this run uses a new exploit that can control enemy spawns and rope properties to massively reduce lag and time overall.
there are also a few smaller improvements that involve deeper observation and game knowledge than what was shown in previous runs.
the run aims to beat the game as fast as possible which basically comes down to reducing lag wherever you can.
the movie was made on bizhawk v2.3.2 and it was played on the original japanese gameboy version to include the different title screen that the other versions don't have.
the new exploit is called pause delay and is done by pausing and unpausing the game at just the right frame so that the following frame after the pause will continue the action that got interfered due to pausing the game. if done at the right time, this lets you skip enemy spawns or bypass rope properties to save a lot of time that was otherwise needed to perform other actions in order to achieve the same result.
Nach: feos asked me if I can judge this, so I'm taking it off his hands.
This run is quite nice and a great improvement over past submissions for the DMG version. It's nice to see one of the hardest games I played as kid being dealt with so effectively.
The first question that comes to mind is whether this version should be published alongside the CGB version, as the game is practically identical. I'm not aware of any significant game-play differences that would normally allow for side by side publications, such as different enemies, movement mechanics, weapons/power-ups, or that sort of thing. I have not seen any strong arguments why this version should also be published.
Aside from that though, as great as this run is, the discussion showed that several improvements can be made. While most of the improvements are minor and would not necessarily warrant rejection, there is a fairly major one in the third level with the crushing ceiling. It's easy to notice with the naked eye that it's sub-optimal now that we know the ceiling can be glitched into not moving, and waiting for it is significantly slower.
If it does make sense to TAS this version, it will now need to include ideas from this new submission. Rejecting.
Mazzin, please do not feel discouraged, as your contributions to the knowledge of this game were important and I'd love to see new runs from you in the future. If you're looking for a different yet similar game to TAS, I would love to see a run of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge Japanese version. That game has a different weapon than the US version used in the published runs, and if the weapon is used in a decent run, I can see it being published here along side the other.
[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
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
For the record, this IS a gameplay improvement over [1612] GBC Castlevania: The Adventure by arukAdo in 14:58.70. The mentioned "pause delay" glitch is used incredibly sparingly in the published run, but it is used far more often in this one, which removes a ton of lag and helps with rope jumping. The slower time is due to the normal GB version lagging a lot more in general (at least as far as I understood from the explanation, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
arukAdo is using the new improvements in this movie for a GBC version improvement, but I feel like this run can be acceptable in the meantime assuming the GBC improvement takes a while to be completed.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
this is gonna be a very long and probably never ending discussion but i will try to answer it anyway:
i tested every version before i started making my run and in the end my conclusion was that all versions are exactly the same in terms of gameplay, so the only difference would be the lag from the emulation itself, but that is exactly the reason why i did decide against it.
due to the faster emulation of the konami collection (likely only caused by less lag frames) the overall speed of the game is way higher than the original gameboy versions and because of this, the sound and music of the game is significantly changed too and even spikes every time the amount of lag changes in a scene.
and in my opinion this hurts the viewability a lot.
and not only the audio is worse in the konami collection, but also the seemingly prettier colors have some obvious down sides like wrongly colored edges that look cheap and not showing hit detection on enemies is a huge deal from a viewing standpoint.
so long story short:
other than the reduced lag in the emulation itself, the color version only has negatives compared to the original GB versions and since the gameplay itself is technically identical, i purposedly went with the "better" version instead of the least laggy. and speaking of visuals, only the japanese version features the bats and moon title screen and that's why i picked that.
i hope i could answer this understandably.
For the record, this IS a gameplay improvement over [1612] GBC Castlevania: The Adventure by arukAdo in 14:58.70. The mentioned "pause delay" glitch is used incredibly sparingly in the published run, but it is used far more often in this one, which removes a ton of lag and helps with rope jumping. The slower time is due to the normal GB version lagging a lot more in general (at least as far as I understood from the explanation, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
arukAdo is using the new improvements in this movie for a GBC version improvement, but I feel like this run can be acceptable in the meantime assuming the GBC improvement takes a while to be completed.
this is correct.
unfortunately there is no accurate way to compare GBC and GB versions but calculated from the results of my rough version testings, the time of my submitted run here would be around 13:45.xx minutes in GBC time. so if anyone is confused about the times, use this for reference instead!
In the interest of trying to get something resembling an objective measure, how does the in game timer work? Does it advance when the game is paused and more importantly, does it advance on lag frames?
Thanks for the subtitles, by the way.
this is gonna be a very long and probably never ending discussion but i will try to answer it anyway:
i tested every version before i started making my run and in the end my conclusion was that all versions are exactly the same in terms of gameplay, so the only difference would be the lag from the emulation itself, but that is exactly the reason why i did decide against it.
I'm not exactly sure, what you mean by this, so I'm not gonna comment that part.
Mazzin wrote:
due to the faster emulation of the konami collection (likely only caused by less lag frames) the overall speed of the game is way higher than the original gameboy versions and because of this, the sound and music of the game is significantly changed too and even spikes every time the amount of lag changes in a scene.
and in my opinion this hurts the viewability a lot.
Hmm, I honestly don't notice that much of a sound difference between the two versions. To me the gbc version sounds a bit more "8 bit" than the gb version haha (whether one likes it or not is of course a personal thing). And honestly, the sound of the gbc version does not deter me from watching it and I strongly believe it would NOT hurt the viewability at all.
Mazzin wrote:
and not only the audio is worse in the konami collection, but also the seemingly prettier colors have some obvious down sides like wrongly colored edges that look cheap and not showing hit detection on enemies is a huge deal from a viewing standpoint.
First of all, the original gameboy is monochrome so the gbc doesn't have "seemingly prettier colors" but it has colors in the first place. Moreover, I assume, the "wrongly colored edges" you are refering to are the ground, platform and ceiling elements of stage 2? (and maybe some other I missed out?) Well, as far as my knowledge goes, this is due to the very nature of the gameboy color (and various other consoles), where each tile is drawn with a certain given pallete of - if I'm not mistaken - 4 colors. So, the reason, why these "cheap" looking edges exist is not because the programmers were lazy or something, but because of the limitations of the technology of that time. If you take a closer look at these very tiles of stage 2, you notice they choose a dark brown for the "extra" pixels and not black, yellow or white, so it looks to me like they knew very much what they were doing and they choose this dark brown because it looked most appealing to them, given the blue sky as a contrast.
My opinion on this: The non existing hit animation is sad, but at least to me it is ok. In addition, I absolutely adore the gbc coloring here. In my eyes this game is a very good example of a beautifully colored gbc game. Please don't take this persoally, since this is just my opinion on the topic(!), but from a viewing standpoint, I don't see this as a "huge deal" and I'd rather watch the gbc version than the gb version.
Moreover: The Movie Rules state:
If the game has full-color graphics for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Color mode should be used.
(I know, strictly speaking, they are both different games, but are they really that different? hmmm... (I am not the person to judge, correct me if I'm wrong))
Mazzin wrote:
so long story short:
other than the reduced lag in the emulation itself, the color version only has negatives compared to the original GB versions and since the gameplay itself is technically identical, i purposedly went with the "better" version instead of the least laggy. and speaking of visuals, only the japanese version features the bats and moon title screen and that's why i picked that.
Haha this is funny, as to me the exact opposite is true! I pretty much see only positives in the gbc version. Hmmm furthermore, if your goal is the fastest completion, I'd strongly suggest using the less laggy version!
Mazzin wrote:
Samsara wrote:
For the record, this IS a gameplay improvement over [1612] GBC Castlevania: The Adventure by arukAdo in 14:58.70. The mentioned "pause delay" glitch is used incredibly sparingly in the published run, but it is used far more often in this one, which removes a ton of lag and helps with rope jumping. The slower time is due to the normal GB version lagging a lot more in general (at least as far as I understood from the explanation, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
arukAdo is using the new improvements in this movie for a GBC version improvement, but I feel like this run can be acceptable in the meantime assuming the GBC improvement takes a while to be completed.
this is correct.
unfortunately there is no accurate way to compare GBC and GB versions but calculated from the results of my rough version testings, the time of my submitted run here would be around 13:45.xx minutes in GBC time. so if anyone is confused about the times, use this for reference instead!
I feel kinda dumb, but could you please explain to me how you calculated that time? Probably I'm just missing something, sorry 'bout that..
In the interest of trying to get something resembling an objective measure, how does the in game timer work? Does it advance when the game is paused and more importantly, does it advance on lag frames?
Thanks for the subtitles, by the way.
im not too sure, but i would claim that 1 ingame timer second occurs at 32 non-lag frames or so, i can't remember, maybe it was a different number idk...
at least i believe it should be a set amount of non-lag frames that make the ingame timer tick. this also means that in a section with less lag, the timer runs faster than in a place with much lag. (actually you can even produce lag during your gameplay to make the timer go slower and while you have a longer real time outside of the game, the timer would show a faster time than you would get with less lag, it's anything but intuitive)
oh and pause frames do not count as frames that count for the timer though.
that's what i mean... it's basically a religious question which version is the better.
some prefer this some prefer that, there is no right or wrong and bringing different religions together is always troublesome and the compromises seem to satisfy neither party...
i knew from the very beginning there would be people who would still prefer the other version but i still went for the one that i felt best with.
and since it is rather possible to compare the 3 gameboy versions to each other than it is to compare any of the 2 konami collections to anything other than themselfes and i already knew that it wouldn't even matter to compare my new run since it is faster no matter how you look at it, my hope was that i could at least set a new standard in which we would have at least 3 possible versions to compete against each other and not only be restricted to 1 that feels so deeply unsatisfying to me personally.
there is not much i can do now... i just prefer the GB versions and that is my opinion.
if the majority rather wants to see the other version, i have to accept it...
i wish konami had never released those collections, then there would be no problem at all. but yeah... now we gotta live with that dilemma.
Hm, I think I understand your point better now. The fact, that they are really two different games (even though the gameplay seems to be exactly the same) makes this case unnecessary hard...
How much time would this exploit save in a TAS made with the GBC version?
On the first room it saved 94 frames to abuse it, but the timing are a bit different with bizhawk compared to vba, loading the first level take slightly longer (~200 frames) but the game itself lag a bit less
How much time would this exploit save in a TAS made with the GBC version?
On the first room it saved 94 frames to abuse it, but the timing are a bit different with bizhawk compared to vba, loading the first level take slightly longer (~200 frames) but the game itself lag a bit less
Well, that's an interesting situation. The game itself is laggy, which results in an unavoidably longer movie, but it also introduces additional challenge for optimization, which introduces more technical work in the TASing. So in a certain way, GB is the hard version of GBC...
It work exactly the same way on any version of the game, but on the grey you benefit more of the technique because well, the grey just lag more.
The monsters address range is starting at 0600, whenever something change there you just rewind a few frames and try pause on every other frames (that doesnt lag...), if it doesnt work you can try to pause 2 or 3 times, except for a few spawns it seems to work everywhere.
Alright, since this topic wouldn't go off my mind recently, I did more research on these two games. Now I absolutely feel like I have to apologize for some things I said before.
So first of all, I was confused and all in all rather harsh in general, so I apologise for that. Of course I can't undo, what I have done, so take this post as somewhat of a compensation.
The one part, that I constantly was thinking about was this one:
KiwiCracker wrote:
If the game has full-color graphics for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Color mode should be used.
(I know, strictly speaking, they are both different games, but are they really that different? hmmm... (I am not the person to judge, correct me if I'm wrong))
Now I think I definitely need to correct myself in some way here. After some more research if totaly feels to me like the two games are in a pretty similar relationship as the original NES Super Mario Bros games and the SNES Super Mario All Stars games. (or even the GBA Advance series, but I think the SNES series comes closer).
After searching for these games on this site, I realized they all were treated differently. Therefore I think this should totaly be the case for this game (and all the other Konami Collection games) as well. I don't see any logical explanation, for why this series should be an exeption.
Although I still personally prefer the konami version over the original, simply because of the colors, this is absolutely no argument for letting this run of the original GB Castlevania The Adventure be rejected! Everybody has their own preferences and ours just are different ;)
(Again, I might be wrong with all of this and additionally, I'm very new here (so I kinda feel like, I shouldn't have posted anything in the first place), but nonetheless, this is my opinion on all of this now.)
Possibly. This is a little complex. i remember asking on IRC about a similar situation where a game was on both Genesis and SNES, and was told for consoles in that era, they are most likely to be two different games.
You might be able to say GBC and GB are different consoles, so it's two different games. Those consoles are more closely related than Genesis and SNES, though.
In the Judge Guidelines, when talking about obsoletions, it says.
Cross-platform obsoletions, on the other hand, are not done unless it's about deliberately identical ports (as happens with modern console games).
The lag difference between versions is enough that it's incredibly difficult, or maybe impossible to tell what the actual amount of gameplay improvement would be with the new strategy. I would not be against counting this as a different game than the published movie.
Because I was curious to test things, ive made a little movie and it save 70 extra frames on the first room. (took me only 5min)
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/65245845160899640
The difference is just proper use of the bug and avoiding to hit candles.
Originally, destroying candles was faster, because combined with monsters it creates extra lag, but because we basicly now remove all monsters, its slower to hit them, that is because jumping is just slightly slower than walking. (thats very easy to test)
Edit: This doesnt mean you shouldnt destroy any candles, but should avoid destroying those that are not giving you any advantage or removing lags. (it could be very tedious to verify each candles interaction/lag)
There is frame rules in this game so there is no way to exactly predict how much you gonna save trought the run.
Here a test run with better spawn manipulation, just stage3 first block is already 10 second faster than any previous run, it is 2803 frames faster than published movie with 2320 less lag.
Link to videohttp://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/65283066503537296
To improve further;
-ghost script (cannot be used between grey/color, unfortunatly)
-script to tell you on screen when a monster is spawning (check ram range)
-bot to verify every candles
-cleanup small mistakes
Note that you can improve jumping by making sure you dont land on a lag frame, thats something that isnt possible everywhere and pretty tedious to produce, also if theres too many lag after the landing it might not have any benefical effect.
sick stuff!
you managed to bypass all enemies in the first screen of level 1 which i didn't...
and you somehow stopped the floor and ceiling from moving at the start of level 3?
how did you do that...? i assume it is just the same trick but i wonder why i didn't find this. im sure i tried to bypass that too.
but great finds nonetheless! that is a huge save over every previous run, very nice!
btw i don't wanna hurt your feelings again, but i have to get this off my chest:
you seriously lack game knowledge! i can easily tell from looking at the gameplay.
but now i think i have an idea why! i assume you didn't spend much time with any other version than the color one, right?
because that would make sense then, since it is significantly less laggy and thus it is waaay harder to spot smaller lag differences like candles and such.
me on the other hand, i only spend time with the EU and JP version of the regular game and this evidence strongly suggests that it might be beneficial to play the regular version first to gain a better sense of less significant improvements.
(...or you could just research existing runs to avoid rather obvious mistakes, but i understand that this video here was only a test)
ps: don't let this discourage you, i don't mean it personally!
your new stuff is great!
sick stuff!
btw i don't wanna hurt your feelings again, but i have to get this off my chest:
you seriously lack game knowledge! i can easily tell from looking at the gameplay.
but now i think i have an idea why! i assume you didn't spend much time with any other version than the color one, right?
because that would make sense then, since it is significantly less laggy and thus it is waaay harder to spot smaller lag differences like candles and such.
me on the other hand, i only spend time with the EU and JP version of the regular game and this evidence strongly suggests that it might be beneficial to play the regular version first to gain a better sense of less significant improvements.
(...or you could just research existing runs to avoid rather obvious mistakes, but i understand that this video here was only a test)
ps: don't let this discourage you, i don't mean it personally!
your new stuff is great!
Talk with input files.
[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
btw i don't wanna hurt your feelings again, but i have to get this off my chest:
you seriously lack game knowledge! i can easily tell from looking at the gameplay.
[...]
me on the other hand, i only spend time with the EU and JP version of the regular game and this evidence strongly suggests that it might be beneficial to play the regular version first to gain a better sense of less significant improvements.
(...or you could just research existing runs to avoid rather obvious mistakes, but i understand that this video here was only a test)
It's not a good look to call someone ignorant and talk about how much better you are then them, especially after they post an improved version of your movie. Ad hominem like this is generally unproductive, regardless of context, since it just denigrates people and doesn't actually help progress discussion. Even if you think you know more about something, it's more productive to just explain in detail how an aspect works, instead of telling them "you have inferior knowledge".
Mazzin wrote:
but now i think i have an idea why! i assume you didn't spend much time with any other version than the color one, right?
because that would make sense then, since it is significantly less laggy and thus it is waaay harder to spot smaller lag differences like candles and such.
This is slightly more useful, but it lacks detail. It would be more useful to explain exactly how the lag works, e.g. "letting candle 11 in level 2 remain on the screen is slower because XYZ".
But really, if you want to show something's faster, you should provide a comparable input file as Memory suggests (i.e. one done in the same game version) proving it's faster. Unsubstantiated claims are much less useful.
"...research existing runs to avoid rather obvious mistakes..."
isn't that an input file already?? i was actually refering to my submission file with this.
in a way i always feel insulted whenever someone posts a "new" file that even includes mistakes that i tried to avoid in my run and i even tried to explain some of them in my maxed out videos description and my subtitles...
so don't tell me i play the big mystery card here, i basically showed most of my knowledge already, but im also glad if someone wants to hear more.
and to name some examples, this is what bugs me the most and it's not even a TAS related fact, only basic game knowledge that could easily be obtained just by casually playing the game, it's no secret at all, which makes it even more outrageous for me:
the very first candle of the game has to be destroyed!
because this candle triggers another additional candle to spawn in the next screen, the second last that contains a 1UP.
and while it technically doesn't matter too much to leave the first candle (it's even better because of less lag caused by the whip action), if you leave it you will have to deal with additional lag from the the other candle that you purposedly spawn.
and the 1UP candle that spawns isn't just a similar case than the one at the start, because the location is right next to a rope that you will have to climb up.
and since climbing is super slow you will spend a lot of time on that screen before you can get out of sight from the candle, which in return means it does NOT save time to leave this candle there while you climb the rope.
so by leaving the first candle alone and seemingly saving the action of whipping it, only causes you to be forced to still use a whip move on the second candle, so even if both actions were equally time consuming (which they aren't, since the location favours the first candle over the 1UP candle), you would still have half of a screen movement more lag before you can even reach the 1UP candle to destroy it... so no matter what, spawning that candle only costs time in my eyes.
unless someone can proof me wrong with a detailed explanation that convinces me that i missed something...
the same problem goes for level 3 and level 4 as well. (at least level 2 was somewhat fixed in the last video here).
in level 3 you have to destroy the 3rd candle of the level to not spawn the first one in the horizontal scrolling section with a crystal ball in it (which i explicitly explained in my video, so idk why people point at me from all sides, but whatever...).
and in level 4 im not super duper sure if it could somehow be worth to ignore it, but i think unspawning any object sounds like a good idea...
at the start of level 4 you have to destroy the last candle of the low ground section where the knights are, that candle contains a heart and if you leave it, it spawns the second candle in the next screen which contains a blinking heart.
(but guess what, i explained that candle spawn too in my video...)
why is every time such a drama here, i just wanted to enrich your lifes with my work, but instead i kinda feel like i did something wrong when i made my run :(
sorry if i did, my only intention was to push the game further than ever before...
i appologise if i accidentally insulted anyone or whatever, i just feel disrespected if my improvements get ignored on purpose even when i showed and even explained how they could be achieved...
there are some other things i dislike too regarding gameplay optimization but they are only a matter of a few frames which im not sure if it even matters in the color version, but it certainly does in the regular version.
