Hey, that's pretty good! Better than what I was doing, anyway. I also had this idea to force a no-damage run by setting health and lives down to one in the Debug Mode, but maybe that's a little silly. I could probably find improvements to make in your video if I tried, but I don't feel like it right now.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Thank you!
I think there were a few times where I shouldn't have taken damage, but the biggest mistake can be easily seen just by comparing the first cloud fight (and the mid-boss cloud) to the second one in Mt.Dedede.
A couple of other ones I discovered in Mt.Dedede...you don't need to touch the clone Kirbies at all to go through the doors (capriciously demonstrated in last section before Dedede boss). Just duck for a few frames to squeeze under the spike to get in the door.
If you want to check what's faster, you'll have to check memory addresses.
As far as I tested, it isn't faster to jump all the time.
like in the GBA games, avoiding the floor is a faster way of transportation
This hasn't to do with a specific console but with how a specific game works.
There are GBA games in which jumping is slower.
You wondered why you're 46 frames behind.
- You stopped at frame 500 for no reason.
- Maybe you did a bad job at lag reduction and optimization.
- You stopped at frame 500 for no reason.
- Maybe you did a bad job at lag reduction and optimization.
The difference between a certain frame in both runs (the first flash from Warp Star in the forest) was 46. I think now that time could be saved from a speed glitch done by air-puffing (that's what I call it :P) where Kirby goes faster BACKWARDS.
Also, I was refering to NiDL and KatAM in particular, not all GBA games.
EDIT: Never mind, that method is slower. So far I've managed to shave 12 frames of my own time, but so far 34 down JXQ's.
EDIT EDIT: 6 frames and we'll have an improvement. So far I've shaved off by pressing start on the title screen and the "Green Greens" screen. I think the 6 frames came from sucking totally un-nessisary enimies.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Nah, JXQ's run seems to be un-improvable, said by my expirements. Unless JXQ personally knows improvements.
See Youtube page (GIRfanaticTAS) for all runs and stuff.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Nah, JXQ's run seems to be un-improvable, said by my expirements. Unless JXQ personally knows improvements.
No, his movie is quite improvable. You can save at least 5 (probably more) seconds only from lag reduction and better strategies.
I planned on improving upon JXQ's run, but I kinda ran into a stupid frame rule at whispy woods and I don't know what to do. Also, I'm now a little frustrated and demotivated :(
So I did what I always do when it comes to such cases: I'm posting my progress and knowledge for future reference and leave the project alone for awhile.
Most of these are somewhat complicated to comprehend or to use efficently. My .vbm covers all of these though. Here goes:
Facts, tricks, glitches:
- pressing down for 1 frame just before landing will make kirby land without producing a star sprite. Also, there's no landing animation to recover from.
- To reduce lag efficently, you need to keep the number of sprites on-screen as low as possible. Often trial-and-error is required though... Sometimes it's faster to go through the room without sucking in enemies, sometimes it's faster to swallow them. For some reason, the game doesn't lag as much when you jump in certain situations.
- You can swallow enemies in the very moment you suck them in. If you then suck in another enemy (you need to be close enough, preferably above or below the enemy or object), you can skip the "sucking-in"-animation.
- Damage boosts are rather useless. Only in some situations, you can use them to acquire invincibility (for instance, it's useful after the miniboss battle in level 1) or if you don't need to accelerate after the boost (like in the first room of level 1 where you can boost towards the warp star, or in the first room of level 2, where you can boost towards the door to the next room...)
- You can keep many animations by pressing left and right alternately, like the landing animation, the bumping-against-a-wall/ceiling animation, the sucking-in animation...
- Left+Right will make Kirby walk in place. If you walk to the left and then alternately press left+right and right you will moonwalk. Also this can be used to abruptly and temporarily loose your momentum. If you let go of either left or right, you will regain your momentum. This is sometimes useful in sections like the third room of level 1, where you need to float up to the top of the room while navigating by the corners.
Spitting stars at whispy woods should only be done between the periods in which he drops 3 items. If you damage him while he drops items, it'll take quite some time until he can drop the next item.
In my movie I get the first two apples from whispy woods. And here's the problem: When spitting the last apple of the first period at him there's such a huge time span where he's just doing nothing! It takes 40 additional frames for him to drop the next 3 items as opposed to not spitting the last apple at him. So yeah... I don't want to make half-assed movies anymore. Even less when improving upon an existing movie.
Hope you guys like what I did so far. I'm aware I killed some surprises for the next kirby's dreamland TAS, but it couldn't be helped. The only way I see to avoid this problem is to save some frames before whispy woods. But I already optimized my gameplay as well as I could.
Let me know if you got any hints, glitches, tricks that I'm not aware of.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/196948073/Kirby%27s%20Dream%20Land%20%28UE%29%20%5B%21%5D2.vbm
Hey, I picked this one up again. I've redone the two rooms before the boss room and saved ~ 4 frames. Whispy didn't make me wait as much this time and the boss fight looks good.
The waiting spans seem to be related to Whispy's blinking animation which seems to be matter of luck-manipulation. I had originally postponed this because I thought it was related to a nasty frame rule and I didn't know how to save frames in the previous rooms to avoid this. I put much effort to save as many frames as I could (40.000 rerecords now! o_o)
So far, this is 205 frames faster compared to the published run.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1890830178/Kirby%27s%20Dream%20Land%20%28UE%29%20%5B%21%5D2.vbmEDIT:
Now finished level 2. That was an easy feat, no complicated rooms that are full of enemies here or anything that stopped me. I'm now 373 frames ahead of the published run.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/982557142/Kirby%27s%20Dream%20Land%20%28UE%29%20%5B%21%5D2.vbm
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
I just saw your most recent WIP. I can't tell real well how this compares to JXQ's run, but you've done a really great job with lag.
Stage 1:
Looks great, especially the health management before the miniboss. The lag is a little questionable before you enter the tree, but it looks like there wasn't much you can do about it. With Wispy Woods, does he always have to drop a spike in each set of 3?
Stage 2:
Nice job beating Lololo as the miniboss without taking damage, and pretty decent playaround for the other two hits. I'm surprised that inhaling the bottom row of blocks in the next room is the fastest way to go. With the boss, how much control do you have over which rows they use? It seems like you spend a bit of time moving to the middle for the final hit... would it be faster to inhale the first box closer to the middle?
Stage 3:
I'm guessing all the damage in the water was to avoid lag... very clever! I also like the glitched enemy in the floor shortly afterward. It's a shame you had to skip the spicy food here, but honestly, you've cleaned up crazy amounts of lag. Good luck with improving the Kaboola fight!
Keep it up!
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.
Stage 1:
Looks great, especially the health management before the miniboss. The lag is a little questionable before you enter the tree, but it looks like there wasn't much you can do about it. With Wispy Woods, does he always have to drop a spike in each set of 3?
I tried for 20.000 rerecords to optimize the last room of level 1 to eliminate as much lag as possible but this is the best I could come up with.
Whispy either drops 2 gordos + 1 apple or 1 gordo + 2 apples.
Stage 2:
Nice job beating Lololo as the miniboss without taking damage, and pretty decent playaround for the other two hits. I'm surprised that inhaling the bottom row of blocks in the next room is the fastest way to go. With the boss, how much control do you have over which rows they use? It seems like you spend a bit of time moving to the middle for the final hit... would it be faster to inhale the first box closer to the middle?
The no-stun trick is used a lot in this run (swallowing something, be close to the next thing you suck in so the animation gets skipped).
Due to this trick I could spit the last box at the miniboss at the instant I sucked it in. And for the same reason, going through the bottom row and bein close to the second to last box at the boss is faster. I regain control faster, can spit it at Lololo (or Lalala) and immediately go on.
Stage 3:
I'm guessing all the damage in the water was to avoid lag... very clever! I also like the glitched enemy in the floor shortly afterward. It's a shame you had to skip the spicy food here, but honestly, you've cleaned up crazy amounts of lag. Good luck with improving the Kaboola fight!
Usually you can damage boost in this game, but due to the lag it ends up slower most of the time. It was still used in level 2, room 3 even though it was one frame slower because it eliminated a lot of lag in the following rooms.
Taking damage in the water seems to be better because you regain control faster. EDIT: And yes, at one point it boosted me forward so a cannon isn't lagging very much. :)
Thanks for your comments :)
Link
The screen scrolls one pixel further than it should. Can probably not be exploited, but who knows.
The TAS is now at level 5.
I saved about 19 seconds so far.
Link
Background music glitch
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5169653
- The glitch happens in the video at about 3 minutes in.
- Notes in case the video gets deleted: In hard mode (Japanese version), in the first level, end of 2nd room near the door, where the enemies make a lot of noise, this section seems to cause the background music to mess up.
Sounds like the enemy noises cancelled out at least one of the sound channels. I got a similar sound by unchecking (muting) Options>Audio>Channel 3 in VBA.
If the music ever causes lag during the TAS, maybe using this trick could remove some of the lag frames and save time.
Ideas to improve the TAS
Better momentum preservation around corners? (such as in Level 1 when ascending to the top)
Level 2 Lololo Lalala --> possible to hit both in one hit? (test it) Tested it, doesn't work. Stars that you shoot nearby of Lololo or Lalala don't survive for some reason, so you can only hit one of them each shot.
Level 4 Kracko Jr. --> it might be possible to kill him one cycle? (test it) Tested it, doesn't work
Level 4 block row --> use exhale-inhale instead of spicy food?
Level 5 Kracko entrace --> enter by taking damage or from above somehow, instead of at bottom
Level 5 Dedede --> better manipulation (make him jump only)
__
This hasn't been posted here so...
Kracko moves fast if you are in the triangle, and slow if you aren't.
Apparently there is a new trick to despawn enemies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr9-5JXvcuc
Will probably make a luascript that shows all loaded enemies and investigate it later.
For future reference, I had a little bug happen at Kaboola. My shot missed and it looked like it wrapped around the screen instead of despawning...
Sadly I can't redo it anymore.
EDIT: Managed to do it again. Basicly it's a frame-dependent bug that occurs every 100 or 200 frames if Kirby shoots on that frame. Also his X-pos has to be proper. If done correctly, the shot will come from the left side of the screen instead of from Kirby.
Working on Kirby games for console verification. I resynced the existing run up to start of level 2 and it works on console. There are quite a few added lag frames compared to the original, which is expected since it was made in VBA.
I don't intend to work on this too actively, just as a side project since Kirby games are some of last GB/C games I want to see verified.
Note that I am using JPN version since carts are much cheaper, but I did check if it works on USA version and at least for level 1 it syncs pretty easily.
Pretty awesome that you're doing this. I tried to resync the TAS a couple of years ago and I was unsuccessful. I'll be rooting for you.
By the way, if you ever finish the full resync, besides sharing the input file for archival purposes, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend using a different palette for the game because the custom made palette for these Kirby games is... not very pleasant to look at, to say the least.
Pretty awesome that you're doing this. I tried to resync the TAS a couple of years ago and I was unsuccessful. I'll be rooting for you.
By the way, if you ever finish the full resync, besides sharing the input file for archival purposes, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend using a different palette for the game because the custom made palette for these Kirby games is... not very pleasant to look at, to say the least.
I think the palette looks fine, which one do you think looks better? As long as you pick the palette on the first possible frame things seem to sync ok.
I found a potential time saving strat in lvl 3:
--removed, see later videos--
This only costs 2 frames in the water section, but saving the hit saves 2 health compared to the original, so potentially 2 extra damage boosts available. Not sure where to use them though.
Levels 1-3, console verified.
The trick I mentioned above seems to save ~10 frames overall, so is an actual improvement. (At least where I chose to use the damage boosts, possibly there are better locations.)
--superceded, see later videos--
Movie file: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638037217184361367
