(Link to video)
Most up-to-date movie file: Userfiles/Info/69339170071981656
It's Donkey Kong Junior on Intellivision and the good news is that it is a much more polished port than the Donkey Kong one!
Objectives
  • Uses hardest difficulty
  • Genre: Platformer
The difficulty selected was Skill level 4. It is the hardest difficulty because it features the highest number and speed of the enemies.
The goal of this movie was to play through one loop of the game's three unique stage layouts, which involves playing the first layout twice.
General Movement
  • Climbing up two vines at once is faster than holding onto one
  • Climbing down a single vine is faster than holding onto two
  • Jumping has slightly slower average horizontal speed than walking
  • There are also frame rules at play in this game. I'm not sure exactly how they work yet, but they limited the amount of unique RNG patterns I could test.
Stage 1
Jumping past the first vine is possible by jumping from the very right-edge pixel of the previous platform. The jump at the beginning is required to get the pixel alignment just right for this.
Stage 2
  • Climbing up a single vine to avoid the fruits is so slow that it is actually faster to just power through them by climbing two vines all the way up
  • Progressing horizontally across the chains is faster than climbing all the way down and running and jumping to the next set
Stage 3 is the same as Stage 1 but with more enemies.
Stage 4
  • I was unable to use the spring to jump to any higher platforms, including the high one on the left
  • It is faster to slowly climb the single chain through the tension wire than to climb two units left and use those two chains to climb up fast

Samsara: File replaced with a 52 frame improvement, and judging.
Samsara: Optimization looks good, and the loop endpoint does as well. Accepting to Vault. This syncs on BizHawk 2.6.
fsvgm777: Processing.

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7025: Winslinator's INTV Donkey Kong Junior in 01:35.36
Experienced player (677)
Joined: 7/18/2016
Posts: 76
Location: United States
Hold up, I found a faster way to manipulate my subpixels for skipping the first vine on stages 1 and 3. Give me a bit while I make those improvements.
nymx
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1586)
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 798
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
Wait...you are telling me that an old 8 bit system has programming to make use of subpixels? What would be the point...this game really doesn't require it. I've seen older games manipulate position, but it usually was to push the main character "off-center" from its given starting point...giving a pixel advantage without suffering from any detection that would hurt progress. This would be evident where a character would move 2 pixels each frame. When the character would run into a wall, or edge of the screen, it would reset it to an odd number placement rather than the 2,4,6,8 pixel possibilities. This is not in every game, but I'm pretty sure that a game like this doesn't make use of subpixels. That started surfacing in SNES....like Super Metroid.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Experienced player (677)
Joined: 7/18/2016
Posts: 76
Location: United States
Okay I have a 52-frame improvement to replace this movie with at: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/69339170071981656 RNG was unfortunately slightly worse in all four stages this time around, and I forgot to mention this earlier that there is a strange framerule-like system that the game uses which limits the number of suitable RNG patterns to test. For example, in the case of the fourth stage, this was the only RNG pattern which made the fastest framerule. [quote nymx]...but I'm pretty sure that a game like this doesn't make use of subpixels.[/quote] It appears you are correct! I was using a RAM address which I thought tracked X subpixels but upon closer inspection, it does not. Visually, it is actually possible to see that the manipulation I make allows me to jump from the very edge pixel of the platform, whereas without the manipulation the rightmost I can jump is two pixels to the left of that. I have already updated the TAS notes and temporary encode to reflect all of the above.
nymx
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1586)
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 798
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
Winslinator wrote:
It appears you are correct! I was using a RAM address which I thought tracked X subpixels but upon closer inspection, it does not. Visually, it is actually possible to see that the manipulation I make allows me to jump from the very edge pixel of the platform, whereas without the manipulation the rightmost I can jump is two pixels to the left of that. I have already edited the TAS notes to reflect all of the above.
Excellent! I figured that to be very odd, but thanks for looking into that. Nice find on the 52 frames, also. Now I can vote yes! As you can tell, I am a big fan of older consoles.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14776
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4405] INTV Donkey Kong Junior by Winslinator in 01:35.36
Fortranm
He/Him
Editor, Experienced player (773)
Joined: 10/19/2013
Posts: 1108
I wish I watched this before the decision was made. This looks surprisingly good for an INTV game, actually. http://tasvideos.org/Fortranm/ListofDKReleases.html Finally I get to update this page again. Thanks. :D