Topic by Zeupar

Posted: 7/11/2018 10:49 AM

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Zeupar

Joined: 5/14/2007
Posts: 525
Location: Pisces-Cetus filament

This game is awesome. And this excellent TAS does the game justice so far. I have a question, WarHippy: Who of the original four-member team is still contributing to the project? If feels like you are the only one working on it right now.

AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3 xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D Help improving TASVideos!

Posted: 7/19/2018 7:02 AM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

So yah, I am the only person TASing this game atm. mugg dropped out during the first level. His work was excellent, but it did get improved on later. Thunderaxe31 created the initial .lua for displaying enemy information and helped find a couple tricks, but has not supplied any inputs. xy2_ has also found a few tricks, and he helps in modifying the lua script as needed for the game. But also likewise, he has not supplied any actual inputs for the game. This TAS would not be half as well-optimized without their help thus far, but I am the only one logging inputs. On a different note, here is another improvement to the fights. 322 frames faster than the previous wip. I'm now completely satisfied with the fights and will be moving full steam ahead into the next level. The 3rd Ki upgrade is acquired at the beginning. Time to see how useful it's going to be.

Posted: 8/28/2018 5:58 PM

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MUGG

Editor, Expert player (2313)

Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3855
Location: Germany

Amazing progress! This WIP synced in Bizhawk 2.2. 2.2.2 and 1.2.0 desynced. Keep up the good work.

Youtube • Livestream • Progress 11th TASer of the Decade 2010-2019 !

Posted: 8/30/2018 5:11 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:30 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Thanks MUGG. I use 2.2.1 because 2.2.2 and 2.3 have problems on my computer (don't know about 1.2). The good work does continue, too. Here's the next level completed. It's probably the longest in the game. Here's a link to the .bk2 and the .lua's used.

Posted: 8/30/2018 11:19 AM

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Challenger

He/Him

Skilled player (1638)

Joined: 2/23/2016
Posts: 1036

Great work again! Now this stage no longer suffers with the horrible slowdown. With the amount of hard time to improve these levels like this, looks like this game is not so easy to deal with. 500th post reached!

My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.

Posted: 9/24/2018 11:22 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:30 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Progress Underwater Cavern is complete. This level went rather smoothly since most of the enemies took only 1 hit to kill. About half the time spent this month was used to re-work Muscle Tower. I had missed a couple movement optimizations which would've saved four frames, but I ended up saving 69 frames, instead. Half of that was from a better boss pattern at the end. You'll have to play the input file to see the changes, though. The video shows new content - the Underwater Cavern and the TaoPaiPai fight (part 1) where I have to lose as quickly as possible. After losing the fight you play a training mini-game level up the tower where Goku tickles a cat 10 times to get stronger. Then there's a regular one-on-one fight with TaoPaiPai again where you're supposed to beat him. I wanted to add these two parts to the WIP, but there's more work to be done on the fight. After he knocks me down the first time it's possible for him to attack me up to 18 frames sooner than what's in the WIP. Finding the opportunities to manipulate the RNG without losing time is going to take awhile. Other random thoughts include going back and adding in entertainment for the times Goku is just standing there. This would be a nice change of pace and would make it a less daunting task at the end. It really would be better to add in the entertainment along the way so that I don't have to worry about precisely matching the sub-pixel values all the time.

Posted: 9/24/2018 8:30 PM

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MUGG

Editor, Expert player (2313)

Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3855
Location: Germany

I cannot look into the WIP too much, but I just wanted to mention that I vaguely remember a fight skip being possible in that underground level somewhere... if I don't remember wrong... Are you using it or did you make sure that it isn't possible?

Youtube • Livestream • Progress 11th TASer of the Decade 2010-2019 !

Posted: 9/25/2018 3:12 AM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

You can skip a fight in Red Ribbon Army level which is coming up after you beat Taopaipai. This can be done in the second part of the level by going underneath the bridge (and thus going underneath the fight checkpoint). I couldn't find anything in this thread or anywhere else online that mentions any other fight skip in the game, but it's worth checking into.

Posted: 10/1/2018 8:02 PM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:30 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Saved a handful of frames at the end of the Underwater Cavern. The change in RNG allowed for a brand new strategy for losing the Taopaipai fight. Saved over 90 frames in total.input file I block a lot of his early attacks so that he is able to throw out even more attacks. This lets him have just enough energy to fire off 3 Ki shots in a row. I also throw out an attack after blocking so that my guard gauge doesn't get destroyed and so that the next attack can come out which is a powerful attack and reduces my health just enough to get knocked out from the ki blasts. As a side note, once my guard gauge is depleted and my defense is broken, he performs the same combo into the knockdown. So I need to have him use the most powerful attack possible to break my defense while the gauge is at the lowest.

Posted: 10/1/2018 8:05 PM

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Challenger

He/Him

Skilled player (1638)

Joined: 2/23/2016
Posts: 1036

Now the battle is notably improved! Great work again man!

My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.

Posted: 10/27/2018 8:46 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:31 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

On this month's installment of Dragonball: Advanced RNG Adventures we have Tower of Korrin + Tao fight part 2 + Infiltrating Red Ribbon Army base part 1 input file Catching Korrin proved to be more difficult to optimize than I thought. All of his actions are dependent upon your position, the direction you're facing, and ,as a matter of course, RNG. The only way to manipulate rng in this mini-game is to press the B button (the capture button) which takes 31 frames to complete. All other buttons are disabled. After capturing Korrin he will fade out and re-appear somewhere else. He will either fade-in in a position relative to Goku (usually a medium distance away) which can take several extra frames to catch since you can't touch him until he's completely solid, or he'll instantly appear in mid-air with several of his copies flying around. Catching him when he appears in mid-air is the fastest option, but it's definitely not possible to manipulate every time (unless you can correctly manipulate rng starting from 2 levels back). The Tao fight was also difficult to manage. In all of the VS fights in the game you never want the enemy's defense bar to start regenerating or else you'll spend 30-45 frames going through the stun animation of breaking their defense without dealing much damage. The main difficulty in these fights is to manipulate the opponent to do an attack immediately after a ki blast. This depends on the rng and your height/position relative to the opponent. This will prevent their defense gauge from refilling since they won't be in a neutral position anymore. In this fight, though, Taopaipai's gauge will sometimes refill by a single point even while attacking. Flying into the Red Ribbon Army base is the only auto-scroller in the game. The mandatory fights are the only thing to optimize. And in those fights the only thing you need to destroy are the blue hovercraft. Sometimes a gray one will also have to be dealt with. I don't make the level look terribly fun just yet. I'm just focusing on optimal fight patterns, and with so much free time between fights it should be easy to manipulate the right patterns when I go back to polish it up. The last fight of this section is the only one that I think can be made better.

Posted: 10/28/2018 3:30 PM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3531)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2728
Location: US

Looking good! Should be about half way done now!

Posted: 10/28/2018 7:40 PM

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MUGG

Editor, Expert player (2313)

Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3855
Location: Germany

I think the autoscroller looks a bit lacklustre, but I'm sure the whole "standing around and getting hit" thing is all for luck manipulation? Tao looks pretty nice! EDIT: Ah you're saying you will redo it.

Youtube • Livestream • Progress 11th TASer of the Decade 2010-2019 !

Posted: 10/28/2018 8:43 PM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

I'm well over halfway done, thankfully. I'm confident sub 35 minutes is possible, and the run is at 21:20 so far (6 minutes and 20 seconds faster than the current movie).

Posted: 10/28/2018 9:42 PM

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Challenger

He/Him

Skilled player (1638)

Joined: 2/23/2016
Posts: 1036

WarHippy wrote:

I'm well over halfway done, thankfully. I'm confident sub 35 minutes is possible, and the run is at 21:20 so far (6 minutes and 20 seconds faster than the current movie).

Now the Red Ribbon saga is nearly finished. For me, since Red Ribbon is longer, I consider this as the "second part" of this game. Fun fact: The current amount of time saved is roughly similar as the overall amount of time saved from StarTropics II and Cadash (which previously were first 500 runs too).

My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.

Posted: 11/2/2018 12:55 PM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

I managed to save 53 frames on the Tao fight by manipulating one of the defense gauge refills to only refill to 1 point instead of the full 16. This saved 1 attack and provided better positioning for the next series of attacks. An additional 50 frames were saved on the autoscroller due to a couple enemies spawning faster. I'm pretty sure it has to do with RNG and my position relative to their spawn points. This mechanism still needs to be studied.

Posted: 11/23/2018 7:24 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:31 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Red Ribbon Army Base (pt 2) + Baba's Palace + City Street + 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament + First Encounter with Piccolo Input File In the RRA Base I was able to pull off the fight skip by going under the bridge. It's clear this wasn't intended by the developers since this is a pixel perfect jump. The first fight at Baba's Palace is against Spike the Devil Man in the Devil's Toilet arena. He starts with a laser attack, so I use the L+R attack to break his stance. Otherwise he only takes half damage while charging. I've seen videos of him starting with a different movement, but none of the RNG changes I could make would cause a different start. The L+R attack does less damage than any standard combo* (*more details will be provided in the future submission). -Edit- The second fight is against Grandpa Gohan whom Baba is able to bring back to life for one day. Next is a fight against Shu and Mai in a giant robot combination. All of the missiles are reflected back for massive damage making for a quick fight. The 22nd World Martial Arts Tournament ramps up the difficulty of the CPU opponents. The Chiaotzu and Krillin fights are especially difficult due to their small frames. The fight against Tien was probably the most distressing fight of the run. Not because it was overly difficult, but because I found a new trick that could save time in almost every VS fight in the game. It's a trick to do an instant jump straight up instead of to the left or right. Details of all the tricks and mechanics will appear in the future submission text, but for now all you need to know is that it can allow for better positioning when I want to fire my Kamehameha. Hopefully I can implement this trick into earlier fights without changing the RNG. Up next is a fight against one of Piccolo's minions followed by a quick fight against the boss man himself. This is another required loss, and I was not able to do it any faster than the previous submission. There are only 2 levels remaining. It looks like a 2018 submission is possible, but I need to step back and make sure that I'm not rushing through anything. The next time I post about this run will almost certainly be the submission itself where all of the wonderfully intricate details will be explained.

Posted: 11/23/2018 9:53 AM

Post subject: More closely to finish!

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Challenger

He/Him

Skilled player (1638)

Joined: 2/23/2016
Posts: 1036

WarHippy wrote:

Random fight against Mystery-roshi

Actually he is Grandpa Gohan ;)

WarHippy wrote:

I found a new trick that could save time in almost every VS fight in the game. It's a trick to do an instant jump straight up instead of to the left or right. all you need to know is that it can allow for better positioning when I want to fire my Kamehameha. Hopefully I can implement this trick into earlier fights without changing the RNG.

This is the nature of TASing. Even with too much work, something can be discovered much later.

My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.

Posted: 12/17/2018 11:06 AM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

I went back and added the new jump trick into the run. The first instance it saved time was in the Tao fight after Korrin Tower. This caused a change in RNG and I had to re-sync half the run. But, this complete shake-up of the RNG allowed me to find new strategies in many spots which culminated in 318 frames being saved. I'm now back up to where I left off in the previous wip. 2 stages to go and 2 weeks to do it in. READY. FIGHT!

Posted: 1/21/2019 1:45 PM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

I wanted to document some stuff that wasn't included in the published run or submission text. The following link contains several minor glitches, the .lua's used, and a known improvement that was pointed out to me in the youtube comments of the published run. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/52705118511615245

Posted: 9/17/2019 11:52 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:31 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

And we're back! In the submission text I mentioned that I would have liked to spend a whole 'nother year on this TAS. And well, I am. I started off by working on one of the known improvements in the Underwater Caverns. By delaying picking up the purple turtle shell as late as possible I can make it all the way to the mini-boss. This lets me do some serious damage very quickly. Some minor improvements were made in the following stages and I had saved several seconds at this point. Before I got to the end of the auto-scroller level I decided to go back to the beginning and try out some things that I missed the first time around. Sure enough, I was able to shake a few frames loose which led to new RNG values which led to more savings. A little over two and half months into this re-work and I'm halfway through Muscle Tower. I'm 129 frames ahead with two half-stages to go before I can re-connect with where I started off. I'm positive the second half of the game will yield even more improvements, especially the 1v1 fights, since I was in a bit of a rush at the time to submit before the end of the year. There is no rush for me this time because this game already got its award. I don't plan to have this run done until sometime next year.

Posted: 9/18/2019 1:51 PM

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MUGG

Editor, Expert player (2313)

Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3855
Location: Germany

You are crazy. I wish I had as much motivation as you.

Youtube • Livestream • Progress 11th TASer of the Decade 2010-2019 !

Posted: 9/20/2019 11:04 AM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Technically not crazy. I may keep doing the same thing over and over again, but I get a slightly different result every time ;)

Posted: 10/12/2019 1:08 AM

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

Link to video Muscle Tower - 1st Mini-boss, slightly altered starting pattern. It's the same as in the published run, but slightly delayed so that I can reflect all 3 missiles at him. - 2nd Mini-boss, the first phase was the same. The second phase was very similar. I had to spend a few frames getting one extra hit on one of the copies. The last two copies actually moved towards me instead of away from me like in the published run. This let me end the fight much closer to the right side of the screen. - Boss, Lost a couple frames manipulating rng for the best starting pattern. Improved the attack pattern against the bricks. Changed up the L+R rush usage to let me finish fight with a ki blast. Ending the fight with the rush special loses a couple frames from lag. - 73 Frames Saved on this level Underwater Caverns (pt. 1) - Discovered a new mechanic of the game. When an environmental hazard such as a ground spear kills an enemy, then the game will wait until the enemy's corpse completely disappears before triggering the next event. In the third fight of the level (the one where I kill 3 bats in the first hit) there are off-screen ground pikes on the right side of the screen. These pikes were used in the published run to kill the enemy, but this time I wait until they hit the enemy first and then I deliver the killing blow 1 frame later. This trick is used twice in this fight saving 89 frames. Another 6 frames are saved through better movement in the falling section shortly afterwards. 1 frame saved right before the transition to the second half of the level because I don't need to delay for rng manipulation. 96 Frames saved Underwater Caverns (pt. 2, above ground) - Delayed getting the purple turtle shell as long as possible which let me carry the invincibility frames all the way to the mini-boss. The results speak for itself :) 218 Frames saved Underwater Caverns (pt. 3) - The red robots that drop down from the ceiling don't need to be destroyed in order to advance. This is the only instance in the game where an enemy spawns after the start of the fight that doesn't need to be destroyed in order to advance. 70 Frames saved General Blue (Boss) - Finished the fight with a lvl. 3 kamehameha instead of an L+R rush attack. 18 Frames Saved. For this level I saved 402 frames. I am 555 Frames ahead in total.

Posted: 10/25/2019 1:03 AM
(Edited: 7/16/2020 1:32 PM)

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WarHippy

Experienced player (994)

Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227

What could possibly be more fun than making progress on your TAS??? Why, starting over, of course! I picked up on a much better strategy for the 1v1 fights. In the fight against Nam it had always bugged me that the fight went extremely smoothly and fast even though he had never jumped. I tried the same strategy in the Tao Pai Pai fight, and I ended up saving 48 frames in an unoptimized trial run(!). The damage output of the ki blasts are so much more efficient than using regular attacks. There was slight change in the last tutorial level that saved 3 frames. It wasn't implemented in the previous WIP due to RNG manipulation. Fight against Giran - 34 Frames saved Fight against Nam - 50 Frames saved. I was able to break his defense gauge quicker, and it turns out to be a lot more efficient to do the lvl. 2 ki first followed by the lvl. 1 blast as a finisher Fight again Juckie-Chun - 63 87 Frames saved. Since I was starting so close to the beginning again I figured I'd go ahead and get this to sync in BizHawk 2.3.2 (mGBA 0.7.2) As a result, I've lost about ~~30 frames~~100 frames of time due to lag. I can expect that over the whole run I'll be losing about ~~100 frames~~ 200 frames total. Here's the new file that syncs up to the beginning of Muscle Tower. mGBA 0.8 was just released this past week. If it gets implemented into a newer bizhawk I will make sure that it syncs again. EDIT - I'm syncing up the whole original improvement up to the Tao Pai Pai fight. It's far too useful of a tool for comparison to just drop. It turns out I'm losing quite a bit more time to lag than I thought.