(Link to video)
"Destroying Angel: Reap & execute divine judgment upon el Pueblo de Mendez"

Goal: Perfect Score in fastest time.
  • This is accomplished by achieving all kills except Bella Sisters during Bonus Chest timers.
Result:
  • Score: 210400 (Perfect)
  • Enemies killed: 124 (Maxed)
  • Bonus Chest Kills: 38+46+34=118 (Perfect)
  • Max kills in a row: 46 (Max combo is incompatible with goal of perfect score on this stage)
  • Rank: 5 Stars (Maxed, Granted for scoring at least 60000 points)

About The Mercenaries
Mercenaries is unlocked by completing the main game. It is a timed minigame with the objective of scoring the most points before time runs out. Per the intro of a map "Eliminate as many Ganados as you can before your evac chopper arrives! Successive kills will result in earning you more points!" Initially only Leon is selectable. There are four other characters playable when unlocked after scoring 30000+ points in one of the four (unofficially named) maps:
  • Ada from the Village (Stage 1)
  • Krauser from the Castle (Stage 2)
  • Hunk from the Base (Stage 3)
  • Wesker from the Waterworld (Stage 4)
Each map starts with two minutes of gameplay time, and time extensions are spread throughout the map. The Castle map has a total game time of up to 9 minutes. Item menu, item grabs, and cutscenes do not consume game time. Gameplay ends when the player dies, or when time runs out (the player is "rescued").
Each map has three Bonus Chest timers. Each gives 31 seconds during which time extra points are awarded for each regular enemy kill. The majority of effort put into this TAS was spent optimizing the Bonus Chests, with kills being registered with few frames to spare.
The USA(NTSC) GameCube version using Wesker is acceptable for achieving Highest Score in this stage. The enemy AI is aggressive. Enemies run into the player's line of sight, meaning less time is wasted hunting, and more time is focused on killing and moving to the next objective. Wesker has the best weapon selection.
The score for a perfect run on this stage is 9500*6(Bella Sisters)+1300*118(Ganados)=210400. See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details HERE.

Spawning: The enemy spawning is relatively simple. 10 ganados can be on the map at a time. Bella Sisters may put this over 10. The bulk of enemies come from the huge central area of the map. 3 ganados spawn (one chance only) each from grabbing timers in the barn and behind the tower. 8 spawn from the big house. Except for the initial 10 ganados, 6 will spawn in the small house and 16 spawn on the hill. There was a spawn glitch during the second bonus chest where if I did not wait to get kill 25, 10 ganados would not ever spawn.

Manipulations: The reason for number of Re-Records:
Luck (RNG) is based on actions the player takes. RNG was manipulated throughout the run by trial and error. A little RNG manipulation was used for ammo (handgun ammo and hand grenades). RNG manipulation achieved the following:
  • Critical Headshots- In high scoring real-time runs, the pistol is only used to shoot barrels and to get emergency kills if Rifle and Magnum ammo runs out due to unreliability. With a Crit probability of about 50%, TAS effectively turns it to 100%.
  • Desirable Ammo drops, primarily Hand Grenades used for blowing up groups of enemies, and handgun ammo.
  • Plagas (gorey monsters which randomly pop out of the necks of some ganados) were not allowed to appear.
Enemy AI was manipulated to:
  • Keep them from damaging Wesker
  • Get three poor AI ganados off of the roof of the big house so they can be gathered at start of bonus chest.

Enemies:
  • Ganado: Standard enemy, easy pickings with the handgun. They wield either pitchforks, torches, knives, hatchets, sickles, or dynamite. The dynamite can be shot to cause an explosion, which is used twice in this video.
  • Bella Sister: Six in total, these chainsaw wielding foes have high health and a damage limiter which requires them to be hit 8 times with a powerful weapon for a kill.
  • Glitched Bella Sister: Occasionally, a Bella Sister will be replaced by a standard Ganado woman with high health that gives the same points as a Bella Sister, but without the damage limiter. Hooray! However, if she appears one other enemy will simply not spawn, reducing the maximum possible score. Therefore, only regular Bella Sisters were allowed to spawn.

Wesker's Arsenal:
Firearms:
  • Silenced Handgun: Primary weapon used in this TAS, it shall hereby be known in this write-up as the "TASER" CANNON (don't forget the quotes). The silencer is usually discarded in high score runs to free up more space in the weapon inventory (attache case), but it is kept here for aesthetics. It is the fastest and weakest gun, quick to draw and lower. It's effective for getting critical headshots against Ganados, and stunning Ganados for melee attacks or follow-up shots (Not used in this run due to time constraints). It cannot shoot through any enemies.
  • Killer7: A powerful magnum. Primarily used for killing Bella Sisters and getting a double heatshot. Limited ammo. Quick to draw and slow to lower. 3 enemy penetration. Body shot kills register when body stops moving.
  • Sniper Rifle: The primary weapon in real-time runs due to its power, instant kills, and 5 enemy penetration. Very slow to draw and slow to lower, making its use in this TAS limited in this to Bella Sisters, after which it is discarded.
Granades:
The character runs faster with a grenade equipped, however switching inventory takes time so this is rarely used unless a grenade is actually needed for use.
  • Flash Grenade: Used twice for stunning enemies. Can also kill plagas. Kept in inventory for increasing run speed when no other grenade is available.
  • Incindiary Grenade: Lingering area of effect. Cannot kill any enemy on its own in this stage, used to damage Bella Sisters.
  • Hand Grenade: Used for taking out large groups and for killing enemies outside player's line of sight. Vital for maximizing Bonus Chest kill.

Aiming:
  • Analog Stick: Most Precise (Slowest), Has radial conversion (i.e., full right tilt with full up tilt will result in slower movement right than full right tile alone).
  • D-Pad: Faster than full tilt A-stick. No radial conversion.
  • D-Pad+Analog Stick: In opposition, this can fill the speed range between Analog Stick alone or D-Pad alone. Used in combination aiming is quicker than either individually. Constructively using this technique, the Rifle can swing 180 degrees in the time between shots. Used during immobility period after firing a shot to turn toward next objective, and is preferred method of aiming (fastest).
  • C-Stick Quick Aiming: Tilting C-stick left or right and pressing R will cause the player to rotate while drawing a weapon, which is faster than turning with the weapon drawn.
  • C-Stick Multi Turn: A C-Stick turn can be interrupted by releasing R for 1 frame, and holding R again. This can be chained together for very quick turning over large angles.

Iterative Optimization: The Cooperative Pursuit of the "Perfect Score"
Real Time Runs:
  • 98krauser's 207700 World Record on Wii HERE
  • This is impressive in that it is only 9 bonus kills from a perfect score.
  • Derek Taylor's 207400 on PS3 HERE
  • PeachyMike's 207400 with Hunk on Wii HERE
Potential Improvements:
  • After the run was completed, some potential time savers I've Identified are: Skip the first and third time extensions, which will only mean less waiting out the clock at the end (some experimenting showed that this may mess up spawning, and makes gathering enemies for 1st bonus chest more difficult/slow). Also less grenade gathering is required, as were 8 leftover at the end.
Highest Score Links:
The Mercenaries High Scores, Vol. 14 Atwyatt's GameFAQs topic kept the ideas coming. Each volume prior was 500 posts.
Cyberscore This site was briefly used before Shin's site for some players like myself
Shin's Site [dead link removed] This used to be "the" place to log Mercenaries High Scores and Main Game Speedrun Times.

Special Thanks to:
  • Dolphin Developers, who made available the amazing Tools execute this Tool Assisted Score-Attack.
  • SoulCal, whose amazing captioned Full Game run taught me many tricks.
  • Capcom, for making such a great game!

Playing the .dtm file on Dolphin:
Use Dolphin 5.0-10833 with included dsp files. Use Direct3D11 (OpenGL causes laser sight line to disappear).
Use the following memory card file with Mercenaries and Wesker unlockedMemoryCardA.USA.7z. You may need to export its contents to GCI folder to get the files to read.
Verification run to generate above memory file: Full instructions are HERE Verified by Fog [/Forum/Topics/14804&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50|here].
Play this Mercenaries:Village submission on Disc 2, it desynced for me on Disc 1.

Other info for judging/publishing:
Similar Movie Castle Stage
Suggested Screenshot: VI 4926 (Shooting at 2 Bella Sisters).
Native aspect ratio is 4:3 letterboxed to 16:9. Please crop out the letterboxing if encoded.

slamo: Very nice job on this one, all known records for the high score were beaten and the movie is obviously very well optimized. As explained in the judgement for the Castle run, each Mercenaries map is an independent minigame that has an ending, so it meets our requirements for game completion.
This run uses the same verification movies as the Castle run. These movies were made on a version of Dolphin that is now deprecated, but not outright banned. The actual submission was made in an acceptable version of Dolphin, so we'll allow this.
Since this movie is save-anchored, it's not Vault-eligible and must be compared to other published runs of Resident Evil 4, namely the Castle run. I found that the level layout was vastly different and the strategies used were quite different as well. Generally people also agreed the run is unique enough, so it may coexist along with the published Castle run.
So is the movie entertaining enough to be in Moons? Voters certainly thought so. Despite the constant menu usage being a distraction, I thought the action was great, especially the rapid-fire pistol headshot sequences. Accepting to Moons.
feos: Dolphin let me go!!!

TASVideoAgent
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EZGames69
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What’s up with the audio when a Grenade goes off?
[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
Patashu
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I wasn't expecting another of these TASes, nice! The downtime before the first of the mad combo rushes is a little slow, but more than made up for by perfect sniping and amusing zombie dodges. Yes vote! Is it impossible to kill a Bella Sister during bonus time?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Dimon12321
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You did my morning, Agent Smith! Despite the fact you need some preperations before taking each bonus time, I don't think it's boring. Yes vote! I made a similar TAS aimed for maximum single combo on Wii 3 years ago. You can watch it here for reference and comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHeN-caI1Ds
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
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Patashu wrote:
Is it impossible to kill a Bella Sister during bonus time?
Killing a Bella Sister during a bonus chest does not increase the score if they are #3 or higher in the combo. More bonus points are gained racking up the Ganado count (+300 each).
Patashu
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Ubercapitalist wrote:
Patashu wrote:
Is it impossible to kill a Bella Sister during bonus time?
Killing a Bella Sister during a bonus chest does not increase the score if they are #3 or higher in the combo. More bonus points are gained racking up the Ganado count (+300 each).
Makes sense, thank you!
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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Very entertaining, voting yes.
Ubercapitalist wrote:
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details HERE.
Cool to see this being used :D. How did you know it was written by me?
Dimon12321
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Baxter wrote:
Very entertaining, voting yes.
Ubercapitalist wrote:
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details HERE.
Cool to see this being used :D. How did you know it was written by me?
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=364247#364247
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Baxter wrote:
Very entertaining, voting yes.
Ubercapitalist wrote:
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details HERE.
Cool to see this being used :D. How did you know it was written by me?
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=364247#364247
Ah, that explains it, forgot about that >_>
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This minigame drove me nuts when I was playing it, so this was nice to watch. Would you ever do max scores of other stages as well, and maybe max scores for characters? Edit: Given how there's only a finite amount of NPCs, would it make more sense not to grab some of the timers?
Dimon12321
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jlun2 wrote:
Given how there's only a finite amount of NPCs, would it make more sense not to grab some of the timers?
Timers are required to make some more enemies appear.
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
jlun2 wrote:
Given how there's only a finite amount of NPCs, would it make more sense not to grab some of the timers?
Timers are required to make some more enemies appear.
Yes, in hindsight 2:00 or 2:30 worth of time extensions could be skipped. The barn and tower timers each spawn enemies and must be grabbed. EDIT: Upon experimentation, the first 90 second timer needs to be grabbed and Wesker needs to be out of the house by 3:15 in order for three ganados to spawn.
jlun2 wrote:
Would you ever do max scores of other stages as well, and maybe max scores for characters?
Castle and Village are done, leaving Base and Waterworld. I'm considering Base on Wii (more enemies than GC) or Waterworld on GC. I don't think other characters have higher scoring potential than Wesker.
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After some trials and tribulations, I've confirmed that this movie syncs. The link to the memory card in the submission text is dead, so I re-synced the verification movies and made a new memory card file. You can use this link to get it: https://files.tasvideos.org/common/SubmissionFiles/6501S/MemoryCardA_USA.7z Now I could use some opinions on something. This movie is not Vault-eligible because it's save-anchored. This basically means that it must be compared to other branches of this game, namely the Mercenaries: Castle run. Does this run offer new TAS material over the Castle run? If there's too much overlap, which run is a better representative? I'm leaning in one direction, but I'd appreciate some other opinions before I make a judgement.
Memory
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I feel the other Mercenaries run is definitely cooler than this one but this one is definitely interesting in its own right and has some unique strategies that I enjoyed.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Yeah they also look different to me, entertaining in their own different ways.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
EZGames69
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Im not sure if anyone missed my comment but does anyone know why the audio seems to get corrupted in places like 0:55 and 2:17 in the encode?
[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
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EZGames69 wrote:
Im not sure if anyone missed my comment but does anyone know why the audio seems to get corrupted in places like 0:55 and 2:17 in the encode?
I think it is due to my capture method (Xbox app). Playing on Dolphin doesn't give those audio problems.
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The Castle movie is way too distracting with constant weapon screens, even in the supercut. Here's it's way more watchable. I don't mind having both movies separately, but if one is to TAS other maps, I'd prefer having all 4 in one movie, Resident Evil 4 "The Mercenaries".
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.
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Does anyone see any visual glitches in these 2 encodes? Link to video
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.
Dimon12321
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feos wrote:
Does anyone see any visual glitches in these 2 encodes?
It's difficult to see any difference on such a low resolution. On the Wii version of RE4, using OpenGL render results in a graphical glitch when you do a headshot. Head explosion generates 2-3 rotating squares (I can't even describe it well), so I'd suggest you to use D3D11 to be sure.
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
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feos wrote:
Does anyone see any visual glitches in these 2 encodes?
They look the same to me, no glitches. I get a glitch running OpenGL on iGPU where laser line doesn't appear, but your video doesn't have that problem.
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Current progress: https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/8447 SD encodes are done though.
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 2389)
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 3390)
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 4391)
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 5392)
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 6393)
g = g.DuplicateFrame( 8396)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(10397)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(11397)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(12400)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(13401)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(14401)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(15402)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(17404)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(18405)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(19405)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(20408)
g = g.DuplicateFrame(22409)
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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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4072] GC Resident Evil 4 "The Mercenaries: Village" by Ubercapitalist in 07:12.37