Here is an improvement to Prower's run of Mega Man X3. It's 3 minutes and 45 seconds faster, and while I'm sure it can be further improved, it's much closer to being perfect and it's been suggested that I should submit this as it is for now.
This movie:
Aims for fastest time
Takes damage to save time
Abuses programming errors
Emulator: Snes9x 1.43 WIP 1
I follow mostly the same route as Prower, with the following important differences:
I skip getting the air dash upgrade because it takes about 20 seconds to pick up and I didn't think it would save enough time to make up for it, despite allowing extra jump height and mid-air dashing. And I'm now pretty sure I was right about it being faster to skip it; I didn't notice more than 5 or 10 seconds of time lost from not having it. It would've made a lot of things easier, but most of them not necessarily faster.
I fight Vile after Neon Tiger's stage instead of before it so I have two weapons he's weak to (to avoid running out of ammo during the fight).
I don't kill Byte since doing so is mostly a waste of time waiting for him to explode.
I use some pretty strange strategies at times, but trust me that they are faster (or at the very least not slower) than what Prower did, as is probably obvious from the time difference.
The bugs abused are:
damaging some bosses when they should be invulnerable (mainly Toxic Seahorse and Crush Clawfish)
passing through enemies using drills
making a platform disappear by scrolling it off the screen
extending Zero's Z-Saber damage time by hopping
jumping up ladders without climbing (more of a trick than a glitch, also works in MMX and MMX2)
invulnerability abuse to climb spikes (most likely a feature by this late in the series)
That's all for now...
(This wouldn't have been possible without Prower's movie to refer to, and the WIP of his (now-cancelled) improved version was also quite helpful, as were various related comments/suggestions/examples (especially those of Mikwuyma).)
I never thought I'd finally see a run where no single item besides the Z Saber was picked up. I also loved the way you utilized Blizzard Buffalo's weapon against some of the enemies. It's a take (yes)!
Looks great to me. Though it seems some of the earlier stages could be better optimized via the ladder glitch which you seemed to get the hang of later on, that can wait.
I wonder now if someone could attempt a 100% item run? It'd be considerably longer, unlike the MMX2 run which seems to have been faster because of it, but it'd be neat to watch. I can't remember, can X get the Gold Chip AND the Z-Saber at once? 100% may also mean getting the ride armours, even though they may not have a practical use within the run itself...
Very nice run, I'm glad someone finally went ahead and improved mine :) Definite yes vote, and the spike-climbing in Doppler 2 was really really impressive.
Voted yes because the run is not only awesome I got credit too. Thanks for putting up with my constant questions Nitsuja, you discovered some really interesting stuff.
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
Voted yes, though I haven't watched the full run, yet. But from what I've seen it's very excellently done and highly entertaining. I think Megaman X2's star should be given to this movie when/if it gets published.
You can thank Capcom at a later time, for letting the player skip those screens. ;D
And in the X series, the bosses are called Irregulars (Maverick in the states).
Joined: 3/29/2005
Posts: 229
Location: The boonies.
One of them's a plant, I think.
And they get really pathetic about naming them after the 3rd installment of the series, too.
Then again, when the original blue bomber started fighting guys like "Tomahawk Man," I gave up on him.
Joined: 1/9/2005
Posts: 219
Location: The Netherlands
I don't understand why the creator does not jump at the end of it's dash.
Not only will it increase the length of the dash, but when you touch the ground, you can instantly start dashing again. (iirc)
Right now, most of the times you keep on dashing on the ground. You can clearly see the movement pauses for a very brief moment, and you lose various frames due to this in your entire movie. It'll prolly only be a few seconds at most, but still...
Also, i don't understand why you get hit by some bosses. For instance, the drill boss. He's charged up and heads towards a wall. There's no stopping him, but still you jump up on him and get damaged.
If this was for entertaining purposes, well, it didn't work for me.
Another thing, the boss fights weren't really entertaining. Take a look at the X1 run and see how much the player moves around the boss even if he has to wait for the boss to stop flickering.
Right now it's like, "shoot, evade attack, wait for the boss to get vulnerable again, repeat".
Apart from that, the rest was good, and a big improvement on the former X3 run. (i can't believe that one got posted, he actually misses shots at bosses)
So, yeah, i'm voting yes.
But if any future run is made..... please...... do (not do) the above that i mentioned....
I think Megaman X2's star should be given to this movie when/if it gets published.
Well I think any movie that the author isn't reasonably sure is perfect shouldn't get a star...
Mlandry wrote:
but the ladder trick works in MMX2 so this one is closer to perfection than X2
I don't really agree, especially since MMX2 doesn't have that many ladders that must be climbed up compared to MMX3.
But, uh, thanks for the compliments.
McBAIN wrote:
I don't understand why the creator does not jump at the end of it's dash.
Not only will it increase the length of the dash, but when you touch the ground, you can instantly start dashing again. (iirc)
Right now, most of the times you keep on dashing on the ground. You can clearly see the movement pauses for a very brief moment, and you lose various frames due to this in your entire movie. It'll prolly only be a few seconds at most, but still...
Jumping also causes a 1 frame complete stop, and when you touch the ground you have to walk for 1 frame before you can dash. In places like the hallway before a boss, jumping actually slows you down by 1 or 2 frames (especially if you hit the ceiling which costs 2 extra frames), and besides that it's often the exact same speed. But you're right that in some places (such as longer rooms without lots of height changes and with no obstacles overhead, which admittedly are not rare), since a jump lasts longer than a dash it still leads to less total pauses, so some number of frames (but certainly not a few seconds worth) would be gained by jumping in more places, and maybe it looks better even when it doesn't save any time.
(EDIT: I did a test of X's first part of the intro area and found that the very first thing done, dash-dash, is faster than anything else possible, and that about 3 frames are lost over that area by jump-dashing more often. And watching the MMX video, it loses usually 2.5 frames or sometimes only 0.5 frames in every small pre-boss/transition room by dash-jumping instead of dash-dashing.)
McBAIN wrote:
Also, i don't understand why you get hit by some bosses. For instance, the drill boss. He's charged up and heads towards a wall. There's no stopping him, but still you jump up on him and get damaged.
If this was for entertaining purposes, well, it didn't work for me.
It saved 39 frames each time, that's why I did it. He was invincible-charging up to head at the other wall; jumping on him tricks him into charging into the wall he's already at, which causes him to become vulnerable to damage earlier than normal. (Avoiding the damage would not have saved any more time and wasn't possible without the air dash. (EDIT: perhaps it might be possible after all, let's see...)) Manipulating him to not go into that charge at all (or at least less) would be even faster, but I haven't yet been able to get him to do anything else but invincibility-charge every other time as his low-health behaviour.
McBAIN wrote:
Another thing, the boss fights weren't really entertaining. Take a look at the X1 run and see how much the player moves around the boss even if he has to wait for the boss to stop flickering.
Right now it's like, "shoot, evade attack, wait for the boss to get vulnerable again, repeat".
I suppose you're right... I think Blizzard Buffalo is the most boring one, I'd like to try beating him just as fast without exploiting his AI stupidity. Some of the bosses use attacks that normally require a lot of moving around to avoid, so in those cases I purposely moved very little to make it look like dodging their attacks was easy for me, but yes, more dancing around them when waiting would probably look better.
(edited for extra info in the above)
Joined: 1/9/2005
Posts: 219
Location: The Netherlands
Hmm, i didn't know the jumping and landing etc actually costed frames. Interesting. For my human eye it always seemed like ground-dashing took long pauses (due to human control) and jumping saved little time.
I assumed it would be the same for a time attack, since i still saw the little pause between each dash. I assumed wrongly :)
Although i don't think it'll be useful to use ground-dashing for such parts in my own speedruns, since i won't be able to time those dashes frame-precisely.
Also i didn't know Tunnel Rhino could actually stop and dash the other way when he was charged. (i thought he could only do that in normal dashes)
Well, i guess that my only critique would then be the boss fight stuff.
But hey, i already confidently voted yes. :)
Thanks for the explanation.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[329] SNES Mega Man X3 by nitsuja in 39:50.92
Pretty good run :-) Huge improvement over prower's previous...
Big fan of the climb up the spike wall of course...
The boss battles all looked pretty good though Tunnel Rhino seemed a bit off (there were times when he seemed vulnerable for quite a bit).
I agree with the sentiment that some more entertainment could probably of been added without slowing things down.
I think this game is one away from a perfect run but this run is beautiful in its own right and is pretty satisfying.
This signature is much better than its previous version.
I think you have to make sure you check "use WIP1 timing" in the movie play dialog.
If you dont see this option try going to the SNEX9X forum and get the modified 1.43 version from there.
This signature is much better than its previous version.
