Submission Text Full Submission Page Publication Page

Emulator details

  • Recorded on BizHawk-2.8-win-x64
  • Left+Right/Up+Down - off

Game objectives

  • Aims for fastest time
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Added a jump in the first bonus level which saved a few frames, and the rest of the run beautifully synced, so I think I can just update the movie file without changing authorship.
feos: Huge thanks to ktwo for reviewing this submission, even if it wasn't an official review. Movement in this game feels very limited, especially jumping, so given that I think this run is well done, aside from a tiny mistake I fixed in the first bonus. Accepting.
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Posted: 8/14/2022 1:53 PM
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7648: excite's GB Castelian in 11:25.70
Posted: 8/15/2022 3:04 PM
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ktwo
Player (243)
Joined: 8/10/2008
Posts: 113
I'm the TAS-author of the NES-version of this game. I was aware of there being a GB-version, but I haven't played it before (or watched any gameplay). It turns out the two versions are quite similar in terms of level layout, but with several minor differences. I also noticed some minor differences in the game mechanics. Overall, the two versions are incomparable (also due to the fact that the NES-version is very, very laggy). Small sections of the game can still be compared between the two versions. While the manipulations done in the NES TAS are documented, I don't remember the finer details of them and didn't take the time to brush up my memory either (some of them starting several screens away to set up a particular enemy pattern and require a bit of time to get up to speed with). The game was still engrained enough in my memory to give this GB TAS a critical watch. Every time I noticed something that looked odd or didn't recognize from my NES TAS, I did a (fairly quick) check to see if it was due to a routing mistake or version differences. In the end, I'm left with the following question marks: * Were you aware of the possibility shown at https://youtu.be/hx9YxoNqBfA?t=399 ? I tried to get it to work with the submitted movie file, but the enemies were not aligned properly. A manipulation of the enemy spawns would have to be set up in advance for a chance to get it to work. I'm not going to do it, but would like to know if you already considered it and tried to include it? * The rest of tower 5 didn't look optimal in my eyes. There were fairly long stops before several enemies near the end. I remember facing the same problems in the NES TAS and it required a manipulation to start further down the tower to get the enemies aligned and minimize the stops towards the end. I'm not saying there is a faster solution, just that it looks in my eyes like there should be one and I would again be interested to know how hard you tried to optimize this section? * Why do you mention "Left+Right/Up+Down - off" in the run comments? Those combinations are generally forbidden for RTA leaderboards, but they are allowed on tasvideos. Do those combinations do anything special and would it have saved any time? While it's not the purpose of this thread, I should also mention that there were a few route choices/tricks that looked like they could save time in the NES TAS. All of the ones I could identify were however due to version differences, so there are no improvements to the NES TAS that could be easily implemented (as far as I can tell). I personally don't care about the entertainment criteria here, but I appreciate this version being TASed. I still assume this is pretty obvious vault material. As for the technical aspect, I would like to get some feedback on my questions above before giving it a thumbs up.
Posted: 8/17/2022 4:36 AM
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excite
Player (8)
Joined: 4/29/2022
Posts: 2
ktwo wrote:
I'm the TAS-author of the NES-version of this game. I was aware of there being a GB-version, but I haven't played it before (or watched any gameplay). It turns out the two versions are quite similar in terms of level layout, but with several minor differences. I also noticed some minor differences in the game mechanics. Overall, the two versions are incomparable (also due to the fact that the NES-version is very, very laggy). Small sections of the game can still be compared between the two versions. While the manipulations done in the NES TAS are documented, I don't remember the finer details of them and didn't take the time to brush up my memory either (some of them starting several screens away to set up a particular enemy pattern and require a bit of time to get up to speed with). The game was still engrained enough in my memory to give this GB TAS a critical watch. Every time I noticed something that looked odd or didn't recognize from my NES TAS, I did a (fairly quick) check to see if it was due to a routing mistake or version differences. In the end, I'm left with the following question marks: * Were you aware of the possibility shown at https://youtu.be/hx9YxoNqBfA?t=399 ? I tried to get it to work with the submitted movie file, but the enemies were not aligned properly. A manipulation of the enemy spawns would have to be set up in advance for a chance to get it to work. I'm not going to do it, but would like to know if you already considered it and tried to include it? * The rest of tower 5 didn't look optimal in my eyes. There were fairly long stops before several enemies near the end. I remember facing the same problems in the NES TAS and it required a manipulation to start further down the tower to get the enemies aligned and minimize the stops towards the end. I'm not saying there is a faster solution, just that it looks in my eyes like there should be one and I would again be interested to know how hard you tried to optimize this section? * Why do you mention "Left+Right/Up+Down - off" in the run comments? Those combinations are generally forbidden for RTA leaderboards, but they are allowed on tasvideos. Do those combinations do anything special and would it have saved any time? While it's not the purpose of this thread, I should also mention that there were a few route choices/tricks that looked like they could save time in the NES TAS. All of the ones I could identify were however due to version differences, so there are no improvements to the NES TAS that could be easily implemented (as far as I can tell). I personally don't care about the entertainment criteria here, but I appreciate this version being TASed. I still assume this is pretty obvious vault material. As for the technical aspect, I would like to get some feedback on my questions above before giving it a thumbs up.
The text was translated by Google Translate, so it may be difficult to understand or unnatural. "Were you aware of the possibility shown at https://youtu.be/hx9YxoNqBfA?t=399 ? " Yes, but it was faster to wait for the elevator to come down. "The rest of tower 5 didn't look optimal in my eyes. There were fairly long stops before several enemies near the end. I remember facing the same problems in the NES TAS and it required a manipulation to start further down the tower to get the enemies aligned and minimize the stops towards the end. I'm not saying there is a faster solution, just that it looks in my eyes like there should be one and I would again be interested to know how hard you tried to optimize this section?" Maybe I'm lacking in research, but the main character's position where enemies spawn is different from the NES version, so enemy manipulation like NES TAS won't work. "Why do you mention "Left+Right/Up+Down - off" in the run comments? Those combinations are generally forbidden for RTA leaderboards, but they are allowed on tasvideos. Do those combinations do anything special and would it have saved any time?" Because I had nothing else to comment on. There is nothing special about it.
Posted: 8/18/2022 7:50 AM
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ktwo
Player (243)
Joined: 8/10/2008
Posts: 113
Thanks for the reply. Then I don't have any other comments. I fully agree that what's possible in one version does in no way mean that the same (or even similar) can be done in the other. Like I mentioned in my first reply, I wasn't able to find any improvements in any of the sections I checked. That combined with knowing that the improvement ideas I had have already been checked, it looks good to me from a technical point of view. Just for reference, I will post the considerations I made for the end of tower 5 in the NES-version: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Castelian_(NES)/any%25(ntscj)#Tower_5 . I don't intend to do a similar analysis for the GB-version, but in case someone is interested now or later, it might serve as a starting point for how to investigate a possible improvement.
Posted: 9/22/2022 11:08 PM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 14873
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4838] GB Castelian by excite in 11:25.70
Posted: 1/19/2023 9:40 PM
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ktwo
Player (243)
Joined: 8/10/2008
Posts: 113
A 47f improvement in tower 5: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638097610555413379 I didn't put in enough effort to consider it worthy to submit an improvement, so I'm just posting here for reference in case anyone would be interested in this game in the future.