Hi everyone, newcomer here.
I saw that somebody was posting GBA Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone WIPs, so I thought I'd get this out there.
I used to casually speedrun this game, and it's pretty interesting from a routing perspective, particularly because Harry takes ages to cast a spell, to the extent that it's actually a few frames quicker to take damage and then later restore that health. This makes health management a key part of the run (since taking damage is usually faster than dodging enemies, so you'll do it whenever possible).
As a live speedrun though, the game is very unforgiving. There are stealth sections with wonky detection where if you're seen, you restart the level. There are moving platform sections with wonky pit detection where if you fall in, you restart the level. There are flying sections where one slip up can waste a ton of time. And as I said, health management is tight, and mistakes are easy because of how slow it is to attack.
Of course with a TAS you can avoid these problems, so I thought it would be a fun TAS to make:
Link to video
It's the first I've ever made, but since it isn't a very action-packed game I thought it'd be a nice place to start. Also it is not fully optimised, mainly because I did this independently and didn't want to spend ages optimising it if there were tricks other people had found that I was missing. And I'm not sure on the route yet either. Even if there are no other big tricks, off the top of my head I can see a few movement errors, and there are some cycles I was a few frames away from getting that I'm optimistic could be made somehow.
The main features are enemy manipulation (that's what I'm doing when I change spells rapidly - it affects the starting direction of offscreen enemies) and skipping triggers (if I ever take a weird route through a room it's to avoid conversations or doxie spawns).
It's an hour long, and so I'm not sure it's worth creating a wall of text detailing every little trick. Hopefully everything is obvious enough (at least if you're familiar with the game), but if something isn't clear just ask. Maybe later I'll make a comprehensive list if people are interested.
Anyone else have interest in this game?
As a live speedrun though, the game is very unforgiving. There are stealth sections with wonky detection where if you're seen, you restart the level. There are moving platform sections with wonky pit detection where if you fall in, you restart the level.
I played this game on emulator before, and discovered that you can literally walk past the professors (and thus skip several rooms) with the use of savestates and somewhat precise movement lol.
you can literally walk past the professors (and thus skip several rooms) with the use of savestates and somewhat precise movement lol.
I'd be interested to know where. One of the things I've been working on since making that TAS is the stealth sections. I'm not particularly pleased with any of them yet, and it pains me whenever you have to wait. Unfortunately the only places I've been able to sneak past professors in ways that are clearly unintended have taken me to places that are either in the wrong direction or have missing loadzones.
The detection can be incredibly precise though. There's a part in the run at the start of the forbidden forest where I casually zigzag between some thorny bushes without taking damage. It's easy to make the first zig only for it to be literally impossible to zag without taking damage just because your grid alignment is wrong (since changes of direction are not instant), and it takes precise movement in the room up to that point to do them both successfully. I've never found a consistent strategy for doing it live.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6436
Location: The land down under.
I was going to have a nitpick at Subject name and ask to call it Philosopher/Sorcerer's Stone but then I found out there was no European version of this game.
The Option for the UK title is there so... nitpicking kinda.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
I was going to have a nitpick at Subject name and ask to call it Philosopher/Sorcerer's Stone but then I found out there was no European version of this game.
The Option for the UK title is there so... nitpicking kinda.
Ha, well I am from the UK myself, so you can imagine how much it pained me to use the US title, but since that was the version I actually ran...
(EDIT: I gave in and changed it :P )
You have got me wondering about the differences between versions though, or more specifically the differences between languages. The dialogue is pretty fast in this game, but it could always be made faster if there was a language that needed fewer text boxes, although there isn't a Japanese option which is usually the fastest. I might have a look when I next get the time.
I'm so glad you're not doing the GBC one, it gets really same-y. Regarding the stealth segments, do the detection zones move around or are they fixed? If they move around we can pinpoint their positions via clever memory watching. (I have never played GBA Philosopher Stone before)
Hey. I also planned a TAS for this game at one point. I managed to find a few tricks and other oddities for it. Nothing supremely useful, I think, but the game does have glitches if you start digging into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReu8vkN8wQ
I also wrote some speed notes on the game... but the notes are in finnish and it's been too long now for me to make any sense of them since I can't remember the game that well. I'll have to watch that TAS test and see if I can then piece it all together in my head.
EDIT: here are some potentially useful excerpts from the notes:
- "Potions class: you can skip the final gnome section by running past the barrel." (I think this refers to the part at 05:50.)
- "Hagrid: on the way there, you can do a small warp using the score boards." (I think if you examined the scoreboard, you teleported near the exit. See if this would be faster?)
- "Hagrid's Garden: you can slip past a moving block diagonally and shoot it in place earlier than normal." (This probably refers to the block you can see in the screen at 08:26 for instance.)
- "Avoiding Snape: at the moving blocks you don't have to destroy the urn, you can slip past it." (I guess you do this in your test run already.)
- "Greenhouse 1: at the end of the left path there are two pits and a moving block. You can inch to the block by the side of the wall, unlike normal." (But then I also wrote that this might not be useful after all. So, eh... I have no idea about this one.)
- "General note: there is that shortcut between 4th and 7th floors. How often can it be used?"
- "Worms: to the down-left of Hagrid there's a log you can slip past from the down-right." (If I'm not mistaken, you do this in the run.)
- "Doggie: you can walk past the conversation... but this is likely slower." (???)
Just something that came in mind. Would you save time whenever you have to learn a new spell by first failing two times, then learning the spell, then failing one last time? Or do the X's reset after a success? (can't remember)
Also, I agree with JLun that the stealth sections can be potentially very broken. Do your darnedest to get past everyone in record time!
Yeah, unfortunately most of the glitches and things I've found aren't timesavers either.
Pokota wrote:
Regarding the stealth segments, do the detection zones move around or are they fixed?
On most floors there's one person who getting past would mean skipping the entire floor. Most of those are fixed in place and seem unavoidable, but the one that moves is the very first one you meet on the 7th floor. I'll keep working on him, and the stealth sections in general.
AKheon wrote:
- "Potions class: you can skip the final gnome section by running past the barrel." (I think this refers to the part at 05:50.)
I did try that and never managed it, but I can always try harder!
AKheon wrote:
- "Hagrid: on the way there, you can do a small warp using the score boards." (I think if you examined the scoreboard, you teleported near the exit. See if this would be faster?)
Not sure what you mean by scoreboard...?
AKheon wrote:
- "Hagrid's Garden: you can slip past a moving block diagonally and shoot it in place earlier than normal." (This probably refers to the block you can see in the screen at 08:26 for instance.)
With the strange egg rolling I use to skip most of the garden, I actually want the block there to stop an egg from rolling too far. I'm pretty pleased with my technique for the garden and using the eggs to clip slightly into the hedges to get just the bottom two switches pressed. Actually the minimum required would be only the very bottom switch, but I can't find any way to do that faster than the bottom two together.
AKheon wrote:
- "General note: there is that shortcut between 4th and 7th floors. How often can it be used?"
There's actually only once when you can't use it and you'd want to (on any%) but its pretty well blocked by a person standing right in front of it. Even if you can get by them, I wouldn't be surprised if the transition zone had been removed for that period since it was supposed to be inaccessible. That happens elsewhere when you get to places you shouldn't.
AKheon wrote:
- "Doggie: you can walk past the conversation... but this is likely slower." (???)
Yeah this is one of the many places I skip conversations. Despite how wonderfully fast the text speed is, it is marginally faster to skip.
AKheon wrote:
Just something that came in mind. Would you save time whenever you have to learn a new spell by first failing two times, then learning the spell, then failing one last time? Or do the X's reset after a success? (can't remember)
Ahahaha! Oh man, yeah that would be so much faster. I can't believe I never realised that.
What you might notice on those spell sections is that if you enter your input at the first possible frame, then the arrows around you don't appear (other than the one you pressed) and Harry's wand has no sparks coming from it. Let's you know you got the perfect frame, which was always so satisfying when running live.
Also, while I'm listing things, might as well make note of a couple of small tricks I used that are less obvious:
- If you're holding a direction during a screen transition then you start in the next room slightly to that direction. This saves frames in general, but can also be used to skip cutscenes (like the one in the main hall at 48:12) or save books (like the one in the phial puzzle room right near the end).
- If you have to use more than one spell in the same room it is better to use them in the same spot if possible, since the start and stop moving animations are at less than full speed, so the less often you stop moving the better.
- Also those flipendo blocks that you push are very broken. You can often push them from the wrong side if you're close enough, or skip them entirely by walking underneath them (I do that a lot in the phial puzzle room from 56:29) and you may have seen that when you're pushing one upwards you can trick the game into thinking you have fallen into the pit when you haven't, and it saves a few frames (because you don't have to wait for it to settle). Unfortunately this doesn't work at all horizontally, and downwards Harry gets glitched in a falling pose and you can't do anything except slide around the room. Pretty funny though.
That's all I can think of right now.
Cheers for suggestions and encouragement everyone, the stealth sections are well and truly broken!
Link to video
The trick is to walk diagonally through their detection zones (which will make them detect you but not actually punish you) until you get right up to them, and then edge around them until they turn, at which point flee (also moving diagonally). Normally once they've detected you they will catch you when you try to start moving away from them, but if you do it only when they turn around then their detection resets, and if you move diagonally then they won't re-spot you.
Compared to actually going through the rooms normally, this saves over 3 minutes!
Following up on a thought from before, I decided to check the difference between the different languages.
Every language has conversations at the same time, and each text box takes the same number of frames regardless of how full of text it its (30 frames for the first text box in a dialogue to open, 3 to close) so the only difference between languages is how many successive boxes of text there are in each conversation (each successive box taking 4 extra frames).
This isn't simple to check, because there are 12 languages and each one has fewer text boxes in some places and more in others, so there's no immediately obvious best choice. The only solution was to look at each unskippable conversation in each possible language and count how many successive text boxes there are (ignoring the first which must be there for all languages). I have now done this, and details are in the following table:
Language Frames Taken To Successive Total Frame
Select Language Text Boxes Cost
English (US) +0 314 1256
English (UK) +3 314 1259
French +7 371 1491
German +11 372 1499
Spanish +15 322 1303
Italian +19 341 1383
Dutch +23 346 1407
Swedish +20 333 1352
Norwegian +16 312 1264
Danish +12 328 1324
Portugese +8 336 1352
Portugese (BR) +4 343 1376
What does this mean? Well there's only one language with fewer text boxes than English, and that's Norwegian, with two fewer boxes. But each box only saves 4 frames, and since it take 16 frames to swap to Norwegian that's still a net loss of 8.
So English is still the best. What an anticlimax.
It was closer than it looks too, because for a good two thirds of the game Norwegian was the best choice, having at least 5 fewer text boxes for a while (which would mean even with the +16 penalty it would be saving 4 frames) but then unfortunately for the last third of the game every conversation in Norwegian seemed to run on just enough to use up an extra text box and erase that advantage, including one case where it had a text box containing just a dash. I mean, really? It's like the game wanted me to have wasted my time.
Oh well. At least now I know for sure that US English is the fastest choice.
Hmm, interesting. Well, if there happen to be instances of being able to skip cutscenes later in the game, the balance might change again.
Oh by the way, I checked out the scoreboard thing. Normally the game does not teleport you after examining one, but if you press A AND start or select at the same time near one, first the game will open the menu while the scoreboard is buffered to open afterwards. Then, when closing the scoreboard, Harry is teleported near the exit to some default position. So in rare cases when you need to go out and you're near the scoreboards, this might save time.
Hard to say if this prompt trick would cause results elsewhere in the game...
---
I just noticed something. If you walk into a doorway at the same time you press Start, you can delay the screen transition until closing the menu. However, you can do this repeatedly with timed Start-presses. So doing this long enough, you are able to walk through doorway triggers without them activating and go "out of bounds" (most often there seems to be a wall beyond the open doorway, though).
---
A different route idea for the first dungeon, for picking up the 4th star. Instead of shooting the moving block you do at 02:19, shoot the one to the south-east of it when you're backtracking. There is barely enough floor at the south that you can reach the next area with diagonal running... this should help you run a little shorter distance overall.
---
The doorway trick I mentioned earlier actually lends itself to going out of bounds in one map of the game: Dungeons. Mind, I've only tested this glitch up to this point in the game, so maybe there will be more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on4Uw_9joz0
Ah, nice find! Definitely worth seeing where else that can work.
I've tested the scoreboard warp more thoroughly. Unfortunately because opening the menu takes so long, it doesn't save time when leaving the entrance hall, but I agreed it might have results elsewhere when an image is loaded.
The obvious thought is whether it works on save books, which could potentially help in a lot of rooms, but it doesn't. Nor does it work on the victory screens at the end of each dungeon, or the quidditch victory screen. Seeing as it seems to work when the game is loading up a fullscreen image, I tried it in the two places where a cutscene starts: at the Mirror of Erised and when you see Voldemort attacking the unicorn. No useful results though:
- At the mirror, if you open the menu the frame you touch it, then when the cutscene ends you warp to the start of that small room, but you cannot leave and you just have to watch the cutscene again, so you save no time.
- At the unicorn, if you open the menu when Voldemort touches the unicorn then when the cutscene ends you are stuck in that area, Voldemort freezes in place, and you cannot progress to the next room. Again, not useful. Shame.
Good idea about the first dungeon. I've been beginning to try optimising a WIP up to the end of that dungeon (since I've never yet attempted a fully optimised TAS and it would be good to practice), so I'll go back and edit it to do that route. I'll post it when I've got something solid to get advice and criticism if you could.
The gnome battles are giving me the most trouble at the moment since they cannot be easily manipulated yet (pressing R to swap spells only seems to manipulate the gnomes' position when you actually have a different spell to swap to - for now I can only manipulate them by the timing of my spells earlier in the room, like when rolling the barrel at the start for example).
Wish me luck!
----
EDIT: I have a WIP until the end of the flipendo challenge now. Using the alternate route that you suggested Akheon saves 80 frames, not just there but also it gives me a better possible gnome pattern later which is nice.
By spacing out my spells on the first barrel I lose 4 frames by not 'chaining' the spells, but I can manipulate the first set of gnomes so that I can chain my spells against them, and I am also near to the door when it opens so the camera has less distance to travel (giving me a net gain of 6 frames). I can only see this being improved if you could be even closer to the door when you kill the second one, but I found no way to manipulate the gnomes to do this.
The second set of gnomes are even trickier. I make sure to kill the last one while standing on the spot closest to the door that will still collect the star as it appears (because this combines both camera movements into one). This could potentially be improved if you could kill the second gnome earlier, but I found no way to get him closer.
In later levels, when you can swap spells to manipulate the gnomes, it should be easier to optimise any gnome sections.
From now on I'll probably alternate between extending this WIP and trying to use any of the tricks we've found to break later sections of the game. Feedback is of course welcome.
Ahh, nice find! By my reckoning that will save ~78 frames there, although it remains to be seen how it affects the gnome positioning later. I did try that angle but I obviously missed that specific spot. Pretty new to TASing so the idea of tracking Harry's x and y to make sure I've attempted every possible position hadn't occurred to me before. Definitely something to pay attention to in future.
On that note, what memory addresses are you using to get his co-ordinates? The addresses I thought held Harry's x and y (1948 and 194C) I've just realised must be for the screen instead because they hit 0 when you're near the edge of the map.
Ahh, nice find! By my reckoning that will save ~78 frames there, although it remains to be seen how it affects the gnome positioning later. I did try that angle but I obviously missed that specific spot. Pretty new to TASing so the idea of tracking Harry's x and y to make sure I've attempted every possible position hadn't occurred to me before. Definitely something to pay attention to in future.
On that note, what memory addresses are you using to get his co-ordinates? The addresses I thought held Harry's x and y (1948 and 194C) I've just realised must be for the screen instead because they hit 0 when you're near the edge of the map.
Yeah, I've first thought doing that, I uploaded my VBM to help gamerretro (but yeah, gamerretro is too smart to don't need my help) but yeah :P
Current:
Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD
Paused:
N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair)
GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven)
TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
One thing that might complicate optimizing are those cutscenes where the camera shows you something. A cutscene like that resolves quicker if Harry is closer to the thing it wants to show you. Since the camera moves faster than Harry, you probably shouldn't go out of your way to minimize camera moving distance... but still, a good positioning might save a frame or two somewhere.
Checked out that WIP. Looks pretty good, can't think of more improvements to it for now.
Thanks for feedback everyone, much appreciated.
got4n wrote:
I uploaded my VBM to help gamerretro
Oh yeah, I see it now. I saw his first ones when he uploaded them, but clearly hadn't actually downloaded yours. Nice.
AKheon wrote:
One thing that might complicate optimizing are those cutscenes where the camera shows you something...
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Now that I'm hitting the switch from that specific spot I can't do much about the first camera shot for the bridge, but I've tried to minimise it after the two gnome battles. Actually, I've currently improved the first gnome battle so that I'm even closer to the door when it opens, but the second can't really be improved further, since if you get closer to the door (to shorten the cutscene) then you won't automatically collect the star when it appears in the middle of the carpet, and so you have to watch the two cutscenes separately (one for the door of that room opening, and one for the exit opening).
A good thing about this game is that the RNG and cycles reset when you start each area, so I can easily go back and redo a room and paste the new route into a bigger input log, and there shouldn't be any desync issues. I'm currently working on the potions level, but I can (and probably will) go back to the first level and try and improve it now and then.
I have a new WIP up to the end of the potions challenge. There's a fair bit going on so I'll rattle through the sections and decisions made:
Flipendo Challenge
- Now that I'm hitting the first switch earlier it subtly changes the timing of the gnome battles. I've improved the first one so that I'm pretty much as close to the door as possible when the cutscene starts, but the second battle is actually now a few frames worse. Still a net increase though.
To Potions
- Pretty simple, except I wish Hermione would walk faster. Also note that the less than optimum movement in the potions classroom is because you don't actually control Harry at that point.
Potions Challenge
- The first point of interest is the battle with the three gnomes at the top. It's pretty much mandatory to take a hit, because it would take ages to dodge them. After trying many ways of killing them this is the best I could find, because I only take one step in a direction I don't need to travel (to turn to shoot the gnome from the left gate), and I also found it funny that the last gnome gets pushed into the pit. You'll always need to turn to shoot the gnome from the left, so I don't think this battle could be made much faster.
- The second interesting section is in the bottom right with the barrels and switches. Luckily you can step on one button yourself, and because spells are so slow it is fastest to step on the one that would have needed you to roll a barrel three times. Walking by the jar on the right of the pit is actually pretty precise. The odd wiggly movements I do are firstly to keep that alignment, and secondly to avoid rummaging in the bookshelf when walking back up.
- In the room with the two flipendo blocks, the main aim is to hit the block as early as possible, from a place where it won't hold up your movement for long. Hitting the switch from the side is a neat trick that saves quite a few frames. (The very first switch in this level which turns the bridge can also be hit from the side, but in that case it loses one frame since it doesn't allow you to cut the corner so much.)
- The final section with the gnomes and barrel feels unsatisfying to me, but taking damage forward and back is almost certainly the fastest way. Since they're set up to be in line to be hit with the barrel, they can't be manipulated at all, so dodging them takes far too long. The only concern is that taking two damage here will make Hagrid's Garden more difficult (because I used to take a couple of hits there), however my thinking was that when doing the Dittany challenge you are restricted to a global cycle of the first moving platform, so it may be possible to spend time dodging the enemies there without actually losing any overall time.
As always, feedback is appreciated.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6436
Location: The land down under.
Asking if this would help during the Flipendo Challenge.
As soon as you start the Challenge you can shoot out a Flipendo which should hit that barrel (This is casting a spell then going through the dialogue see Harry complete the spell and continuing).
Would it help casting out the spell very early for the gnome's positioning?
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Hello, newbie to TASvideos, I used to play this game a ton as a kid. In the potions challenge, I just wanted to point out that if you collected the vile in the first room last, the camera doesn't have to move at all to get to snape. Since you have to go back that way anyway it certainly wouldn't waste time and you would save the time it takes for the camera to get to snape and back.
Unless you did this in your newest WIP, in which case ignore me.
Harry's X: 952
Harry's Y: 678
