Topic by Iriasu

Posted: 4/24/2005 10:43 AM
(Edited: 11/19/2005 2:42 PM)

Post subject: Pulseman

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Iriasu

Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 104

An old Gamefreak game, before they started to develop Pokémon games for Nintendo. It's a platform game with a MegaMan/Sonic feel to it. You have this ability called "Volteccer" (sp?) that after being charged up, you cah fly a small distance up-forward and same goes with Pulseman's Electric attacks, which is a long distance attack (when it's charged). To charge up your attacks, you must run a bit so Pulseman gets more electricity to use moves. Otherwise, this is a pretty basic straight-forward game that didn't get much attention, since it didn't get outside Japan even. It's a shame, because this is a fun game with voice acting and the same character art as the Pokémon games. Go try it out. I can try a mini-run on it just for show. When I know how to fully operate the re-record feature for Gens, I'll give this baby a go-go. ^^; What'd ya think, guys? Should this pretty boy deserve a chance at being recorded to the max?

Posted: 11/15/2005 8:23 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

Ooohh. Pretty. Edit: I've played around with it some, and I'm quite sure it will make an interesting movie. If anyone knows non-obvious tricks/bugs (ie stuff I wouldn't know from this page or from playing the game), they'll be put to good use. Edit2: The first stage is done, although it sucks for now. I think the game is worth doing well, although I may have to mix it up to keep the voices from getting annoying. The movie was recorded with Gens 9f with sound at 44100 Hz/stereo, Japan (NTSC) as the country and Pulseman (J) [c][!].bin as the rom. For a game that was only ever released in Japan, this sure has a lot of English. Even the news flash after stage 1 is in English with Japanese subtitles.

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Posted: 11/16/2005 8:39 PM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

In the event that someone cares, I'll outline my plan. For each of the 7 stages, I'll first do a quick and dirty (aka beta) run to get familiar with the level. After that, I'll do a polished run with either frame-advance or 3-6% speed. Edit: The final version of the first stage is done. I would appreciate comments on what I've got so far. Some important notes on the game include: * I can't dash at any given frame. I sometimes have to wait 2-4 frames, so it will look imprecise. It's not. * Falling from a running jump preserves momentum, whereas falling from a dash or a volteccer (bouncy ball) doesn't. * Running is slower than dashing, but only by about 18%. Running and jumping off a ledge is faster than dashing off, if the fall is long enough. Edit2: I'm calling this the beta run now. I'm seeing several places that could possibly be optimized, and I can't conclusively tell myself that the optimizations wouldn't work. I'm also learning that frame-advance, while an excellent tool, is neither necessary nor sufficient for making a solid movie.

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Posted: 11/28/2005 9:18 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

Heh. The latest version beats the city area by about 9 seconds. What's in my sig is and will be the most current version of the movie as I finish each stage.

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Posted: 12/14/2005 10:58 AM

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Twisted_Eye

He/Him

Active player (332)

Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 629
Location: Seattle, WA

haha wow, I stop paying attention and someone starts doing one ;P I've started following this great site and have considered that if I was going to do a run of my own, I'd start with this game, one of my favorite platformers EVER. But I got beat to it by someone who knows what he's doing already, probably a good thing hehe As for your run, it looks great, the way you took care of the first couple bonus stages especially took away all doubt that this game would make an awesome run. I'm pretty certain that there are very slight instances that could ever so slightly be optimized even better, but I'm not one to say considering I haven't done any speedrunning before. Either way, good luck with it! And the SITE that you linked to; I've been looking for a translation of the japanese in the game for a very long time! (Well not actively, more like just waiting for it to drop in my lap and it finally did, thank you! :P)

Posted: 12/14/2005 6:14 PM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

If you think something could be more optimal, let me know. The worst that could happen is that you're wrong and learn something about how the game works. This is my second tas and my first one using frame advance, so don't think that I've reached the theoretical limit of this game. ;) I'm going to try to redo the stage 3 boss fight, since the number of hits the boss takes seems to depend on what kind of attack I use. I also don't like the pause, even though everything else I tried (including attacking during the pause) made the last hit happen later.

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Posted: 12/15/2005 7:16 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

Grrr. I was able to cut off 76 frames from the second area of the first stage (the one with the schematics in the foreground), but the game isn't hexeditor friendly. This section has been bugging me since I started stage 2, but I wanted to press on and eventually have a final product instead of constantly optimizing the first stage, never actually getting to anything afterwards. I do *not* relish redoing all the areas I've done so far, especially since I'll have to make sure I'm not any slower. I don't like knowing that my tas could be better, but I'm going to save this for v2, just so I have a hope of completing v1. Edit: If 5 people are willing to post in this thread to say that I should redo with the faster stage 1 area 2, I'll redo it. (I don't expect this to happen, but I'll go with it if it does.) It's an expensive trade-off timewise, and I'd rather just continue if the problem won't bug people.

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Posted: 12/15/2005 10:14 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

How hex-edit-unfriendly is the game? Sometimes even if a game has a lot of lag, it can be made to sync up by only hex editing at 8-frame boundaries or something like that. Anyway, if it can't be hexed in without editing all sorts of things after it in the movie, I'd say it can wait until another version of the run is made. Unless you don't think there will be a v2, that is.

Posted: 12/15/2005 11:11 AM
(Edited: 12/15/2005 8:38 PM)

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Whoa, actually I was just fooling around a bit and found a huge movement bug that's a little hard to do but will probably save a lot of time. Here is a GMV demonstrating it: http://www.savefile.com/files/3206040. (edit: Oops, that's odd, some bug in my build of Gens reset the re-record count to 1.) I didn't attempt to seriously optimize it for speed, and I'm not sure if there isn't a faster variation or combination of moves possible (I don't know that much about the game). But, maybe you should consider starting over after all, this could make things pretty different... Are there any right-to-left stages or rooms, btw? It helps the going-left case even more drastically.

Posted: 12/15/2005 5:43 PM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

I thought about it, and I'd rather just bite the mullet and redo it than submit something I know could be better. I also look forward to seeing what you've got.

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Posted: 12/15/2005 6:09 PM

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nesrocks

He/Him

Player (241)

Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil

hey nitsuja that file is giving me a 0 byte content zip file.

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 12/15/2005 8:33 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

FODA wrote:

hey nitsuja that file is giving me a 0 byte content zip file.

Oh, ok... Try this: http://www.savefile.com/files/3206040

Posted: 12/16/2005 1:08 AM
(Edited: 12/16/2005 4:46 AM)

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

My brain just exploded. Twice. I can reproduce and probably optimize it some, but it looks like one of those excessively disruptive bugs, like left+right in smas/smb3 and Tiny Toons. I doubt a tas with such a bug would be accepted. Still, it's an incredible find. I had decided to redo everything after s1a2 before I saw your post

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Posted: 12/16/2005 3:28 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

IdeaMagnate wrote:

My brain just exploded. Twice. I can reproduce and optimize probably optimize it some, but it looks like one of those excessively disruptive bugs, like left+right in smas/smb3 and Tiny Toons. I doubt a tas with such a bug would be accepted. Still, it's an incredible find.

No, it could be accepted. For one thing it's NOT a left+right bug; you can do it very easily in normal playing. And it's not all that disruptive... since when are 'normal' bugs off-limit in a TAS, anyway? Also, it's not that easy to optimize - I didn't really optimize it mainly because I wasn't sure how; there's still a lot of things to consider in when to use it, when to run normally or if you should dash to gain electricity, when to spend time using volteccer to gain height because being higher up allows you to perform the trick for longer, etc. It requires you to gain running speed before doing it and go left quite a bit before going right, and the volteccer will only go leftward so you have to either cancel it immediately or position it perfectly to bounce, and your speed reverts to normal as soon as you touch the ground, so it's more limited than it looks. But, it's different enough that it shouldn't obsolete a run that purposely doesn't use the bug - the physics of the game are pretty interesting either way.

Posted: 12/16/2005 8:22 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

After playing with it some, I agree that a submission using it could be accepted. The bug is powerful and changes how I'll need to think about the game, but there will still be plenty of strategy. Thanks for posting. I'll try to put the bug to good use.

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Posted: 12/17/2005 8:54 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

It looks like I can't skip that schematics level. I can get through the barrier between the "in" and "out" signs, but the game won't let me through the exit to the TV station. I can't either run through it or use the bug. On a more positive note, I've gained 870 frames in the first area of the first stage, and I'm not entirely convinced I can't do better. A tarball with the state and gmv is in my sig. I would appreciate any thoughts.

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Posted: 12/17/2005 9:30 AM
(Edited: 12/17/2005 9:56 AM)

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Well, the first/only mistake I noticed so far is that you can get past the title screen stuff 68 frames faster (by pressing B sooner, and maybe something else). EDIT: Hmm, here is 241 frames faster than that: pulseman bug 2 (and I think it can still be faster somehow, maybe by doing one or two more volteccers or not bouncing under those blocks for so long)

Posted: 12/17/2005 9:55 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

Thanks. Hexediting in the improvement didn't even desync the movie.

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Posted: 12/17/2005 9:56 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

But, see my edit above.

Posted: 12/17/2005 11:21 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

That's more than I'd expect to gain. Filespace isn't letting me connect at the moment but I'm not going to look at your improvement for now anyway. It won't do me much good if I keep posting levels and you keep improving on them. I to learn to look for and find improvements myself. So far, I've cut off 117 frames. I hope I eventually get an instinct for what's not optimal, because I didn't expect what I made to be so far from it. Edit: I'm now down to 50:34, which gives me a 336 frame improvement over the 56:10 movie. I'm still not sure it's optimal, but it's getting closer. Edit2: I'm done with this area. I've got it down to 50:12, and if you can beat that I'm quitting. It's in my sig now. Thanks for the competition. Hopefully what I post in the future will be good enough the first time so you won't have to own me again. ;)

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Posted: 12/18/2005 7:38 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

IdeaMagnate wrote:

I'm done with this area. I've got it down to 50:12, and if you can beat that I'm quitting. It's in my sig now. Thanks for the competition. Hopefully what I post in the future will be good enough the first time so you won't have to own me again. ;)

Nice, but... well, it still looks like faster should be possible, but that's not really based on anything and I'm a bit afraid to try now, and it's probably better to move on. Anyway, I didn't really mean it as competition, it's just that showing some input that's faster seemed to be the clearest way of explaining what's definitely not optimal. EDIT: My message was probably too hidden there, so I'll clarify: I think that last WIP you posted is quite close to optimal and that I probably wouldn't be able to improve it by any significant amount if at all. But, I won't know for sure unless I try it. If I just tell you it could be faster, but that I'm not exactly sure how, that's pretty useless since you don't even know if I'm right. But by all means, keep going with this, if you're not already.

Posted: 12/21/2005 6:54 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

It motivated me to find a better route and to reconsider how I plan routes in general, whatever your intent.

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Posted: 12/21/2005 3:27 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

OK, good, that was pretty much it. No new progress on this yet, I take it?

Posted: 12/21/2005 6:45 PM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon

There's some progress, but it's slow and deliberate. I'll work on the s1a3 (TV station) today and seem to be getting about one non-trivial area done done per day. s1a2 (Integrated City, according to the sound test menu) took about 12.5 seconds. I fly into a lot of walls, but I don't think it's avoidable in a constrained level like this. Edit: One thing that's been bugging me is that sometimes the trick won't work for a short while. (I can try it, but I just change direction right after taking off instead of jumping backwards like normal.) A good example is this state, where I can't perform the bug on the floor, but I can if I jump onto the blocks in front of me.

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Posted: 12/22/2005 12:39 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

One response before I look at this: When you're doing the glitch, the thing that matters is not where your character is, but where the camera (screen center) is positioned. So it's possible that flying into walls doesn't waste any time at all as long as the camera keeps moving. Also, about the trick not working, it will only work if you're able to turn from the left edge of the screen for a frame while still staying all the way on the left edge of the screen. You need to be able to stick to the left edge for the trick to work (which I thought only depended on how far into the jump you are, but maybe there's some other factors).