Topic by IdeaMagnate

Posted: 12/22/2005 2:53 AM

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IdeaMagnate

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

I intuitively understand that movement depends on the camera rather than Pulseman, since he jumps back to the edge of the screen if he's blocked by a vertical barrier for part of a glitched jump. I also know I need to run for about 10 frames and be jumping backwards for about 10 frames before I can glitch to the left side of the screen and back. Sticking to the left side of the screen looks necessary, though it's hard to say whether it's cause or effect. However, the inability to use the glitch I mentioned is different. In that state, etc, it's not even possible to jump backwards. When I try, I end up facing and jumping to the left.

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Posted: 12/22/2005 6:30 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

I think when the glitch doesn't work, it's because of the way you landed on the floor before trying to do the glitch. Specifically, if you don't land from at least a short fall beforehand (from ending a volteccer too close over the ground) then the glitch won't happen again until the next time you jump or fall. In that save state you gave, it is possible to glitch from that floor without jumping onto the boxes in front of you - just do a little jump onto the same floor and you'll find you're able to do the glitch after that from the floor.

Posted: 12/22/2005 9:23 AM

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IdeaMagnate

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

You're right. Knowing that saved me 14 frames in s1a3 and will be an important consideration later on. Thanks for figuring that out. Edit: I'm starting to get tired of just using the bug over and over. It seems to take most of the strategy out of this game, other than "which position will be best to use the bug in?". After watching my bugless and buggy movies, I found the bugless one much more entertaining and less disorienting. I appreciate you finding the bug, nitsuja, but it changes the game too much for my tastes. Glitching through walls occasionally, like in JXQ's Sonic 1 tas, is different from doing it several times in any given area. When I get back from home on Tues, that I plan on continuing the (mostly) glitchless version.

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Posted: 12/24/2005 4:42 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

OK. What do you mean by "mostly" glitchless, though? I think they (glitchless and glitchful) would both make good runs, but you can't really mix them in a non-arbitrary way, so are you referring to some other bug(s) in the game?

Posted: 12/24/2005 5:39 AM

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Twisted_Eye

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

You should keep it going the way it is now, I think. The glitch will amaze anyone that's already played the game for the first few levels (me in particular, that's such a cool glitch), and the rest of the game will be fine. After the first three stages, less and less of the the game is straight left-right levels. Stage 4 has a long vertical road (and aroom where glitching through the wall would be VERY helpful and thus entertaining), Stage 5 is first vertical and then a maze of screens where the glitch wouldn't even help, Stage 6 is mostly underwater and then a long level that's nearly all a bottomless pit (so if you could glitch through it, that'd be very entertaining), and Stage 7 starts with three forced-scrolling stages where glitching again wouldn't help. So I think the game itself evens it out enough to make a whole glitchful run entertaining. The first third will be largely glitch controlled and the rest will be more skill.

Posted: 12/24/2005 7:08 AM

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IdeaMagnate

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

nitsuja, I mean that I won't use the backwards jump glitch at all, but anything else is fair game. There's at least one smaller bug and I don't want to close off the possibility of using it. Twisted Eye, I'm not against either method in the long run. For now I feel like there's not enough strategy involved, but I can easily imagine doing mostly glitchless now and glitchful later. I was thinking of s3a3 (casino) and s4a1 (first area w/ water) as areas that would be more impressive without the glitch. Of course, there are areas where the glitch shines too. I also think it will work better to do mostly glitchless first so people will know what's missing in a glitchful tas. There's important stuff in most (all?) stages that's very easy to glitch past. Seeing the obstacles navagated quickly will give the viewer an appreciation for when they're bypassed completely. Edit_n+1: It seems I can edit previous areas quite nicely now. I've managed to fix the opening and s1a2 and still keep everything up through s4a1 (where I was when I decided to redo it) working. The s1 boss is faster but looks sloppy. I may redo it and the s3 boss later now that I know I can.

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Posted: 12/30/2005 1:08 AM

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NrgSpoon

Joined: 6/14/2004
Posts: 646

I have to randomly say there's something about GameFreak's character designs that I find appealing.

I like my "thank you"s in monetary form.

Posted: 12/30/2005 2:16 AM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

Yup, looks like Pokeymon.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 12/30/2005 8:14 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

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

I'm curious what the intro says. If someone who knows Japanese wants to help, I took some screenshots.

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Posted: 12/30/2005 12:07 PM

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Truncated

Editor, Reviewer, Experienced player (968)

Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
Location: Sweden

１９９９年数理生物学者好山博士は In the year 1999 The mathematics biologist, doctor Sukiyama (?) コンピュータ内に生み出した人工生命体の少女と恋におちる had fallen in love with a female artificial lifeform born inside the computer. メモリ空間内で結ばれたふたりの間に生まれたのが＊＊＊ The one born between the two when they linked in memory space... 現実界と　コンピュータ空間を自由に行き来でき＊＊＊ could move freely between the real world and the computer world... 電気を操る少年゛パルスマン゛である a young boy manipulating electricity - he was Pulseman. そのころ＊＊＊　世界各地で謎の男　ドク＊ワルヤマ率いる In that time... everywhere in the world, commanded by the enigmatic man "Doc Waruyama", ゛ギャラクシィ＊ギャング゛による犯罪事件が多発していた there were a lot of crimes commited in the name of the "Galaxy gang". ---- Hope the Japanese transfers alright, it's all boxes outside of my word processor here. I'm a bit unsure about the last two, and the pronunciation of the good (altought somewhat kinky) doctor. It could be that they are meant to be opposites in some way: Suki yama = loved mountain Waru yama = bad mountain

Posted: 12/30/2005 11:43 PM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

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

Thanks for the quick translation, Truncated. edit: I've got stage 4 done, and I encourage people following this to look for improvements. I've had great success hexediting in optimizations with the script I posted here, so even a small improvement would be welcome. (I plan on trying to improve the hand and casino bosses before submitting anyway, but wouldn't mind if someone posted improvements in my technique or exectution.)

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Posted: 1/7/2006 9:57 PM

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Twisted_Eye

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

Just like to let you know that I've been following your signature's progress and am loving what you've done...except there's an alternate path at the beginning of the ice maze (s5a3) that I discovered the last time I played (after playing this game for years!) which I'm sure is faster than the expected route. I'm going to go look into it and give a recording if it is shorter, if it isn't, I'll just edit this all out of my post lol!!!!sor edit= OH and also, I'm sure I remember one time on the console where I was able to get that dark pulseman (Stage 5 boss) stuck in the wall so I could just keep hitting him until he died, but I've never gotten it to work since. So I'm not sure how useful this edit was after all

Posted: 1/8/2006 2:03 AM

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IdeaMagnate

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

Heh. I didn't even notice that alternate exit in level 01 of the ice maze before you mentioned it. I should have suspected something when my map didn't have any level 07. I'll test if it's faster before I submit. If you feel like testing it, start from this state. If you can get the first nonblack frame of level 08 before 17:21:30, the alternate route is faster. I can imagine getting dark Pulseman stuck in a wall while he's vulnerable and will definitely see if I can duplicate it. Let me know if you remember anything else about how you did it. It may look like I'm almost done with this, but I've still got a lot of optimizing to do. At the very least I'm going to redo the Stage 1 boss and be sure I can't improve most of the bonus levels, in addition to what you brought up. Since school starts on the 10th, it could be a while before I find time to finish this to my liking.

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Posted: 1/8/2006 5:44 AM

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Twisted_Eye

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Joined: 10/17/2005
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I haven't had any time to check it, but I do know that it was the left wall that he was in. I'm sure it'd happen right when you hit him in Volteccer form and the screen gets all screwed up, maybe that's part of it. One more thing about that boss: If you throw a Flash Arrow (or whatEVER it's called, that projectile attack you have) and hit him with it, it'll instantly charge him so that he starts volteccing, I wonder if there's any way that can be used to make the battle faster. ---Actually, probably not since you'd have to recharge yourself. OH. If he's near the back wall and you swing close at him, he'll back off and then charge forward and volt. That might be faster if he's near the wall, also.

Posted: 1/8/2006 10:03 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

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

Your suggestion about the ice maze saves about 11 seconds, but I can't get the change to sync right now. It'll definitely be in the final version. Thanks for the tip. I'll also see if I can't provoke dark Pulseman into attacking earlier. That's one of the slower battles, making it an excellent place for optimizations.

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Posted: 1/8/2006 11:02 AM
(Edited: 1/8/2006 11:21 PM)

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Twisted_Eye

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

Walking up and trying to slap him from the very start and dashing to the left to build static and avoid his own dash is definitely faster (EDIT--Shit, you do this in your movie already, hahaha), but the idea to charge him up by hand is unhelpful; unless you're very far away from him when you shoot, there's no way to build up volteccer power fast enough before he starts bouncing off the walls and wasting what little time was gained. But if he's ever close enough to the walls that backing him up will cause him to dash, it's a good idea to take a swing Getting him stuck in the wall has proven impossible, and would probably not be helpful since he can't be hit again until he hits ground. I'm not sure where the heck I pulled that from but oh well. I've found ducking and sweeping at his feet yields no response, but no damage either, so it's just kinda stupid looking hehe Another interesting thing I found is that while he's charging, if he's hit with the arrow thing he'll shoot right into his volteccer, which is another interesting yet totally unhelpful thing I found because again it takes away your volt power. Geez where's that infinite-volt sphere item when you need it. OH and if you swing at him while he's charging, he'll back away while charged. If he doesn't dash at you, he'll just stand there. Charged. And then when he decides to volt, he charges AGAIN. Funny looking but useless. EDIT==Hold on, the idea to fire him up by hand seems to actually be helpful: When he's far enough from the walls and you're about a quarter screen-width away from him towards center stage (about how apart you are at the start of the battle), dash away, fire a shot at him, dash back, and volt. If you volt too early you end up hitting on top, ending up with him out of range, but otherwise I think this technique may just save a couple frames (and look cooler, too :P) -Yeah, about a second or two each round of fighting I'd say, since the time spent waiting for him to hit the ground can be used to get far enough away to set up the move

Posted: 1/8/2006 6:50 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Oh, I must have missed a lot of updates. One thing that seems off to me (didn't notice it before, sorry) is that part where you get the perma-charge powerup in stage 2. Why did you go out of the way to get that? It looks like you don't use the volteccer more often than you'd have gotten charges from normal running, except for the very first volteccer after the powerup, which you could've done by dashing. It should be about 1 second faster to skip that powerup, I think. EDIT: Actually I'm not so sure now, I'll try this out and let you know if it's really faster without it... EDIT2: Tested it, and it was over 2.5 seconds faster (at room blackout time) to skip the powerup. EDIT3: Another thing that looks like it loses time: In the next room, when you use the voltecer to attach to the 2nd wire, there's no volteccer delay, so why is there a delay for attaching to the 1st and 3rd wires in that room?

Posted: 1/8/2006 9:42 PM

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Twisted_Eye

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

edit--Oh i'm sorry, you were talking about the last room before the boss, that long jungle room. You're right, the first time he rides the wires, he would in fact save a small bit of time by shooting off a projectile first, getting rid of the static, so that he can hop right onto the line and not spend time on the volteccer animation

Posted: 1/8/2006 11:16 PM

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Twisted_Eye

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

I just found a crazy glitch during that Dark Pulseman battle that can be used to save even more time, but it's a frame-precise glitch, it's weird. Basically, if you hit the volteccer button the very.frame. that you and dark-you collide and start mashing on that same volteccer button during the collision, you'll go right back into volteccer form and shoot off! And if you're close enough to Darkie when you do it, you'll hurt him as well! The time saving part of this glitch, though, is that if you are still in volteccer form when he hits the ground, he'll INSTANTLY start charging up and volt off, meaning that if you can work it so that you two collide again real soon, you can do the glitch again, saving a good amount of time per round! Problem is, you don't have much control of Pulsebo once he's in volteccer form. --I was able to hit the glitch three times in a row at full speed just now, so with a little work it shouldn't be too bad at all. You can choose the direction you volt before you do, fortunately

Posted: 1/9/2006 12:03 AM
(Edited: 1/9/2006 2:15 AM)

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Twisted_Eye

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

haha, um, I just recorded an entire battle using the glitch I mentioned in the last post, but, um, well. I've never used this movie recording stuffs and stuffs, and in my idiocy I somehow recorded the movie into the movie that was already made, but about two minutes AFTER the other movie's battle starts, meaning that in the middle of stage 6, Pulseman starts pulling some really stupid behavior haha. This battle's at least 15 seconds faster than the movie's Could someone help me hex-edit all of the information after about 21:27 back into the movie at about 18:56:07 (frame 68167)? EDIT: Hold on, I'm figuring it out and doing it myself :) EDIT2: Shikkle. My movie starts with several frames of right-holding, and that's just what was going on in the movie at the time I'd started interrupting, grr. This is suck.

Posted: 1/9/2006 1:41 AM

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IdeaMagnate

Player (80)

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

nitsuja, you're right. The only reason I can think of that I kept the perma-charge was that I was recording a version with and without, and forgot to record the version without. I'll also try shooting off a flash arrow to avoid the volteccer animation when catching onto a wire. I may not be able to do it everytime I need to catch onto a wire while charged, since firing slows me down slightly, but I'm sure it will work more often than not. It would be very helpful if you could figure out what's going on in the s7a4 boss battle. I'd like to do more bosses like that one. Twisted Eye, check my post here. If you've got Perl installed on your system, it should make your job easy. If you're on win32, you can use ActivePerl. If you can't get it to sync, try deleting or adding a frame. If that doesn't work, recording a single instance of the bug is as helpful as anything.

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Posted: 1/9/2006 2:21 AM
(Edited: 1/9/2006 2:53 AM)

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Found something else, first: At around 22:53:00, you wait a couple of seconds for the platform to move forward before crossing the gap, but you can jump across quite easily from there without waiting by having a higher running speed when you get there (from landing on and running across the leftmost platform first) and jumping without holding right to increase the horizontal movement speed during the jump. Actually, doing this might speed up almost all of the jumps you made (any full-height jumps made while at full running speed to move horizontally, at least)... EDIT: Maybe it's not so drastic, actually. I'm not sure what causes some jumps made at running speed to move slower but it definitely didn't happen for all of the jumps you made while holding rightward, only some of them. Also, you seem to lose some time due to lag from breaking blocks, like in the autoscroller where it looks like it'd be faster to wait for the confetti stuff to clear in-between breaking at most 2 blocks at a time.

Posted: 1/9/2006 2:52 AM

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Twisted_Eye

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

Working version here (save state included, yep) I just plain remade it, but I screw up twice in the middle and once near the end, so be warned that it's not desyncing. I'm just stupeed with my save states (which is how I put myself in this mess in the first place, haha) Still, the difference in times between versions is about 16 seconds saved, so I'm sure you could do better with a more disciplined run through him. ...And I'm definitely going to have to work on my victory dances ;P And your s7a4 boss....hahaha that's....never happened before:P

Posted: 1/9/2006 5:03 AM

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IdeaMagnate

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

Yeah. I've tried to minimize the lag from the confetti, but I also wanted to break everything breakable in the auto-scrollers to make them more interesting. The magic number to avoid lag seems to be 4 blocks-worth of confetti onscreen at once. In the first autoscroller I was mostly able to do this, but in the last one time was tight enough that I tried to get all the blocks broken in as short a window as possible to end the lag sooner. I'll take a shot at reducing lag in the autoscrollers when it comes time to redo them. The bonus stages also have a ton of lag, but I doubt it's possible to reduce it without wasting time. As for 22:53:00, I tested landing on the upper platform first, but I held right while jumping. I just tested holding right vs not holding right while doing a full-height jump from the ground with 50, 25 and 15 frames of a running start, and holding right was either marginally faster or the same. (The 50th frame is the first you can jump on and be charged.) However, it's good to know that holding right *will* slow me down when jumping off a platform. I'm probably not going to redo the platform autoscroller, but I might be able to save some time elsewhere. I also noticed that if I fall off the ledge and come out of the volteccer at the right time, the platforms will magically be in a more favorable position. Twisted Eye, that's a great bug. Thanks for the demo. It looks a little harder to manipulate than the normal mehtod, but that's what rerecords are for. ;) It will make a more interesting and much faster fight. I also want to look into getting dark Pulseman stuck in a wall

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Posted: 1/9/2006 5:24 AM

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Twisted_Eye

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

Using this bug, I was once able to pop him halfway into the ground somehow, but when he later volted he popped right back out :( I shoulda dropkicked him in the face while I still had the chance Side walls haven't had any luck, but I might still try another couple ideas later.