Not the DS adventure game about investigating that everyone knows about.
Introduction
Touch Detective, also known as Mystery Detective in Europe, is a 2006 Nintendo DS adventure game developed by Beeworks and published in Japan and the US by Success and Atlus, respectively. The game follows detective Mackenzie as she works to solve 4 cases to join the Great Detective Society. The game is designed in the style of a Lucas Arts adventure game where there's no fail states. Along with tracking her investigations, Mackenzie keeps track of a Touch List of interesting things she touches over the course of the game.
The goal of this TAS is to complete all 4 Episodes of the game from a fresh save file. This means having to deal with minimizing the amount of entries in the Touch List as the optional ones are sometimes in the way of normal interaction. The total number of entries added to the Touch List in this TAS is 15 out of 50 entries.
Run notes
- Emulator used: BizHakw 2.9.1
- Melon DS core
- DS mode
Mechanics and techniques
There's still a notable amount of tech worth mentioning for a TAS that's otherwise about following the critical paths to advance and minimizing the route pathing.
Cursor movement
While it's possible to use the face buttons and D-pad to move a cursor and select objects, it's much faster to simply tap the touch screen. If it's a movable area, Mackenzie will generally go towards where the stylus is tapped or held. For distinctively longer areas spanning more than the screen it's better to hold the stylus down in place as tapping multiple times can stop Mackenzie for a frame per tap.
Moving during item inspection
Mackenzie can move during the fade-in and fade-out of the item inspection screen. It saves a bit of time to select the area for her to walk towards her next destination and then start inspecting items in the inventory.
Moving before using items
Moving Mackenzie to the place where she would use an item in a given place saves about 1 frame each time it's done. It's very minor but it's a time save worth mentioning.
Pathfinding interruption
Usually tapping an interactable object will cause Mackenzie to do the following:
- Find a direct path possible to interact
- If there's something slightly in the way, find a path involving multiple movement lines to interact
- If there's too much in the way, the game will ignore the input
The interesting part is that the direct pathfinding check is slightly narrower than Mackenzie's movement hitbox. This means that the first check can be fulfilled without actually having a clear that. When that happens and Meckenzie runs into something that blocks the path, she will simply do her interaction from the spot she stopped at rather than the intended location. This can "warp" Mackenzie to screen transitions and allow her to grab some objects at longer than intended ranges.
Faster text options
In certain points of the game there are multiple choice options where they would lead the same end point but the text and/or text box numbered displayed would be different. Naturally this means selecting the faster text option when there are multiple options that ultimately do the same thing.
Also as a note, in Case 1 there are three objects to give to Cromwell. Giving the cake slice first is much faster than the other objects as his initial text is the same for if you're giving him the required items before Mackenzie knows about the Sweet Dreams Pillow items. In contrast, the text for giving the cake after knowing about the items to give has more text boxes to go through.
Possible improvements
- There is a point in Episode 2 where I didn't use the warp to get into the Fortune Teller's shop a little faster but I figured that out in Episode 3 when I managed it the first time. That could be fixable but I'm not sure how much that would affect lag and/or input polling.
- The movement might have some possible improvements, especially for bigger areas.
- The RTA runs mention a warp to Cromwell's room that I couldn't figure out. If someone can find that it would save a fair amount of time considering the number of times the room is visited.
Note to encoders
There's inputs after the credits sequence that aren't in the submitted input file. This user file has the extended input for the post-credits scene:
There's also a bit at the end of Episode 4 Part 1 that involves the credits playing before the case is properly closed that makes more sense if the top screen is above the bottom screen. Not sure if it's worth bothering changing the screen layout for that small bit but it's worth noting at least.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Well, I enjoyed watching this. The music was a plus. After reviewing this, it certainly beats all known records; however, the author did mention to me that the WR has a warp in it that has not been applied to this run. This makes this run even more impressive. Being roughly 10 minutes faster, I think it sets a very good base for any future submissions
Accepting.
Publisher, please remember the alternate encode that
Darkman425 has provided.
