(Link to video)
Behold, for this is... The Absolute Superplay: Six seconds faster than the previous T.A. Death TAS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZaq0jQcZVQ) by use of spamming wall as many wall kicks as plausible, which allow 1 frame to be shaved off of several piece placements (there is even a single piece in which 2 frames are saved!). 1 frame might not be much, but out of 999 levels with each piece counting as one level (well, line clears also count as levels...), it adds up. Greater stacking efficiency (no overhangs that require pieces to be moved backwards, and more Tetris line clears) also saves time. This TAS also makes the goal of achieving all gold medals (except for the AC medal, which would require too much RNG and would also tank the time), with an extra challenge at the end.
Comments by section:
Lv000: Believe it or not, this section actually took me the most time to complete. As I was still getting the hang of using kicks to save time, there were a lot of places that I missed kicks (leading me to redo the entire section later), and a lot of kicks that I tried to do that actually didn't save any time. Even though this is technically the slowest section, I feel the most confident about my performance in this one.
Lv100: I must say, this was by far the most frustrating section of them all. Getting the CO medal in TGM2 is actually really hard, mainly because of the lack of a hold button. It took me no less than four hours of pain and suffering to achieve the medal...
Lv200: In Lv100 and Lv200, there is no time penalty for clearing non-Tetrises. Thusly, I take advantage of this to build an optimal stack to get the silver RE medal. However, I feel like going for the RE medal actually made my time slower because I didn't get to do as many kicks due to the flatter stacking required.
Lv300: To get the gold RE medal, four recoveries need to be performed. The third one is here, but since the medal doesn't change you can't tell. I actually didn't intend to get the gold RE medal, I just ended up getting it due to how much I held back from non-Tetrises, as now that we are out of section 100-299, time will be lost for clearing anything other than a Tetris. However, I still end up clearing a double and a triple because of an I drought towards the end of the section, which prevented me from ending the section in a Tetris.
Lv400: At this point the TAS reaches nearly its max speed, and it's blazingly fast. At this point you can't see any of the kicks at all unless you watch the video in slow motion.
Lv500-899: In T.A. Death, reaching Lv500 in under 3:25 awards the grade M. Of course, this time requirement has been obliterated, as the entire run is under that time. There is a strange bug that only seems to occur when TASing and in sections 300+ in which the DAS charge, which allows the piece to instantly move from the spawn, can be completely lost. I have not figured out what exactly causes that bug, but I have spent a lot of time working around it, making sure to never let pieces get "stuck" due to no DAS charge. I think it happened around 3-5 times in the entire TAS, but I was able to circumvent it each time.
Lv900: As we are in the final section, there isn't quite a time penalty for clearing non-Tetrises. What's most important is having the least amount of uncleared lines, as that allows me to reach 999 faster. Thus, I break the no non-Tetrises promise (well, there were a few in the earlier sections due to I drought) and instead prioritize downstacking towards the end of the section, finishing with only 2 uncleared lines and a time of 2:42:63. While the main game is over and the time is set, there is still the credits. In T.A. Death, reaching level 999 awards the grade GM, with absolutely no other requirements.
Credits: Ordinarily, the credits in T.A. Death has a set length, does not increment the timer, and has absolutely no bearing on whether or not the player has won or lost. Originally, I was just going to play really silly here as a result, but then I thought that I couldn't call this "The Absolute Superplay" if I didn't go for the Secret GM durng the credits. It requires the player to build a > shape out of holes in rows 19/21 of the board, with the final hole in column 19 row 1 being covered by a block. Secret GM is very tricky to build, and is even more difficult in T.A. Death's 20G. Interestingly, when building a secret grade in the credits, the secret grade is only detected if the player doesn't top out. Therefore, the entire shape has to be finished in sync with the end of the credits. Normally, the secret grade is detected even if the player tops out (blocks that kill the player are even counted for it), so this reduces the possible piecement places by a little bit. Anyways, with the perfectly timed Secret GM, this run is a Double GM with five gold medals.
Medals:
AC Medal: One all clear is performed at the start for the Bronze AC medal. As previously mentioned, there is too much RNG involved to get a higher medal than that, so the AC medal remains bronze for the entire run.
ST Medal: In T.A. Death, Gold ST is awarded when any section time is less than 42 seconds. Because each section time is less than 42 seconds (the first section being 28 seconds, and the final 5 seconds being around 12-13 seconds), it is actually re-awarded every section.
SK Medal: In T.A. Death, only 17 Tetrises are required to get Gold SK. In any TAS, Gold ST and Gold SK are guaranteed, but not so much in RTA.
RE Medal: Four recoveries are required to get the Gold RE medal. The first three are in sections 100-300, and the final one is in 500. While I've come close, no more recoveries were performed in this run.
RO Medal: RO is the funniest medal. Every 3 sections is worth one level of the RO medal (with the Silver RO being 4 sections). It requires the rotation/piece ratio to be at least 6:5. While I do a lot of extra rotations due to all the kicks, it's not quite enough to get the RO medal. To make up for the missing rotations, silent rotations are performed every frame with the O piece. Despite everything, it's actually really realistic to get the RO medal in an RTA run.
CO Medal: To get the Gold CO medal, at least a 7 combo is required. However, singles do not increment the combo counter, nor do they reset it. To get Gold CO, an extra tall stack, one worth of the RE medal, with a funnel-like hole at the side must be built in order to get enough line clears. After filling almost every block in the board, and even placing a piece in the spawn area, I'm just barely able to get Gold CO. It's pretty satisfying, though.
  • Submission note: I believe it was written somewhere that the emulator should be paused when a recording is started. However, I did not pause the emulator when recording. I found that there was no issue with the recording as a result, but it will not play if the emulator is paused when the recording is loaded (it will play if the emulator is unpaused).

FractalFusion: Fixed game name and added Youtube encode already posted by the submitter in the thread.
Masterjun: Judging.
Masterjun: This is a great fast-paced movie. The single frame improvements by using wall kicks were a great idea. It's a shame the All Clear Medal was the only one that couldn't be achieved as a gold medal. Maybe a future run could try and accomplish this. Still, this isn't a reason to reject the run, as it still accomplishes the goal of beating the game mode.
Viewer feedback was very good. Accepting to Moons.
feos: Pub.

TASVideoAgent
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Spikestuff
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Just a question. Is the input overextended by any chance? If it is just upload it to the userfiles and link it back here to be fixed by someone who can replace your movie file.
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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What do you mean by overextended? Do you want me to upload the recording or a savestate or (???)?
Spikestuff
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Your showing a TAS that's a 2:48.93 and saying it's 6 seconds faster than that meaning it should be a 2:42.xx but the input file that's in the movie is a "3:25.58". I'm just mainly asking if you didn't end your input on the final frame and instead you watched the credits play out.
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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Spikestuff, it may have to do with him playing the credits out instead of leaving input blank there. Disclaimer: I do not know the TAS in question, but this seems to be a likely source of the issue.
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Welcome to TASVideos, Steelix100! I see you here!!
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The 3.25.58 is the moviefile length autogenerated by this bot, the time (2:42/2:48) is the ingame timer's time. I don't know what to do about that. Most of that time is indeed added by the credits roll as well as roughly 9 seconds on boot. Edit: Hello Mihoru! Thanks for the warm welcome~
Taechuk
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The video in the submission text is the previous TAS I think.
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Would it be possible for someone to provide an encode for this TAS?
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Link to video If you want a video recording of the TAS, I have uploaded one to my Youtube channel.
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WEEEELLLLLLLLL i guess we can say that this represent what a TAS can do ? yes vote, secret GM rank ? star vote ! (ps : does this tas mean we can also TAS TGM3 ???)
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TGM3 runs on Taito Type X hardware, so no, TGM3 is not doable in mame-rr (and will not be for a long, long time, if ever).
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too bad :/
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Ah, I just realized, I made a mistake in the title of the game in the submission, it is actually Tetris the Absolute: The Grandmaster 2 PLUS. This is a very important distinction since T.A. Death isn't in vanilla tgm2. I did, however, provide the correct rom name (tgm2p.zip).
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Thanks Steelix100. I fixed the game name and also put your encode at the top of the submission text. By the way, it is possible as the submitter to edit your submission as well. By the way, I was interested in a full TAS of this game and game mode (T.A. Death) ever since DeHackEd made a WIP 11 years ago (never completed). I didn't have the means to do this TAS (or to trust MAME for that matter), but I'm glad you did. Also, I didn't even know of the Secret GM ending. I noticed in real-time plays of this game mode that once you reach Lv999, the blocks become invisible or something. Is it something that is supposed to happen here but doesn't because of emulation error?
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That happens only in Master mode. There's two types of credit rolls in Master mode, the first is the fading roll. In the fading roll winning or losing has no effect, and blocks disappear after about 5 seconds of being placed. The other roll is the invisible roll in which they disappear immediately. You have to play exorbitantly well for the invisible roll to happen in place of the fading roll. If you die in the invisible roll, you are awarded the grade M, if you clear it, you are awarded the elusive GM grade. In T.A. Death, you achieve GM for just clearing it, so the credits roll in T.A. Death has no differences from the levels before.
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teapartycthulu wrote:
TGM3 runs on Taito Type X hardware, so no, TGM3 is not doable in mame-rr (and will not be for a long, long time, if ever).
There is a Windows version of TGM3 which I have managed to get running on W10, so it could theoretically be TASed with Hourglass or perhaps using Linux to run libTAS to run Wine to run TGM3.
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Taechuk
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it could theoretically be TASed [...] using Linux to run libTAS to run Wine to run TGM3.
would that even be submittable? with hourglass i could understand it being probably submittable but with that?
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I have no if libTAS>Wine>TGM3 would be submittable or even if it would run properly. Just thinking out loud.
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We currently do not allow Windows games being TASed via Wine in libTAS. (not like libTAS even supports Wine at all at the present time) Anyway, I'm raising a bit of concern: The EEP-ROM test reports NG (no good) in the game's self-test when playing back the movie (same when recording a movie). However, it reports OK when I'm just running the game. Clearly, it doesn't seem to be an issue with the ROM itself.
Steam Community page - Cohost profile Oh, I'm just a concerned observer.
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fsvgm777 wrote:
We currently do not allow Windows games being TASed via Wine in libTAS. (not like libTAS even supports Wine at all at the present time)
'Note that for future purposes, testing this workflow is still encouraged.' While you couldn't submit a TAS of TGM3 on Wine on LibTAS right now, having a proof of concept TAS would be an excellent way to jumpstart the process of these TASes becoming acceptable. (Maybe start with something easier though?)
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Submission text wrote:
AC Medal: One all clear is performed at the start for the Bronze AC medal. As previously mentioned, there is too much RNG involved to get a higher medal than that
Hmm... Link to video Note that I didn't change the RNG, the pieces are the same.
Warning: Might glitch to credits I will finish this ACE soon as possible (or will I?)
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Whoa, nice. However, as 2 extra lines clears are made, 16 frames are dropped, so if I did that, I would lose an entire 16 frames off the final time. In order to have a "lagless" Gold AC, all 3 all clears need to end in a Tetris (like the first one). So it's not just all that RNG to get the all clears in the first place, it's even more RNG to get them all with a Tetris. It took about 20 restarts to get an RNG seed that allowed for an all clear Tetris. I was able to get a non-Tetris all clear on about the 3rd try. I left all that out of the description because I thought there was too many words in there already.
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Is it only non-tetris all clears that lose frames, or does every non-tetris line clear lose frames? You have a number of line clears that aren't tetrises in this one, especially when doing the CO medal.
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It's any line clear that isn't a Tetris that wastes frames (technically, the Tetrises wastes frames too, it just wastes the least frames). It's simple math. There's an entry delay (known to most tetris players as ARE) between pieces, and a line clear delay between pieces when a line is cleared (replacing entry delay). Depending on the section, these numbers will vary. In section 0-99, entry delay is 19 frames, and line clear delay is 27 frames. Thus, every line clear slows you down by 8 frames. Two extra line clears is 8x2=16 frames. In sections 100 and 200, entry delay is equal to line clear delay (13 frames each), thus no matter which lines are cleared in which amount in only these two sections, no time will be lost. This is mentioned in the description. In section 900, whether or not there is a time penalty for clearing non-Tetrises is a bit unclear. Since the game is about to end, what is more of a time waster is placing pieces that are not cleared. Each piece takes anywhere between 7-12 frames to be placed on the board (most will be 8-10). The frame difference between entry delay and line clear delay is 4 frames (less). Thusly it is of the most importance that no line is left uncleared, and that the final line clear sets me to exactly level 999. Most of this is also in the description. Now, there are a couple of non-Tetrises outside of those sections, less than 5, I think. As for those, well, sometimes RNG just gets you down, even in a TAS...