You guys ever hear of this game? I couldn't track it down on cartridge after I played it so many years back until just recently. And I popped it open and played, lots of fun :)
Fluid animations and control scheme, and the music was pretty moody. (go figure, Disney-oriented game.) Wondered if any speed runners have considered it at all, or have even heard/played it.
zer0, did it desync on you at the end of the train station w/ the rocketeer looking bosses? id tried this a while ago but gave up because it kept desyncing at that point. but yes, a very good looking game.
zer0, did it desync on you at the end of the train station w/ the rocketeer looking bosses? id tried this a while ago but gave up because it kept desyncing at that point. but yes, a very good looking game.
Indeed, it does :/
Hm I hope I can get rid of it if I should decide to continue it sometime
Is this still being worked on? If not, I was considering picking it up as a potential first TAS. All the acrobatics would make for a very interesting run.
For those of you who have worked with this game in the past, is there any frame-saving information you can share? I'll take a good look at all the guides around. But the intricacies of a TAS surpass what can normally be found there :)
http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/saxxonpike-gargoyles-wip.zip
using gens movie 9j
I've decided to start a test run of this game. This work in progress is by no means finalized (it may not even be built upon) but more like a check to see if a speed run of this is actually feasable. This little bit is just the first level, all up to the boss stage. You can do some impressive aerobatic maneuvers in this game.
Hard mode in this game makes everything move twice as fast and hurt twice as hard. On top of that, this game is really, REALLY prone to desyncs. While doing the first level, I had to redo portions of it because of them four times. Hopefully they should be fixed at this point.
This is my first experience actually attempting a TAS, so any advice would help immensely!
havent viewed the WIP yet, but would a hard mode run even be worth it? if the double speed of enemies causes desynchs, i think a normal difficulty would be legit. granted, hard mode DOES make the game harder (i.e. no JUST more health for enemies, but actually increases difficulty)
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
It's not the hard mode the causes the desyncs - it's just the game itself. Also, I thought there was some sort of a rule that said it had to be played on the hardest difficulty. (If it's not a rule, I'll impose that upon myself anyway)
Anyway, I got a little bit of advice from a good friend of mine. The first attempt was very sloppy so I've used some more techniques and re-did the first level in a few hours.
http://saxxonpike.googlepages.com/saxxonpike-gargoyles-lv1-wip2.gmv
Since I don't really have much to do for this semester, this run is going to be receiving a lot of my time :)
It's typically the rule that you play on the hardest difficulty mode possible, unless doing so makes the game less entertaining. So for example, if a beat-em-up's hardest difficulty was just like the previous difficulty except enemies had four times as much health, then playing on the hardest difficulty would just mean more time chipping away at the mooks with less room for the neat stuff. This kind of situation is pretty rare, though. I'd say that having enemies moving twice as fast is worth playing on the hardest difficulty.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
oh i know the rules quite well, but i think an exception would be made if, for whatever reason, hard mode made the movie desynch consistently while normal mode play never desynched. granted, it is up for discussion, but that was my take... especially considering that hard mode doubles the speed of enemies and could cause desynchs more often.
edit: off topic, but saxxon, i am from madison wisconsin too! ;D
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Well... while hard mode does make things a bit more interesting considering everything's just moving really fast... it will also make the boss fights slightly longer, I think. I haven't determined if the boss HP is any different in hard mode yet. Going for speed, you could definitely beat the game faster on easy though. There's less projectiles to have to work around and I could take a lot more damage to save time. But that would also make the action seem more dull.
/shrug
The site guidelines recommend always playing on hard mode when possible. In practice, though, this only applies to games where hard mode changes something other than the number of HP each enemy has.
But it definitely applies to this game in either case, because, as you said, everything moves faster.
stickyman05 wrote:
i think an exception would be made if, for whatever reason, hard mode made the movie desynch consistently while normal mode play never desynched. ... considering that hard mode doubles the speed of enemies and could cause desynchs more often.
Gens is not imprecise like mupen64 -- the only desynchs it is subject to (for cartridge games) are a result of issues like SRAM not being included in savestates, or preferences like the sample rate slightly modifying the behavior of hardware. So long as the preferences are the same, and there is no issue of sram, or variable-time access storage (like CD) the player will move in the exact same way on the exact same frame with the exact same input, and so will everything else.
... unless you activate a cheat code.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Under further review, I've found that all game difficulties really *are* the same save for enemy HP and damage taken. Probably should've figured this out for myself, rather than assume what was found online to be correct.
Considering most enemies are skipped anyway, the only place it's going to change is the boss fights. Still, I'm open to suggestions. Do it on Hard or Easy?
Going to re-start this in Gens 9.5b (is that stable and is it compatible with 9j?)
Gens 9.5b
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1986665396/Gargoyles-level1-easy-test.gmv
Just tested this on Easy. It really opens up a lot of possibilities to take damage to save time. Taking damage stops rolling and other animations and, most importantly, allows a third jump. Normally you are able to take two jumps - an initial jump, and a wing-jump. But it's ideal to take damage for a third jump when you are just at the peak of your second - thus allowing you access to higher areas you otherwise couldn't reach by a simple jump combo.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/671838704/Gargoyles-Normal-Full.gmv
A "blueprint" run. Done entirely using Frame Advance in about 18 hours real-time (I need sleep). It shows my route and some techniques, but there are a number of things I'm still unhappy with. Still, this was quite a drain and I haven't decided whether or not to improve it. I think because of all the ways you can maneuver your character and the handful of desyncs I had while crafting this run, this game probably wasn't the best one to pick for my first TAS. /shrug. All my other childhood favorites were covered :)
***
Level 1 is a castle with some vikings. There was a tower I climbed really slow in even compared to my first attempts. After reviewing the effects of all the different attacks I had at my disposal, I found that using A-button attacks on the boss are by far the most devastating.
Level 2 is supposed to be rookery. It's more like a lava pit. It looks like I stalled in one of the rooms as I'm going left - this is to give time for the fireball in the center to rise up. Those things do stupidly insane damage and I didn't have that kind of health at the time.
Level 3 is a rooftop level. Lots of new enemies this time around but not much movement abuse to be had. The boss fight in this level is apparently the hardest one in the game according to many, but it's the best one.
Level 4 is a train level and is utterly stupid. By far, it's the easiest level in the entire game. Its only redeeming factor is a fun boss fight. I think the black machines can be manipulated to be in the same location even better next time around.
Level 5 is some sort of a metal processing plant and it contains 2 more screens than all the other levels. Because of the mechanisms used to prevent you from skipping parts of the level and how bland the level design actually is, the paths you need to take are very straightforward - though I abuse these fire-wall-guns to skip a portion of the last screen before the boss anyway. I received a couple hits on the 2nd rabid dog because there was absolutely no other way I could get him to use his slow back-attack - trying to take those face to face means they hit faster than you can.
***
I left it on Normal difficulty because it seems all that truly changes is how much damage you take and how many lives you get. Seeing as taking damage is an integral part of this run (especially the first two levels) some of the techniques used wouldn't be possible on Hard. Also, no wasted frames on the menu getting them to switch.
Any and all criticism and advice is welcomed.
Overall I thought it was good. The biggest problem is all the waiting in the last levels.
Yeah, unfortunately in the Forge level they deal a lot with lifts which really restrict the pace at which I can complete each screen. It's as if the game starts out great for flexibility of movement and abuse of on-screen objects, but progressively becomes a lot more boring.
did you accidentally miss the elevator boss' left-middle arm a few times? you seemed to have clung to the wall a bit low and, iirc, that arm required more hits to kill than the other three arms. i may be mistaken, but that is what i saw that could be improved (if, indeed, those hits missed)
on the train level, i noticed you stood around and waited for the boss to come to you (the red guy) quite often. is he invincible during this time, or is there another reason you chose to stand still? from the way i saw it, it looked sloppy.
my movie desynched for the forge D-:
lookin good otherwise, though!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
did you accidentally miss the elevator boss' left-middle arm a few times? you seemed to have clung to the wall a bit low and, iirc, that arm required more hits to kill than the other three arms. i may be mistaken, but that is what i saw that could be improved (if, indeed, those hits missed)
on the train level, i noticed you stood around and waited for the boss to come to you (the red guy) quite often. is he invincible during this time, or is there another reason you chose to stand still? from the way i saw it, it looked sloppy.
my movie desynched for the forge D-:
lookin good otherwise, though!
Yeah, the train is going to require a lot more planning. I didn't discover until after having finished this blueprint run that, when you swipe at him before you've killed all the other enemies, he very slowly makes his way to the other side of the screen - thereby delaying when you can actually first hit him. Also during the fight, he tends to match your altitude, but stick around just above you. He goes up when you do. The most effective attack on him is a dive, but it's also the most difficult to perform on this boss for that reason.
As for the elevator boss, I didn't quite understand why that particular arm took much longer than all the others. It seemed to pop out a lot less often. There's probably some luck manipulation to be had there; I'll investigate that further.
The movie seems to play back just fine on my machine as well as my friend's, so verify that you are using 9.5b. If you are, well... that's just the game being stubborned again :P
Thanks a ton for the feedback. I really appreciate it :)
This was Normal difficulty, because there wasn't Options entrance, and the player wasn't thrown back so much by taking damage. And this was very good run with known tricks.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I was once able to get the catapults in the first level to chain so that a jump wasn't necessary, however I haven't been able to replicate it. I don't recall if there is a difference between normal and hard mode other than the number of lives you get. This game also has a ridiculous amount of lag.
Studying RAM patterns. I haven't found hitboxes just yet.
00FF0106 - Player X (16bit unsigned)
00FF0108 - Player Y (16bit unsigned)
00FF010C - Camera X (16bit unsigned)
00FF010E - Camera Y (16bit unsigned)
00FF0802 - Camera X in blocks (16bit unsigned)
00FF0804 - Camera Y in blocks (16bit unsigned)
00FF2C76 - start of actor data (0x80 bytes in size, first one is the player)
+00 X location (16bit unsigned)
+02 Y location (16bit unsigned)
+50 health (16bit unsigned)
00FF3FFB - number of actors to process (8bit)
