After about 4 years of on and off work, the 2player all victims saved TAS of Zombies ate My Neighbors is finally finished!

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.4
  • 100% completion (All victims saved)
  • Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Forgoes time-saving damage
  • 2 players

Comments

Emulator version

Unfortunately, the libsnes core that bizhawk uses was updated between versions 1.12.1 and 1.12.2, which causes this movie to unsync. Basically, they changed way the lag frames are calculated, and although I initially thought I could just shift the inputs by a few frames (per level), it turns out this only works for about 2 levels before the optimized movement (see the movement section below) shifts by one frame, and that completely kills the run from then on. So I could not port this movie into later version because I would have had to redo the whole thing.

Movement

There are 3 movement speeds: normal, swimming, and speed-shoes.
In normal movement, the character moves 2 pixels per frame. However, when moving diagonally, the movement speed alternates between 1 and 2 pixels every frame. We can abuse this to keep a constant 2 pixels per frame while still moving somewhat diagonally. This is used extensively throughout the run.
Speed-shoes movement is the same as normal, but doubled. So it's 4 pixels per frame.
Swimming is 1 pixel per frame in every direction including diagonal, so there's not much to do here.
The overall strategy is to only use diagonal movement when strictly needed.

Speed shoes

Double the speed means half the time, so the whole run is centered about using speed shoes as much as possible, sometimes multiple times per level.
Upon activating the shoes, the character gets 850 frames of doubled speed, which amounts to roughly 14 seconds. There are a few circumstances where this time can be extended. The timer that counts down from 850 pauses whenever the character gets hit, is in the recoil animation during a bazooka shot, or is in the middle of jumping. I sometimes use this to maximize the effectiveness of the speed shoes.

RNG

The RNG is a 2 byte counter that also increments by a random (?) amount every time it is called. Thanks to Meerkov's script, I got the whole list of items you get at every value, and used this extensively throughout.
If anyone is curious, this is the HUD I was using for the second half of the movie https://pastebin.com/WzechnQH
Although most of the time I'll try to get directly speed shoes from the boxes, sometimes the RNG sequence didn't cooperate. In those cases I either skipped the box or settle for a mystery potion, which I will use for speed shoes with the caveat that there is the extra time spent in the animation of the characters drinking the potion.

Routing

In 2player mode, if any player gets more victims than the other, you get an aptly named "More victims saved bonus". Which wastes some time, to avoid that, every level was routed to make sure that each character saves 5 victims. The exception to this are the last 2 levels because they don't have a score screen.
In addition to this, every 40k points, the player will get an extra life, and once the life slots are full, they will get a "Perfect player bonus", which is quite long. Since saving victims already gives a lot of points, it is not possible to avoid this.

Misc

In level 22b, one of the victims had to die because they are behind a solid wall and it is impossible to save them.
You can use bazooka shots to "jump" over spikes and fires. Unfortunately I only discovered this in the later levels.
This movie is roughly 16 minutes faster than the one currently published.

Stage by stage comments

I'll comment on levels where something might need clarification

Level 1

I absolutely need the bazooka here to be able to access level 1b. Also got lucky with the RNG and was able to get shoes and skeleton key.

Level 1b

The skeleton key I got in the previous level allows me to avoid a huge detour

Level 5

This is I believe the worst level in the whole run. I had to basically keep both characters in a very weird movement pattern to have a very nice RNG sequence for the next few boxes. After this level I decided that I wouldn't wait more than 30~ frames to get the item I want, even though in theory I will still save time waiting longer. This can be considered a speed-entertainment tradeoff, since I figured it will be a boring run to spend significant amount of time waiting for the proper drop every time.

Level 6

If you pay attention you'll notice I actually don't pick up the shoes near the end of the level. This is another unfortunate mistake I didn't realize until later. I did come back to try to fix it, but that extra frame completely changed the RNG sequence and I ended up losing time. So I left it as is.

Level 11

This game freezes animation when input is pressed on alternating frames. This is abused to actually avoid spending ammo while going through the weeds.

Level 18

In levels with lots of water it's faster to just take the ghost potion, because the swimming is too slow and the jumping in and out wastes a lot of time.

Level 19

Not really sure what caused the visual glitch at the end of the level.

Level 22

In this level I abuse the bazooka shots recoil to keep the speed shoes as long as possible. (I didn't know at the time you could jump over the spikes, so there was some waste there ...)
The flamethrower is also picked up here besides the bonus level item.

Level 22b

This level is under a timer since we have to wait for the tourists to die and become werewolves. I also had to kill one of the frankenstein monsters because the sprite slots were full and when they are, the tourists never transform.

Level 26

This level is a really good example of having the characters take different routes. It might look awkward but it saves a lot of time over having them together.

Level 28

Here I go over the skeleton key area first to spawn the vampires and prevent the tourists in the top right of the level from transforming. Normally they are not meant to be saved, but we can abuse this glitch to do it.

Level 30

Near the end of the level I take advantage of the fact that the recoil from the bazooka is faster than normal speed.

Level 33

Unfortunate level where knowing I could jump over fire would have been nice.

Level 36

I don't really know what happened to the music here.
The fight went pretty well considering I needed to stay a bit too close for Zeke to be efficient with the weedwacker.

Level 37

On this level I finally realized you could jump over the spikes :)

Level 41

Significant detours here to pick up shoes and mystery potions, but I think it was all worth it since I ended up using them all

Level 42

This was my favorite level to route and execute.

Level 46

In the score screen, player 2 gets the "Perfect player bonus", but player 1 gets all the points...

Level 48

I find the fight was a bit slow, even considering the spider has more health than on level 36. The RNG patterns were all over the place, and the vampire was pretty annoying.
Head fight was pretty uneventful, except for the last pattern that I believe cost me a bit of time.

Killcount screen

Most of the enemies I killed throughout the game were for RNG purposes, or it was in cases where going around them would have taken more than 6 frames. There are a few I also killed by accident and didn't realize until later.

Other comments

Possible improvements

I believe most of the improvements that could be done to this movie are really down to how much one is willing to fight against RNG. There were a few places where I got really unlucky, and maybe could have been improved if I banged my head against the wall more :)

Closing words

Big thanks to all the previous TASers of this game: MechChicken, Walker Boh, and Meerkov.
And shoutouts to the worm bois: accelerator-kun, aki-kun, nrg-kun, ruizu-kun, exiled worm boi baka-kun, and ded worm boi paul-kun.

Suggested Screenshots


fsvgm777: Replaced submission file with one that syncs on BizHawk 2.4, adding 5.84 seconds to the run time as a result.
ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: Reception for this movie was quite good. Accepting for Moons and obsoleting the old publication.
feos: Pub.

TASVideoAgent
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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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Wow! Incredible! Watching this run immediately... I'll edit my post later. EDIT: I'm happy to see another game of "The First 500" done! After the lastest TAS of this game, it was obvious how the published "all victims saved" was so very outdated... Considering how this game is so long and all planning would be laborious... Amazing work! The entire game looks much better now. Yes vote.
My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.
EZGames69
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Did anyone else noticed that the old movie was 666S and this new one is 6666S?
[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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feos wrote:
You've been waiting for it! #666: Walker Boh's SNES Zombies Ate My Neighbors in 59:14.87
Definitely been counting the minutes :) I hope the submission does live up to the hype!
CoolHandMike
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Daaaaaamn. That was fun to watch. Gotta ask. How many hours did it take to do this?
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
EZGames69
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What's this? A version of this movie that syncs in BizHawk 2.4? http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62368582410616263 The main reason I wanted to resync this was due to a bug in 1.x versions of bizhawk, it causes playback in avi dumps to not be throttled correctly, you might have noticed that with the Konami logo sounding too fast. So side effect of this is the movie is about 5 seconds longer due to longer loading time, I also edited the re-record count back to what it is in the submission.
[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:
What's this? A version of this movie that syncs in BizHawk 2.4? http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62368582410616263 The main reason I wanted to resync this was due to a bug in 1.x versions of bizhawk, it causes playback in avi dumps to not be throttled correctly, you might have noticed that with the Konami logo sounding too fast. So side effect of this is the movie is about 5 seconds longer due to longer loading time, I also edited the re-record count back to what it is in the submission.
This is awesome! Is there a tool to do this that I just missed? I swear I actually did try to make it work on the newer versions. Maybe one of the mods can make this the official movie file for this submission? I'm replaying it and so far so good (up to level 7, but there's no reason to believe it will unsync after)
CoolHandMike wrote:
Daaaaaamn. That was fun to watch. Gotta ask. How many hours did it take to do this?
I think on average it was about 3-4h per level? + some time for routing, writing the lua hud... I don't even want to add it all up :)
EZGames69
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You might have not shifted inputs correctly, some loading screens take a few more frames than others, I think the most was 8 at one point, smallest was 2-3. I am also pretty experienced in getting movies on older emulators to sync on newer ones, so i usually know what to look for.
[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
Alyosha
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Wow out of nowhere a huge improvement! Yes vote!
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OMG you managed to save the couple in Level 22 ?????????? it' s incredible ... how it's still april 1st, too bad huh ?
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Finally done watching this. What a tour de force. As for the improvable sequences vs tradeoffs for entertainment (IE, not waiting as long as you could for the ideal drops), how many drops were you actually short? It looks like you had speedshoes the entire time, and had sufficient keys. Also, would it be possible to post a list of total equipment that you needed in the run and the 'ideal drop sequence?' Might be worth the time to test the rolls to get an 'ideal sequence', and see what that does for overall time.
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Non Speedshoed areas: Level 1 Start of Level 2. Monster Potion in level 2 that you just pass up. End of Level 4. "Chainsaw Hedgerow" Looks like you're saving the shoes, and weren't able to finish the level before the shoes wore off. Level 5, I see what you mean about the one drop that just didn't drop. You also lost shoes as a result midway through the level, when collecting more shoes. Monster potion in level 7 behind the key door. Level 12, you lose speedshoes by the end of Mars Needs Cheerleaders. You have two levels (Baby level), where you pass up on collecting shoes... Would it be possible to pick up more to save time here? Level 12B, looks like you lose speedshoes before the end of the level. Level 16, Ants, just before the end. Level 22, Revenge of Dr. Tongue. Quite a long sequence at the end. Level 27, Mark of the Vampire. Here you run out of shoes and stop in the middle of the level before you collect your needed shoes. It looks like you could have been even more aggressive with your shoe pickups earlier in the game. I was wondering if you had 'all the shoes you needed', and it looks like that's not the case. There's a couple of levels that you pass up on shoes that would cost you time in those levels, but look like it would save you time later on by collecting more shoes. Level 29, you start the level without shoes. Slowdown at the end of antfarm, level 32. Slowdown at the end of level 33. Level 35 is interesting. what was going on there? Shoes followed by Ghost potions and yet you wade in the level at the start? Is that faster than Ghost at the start? Level 36. What about monster potions here? Would those be faster? You lose speedshoes here by the end of the monster battle. Level 37, you lose speedshoes by the end of the level. Level 41, you lose your speedshoes again by the end but it looks like you're able to extend them by moonwalking to the end. Level 44, lots of potion usage? Is this the best route? Also you miss a box!
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I think 39 minutes is possible, with even more speedshoes! :) Also, dividing up the speedshoe timing would also help. IE, start character A on the shoes, and then have Character B use shoes later in the level, when it matters for them and you need them moving in the right direction. You do this more later on in the run, it would help with the 'slowdowns' at the end when you run out of shoes, and help extend your shoes for just that touch longer that you need. You do great with the 'moonwalking'. :) Thanks for an amazing run. That's all I could see with this. It looks to me like you whiff a couple of times on the boxes, and miss a few boxes that could help you later on in the run. This is such a long run that I can see why this is so difficult, figuring out exactly what you need when you need it is probably one of the toughest things!
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Opening sequence looks to be bazooka (to open the secret) + shoes + skeleton key for the key door, to open up more boxes for more shoes, which you turn on from level 2. I think there's a couple of boxes in both levels that are available? Is it worth the time to try to get a second shoe in level one to start level 2 with shoes? You're one box/can short of that.
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I don't know about 39 minutes (it didn't look like a full 3 minutes were spent without using shoes where it could be helped), but one thing I'd definitely look into when planning the improvement to this run is listing everything (most notably weapons/items) that advance RNG so that shoes can be received from loot boxes without delays. The Pandora's Box (the golden chest item) can certainly be used for this purpose when there are no enemies around. Anyway, good run and an awesome (and overdue) improvement.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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electricslide wrote:
As for the improvable sequences vs tradeoffs for entertainment (IE, not waiting as long as you could for the ideal drops), how many drops were you actually short? It looks like you had speedshoes the entire time, and had sufficient keys. Also, would it be possible to post a list of total equipment that you needed in the run and the 'ideal drop sequence?' Might be worth the time to test the rolls to get an 'ideal sequence', and see what that does for overall time.
This is hard to answer. In an ideal world, I'd only get speed shoes, since the potions were basically a backup. Basically, for every slowdown point in your other post I would need 2 additional shoes. As for your specific points: - Monster potions are useless in this run since the monster form can only go at normal walking speed - Level 35: shoes and ghost potions is definitely faster than ghost only. The area at the beginning and the hidden hallway to pickup the tourists is long enough to justify the use of shoes - Level 36: You mean monster potion for the fight with the boss? Would be slower for sure. The monster doesn't do much damage to the boss and it's harder to move around with it. - Regarding the "dividing speedshoe timing", I don't think this is doable in practice, since you have to keep the characters in the same screen. So if one character is walking at normal speed, the character with the shoes is stuck at the edge of the screen anyways, and you lose all the benefits. You might save a few frames if you start the shoes only after the character is at the edge of the screen, but you also have to take into account the routing. For instance, one character takes a detour to save a victim, but then the other character needs to do this too so I think it balances out. - Skipping some boxes: there wasn't anything useful in a resonable timeframe (30~ frames), so I didn't bother. - Level 1 strategy: I'm not sure what you mean. I do start level 2 with both shoes. And on level 1 there are only 3 boxes. So, bazooka-shoes-key is needed, else the detour on level 1b is too big. In general, my strategy was to use at the very least 1 shoe per character per level, with 2 shoes for long levels. I had a rough list of what I needed, but I only realized that most of the later levels don't have boxes at all around midway through the movie. I think I could definitely have tried to get additional shoes in the earlier levels, but RNG doesn't always want to cooperate. I went for the 30~ frames self rule because even though I could have 100% ensured that every single box dropped shoes, I also didn't have a good enough estimate of how much would those shoes save in the worst case, because you also have to take into account the time for taking the detour to get the box. The RNG can be very tricky in some points, you have some enemies that trigger RNG calls every frame, so there is no consistency to work with.
moozooh wrote:
I don't know about 39 minutes (it didn't look like a full 3 minutes were spent without using shoes where it could be helped), but one thing I'd definitely look into when planning the improvement to this run is listing everything (most notably weapons/items) that advance RNG so that shoes can be received from loot boxes without delays. The Pandora's Box (the golden chest item) can certainly be used for this purpose when there are no enemies around.
The pandora's box idea is a great suggestion. And the whole list of things that increase RNG would be nice to have too for whoever is willing to improve on this. Personally I don't believe you can save 3 minutes on this run, but I'd love to be proven wrong
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Regarding the "dividing speedshoe timing", I don't think this is doable in practice, since you have to keep the characters in the same screen. So if one character is walking at normal speed, the character with the shoes is stuck at the edge of the screen anyways, and you lose all the benefits. You might save a few frames if you start the shoes only after the character is at the edge of the screen, but you also have to take into account the routing. For instance, one character takes a detour to save a victim, but then the other character needs to do this too so I think it balances out.
I think I've misunderstood how speedshoes work. Doesn't each character need to use a speedshoe?
Level 35: shoes and ghost potions is definitely faster than ghost only. The area at the beginning and the hidden hallway to pickup the tourists is long enough to justify the use of shoes - Level 36: You mean monster potion for the fight with the boss? Would be slower for sure. The monster doesn't do much damage to the boss and it's harder to move around with it.
Thank you! :) I hope you don't regard my post as critical! I think you did an amazing job! Thank you so much for running one of my favorite games!
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speedrun.com mentions a password for saving 10 extra victims ( https://www.speedrun.com/zamn#1001 see rules for 100%) I need to know what exactly does this password and how would that allow to save 10 more victims.
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"
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It's actually explained (albeit in a roundabout fashion) right there where you saw it. The password (BCDF) allows one to start at stage 1b, "Day of the Tentacle", the bonus stage that you can also play after stage 1 if you choose so (as the run does), hence being able to repeat the stage. This gives the following options. 1. Play the bonus stage twice (1b → 1 → 1b → 2...). This adds ten extra victims at the cost of, well, playing the bonus stage twice. 2. Play stage 1, then go to the bonus stage. (1 → 1b → 2...), which is what the TAS does. This skips the extra victims but avoids repeating content. 3. Play the bonus stage first, then skip it the second time around (1b → 1 → 2...). This is slower than the previous option because 1b has a lot more ground to cover, and you won't have the Speed Shoes for it if you start with it. I think option #2 is the most sane choice because getting the victim count higher at the cost of using a password and playing the same stage twice is a dubious goal. The game doesn't track victim count in a percentage form, but the spirit of a 100% category is fully preserved here already as the run saves all victims in every stage the game has.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Yeah, just as I suspected, thanks for the explaination. And I agree that this submission picked the best choice.
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"
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electricslide wrote:
I think I've misunderstood how speedshoes work. Doesn't each character need to use a speedshoe?
No, you're correct. It's just that I believe that optimizing this is not that straight forward. Imagine the very simple case where you have 2 victims, and both of your characters start at the same place. One victim is in a straight line, while to save the other you need a detour. Since both victims need to be saved for the exit door to appear, you are actually better off starting the shoes at the same time. Because the limiting factor will always be the "last" victim anyways. Of course this is a simplistic example, but in practice, each pair of victims can somewhat be reduced to an example like this. When routing I basically tried to find out which character was the "limiting factor", and made sure they were the ones who started the shoes first. Sometimes this meant I had some leeway with the other character, sometimes not, because of the single screen constraint. And don't worry about sounding critical. I appreciate the feedback :)
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The single screen constraint is why staggering can be helpful. You take advantage of that by trying to maximize your time on both characters. It's not a straightforward flow chart through a level to the victims. A couple of times I noticed you using this, if one of the characters doesn't need to be moving at full speed, you can hesitate to trigger their shoes, until their movement becomes paramount. Then that character will close it out at the end, as their shoes last longer. It's not a big savings, but some times it is *just enough* to squeeze out a touch more speedshoe. Anyways, great run. Huge improvement over the previous publication.
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. ---- [4170] SNES Zombies Ate My Neighbors "all victims saved" by Allbeert in 42:58.90
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Just noticed now: The publication don't have "Heavy luck manipulation" tag.
My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.