Post subject: Cavestory/Doukutsu
Joined: 1/1/2022
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I haven't enjoyed a game like this in a long time. It can be found here. It is possible to speedrun the whole game in a predicted hour and a half. But the main purpose of this topic is speedrunning the sacred grounds (a secret level after you defeat the four 'final' bosses) which comes included with an in-game timer. It is one of the most difficult levels I've experienced in my whole career of gaming, but the ending is rewarding. I can finish the sacred grounds in about 8-9 minutes, but there was a video of someone which I cannot find now doing it in under 6 minutes. Besides speedrunning, this is a great game overall. You may be turned away by the graphics at first, but I recommend giving the game a chance before judging it. It really is fun. Incase you get stuck or want to find out how to access the secret level and the other secrets included in the game, just refer here. To get maximum enjoyment out of the game, you should go through the game once without checking the guide first :]
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I want to see a single-segment run through the whole game without saving. That would be impressive. Anyway, my best hell time is 9:26, though I can't say I've been trying really hard. I tried like 3 times after becoming good enough to beat it consistently.
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Record for a speedrun through just the sacred grounds is 2'28'5 (ingame clock timer). That is INSANE. If someone can direct me to a site where I can upload videos (its really small and not very good quality, but you can see whats going on), I would appreciate it. Thanks in advance. And also, a single-segment run through the game without saving would be really cool, but I think that's too hard. Imagine going through the game only to fall into an insta-death spike? >_< And the run should be for the normal ending, not the secret best one or the one where you escape with Kasumi.
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Player (67)
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Just in case anyone is interested, I made a rather crappy speedrun through the whole game. I made a thread about it on the SDA forum, you can find it here: http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=other_games;action=display;num=1115512590 The best segments are #16 (secret cave) and #18 (hell) (even though I suck). Actually, this speedrun is pretty crappy overall but this thread seemed like a good place to post. (yeah, I also like to brag, so ... bleh)
Joined: 8/17/2004
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This may be unrelated, but I'm curious. Where do you find these Japanese Hell records that are mentioned in the post you linked to? I tried to find them when I played Cave Story a few months ago, with no luck. I'd like to see them. EDIT: Nevermind, I see them. I see them. ^^ Any luck actually submitting a run to SDA, Blublu?
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Spoony_Bard wrote:
Any luck actually submitting a run to SDA?
Nah, I don't think they accept non-commercial games. At least it seems to say so in their FAQ.
Post subject: so ive been wondering if doukutsu will be tas'ed one day
Joined: 4/30/2007
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doukutsu monogatari was supposedly ported by a third party to gameboy ds (non commercially) and soon to psp (commercially) although the days of tas'ing ds are probably not soon upon us, would doing a tas of doukutsu, which would of course be very, very, very exciting to see (and im sure everyone would love to see the japanese hell speedrun record smashed in a tas even though the competitions were so fierce it seems like it was perfect even by tas standards), be "legal" considering the rules of what can and cant be tas'ed? and wouldnt providing a link to the game itself on a submission thread be legal since the game was free and the ds port is non commercial? oh but wait, the port was done of the version 1.0.0.6 of the game with the 1.01 translation patch by agtp, and the rules state no fan translations so you can see why i ask since this is confusing based on the listed rules, but i hope to see it one day and a tas competition occur over it
Player (67)
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I will be the first do do a TAS on Cave Story one day, but until TAS-able version is made, a "legit" speedrun will have to suffice. I have been working on one for a little while now, but since Grasstown has been very uncooperative it has been slowed down by an undetermined amount. I don't promise I will finish it though, so please don't bug me about that. There's already a super crappy speedrun out there anyway.
mwl
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 636
I've been thinking about this recently, too. The DS port doesn't look like it will be finished anytime soon. Last I saw, the author released a "demo" with only a few maps ported. One can scroll the maps, but cannot play on them. There are no characters, enemies, items. I'd actually prefer an SNES port to a DS or PSP port. For one, we wouldn't be limited to a 256x192 pixel screen, and we wouldn't need to wait for a re-recording DS emulator. This game undoubtedly has huge TAS potential. All bosses, with the exception of Misery (if I recall correctly), seem to have no damage cap per cycle/round, so at 60 fps we can fire up to 30 bullets per second. If you noticed how quickly Ballos goes down in the 2'17"4 Sacred Grounds speedrun (which was produced with a turbo controller), just imagine the possibilities with frame advance and re-recording. When that day comes, I think we can be looking at completion times below one hour.
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mwl wrote:
When that day comes, I think we can be looking at completion times below one hour.
I actually think we can be looking at below 40 minutes, and that's at worst. Also, I don't think SNES would be able to represent the original game better than NDS (in terms of graphics, sound, etc.). By the time the port is ready, I believe we'll already have a more-or-less working DeSmuME code ready to implement rerecording. After all, it's being developed faster than most other emulators out there.
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mwl wrote:
The DS port doesn't look like it will be finished anytime soon. Last I saw, the author released a "demo" with only a few maps ported. One can scroll the maps, but cannot play on them. There are no characters, enemies, items.
The current demo has everything but guns in and working. http://community.livejournal.com/doukutsu/92406.html
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Boco wrote:
mwl wrote:
The DS port doesn't look like it will be finished anytime soon. Last I saw, the author released a "demo" with only a few maps ported. One can scroll the maps, but cannot play on them. There are no characters, enemies, items.
The current demo has everything but guns in and working. http://community.livejournal.com/doukutsu/92406.html
yeah i thought it was nearing completion this is all exciting to hear the run will probably also be interesting to see what sidequests and optional items will give a positive time boost to compensate for the time it takes to acquire them (i.e. nemesis, spur, snake, etc.) although i am pretty sure the bubble would definitely be a weapon youd only acquire to create the snake since it was seemingly useless my first time through and only makes the time to swap through weapons longer i would think the nemesis would be a definite weapon to grab since it would be invaluable in saving time for the two parts of the game where your weapons drop to level 1; also it would be very much not out of the way since the little man is in the graveyard where you have to go to get the mushroom anyway but the little people family is slightly out of the way; also, i have read the level 2 sword has the largest damage per second in the game and you do have to trade it for the nemesis i am really interested in seeing the different strategies and which is optimal
mwl
Joined: 3/22/2006
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Ah, that's good news to hear. The RavenWorks update was just posted two days ago, so no wonder I missed it. Hopefully, figuring out the weapons won't be that complicated. I don't think we'll be picking up either the Spur or the Nemesis. Both involve fairly lengthy diversions. As I see it, the Spur takes too long to charge up, and when rapid fire isn't a problem with frame advance, the Spur is hardly worth it. Whoever ran Sacred Grounds in 2'17" dealt 1174 units of damage in about 1.6 seconds using Super Missiles and turbo-enhanced rapid fire. As you said, the Nemesis is slightly out of the way. I think scaling the Outer Wall for a second time takes far too long. In the Sacred Grounds, we could always use Curly's Nemesis by firing in the other direction. Hence, I think using the Blade is the way to go. It deals 15 damage at level 1, and 18 at Level 2. If I recall correctly, the Nemesis only deals 8 dmg at Level 1, and far less at 2 and 3. Plus, we'd constantly have to go out of our way to avoid picking up EXP. Trading the Polar Star for the Machine Gun is probably a wise idea, as the power of flight at Level 3 makes a lot of the early maps go by much faster. Per the above reasoning, my proposed final arsenal is * Machine Gun (for flight pre-Booster 2.0) * Super Missiles (for bosses) * Fireballs (for slopes, e.g. in Grasstown) * Blade (for normal fighting and bosses)
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If a TAS is made, and in fact if another speedrun is made, here is what weapons will be collected: Regular gun Fireball Machine Gun Ninja Sword All of these are required to complete the game except Machine Gun, which is primarily used (at lv3) to fly. And that's it! Missles and super missles are worthless since rapid-fire sword (get really close and dangerous) does much more damage much faster. Fireball can be useful on slopes and some bosses before sword, but after that is kinda obsolete. The Nemesis has a good damage output, but it takes forever to get and lv1 sword is more than adequate anyway. Most boss fights last between 3 - 7 seconds (guess) with sword.
mwl
Joined: 3/22/2006
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I'm not sure if this is already known, but for infinite-ammo weapons that take time to recharge (such as the machine gun), it's advantageous to trigger the rapid-fire manually by repeatedly pressing the "fire" key rather than hold it down and allow the ammo to drain. I can now scale the Outer Wall without making any stops to allow the gun to recharge. The ammo never goes below 99, and best of all, speed doesn't appear to be compromised.
Player (67)
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I downloaded the newest demo from http://cavestory.ravenworks.ca/ (This, to be exact.) I tried loading it in DeSmuME 0.7.2. Well, it does something alright. The lower screen works, and you can click those icons to load the areas featured in the demo. But the top screen is all scrambled and the sound is really scrambled. So even if the NDS port was fully done now, it wouldn't be playable on this emulator at this time. It's promising, though. Of course, DeSmuME does not have any TAS features built in, so that is also a problem, though I have faith that one of our awesome coders will work on that too. :) I think the author should just release the freaking source code already. Then every coder on Earth would immediately port this game to every device ever made. Including DS.
Post subject: Cave Friggin Story
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There needs to be a way to TAS this.
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Personally, I'd love to see La Mulana TASed somehow.
upthorn
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lol. And how about Eversion, while we're at it?
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Uh, since we're listing off random freeware titles, Eternal Daughter mayhaps?
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I Wanna Be That Guy. ....wasn't someone porting Cave Story to DS?
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upthorn
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
I Wanna Be That Guy. ....wasn't someone porting Cave Story to DS?
It's "I Wanna Be The Guy" And yeah, there was somebody porting CS to DS, but he never finished and hasn't given any status update in about 2 years.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
There needs to be a way to TAS this.
I had an idea to use L.Spiro script (the scripting language of Memory Hacking Software) to copy/paste process memory, with the aim of simulating rerecording in a PC game. It wouldn't be easy, since you have a running kernel to deal with, which would be constantly messing with system resources, and which can't be tampered with. I think the best option would be DLL injection. One could hypothetically reverse-engineer the game to get an understanding of its memory structures, and then write savestate/movie recording support+hotkeys, and then treat the game itself as though it were a TASing emulator. There's also a version of GDB that can be scripted using Python. I don't yet fathom how useful that could be, especially if it were extended to suit the purposes of TASing. I do know that vanilla GDB can breakpoint (frame-advance) and modify memory and CPU registers (save state), so if you were to script that in Python, you would conceivably be able to do both on the fly, and thus create passable tool-assistance.