Emulator used: BizHawk-1.8.1
Takes damage to save time
Plays on easy, which allows for much more damage boosting, and a more entertaining movie overall I think.
Well it's finally done, the laggiest and randomest game I've ever seen. Literally 1/4 of the game is lag frames. This game is a nightmare to TAS for those reasons. I'll admit to kind of trying to get this done before DTC5, but the result shouldn't be too sloppy, and any improvements found I will fix for next year. But anyway, about the game:

Tricks

Rapid Fire
By shooting and then timing your slide, you can reset your fire counter, allowing rapid succession of shots. This is used on most bosses unless the saber will do more overall damage when it is acquired.
Rock Climb
This is only seen in one place in Stage 5. Boost jump combined with blasting the rock at the right time/angle. Allows me to get over the wall in Stage 5.
Stage 4 Boss Skip
It's been known for a while that this boss was skippable. When approaching the boss if you scroll the camera up with R, the boss wont spawn and you can just jump and trigger the stage end.
Slide Shot Cancel
By shooting your gun at the right time during a slide you can perform the next slide without as much downtime between them. This saves a few frames every time.

Stage 1 / Dune Sea

Lot of slide canceling and damage boosting here. It's also important to note that when arriving at the boss the boss doesn't spawn if Luke is too far on the right of the screen. The boss only spawns relative to where the entire camera is, not where luke is. So for that reason I have to slide back slightly to position the camera to get an early boss spawn. Manipulated to spawn as soon as possible. Also manipulated to stay above ground the entire fight, all while using the rapid fire trick on him. I make him come up as far left as possible also so that way I can jump to the right and get some of the explosions when he dies off screen, to prevent lag.

Stage 2

And here are the laggiest levels in existence. About half of the frames are lag frames. Manipulate the enemies to appear as early as possible, while managing to shoot in all the lag. Also when all of the required enemies are killed, I manipulate there to be nothing that spawns on the way to the Sandcrawler, for lag reasons.

Stage 3 / Outside Sandcrawler

This level is also laggy, and very awkward to play through. Waiting on platforms is unfortunately required here, but lag is prevented sometimes by scrolling certain things off screen. I grab the powerup that's above the exit in this level because the one in stage 4 would waste too much time.

Stage 4 / Inside Sandcrawler

This level is cool, compared to the ones so far. Shout out to Tompa here for pointing out that I wasn't using boosts in the spikes for some reason. It made me redo the entire level and saving a few seconds overall. There's a minor clip on top of a door here for whatever reason, I use an angled shot to open the door then clip through the door. The laser doors in this section are sometimes tricky as well, they have to be carefully manipulated to not close before you reach them. Doing so while still keeping everything else optimal is quite a task, but luckily I got it, with the damage boosts too. The large turrets in this level are annoying, they require a few hits and they lag the game severely when killed. Manipulated the platform after the "smashers" to be further down when I reach it, so I don't have to wait as long to jump down. Also I stay up top with the smashers since there is hardly an lag up there. Rapidfire on the miniboss, then collecting the last blaster powerup. As said before, the boss is easily skipped by scrolling the camera up with R.

Stage 5 / Land of the Sandpeople

I like this stage as well. It took me a while but once I saw that you could get a jump boost from the falling rocks, I knew there had to be something you could do with it. After a bit of experimenting I found that you can shoot the rocks to trigger another one to fall, since another one wont spawn until the first one is gone. Doing so at just the right time to trigger another rock, and manipulating it to be in a good position, I can actually climb the rocks up over the top of the wall, skipping a large portion of the level. Then comes a couple of autoscrollers but they aren't too bad. After the first autoscroller, one of the sandworms is manipulated to not spawn by scrolling down on the camera. After getting the light saber I found something funny that you could do. If you carefully time your shots, you can keep the Banthas bodies from spawning, and instead they're just a floating head. At the end of the stage I manipulate a thermal detonator to drop so I can use it on the boss. It does 40 damage to the boss, which has 150 hp. It's best to use the light saber on this boss, since the blaster only does 1 damage per hit.

Stage 6

Another 3D lag fest. This time with 20 enemies to kill instead of 12. They do spawn slightly more often than the other level though. Other than that it's the same.

Stage 7 / Mos Eisley

This level is kind of annoying, mainly because of the rocket launchers. The rockets create a ton of lag so they are destroyed or avoided as much as possible. There are also spikes here that you can boost on, but they do a ton of damage to you very fast. This is why I manipulate shield drops from just about every enemy where I'd need it. Not much else to say really, it's kinda repetitive.

Stage 8 / Cantina Fight

Yay a brawler stage, but with a blaster. Killing enemies to advance the stage. In one section where I stand around for a second, I'm waiting for those 2 enemies to come so that I can kill them in this location. If I went to the left to kill them faster, more enemies would spawn that I would have to kill to advance the screen for whatever reason. I manipulate a thermal detonator to clear the next room in one sweep. Also used again later to kill a few enemies faster. And one final one manipulated for use against the boss. For the Kalhar boss monster, I use the rapidfire blaster for a little while, until he attacks me. Then I switch to the saber because now I can keep him looped in his head attack, which allows me to get max hits in with the saber, which ends up being faster than just shooting him the whole time.

Stage 9 / Escape from Mos Eisley

Another Mos Eisley stage, but this one is more interesting. The first section up to the mini boss is pretty much just like Mos Eisley, so not much to say about that section. The miniboss is interesting, I manipulated an enemy to push me to the right while fighting the boss. Then after the first 2 sections of the miniboss, I get him to push me to the right a bit before he opens up to attack me. This means I can get through the door quicker after killing him. After the miniboss comes a new section. Manipulate a few shields to get through some lasers. I found that shooting a barrel causes 2 blaster shots worth of damage to the robots, this means that shooting the barrel and then shooting the robot kills it and I can slide past it. That's faster than jumping over it. Then there are the claws, by shooting them at certain frames I can make them take slightly longer to come down, which is just enough time to bypass them without having to jump over them. And finally we come to the boss. It's pretty laggy when his parts are killed off. I manipulate the boss to be in a good position when I kill him that I can move to the left to eliminate all the explosions, making the stage end much sooner.

Stage 10 / Death Star Hangar Bay

Level is pretty straightforward. Manipulating the tiny robots to be in a position when I jump over the gaps they give me a little boost. Jumping over the large robots is necessary because they normally take 4 hits to kill, plus I get a damage boost from jumping over them. Some of the large things that pass by can be manipulated slightly to arrive a little later or sooner, and others can be manipulated to not appear at all, along with the falling enemies at certain portions. The boss can't be killed in one cycle sadly, but it's manipulated to open back up as soon as possible. Can't scroll the explosions off screen on this boss either.

Stage 11 / Rescue of the Princess

Manipulate the little robot at the start of the stage to push me to the right. Waiting on platforms section, yay. You can slightly change the timing on some of them. Also have to wait on the giant crushers to lift up. Timing your slides so that you can do a normal jump without hitting the top of the crusher is faster. The boss of this stage can be killed quickly, making him look foolish.

Stage 12 / Tractor Beam Core

This stage is annoying, more waiting on platforms. Some of them can be manipulated slightly to catch in a better position, while some of them have spawning positions where it won't help to manipulate them really, so there's still waiting around unfortunately. Using the camera to keep enemies scrolled off screen until I can kill them, that's why it might seem weird sometimes. I did find that you can manipulate the final large platform to appear in a position it's not normally supposed to by dragging the camera up as I'm jumping. This makes me not have to wait on it. Using the blaster on the Tractor Beam boss is not as useful as the light saber. Blaster only does 2 damage, and it has 200 hp. Also it releases those orbs that damage you and they block your blaster shots. Also you can't rapid fire on the platforms beside the boss, and doing it from the bottom creates some sort of sprite limit where after your fourth shot, you can't shoot for quite a while. With all that into account using the light saber is the way to go. Then I fall down to prevent explosions after the boss is dead.

Stage 13

Another 3D stage, but this one is much faster. You can only turn in a certain arc, you can't turn around completely. If you look too far to the right or left it stops you. That being said it can still be done relatively fast compared to the other similar stages.

Final Stage

This stage is just shooting enemies until you reach a certain portion of the level, in which you fight a really easy boss. Then one final shot from your missile thingies ends the level. And that's SSW.
Thanks
Thanks to Tompa for following my early WIPs and critiquing it. I improved stage 4 by quite a bit because of that. Also thanks to everyone on forums and IRC who were following it.
As far as improvements, better manipulation/lag management on the 3D stages. Also pootrain mentioned on the forums the stage 9 miniboss can possibly be skipped, but I couldn't find what he was mentioning. I got the miniboss to not spawn but the door would not disappear until you get him to spawn. Maybe there's a condition to be met where it would work, but I couldn't find anything. I do plan on revisiting this game next year, so that's something that could be tested more extensively then.
Suggested Screenshots: 25318, 23751, 25053

feos: Updated the movie file, also judging...
feos: Acceblishing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4493: Exonym's SNES Super Star Wars in 18:36.01
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Temp Encode Link to video
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So I just realized the file I submitted doesn't reach the "credits" screen. I assume I'll need to fix this? As of right now it stops on "The force will always be with you screen" But if you press start on it the credits will roll. I think this is where the movie should be stopped. It's an easy fix if I need to. Edit So, reaching the credits makes the time 18:36.018. Here's the file anyway if it's deemed necessary to replace it: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/18971073642240470
Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.
Spikestuff
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Also to note, for the YouTube encode: DO NOT SHOW THE CREDITS. Copyright track, yet again.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. These colours are pretty neato, and also these.
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Glad to see this game finally TASed after all these years. It's too bad the jumping mechanics ruin any kind of fluidity in Luke's movement, this could've been a much better game had they made that simple change.
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Nice TAS! That boulder jump is really quite something, and the rest of the run looks very well-optimized to me. What are your thoughts on the other two Super Star Wars games?
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I liked this run a lot. However, I'm curious about the choice of difficulty. I'm willing to accept the rationale for choosing easy, but how much time do you expect you gain from that? And out of curiosity, how does this run compare against the old submission by link_7777? I believe the old submission didn't have the skip in stage 5, for instance.
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.
PCachu
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"I can't understand how we jumped through those spikes. I thought we were dead!" "The TAS can have a strong influence on the weak difficulty setting."
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This game is notoriously hard to play, even when set on the Easy difficulty. I don't think playing it on the hardest difficulty (Jedi) will make much of a difference except killing more enemies. It's a great TAS and I vote Yes.
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Great run kid, that was one in a million. Glad to see this game done well. I totally agree with playing easy mode, the hardest difficulty would have been pretty painfully long on the boss fights.
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mklip2001 wrote:
how does this run compare against the old submission by link_7777?
I can't say for sure exactly how much the difficulty change saved by itself, but that run was still pretty suboptimal. This one is 14754 frames faster up to the last shot that "completes the game". However I had to add 2470 frames to reach the actual credits.
Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.
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In the judgment note to the old submission, I wrote:
I also can't agree with the difficulty chosen here, because it does not affect the gameplay, it only increases the player's damage. That means you can do much more damage boosts in an Easy run, not losing actual gameplay.
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.
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That was pretty entertaining! Just from the amount of lag in the movie, you can imagine how much lag you must have reduced to make it as fast as it is. Yes vote.
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Really entertaining run, especially the first 30 seconds of Stage 4 with the quick drops and jumps. It's a yes from me.
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2, researching for Green Stars.
Post subject: Super Star Wars
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Vykan12 wrote:
Glad to see this game finally TASed after all these years.
My thoughts exactly. I like the Super Star Wars games for the music and the graphics, but they're just too hard.
I like Doraemon
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. ---- [2722] SNES Super Star Wars by Exonym in 18:36.01
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I thought the policy was to play on hardest difficulty.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
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xnamkcor wrote:
I thought the policy was to play on hardest difficulty.
Tried reading the thread?
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.
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feos wrote:
xnamkcor wrote:
I thought the policy was to play on hardest difficulty.
Tried reading the thread?
All I saw was someone saying you take more damage on hard. I did not realise we were allowed to decide a game was to challenging. It'd be understandable if "hard" resulted in a game breaking glitch, but just making it harder or longer to complete seems like sort of a silly excuse.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
AntyMew
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xnamkcor wrote:
feos wrote:
xnamkcor wrote:
I thought the policy was to play on hardest difficulty.
Tried reading the thread?
All I saw was someone saying you take more damage on hard. I did not realise we were allowed to decide a game was to challenging. It'd be understandable if "hard" resulted in a game breaking glitch, but just making it harder or longer to complete seems like sort of a silly excuse.
It's not an excuse, and it has nothing to do with being "too challenging." Check the guidelines:
Guidelines wrote:
Where a game has multiple difficulty levels, it is preferred to play on the hardest difficulty level (for more interesting gameplay) unless the only difference between difficulty levels is enemy/boss hit points, in which case the easiest difficulty levels are preferred in the interest of speed. If the difference in difficulty is inapplicable for your run, for example, you trigger the end game sequence right from the start, then selecting the hardest mode is unnecessary.
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Put another way: if the only difference between difficulty levels is that you have to stop every once in awhile to slowly wear down the enemy, then that's not very interesting, is it? It'd be different if the enemies got new attacks, or even if they just dealt more damage and thus forced you to be more careful with your damage boosting. In this game basically all damage taken is from environmental factors though, which as far as I'm aware don't change with difficulty, so all we're missing from the lower difficulty is longer boss fights.
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Anty-Lemon wrote:
xnamkcor wrote:
feos wrote:
xnamkcor wrote:
I thought the policy was to play on hardest difficulty.
Tried reading the thread?
All I saw was someone saying you take more damage on hard. I did not realise we were allowed to decide a game was to challenging. It'd be understandable if "hard" resulted in a game breaking glitch, but just making it harder or longer to complete seems like sort of a silly excuse.
It's not an excuse, and it has nothing to do with being "too challenging." Check the guidelines:
Guidelines wrote:
Where a game has multiple difficulty levels, it is preferred to play on the hardest difficulty level (for more interesting gameplay) unless the only difference between difficulty levels is enemy/boss hit points, in which case the easiest difficulty levels are preferred in the interest of speed. If the difference in difficulty is inapplicable for your run, for example, you trigger the end game sequence right from the start, then selecting the hardest mode is unnecessary.
I watched the entire run, and at no point was Luke ever a boss. Luke is the Player Character. "I also can't agree with the difficulty chosen here, because it does not affect the gameplay, it only increases the player's damage." Are you referring to Damage Dealt by Player or Damage Received by Player?
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
AntyMew
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xnamkcor wrote:
I watched the entire run, and at no point was Luke ever a boss. Luke is the Player Character. "I also can't agree with the difficulty chosen here, because it does not affect the gameplay, it only increases the player's damage." Are you referring to Damage Dealt by Player or Damage Received by Player?
Uh, increasing the player's attack damage has the same exact effect as increasing each enemy's health in this case, so that's just semantics
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Anty-Lemon wrote:
xnamkcor wrote:
I watched the entire run, and at no point was Luke ever a boss. Luke is the Player Character. "I also can't agree with the difficulty chosen here, because it does not affect the gameplay, it only increases the player's damage." Are you referring to Damage Dealt by Player or Damage Received by Player?
Uh, increasing the player's attack damage has the same exact effect as increasing each enemy's health in this case, so that's just semantics
"Uh, increasing the player's attack damage has the same exact effect as increasing each enemy's attack damage in this case, so that's just semantics" Fixed that for you.
"The guy was fatally injured and wants to be covered by God's tears (rain) before he dies. God is too busy to bother because it wastes frames." Frames 16:26
AntyMew
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No, that's really not what I meant... hp-(damage+x)=(hp-x)-damage The fix would have been changing the second increasing to decreasing, since that was a typo. Whoops :| Though looking back, I must have thought I was talking about a different game or something, considering the only change in hard mode is less player health. In that case, you have a point. Sorry if I sounded a bit arrogant or something ^^' Anyway, from what I can tell, the extent of the logic here is that damage boosting is more interesting than not, and that's the only difference between difficulties, so why not play on easy? (I don't know if there are any other differences, so feel free to correct me about that)
Just a Mew! 〜 It/She ΘΔ 〜