Alex Kidd: High Tech World is a action video game with platforming and adventure elements, released by Sega in 1987 for the Sega Master System,that is part of the Alex Kidd series
Game objectives
aims fastset time
Emulator used: bizhawk 1.9.1
Samsara: Fixed game name, and claiming this for judging. Also embedded arandomgameTASer's temp encode. Fixed game name once again to be consistent with the rest of the published Alex Kidd games.
Samsara: Setting to delayed, pending possible improvements by the author.
Samsara: I'm rejecting this movie for the reasons outlined in this post. While the overall optimization is good, the new route and new trick outlined and shown in the post prove that this run can be improved by over 40 seconds.
Making a quick encode. Will give thoughts when its done.
Edit:
Link to video
This game is horrible. The visuals, gameplay, and audio are all bad. But that doesn't mean the TAS itself is bad. In fact, it appears to be well optimized. Giving it a No for entertainment, and recommending it for the Vault.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Let's talk about the game.. it's a trainwreck. It's unfathomly boring, makes no sense, and the visuals and audio will give you physical pain. I'm voting No on this one, and suggesting for the Vault.
The run itself is surprisingly well optimised for a game of this caliber; the quality of your TASes has improved significantly, gamerretro2, and I personally find this one publish-worthy.
There are multiple ways of getting past the guard.
I EXTREMELY doubt that praying 100 times is the fastest.
And by extremely doubt, I mean that it's almost certainly the slowest possible way to do it.
Alternatives are to bribe the guard (2,000 can be easily made in the village from the backscratcher and burger events), or to just be handed one from the event with the temple guard.
There are multiple ways of getting past the guard.
I EXTREMELY doubt that praying 100 times is the fastest.
Do you have proof of other ways of getting past the guard? AFAIK, the only way is getting the Travel Pass (by praying 100 times) and giving it to the guard.
Hmph. Didn't edit fast enough.
Anyway, here's the other two ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_FsRpOqn5M
Note also that there's 1,000 gold hidden in the ninja forest, so that's an alternative to waiting for the burger thing.
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2224
Location: Georgia, USA
Wow, this is definitely not the best entry of the Alex Kidd series. It's really disappointing how few platforming parts there were. You basically have a whole bunch of little fetch quests, it seems.
The game that did this kind of style right is the Linus Spacehead game that Bag of Magic Food did a run for. Instead, this feels like it takes the worst parts from a few different games... that one Japanese game where you try to gain piousness comes to mind. (I can't remember its name right now.)
The technical skill looks good, but we'll have to see about a better route.
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.
Wow, this is definitely not the best entry of the Alex Kidd series. It's really disappointing how few platforming parts there were. You basically have a whole bunch of little fetch quests, it seems.
The game that did this kind of style right is the Linus Spacehead game that Bag of Magic Food did a run for. Instead, this feels like it takes the worst parts from a few different games... that one Japanese game where you try to gain piousness comes to mind. (I can't remember its name right now.)
The technical skill looks good, but we'll have to see about a better route.
Technically, it's not an Alex Kidd game. In Japan, it was Anmitsu-hime. She wanted to go to a bakery, not play the latest Sega games. They just overwrote the main character's sprite and made crap up for all the dialogue.
So, let's rework that description to make it a little more accurate:
Alex Kidd in High Tech World is a action video gameseries of fetch-quests with platforming and adventurewalking and stair-climbing elements, released by Sega in 1987 for the Sega Master System, that iswas reskinned with new character sprites, art and dialogue to fool hungry gamers into thinking it was part of the Alex Kidd series. It accomplished the remarkable feat of making ninja-fighting seem dull.
Any thoughts on this, gamerretro2? You should see if these are faster than praying and use them in a new file if they are. I'll hold back on judging until you come back with an answer.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Any thoughts on this, gamerretro2? You should see if these are faster than praying and use them in a new file if they are. I'll hold back on judging until you come back with an answer.
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Any thoughts on this, gamerretro2? You should see if these are faster than praying and use them in a new file if they are. I'll hold back on judging until you come back with an answer.
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Does the time advance when waiting in the village / in a room?
Any thoughts on this, gamerretro2? You should see if these are faster than praying and use them in a new file if they are. I'll hold back on judging until you come back with an answer.
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Does the time advance when waiting in the village / in a room?
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
xy2_ wrote:
gamerretro2 wrote:
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Does the time advance when waiting in the village / in a room?
I looked into this. Minutes advance in real time, screen transitions advance the clock by 5 minutes. Both of the alternate methods would require one room transition and around two minutes of waiting judging from that time, and the praying takes barely under a minute. The route used in the TAS appears to be the fastest unless there's another, much quicker way to advance time by single minutes. EDIT: To elaborate, by the time the praying stops, it's just turned to 10:54, so praying is at least a minute faster than the other two options barring a route change or something else.
Thanks for the answer, gamerretro2. I'll judge accordingly when the time comes.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Does the time advance when waiting in the village / in a room?
I looked into this. Minutes advance in real time, screen transitions advance the clock by 5 minutes. Both of the alternate methods would require one room transition and around two minutes of waiting judging from that time, and the praying takes barely under a minute. The route used in the TAS appears to be the fastest unless there's another, much quicker way to advance time by single minutes. EDIT: To elaborate, by the time the praying stops, it's just turned to 10:54, so praying is at least a minute faster than the other two options barring a route change or something else.
Thanks for the answer, gamerretro2. I'll judge accordingly when the time comes.
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Tangent wrote:
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
And then you'd still need to wait until the top of the hour, which takes longer than praying. If you can prove this wrong with an input file, I'd love to see it.
gamerretro2, both of the sidescrolling sections can be improved by small amounts. You can completely avoid landing on those high tree branches that stop you in place for a moment and save around a second overall. Would you like to try redoing the movie? I can provide an input file with a sample route if you'd like.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
And then you'd still need to wait until the top of the hour
For what? There are three possible methods.
Pass for free from the temple guard (top of the hour)
Pass for free for praying 100 times
Bribe guard for 2,000 gold
You can make ~1,000 gold for selling the backscratcher, 1,000 for the hamburger event (requires 2:00), 1,000 from the clouds, and I think 3-400 from the random coins strewn around.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Tangent wrote:
Samsara wrote:
Tangent wrote:
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
And then you'd still need to wait until the top of the hour
For what?
https://youtu.be/L_FsRpOqn5M?t=2m15s
I'm assuming this is accurate, as there would be no reason to wait until the top of the hour otherwise, but I'll test it later to make absolutely sure.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Tangent wrote:
Maybe I misunderstood then. I'm pretty sure it was x:00 for the free pass from the temple guard and it only checked for the 2k gold for the other.
You're right, actually, you can pass as long as you have 2000 gold, no matter what the time is. Just confirmed it in-game by giving myself more than 2000 gold as I reached the guard at 10:53 (going off of the submission file). I apologize for the misunderstanding.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I don't really have much to do with this site these days, but I just thought I'd mention that while trying this game out after watching the run, I accidentally bumped into an invisible phone:
This is on the middle of the fourth floor, just to the left of James' room. I doubt it saves any time, but it might be worth taking a look at.
And since I watched (most of) the run: regardless of the whether the route is optimal or not, I'd have to give this a no vote. The game is so bad it's kind of amusing just for the sheer magnitude of the poor design decisions (walked down a perfectly innocuous flight of stairs? THEY'RE BROKEN, GAME OVER!) but doesn't make a good TAS.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Samsara wrote:
Would you like to try redoing the movie? I can provide an input file with a sample route if you'd like.
User movie #27020235245096814
Low effort fix, 49 frames faster. Sorry it took so long. Only the second sidescroller is changed, the first can still be improved but I wasn't about to redo half the movie for that.
gamerretro2, please look into the alternate route suggested by Tangent and improving the sidescrollers. I'll set this to delayed in the meantime until you come back with an improvement. If you have no intention to improve this movie, please cancel it yourself. Otherwise, I will replace the file once you post it.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
This is on the middle of the fourth floor, just to the left of James' room. I doubt it saves any time, but it might be worth taking a look at.
And since I watched (most of) the run: regardless of the whether the route is optimal or not, I'd have to give this a no vote. The game is so bad it's kind of amusing just for the sheer magnitude of the poor design decisions (walked down a perfectly innocuous flight of stairs? THEY'RE BROKEN, GAME OVER!) but doesn't make a good TAS.
