I decided to give this a dedicated section as it is very important and key to this run. At the end of each stage in this game, after getting any orb, there is a results screen that counts how much life and hearts you had so you can more score, however, this is time wasting, and the more you have left, the more time needed to count, the more frames you lose.
The current best ending run does manage that part beautifully by minimizing the life bar as much as possible and having no hearts on results screen.
This is very effective when having Cross or just a key (in case of best ending run), but it is not optimal when having Axe, and specifically Axe subweapon (not sure about others but Axe is the relevant one).
Axe has a key characteristic depending on the number of hearts you have:
if you have a heart count strictly below 20, you can only throw 1 Axe at a time
If you have a heart count between 20 and 30 (strictly under 30), you can only throw 2 Axes at a time.
If you have 30 or higher, you can throw 3 Axes at a time (not sure if more but 3 is enough for optimal fights).
Knowing this, it is worth it to spend some frames on results screen in favor of having optimal heart count whenever we need to use Axe.
This was very useful against Necromancer, Carmilla and Dracula. It should be useful as well for best ending run.
Comments
The movement in this game is pretty simple. Walking is slower a lot than jumping, and jumping is also slower than backflipping. In some cases, jumping is optimal in case we want to get hearts or exit a screen faster
The run is pretty similar to the current best ending run from the start until stage 3 shortcut (also known as Catacombs shortcut). This results in forcibly avoiding saving Annet, thus bad ending is the only path there. I also improved the current run by couple frames here and there early on.
That shortcut is the fastest way to beat the game. It also showcases two stages not present in the current best ending run.
The first one is Stage 4', Catacombs. It is pretty similar to Stage 4 (design and music), but the second last screen before the boss is a bit annoying due to the ground being slimy and prevents Richter from moving freely. The boss is Necromancer, and it is a pretty fun fight, however, second phase was a bit harder due to low i-frames of bosses in this game. I managed to get a great fight though thanks to heart management explained above.
The second one is Stage 5', Inner Sanctum. This is a very funny stage, and so hard. Having smooth and damageless Fleaman room is incredibly hard, and I somehow managed to get most out of it. Next up in the Armor Knights room, I tried to do a skip which saves big travel (probably a minute), but damage taken there was necessary, and I barely survived the stage later, and I also grabbed as many hearts needed for next stage because we will use Axe later effectively. The boss is Werewolf, and using Axe is suboptimal due to it being so mobile, so I switched Time Stopped, as its special attack is as powerful as Axe, but faster for Werewolf.
Stage 6, Clock Tower is similar to current run, but thanks to having Time Stopper, I was able to save some decent time in the first clock screen against Armor Knights. Heart management for Axe paid off so big here because Carmilla boss is so annoying to deal with, having two Axe throws available at a time was very powerful in defeating her faster.
Final Stage, Castle Keep. Stage wise, it is pretty similar to current run, however, thanks to having extra hearts before hand, I was able to save around four seconds in Dracula fight.
Special thanks to:
Dooty: for his best ending run as it helped me a ton making this TAS.
RTA community for their efforts in optimizing the record for this category. The current[1]world record run by SBDWolf also helped me understand how the run will look like.
You: For watching this constant backflipping :)
Suggested screenshot
Frame: 28047
Sorry didn't save Annet :( Maybe I will in the near future? Who knows! :)
[1]: SRC boards was showing the run as the current WR while I was making this run, but it was beaten by Hensachi back in July. Both runs have same strats regardless of date.
eien86: This movie achieves the fastest (not best) ending more than one minute faster than the current RTA WR. There are no current movies for this category in the site (only the "Best Ending" one: [1932] SNES Castlevania: Dracula X "best ending" by Dooty in 13:56.12). The execution looks extremely tight, and the ending itself is very nicely executed. The response from the community is also overwhelmingly positive.
Oh dude, oh dude, oh dude, totally did not expect this submission. Watching as soon as I can.
Edit: Oh yes, that was marvellous. Another great TAS once again. Gladly voting yes for this.
I've wanted a Bad Ending TAS of this game for quite a few years at this point. Very happy to finally see it. Thank you McBobX!
Very nice work on the run. I do have a few things to point out:
- Is it really faster to use the skeleton to boost up in the second room of Stage 4', instead of using the Item Crash used in the RTA route and boosting off the axe knight? This TAS doesn't have enough hearts to be able to Item Crash by that point, but surely enough hearts could be picked up beforehand, especially given Stage 3 doesn't end in a results screen.
- No one has found a setup to line this up quickly so far, and it might prove problematic health-wise too, but it is possible to skip the last part of Stage 5's Fleamen Alley with a damage boost: https://youtu.be/fRiykhK3Xw8
- Have you considered using the Japanese version for the run (Akumajou Dracula XX)? It skips the copyright screen at boot-up, and the title screen animation is faster too, so it should result in it being about 500 frames faster.
On that version, there's also a subtle mechanic on the title screen that can speed it up a little more: you can skip the end of the title screen animation by pressing a button, skipping having to wait for the title screen options to fade in. I am able to start the game on frame 211 here.
Resyncing this TAS on it seems not straightforward but maybe not too hard? I tried myself briefly and it seems like there's some variance in loading times that made me have to slide inputs backwards and forwards a bit, and then there was a desync at the end of the Stage 2 boss that I wasn't able to understand, but I didn't spend too much time trying to figure it out. Might be caused by a difference in lag frames.
It should be noted that for Best Ending, the Japanese version loses 25 frames from Death's death animation being slower, but it'd probably be worth using there too.
I've wanted a Bad Ending TAS of this game for quite a few years at this point. Very happy to finally see it. Thank you McBobX!
Thank you Wolf!! and thanks to everyone for all the great responses and activity too!! :D
SBDWolf wrote:
Is it really faster to use the skeleton to boost up in the second room of Stage 4', instead of using the Item Crash used in the RTA route and boosting off the axe knight? This TAS doesn't have enough hearts to be able to Item Crash by that point, but surely enough hearts could be picked up beforehand, especially given Stage 3 doesn't end in a results screen.
It is faster yes. Originally I had Item Crash strat in the run, but once I reached Necromancer, I was doing the fight and then suddenly I found my Axe throws not normal as I wanted to throw a second one and Richter just whips. That is when I started testing and figured the Axe throwing issue I mentioned in the submission. It is even problematic in the second phase of Necromancer.
I still finished the fight, but I decided to restarted the entire stage and drop the Item Crash in favor of better Axe throws in the boss fight. Turned out that I was right and I saved around 25 frames.
SBDWolf wrote:
No one has found a setup to line this up quickly so far, and it might prove problematic health-wise too, but it is possible to skip the last part of Stage 5's Fleamen Alley with a damage boost: https://youtu.be/fRiykhK3Xw8
I did actually tried to skip that with a Fleaman there but it didn't work. I never thought about respawning the bat from the left side (it is all RNG either so I didn't figure it out xD). I guess I should redo that part now that it is absolutely possible. Thanks for showing that! Now the only issue is to find a way to respawn the Bat from the left side somehow.
SBDWolf wrote:
Have you considered using the Japanese version for the run (Akumajou Dracula XX)? It skips the copyright screen at boot-up, and the title screen animation is faster too, so it should result in it being about 500 frames faster.
On that version, there's also a subtle mechanic on the title screen that can speed it up a little more: you can skip the end of the title screen animation by pressing a button, skipping having to wait for the title screen options to fade in. I am able to start the game on frame 211 here.
Resyncing this TAS on it seems not straightforward but maybe not too hard? I tried myself briefly and it seems like there's some variance in loading times that made me have to slide inputs backwards and forwards a bit, and then there was a desync at the end of the Stage 2 boss that I wasn't able to understand, but I didn't spend too much time trying to figure it out. Might be caused by a difference in lag frames.
It should be noted that for Best Ending, the Japanese version loses 25 frames from Death's death animation being slower, but it'd probably be worth using there too.
Not really. Most of the time, TASVideos considers regional differences if they are gameplay specific (quick kills, harder difficulty, exclusive glitch, etc), otherwise, USA version is always preferred.
I'll try to see if I can get my run to sync on the Japanese version though, and maybe we can switch then :)
Alright, so I looked again into the run and thanks to SBDWolf pointing out the Bat boost in the previous post, I managed to save a second from the boost, but it is using Fleaman instead. Bat is not optimal as it is very slow and harder to bring it from left side all the way to the stairs where the boost is. Manipulating Fleaman however was simple, as in this game, patterns can be changed by just pressing directional buttons, jumping or whiping. Yet, this wasn't an easy task, as finding the combination that gives the pattern where the Fleaman jumps fast underneath Richter was a bit tough.
Link to video
I also noticed I wasn't minimizing lag for Werewolf death animation, so I saved couple frames there
Lastly, the Red Axe Armor boost in Catacombs was improved too, which saves around 11 frames.
All that yielded an improvement of 84 frames. For staff, please I would like to update the current submission file with the one provided here
EDIT: As for version change, I think early start doesn't affect gameplay at all, thus USA version is still preferred and I decided to stick to it. I could get the run to sync in Japanese version however until Necromancer second phase fight, which behaves differently than USA version, though no time save noticed.
