I didn't know that a Rio could be frozen either, I found it randomly when refilling before Kraid, where I accidentally managed to freeze one. After working on the Rio room though, I'm suspecting that they freeze at most 10% of the time you shoot them, or I was really unlucky.
I'm actually done with the Zeebites at this point. When I posted the last WIP I was almost done with Tourian, but didn't want to post it while it was unfinished. They were really damn annoying because you can't really get that room to be super fast, since the Rinkas are so damn slow. After breaking the two first barriers pretty quickly I had to backtrack a little bit in the room twice for the next two. MB was a lot easier as there where only two continuous sources to refill from.
Unless I run into trouble on Meta Ridley this shouldn't take much longer to finish. It will all depend on how much you can manipulate his patterns, and how easily it is to do so.
Is there a way, even if it ends up being slower, to simply skip the ledge climbing ability and just be crafty with bombs and contortion useage? Even if it killed 10 mins, would it suddenly make it 8%?
Probably impossible... but still am curious...
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Just another random gamer
----
<OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
The Power Grip is required; there's a barrier in Norfair that only goes away once you have it. No, there's no justification for this; if it weren't for that barrier then you wouldn't need the Grip.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The Power Grip is required; there's a barrier in Norfair that only goes away once you have it. No, there's no justification for this; if it weren't for that barrier then you wouldn't need the Grip.
I had a feeling that was it. Sigh... really sad. 8% sounds way more impressive. Unless there is ever a way found to bypass it. I mean this game hasn't been even half explored as SM has... so maybe one day.
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Just another random gamer
----
<OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
I mean this game hasn't been even half explored as SM has
While I do agree with this statement, there probably isn't very much big left to find. We didn't just, y'know, stop exploring because of boredom or something, we just stopped finding things. This game is a lot more robust than SM is.
Lowering the minimum percentage in particular would require some pretty serious glitching. The only theory that seems remotely plausible is early power bombs, but it's been debunked several times already.
Not to say that nothing is ever going to happen, or that anyone trying is an idiot. Just... don't get your hopes up.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
No, there's no justification for this; if it weren't for that barrier then you wouldn't need the Grip.
Have you ever tried doing the suitless sequence without using the power grip?
There's no bomb jump and no way to backtrack and acquire the grip. You'd be stuck a couple of screens in, maybe even before entering the ship.
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
The Suitless segment should be fine with walljumping, I don't have the game available at the moment so I'm not completely sure, just using the latest run and measuring by eye. Some parts looked kind of borderline, but it's hard to tell since power grip is always faster than walljumping so it's used way more.
I do understand the design decision behind forcing you to have power grip, because of how they placed it, way out in another area, after a hidden item (plasma beam) even. It's just done in a really silly way, not sure how they would force you to get it otherwise, but eh. Could've put a more important item there or something, like ice beam.
And they already force Varia suit on you when you get the full suit (yes that counts as a %, <_< ), they could've forced power grip on you in the suitless part or something. And it's not even in the inventory screen when suitless anyway.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
I'm pretty sure you'd be able to grab ledges in the suitless part even if you didn't pick up PG. They do give you high-jump during that part whether you got it or not, so I think her abilities during that segment are unrelated to what you picked up earlier (except for E-tanks of course).
Btw, am I correct that if you change "have PG" value to 0 at some point before or during the suitless segment, it won't interfere with your ledge gripping abilities as suitless Samus?
Edit: D'oh, sniped.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Hey guys. So there's been a few non-trivial 100% route improvements found in the normal speedrunning community. Only one of the changes really help the TAS route, but it's at least 10 in game seconds faster (tested with human execution) and even more for real time.
So I started a new 100% TAS! yay!
Here's a WIP up the Kraid elevator so far
I'm aiming for real time for this one and decided to not use stereo sound because of it. The newer version of VBA also lags more during doors and certain map/item screens which is pretty annoying.
Mono sound saved 92 frames and there's 41 frames of actual execution savings on top of that. I've lost 67 frames so far from extra lag, and worse luck cost me 20. In the end, pretty much all random rooms ended up faster on the ingame timer, even if that's not the goal. I just had to waste more time to get any decent room states.
In total I'm 46 frames ahead right now.
EDIT: Quick encode:
Link to video
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
After grabbing the Power Bomb tank in Norfair during cleanup, instead of going back through Kraid we go back up through Norfair and take the north west elevator to Crateria. In addition to simply being faster, this allows us to leave a few missile tanks for cleanup (Missile to the right of Hi-Jump and the one under the Crateria Elevator).
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
New WIP
50 frames faster so far, at least I'm gaining enough time to keep up with the extra lag ;).
Notable changes being the new fancy Acid Worm Skip which saves 2 frames and losing the shinespark up the shaft after Kraid in favor of some unspin magic, saving ~24 frames.
Link to video
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
It's slightly more than 2 seconds of ingame time faster so far.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Okay so, 3rd WIP. Now things are getting interesting. We can see a few changes that stem from the bigger route change in cleanup. I leave 3 Missile tanks and one Super tank to be grabbed during cleanup instead.
I also destroy a couple of bomb blocks in a hot room for no apparent gain. I recently learned that they do not regenerate, which speeds up my second trip through that room way later by allowing a speed booster.
Ignoring the route differences, the run is currently about 12 frames faster than the old run, the lag is catching up to me ;(. It's almost 3 seconds faster on the ingame timer though.
Video:
Link to video
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
WIP 4
Not too much new here, found a way to enter the Ridley fight with all my supers, which helps since I have less maximum Supers than the published run right now.
I found a bunch of really small improvements though. Saving almost a second throughout the area.
Discounting route changes (I'll count the slight lack of ammo as a route change, it's cost me about 50 frames so far on the Cocoon fight and refilling before Ridley) I'm 21 realtime frames ahead, and 241 ingame frames (almost 4 seconds, the ingame timer runs at 64 fps).
EDIT: A new shinespark at the start of Ridley was brought to my attention. It ends up saving almost 2 full seconds over the old strategy. This also changes the RNG for everything after it so I had redo a bunch of stuff in Ridley and the way to Tourian. Because of new luck the cute trick I found to have full supers at Ridley isn't faster anymore. VBM link and youtube video updated to the new Ridley for those interested. New time gain is 153 frames realtime and 376 ingame frames (5 seconds 56 frames).
I'm currently partway done with Tourian so the next real WIP should be coming soon.
Link to video
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
WIP 5
Includes Tourian and Suitless. Gained about half a second from better luck manipulation in Tourian, I still have very little idea how luck works in the game. Thankfully it's not that big of a deal throughout most of the game, but Tourian is really annoying.
Suitless has a ton of small improvements, but a big one is turning the alarm off through manipulating enemy movements and doing some awkward Wall jumping to stay out of Pirates vision. Previous runs ran into a Save room later on to reset the alarm so doing this saved me 2 transitions, around a second of realtime. It's at the second intentional activated alarm, with the really long crawl on top of crumble blocks.
Current saved time is 239 realtime frames and 576 Ingame frames (8s27f).
Link to video
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
I recently put together this NBMB TAS, so might as well drop it here:
Link to video
It started as sort of a pet-project to see if I could make a TAS to begin with, it was always something I wanted to try out, and this seemed like a fun opportunity to give it a go. In the end, it turned out way better than I expected.
Personally, I feel it doesn't quite meet the Zero Mission TAS standards set by Dragonfangs and Cpadolf, since especially the early game is fairly unoptimized due to my lack of knowledge about properly TASing sections, and using small time-savers. Just like every first attempt at a TAS, it gets much better as it goes on, and I did go back and sort of "mask" my errors for the early game by adding a lot movement to make it seem faster, at least. That said, there is a fair bit of well-TASed stuff in there too, and sometimes even some improvements over current runs.
About NBMB. The goal is to collect the most amount of items possible, without killing any of the bosses or minibosses in the entire game. And since this is a TAS, obviously I attempt to do this as fast possible. The category is very unique from anything else out there, as far as how the route goes, what strategies are used, and most importantly, what glitches are utilized.
There's three main big glitches that happen in the run. The Varia Suit gets deactivated with an Item Refill Glitch, Kraid is skipped to get Speed Booster without killing him, and early Power Bombs are gotten. Beyond this, due to the way the route shaped up to be, a lot of the areas are gone through using unique equipment, and since there's very little you actually need missiles and supers for, there's tons and tons of opportunities to do nice looking and nice sounding play-around stuff.
So, bottom line, entertainment value. Hope you enjoy the run.
