background, and happy music.
I picked Guilmon for the encode this time because again, why not. It still makes literally no difference timewise which character you select. Makes me wonder which of the three to submit the run with.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Here is a watch file http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/18026556530398801
I was unsuccesful finding an address for speed and movement on the characters, so those are the only things I could find. I hope its helpful somehow.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Thanks, I'll take a look at it.
I noticed that 3-3 can be improved by a small bit of time by avoiding transforming and just going around the walls instead of going through them. I'll need to fix that before going on.
EDIT: got a 71-frame improvement in 3-3 with this. New WIP is User movie #18137286394530369]here. Also updated the YouTube link above.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Next WIP. Also testing out the newly available 60fps YouTuber. Looks like it's working (on the YouTube page itself, at least).
Link to videoUser movie #18408318382943953
World 5 is a fun world. Some fun in-stage strategies, especially in 5-2.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Link to videoUser movie #19051724065040094
The 6-3 boss in particular was very difficult to optimize. To get the immediate quick kill, all actions had to be entirely frame perfect to hit him ~30 times as fast as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Next WIP:
Link to videoUser movie #19200241641728263
With just one world left, this will be the last WIP. Hopefully I can complete the run and submit it soon enough within the coming weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
lol,can u use different characters in the run since none cost time?
why guilmon becomes agumon evolutions?
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
grassini wrote:
lol,can u use different characters in the run since none cost time?
Yeah. I can just change which character is selected at the start by changing one frame of input, costing no time at all, and all three characters are so completely identical that the run still syncs fine with any one of them.
It's actually pretty funny, as it makes me wonder which character to use for the submission. It really could go either way for any of the three. It would just boil down to personal preference pretty much.
grassini wrote:
why guilmon becomes agumon evolutions?
It's still a pirate game, so it's not really heavy on being consistent with the franchise.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I think you should use all three characters for the submission, since it wastes no time and shows off more of the game's art.
Maybe you can encode a secret message in the choices!
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Patashu wrote:
I think you should use all three characters for the submission, since it wastes no time and shows off more of the game's art.
Maybe you can encode a secret message in the choices!
I can only choose the character once at the start of the run. So I can only choose one of them for the run.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I think you should use all three characters for the submission, since it wastes no time and shows off more of the game's art.
Maybe you can encode a secret message in the choices!
I can only choose the character once at the start of the run. So I can only choose one of them for the run.
Oooh, I see... So you changed it for each individual encode. I understand.
In that case, Guilmon is the cutest, so~
EDIT: Or you could package the movie with a lua script that picks a different character at random every time you play the TAS again. This is obviously the best solution
EDIT: Or you could package the movie with a lua script that picks a different character at random every time you play the TAS again. This is obviously the best solution
What would happen to the encode in that case? My first thought was that there would be three listed encodes, but the only alt encodes I've seen were for things like camera hacks
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
I think I should just use strawpoll to decide the character for the submission :P
http://strawpoll.me/3127003
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
grassini wrote:
use all while u reset many times
As I said before, I can only pick the character once, at the start of the game. Which character is used is saved when resetting+continuing.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
