(Link to video)
Platformer game where you are playing as famous doll.You mission is to get diamonds back from evil barbie and hack pentagon.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 2.3
  • Fastest completion
  • Manipulate luck to save time

Comments

So there is 2 parts in this game:

1st-Default platforming.

You dont have hp, you have "stealth bar" that goes down when someone is looking on you.If its on 0 you will have to restart. you has 5 items:
  • 1st invisibility
let you go through bad guys without stealth bar going down
  • 2nd smoke grenade
let you throw it in bad guys so they cant see you
  • 3rd dog
doesnt has any use evein in casual play
  • 4rd rope
can be used only on signs.
  • 5th hacking device (gba)
needed for unlock doors.
we will only use rope and gba cause you simply cant beat game without it and invisibility once.

There is couple of tricks used:

  • 1)You can speed up climbing on ladders by spamming jump+up
  • 2)You can speed up climbing off ladders by jumping of them
  • 3)When you fall from big height (unless you jumped from ladder) barbie will sit down for a bit slowing you down,but you can save speed by rolling when landing
  • 4)Fastest way to move is spamming jump,but you need to jump many times to see difference.
  • 5)Boxes for using rope and ladders is pretty bad so you can see barbie teleportating in some places

2nd-hacking minigames

there is 4 types:
  • 1st ball in gates
this minigame doesnt affected by rng so there is no time save on this type
  • 2nd microcircuit grabbing
this one requires a lot of rng manipulation to get good time
  • 3rd football
you need to grab balls with goals,ball movement is rng,i tried to use smallest amount of movement here.
  • 4rd mexican wall building (should be renamed)
you need to cut off ball from other field this one doesnt affected by rng.I tried to get most percentage of field while still going fast

Stage by stage comments

ENGLAND 1

Pretty straight forward but 1 small timesave here on 0:30 you jump off the ledge to land on pink roof instead ladder this saves ~4 frames

ENGLAND 2

Not hitting any walls at 0:52 to save a bit of speed

CAR CHASE

Autoscroller without ways to go faster. Tried to make as least inputs as possible.

CHINA 2

Rolling down on 3:58 and 4:14 saves time

BOAT CHASE

SAME AS CAR

DIVING LEVEL

WORST LEVEL IN THIS GAME

MEXICO 1

Wall on 10:59 looks like wall,feels like wall and even tastes like wall ...but its not wall

MEXICO 2

Only level in this game where we use invisibility

HORSE CHASE

EVEN CRUSHING INTO THINGS DONT CHANGE ANYTHING WHY THEY ADDED THIS IN THIS GAME

Other comments

This is my first tas.Maybe game choise is not that good but i tried to use most of it.Probably its possible to find some small improvements unless some type of zip will be found.

Thanks to

  • Spikestuff - for finding fast way to climb ladders and helping with timing
  • marakaratma - optimizing route and found that wall in mexico 1 doesnt exist
  • Cupps - finding more optimized way to beat mexican hacks
  • vedro_spirta, Bulkich, EZGames69 and Memory - for motivating me

feos: Judging...
feos: Replaced with a movie that has the proper header.
feos: I couldn't easily find major and obvious flaws in this movie. There were a few mistakes that cost a few frames, but they weren't frequent. Not a lot of feedback, but whatever was there was positive. And I agree that this game feels really smooth and nice, while not being too simplistic, thanks to level design where you have to constantly move around doing various tricks. Accepting to Moons.
Dacicus: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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Posts: 14773
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EZGames69
He/They
Expert player, Publisher, Reviewer (3941)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2701
Location: Michigan
I have to say, despite this being a shovelware GBA title, it was surprisingly fun to watch. Barbie moves much faster than some of the other barbie games Ive seen. There were even some cool tricks here and there that kept up my interest when watching. I think for a first TAS, this is a pretty good one. Yes vote.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 6/30/2010
Posts: 1093
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
This game makes for a better TAS than I expected. The HP system is unique and allows for fast movement and there are just enough small tricks like abusing the ladder mechanics to make things interesting. You also seem to have put some effort into getting good RNG for the hacking minigames. Voting "yes" on this cheap license cashgrab.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11251
Location: RU
The game and the movie look not bad at all! It was a bit too long to keep me entertained, but it still looks like a Moon. Since this game has no credits, only the cutscene with the queen, and then the usual congrats screen with a password which goes after every level, I think it can be encoded without the last Start press, so there is some feel of completion and the music track can play fully. This was done an a Russian translation judging by the bk2 header, but syncs on the USA ROM, because all the text is skipped right away.
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.
AIVV73
He/Him
Player (76)
Joined: 5/30/2018
Posts: 12
Location: Russia
feos wrote:
This was done an a Russian translation judging by the bk2 header, but syncs on the USA ROM, because all the text is skipped right away.
This tas changed rom 3 times : russian translation of eu-eu-usa.First 2 was synced but usa was out of sync but i have redone all tas anyway.Just ignore it.
My name is AIVV, I'm an artist, I'm a tas artist. I'm hired to people to fulfill their fantasies, their deep dark fantasies.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11251
Location: RU
While checking for improvements I found these values for position and put them into a script. This game reuses the position addresses for something else within the same frame whenever someone is watching you, and it's not possible to show the real coordinates during that time using the mGBA core, but here's the script just because I have it. Download Barbie.lua
Language: lua

while true do x = memory.read_s16_le(0x7b50, "IWRAM") y = memory.read_s16_le(0x7b52, "IWRAM") gui.text(100, 100, string.format("%d\n%d", x, y)) emu.frameadvance() end
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.
Editor, Player (67)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1041
feos wrote:
Since this game has no credits, only the cutscene with the queen, and then the usual congrats screen with a password which goes after every level, I think it can be encoded without the last Start press, so there is some feel of completion and the music track can play fully.
Removing that Start press saves 18 frames, so should the movie file be replaced to update the time? I already made a replacement here that I used for AVI dumping.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11251
Location: RU
I don't think it should be replaced, it doesn't change how soon the ending is reached anyway.
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.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14773
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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. ---- [3837] GBA Secret Agent Barbie: Royal Jewels Mission by AIVV73 in 13:41.68