Topic by Comicalflop

Posted: 1/3/2007 7:09 PM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

I was able to watch the enitre WIP, thankfully. I had to savestate once to get through the bomb shop successfully, but it all worked out. AKA's trying some hex editing to see if A is pressed on the wrong frame. I actually have a lot of, sadly, negative feedback on this one. and this is not to put you down as a TASer, but Mukki I'm not entirely sure if you are doing the fastest form of movement all the time. let me explain, by using the published OoT run. Backwalking was used a lot in OoT, for all sorts of movements. straight backwalking, sidehopping, and making tiny adjustments. Even tiny little distances Guanobowl used backwalking, and in very precious few instances did he not backalk, when he tested it to be faster. When I watch what you have, it seems to me that you aren't really testing what is the fastest possible form of movement for that particular time. the superslides I'll avoid, because you actually have been doing those fantastically. you've got the backwalk while holding a bomb perfect. But, I feel like you're using too many rolls, and not enough sidehops. Sidehops are faster than backwalking on certain slopes. when I watched Guano's original movie, he used sidehops only on very steep slopes, going either up or down. with his recent WIP of his revision, I noticed that even for the not so steep slopes he sidehopped, leading me to believe that he tested thoroughly and found sidehops to be very fast indeed on any kind of slope, and they are very fast to set up. When I watched the entire mountain/goron village segment, I constantly was getting the feeling that time can be saved by using sidehops more often. I know you used rolls occassionally to move around corners and angle yourself better, but you did not use sidehops at all, and both villages have a lot of slopes that would make sidehopping very fast. I'm not trying to suggest that once out of desynch town that you're being sloppy; what you have is good, but it can be faster by studying more of the OoT run and seeing exactly how Guano moves about so fast using mainly backwalking and sidehopping. However, I am quite pleased that you seem to make progress very fast especially now that you were out of town; however, I'd suggest a redo starting from... when you start going on the bridges past the wolves, I think that's where using sidehops begin to get beneficial to use, especially since you spend a lot of time readjusting in between each bridge. and in goron village, I saw slopes ALL over the place. so that should definetly be a good spot where sidehops can improve the time. sorry for the extra long post, I'm proud that you've come this far, but I think a redo is needed so that you A) get a faster time and B) get used to the faster movements of Young Link.

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Posted: 1/3/2007 7:23 PM

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Mukki

Skilled player (1090)

Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom

Hmm...interesting views, but i'll have to disagree on most. Sidehops aren't as much of a godsend as you'd imagine. They are only beneficial if you are moving 90 degrees to your current position, otherwise you have to adjust yourself. Rolls get you just about anywhere. The slopes in Goron village you are reffering to are probably those for use when you have the Goron mask. You may be right, of course and I respect your input. Let's see what the rest of the gang think. http://files.filefront.com//;6467193;;/ ^^^^^^^MOVIE RIGHT HERE ^^^^^^^ EDIT -- Just noticed the name is a super typo. Ignore it. I was in a rush :(

http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html

Posted: 1/3/2007 7:29 PM

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Raiscan

Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom

I noticed you paused slightly after you climb up that place just after exiting the cave with the Lens of Truth. Any particular reason you did this? Also after you go back to the area with tingle in it, you walk forward and hop off onto the frozen lake, then Z target and continue. if you Z targeted, backflipped off the bridge then continued would it be faster? Apart from that I'm feeling its a great job so far.

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Posted: 1/3/2007 8:06 PM

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Mukki

Skilled player (1090)

Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom

Raiscan wrote:

I noticed you paused slightly after you climb up that place just after exiting the cave with the Lens of Truth. Any particular reason you did this?

If I pull back on the joystick too early Link will run off the ledge. I have to delay movement until a certain point until I can backwalk. Well spotted though.

Raiscan wrote:

Also after you go back to the area with tingle in it, you walk forward and hop off onto the frozen lake, then Z target and continue. if you Z targeted, backflipped off the bridge then continued would it be faster?

If I backflipped I would drop too close to the bridge. A normal jump would gain more distance and backwalking beforehand wouldn't really save any time.

http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html

Posted: 1/3/2007 9:38 PM

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YautjaElder

Joined: 3/29/2006
Posts: 273
Location: Sweden

Sidehops in MM sucks, since there is a huge pause inbetween every sidehop compared to OoT. Only use them where you have to or in those few occasions where it might actually be faster than doing something else. I'll watch the wip now. Edit: The only thing that might be improvable is when you jump across those invisible platforms. Have you tried roll jumps (as in rolling when you get near the edge to get a boosted jump)? I'm not totally sure if it is faster than jumping normally, though it is one of my most basic reflexes when playing OoT/MM. Everything else looked fine to me, good work.

Posted: 1/3/2007 10:12 PM

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Raiscan

Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom

For the convenience of others and to practice my encoding skills I have uploaded a high quality avi of just after entering the mountains from termina field up to the 2nd cycle's end. It can be found here: http://www.cowlogic.com/lozmm-tas-wip030107-mukki.avi Alternatively ONLY IF I BREAK COWLOGIC you can download it at: http://www.bluetoaster.net/tasvideos/lozmm-tas-wip030107-mukki.avi enjoy :)

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Posted: 1/3/2007 10:55 PM

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Mukki

Skilled player (1090)

Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom

YautjaElder wrote:

The only thing that might be improvable is when you jump across those invisible platforms. Have you tried roll jumps (as in rolling when you get near the edge to get a boosted jump)? I'm not totally sure if it is faster than jumping normally, though it is one of my most basic reflexes when playing OoT/MM.

If you mean can I skip the third platform by roll jumping from platform 2 to 4 then no. I roll jumped and jumpslashed but still never made it. I only find that roll jumping is faster when trying to gain distance, in this situation it would just put me further across the platforms that are small anyway and because they are tractionless it means that the second jump will be worse (i.e. pissweak because of small build up or extended 'slipping on the spot' due to greater distance to turn and momentum to overcome). Well, that was my thinking behind my actions, and my testing backed me up. I could still be wrong of course.

http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html

Posted: 1/3/2007 11:11 PM

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YautjaElder

Joined: 3/29/2006
Posts: 273
Location: Sweden

Some of those platforms are in a row, I think you can build up your momentum between those. Also I think there was somewhere else where you jumped without rolling near the frozen waterfall... someone should test if roll jumping does save time over normal jumping.

Posted: 1/4/2007 2:47 AM

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bkDJ

Joined: 7/26/2006
Posts: 1215

raiscan: from one encoder to another, that looked great. you should consider cropping out the top 16 pixels though. The run looked great except for 2 areas. the z targeting at 2m33s in the video seems slow, and backwalking at 4m00s would seem faster. Those and I agree the invisible platforms might have benefitted from sidehops (I'm thinking back to how guanobowl goes from the kokiri shop to mido) but maybe not.

Posted: 1/4/2007 4:34 AM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

you know, I could probably take Mukki's WIP, stop it at the hilliest section just before the goron village, and test sidehopping up hills, as well as using sidehops to set up better angles for more backwalking. of course, I've never TAS'd any Zelda game before, but I'm just holding Z, moving sideways, and having turbo A for ease for me. shouldn't be too hard. I'll get on that tonight hopefully. edit: oop not tonight, tomorrow morning probably.

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Posted: 1/4/2007 9:25 AM

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YautjaElder

Joined: 3/29/2006
Posts: 273
Location: Sweden

comicalflop wrote:

you know, I could probably take Mukki's WIP, stop it at the hilliest section just before the goron village, and test sidehopping up hills, as well as using sidehops to set up better angles for more backwalking. of course, I've never TAS'd any Zelda game before, but I'm just holding Z, moving sideways, and having turbo A for ease for me. shouldn't be too hard. I'll get on that tonight hopefully. edit: oop not tonight, tomorrow morning probably.

Good luck.

Posted: 1/4/2007 4:17 PM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

well, I couldn't get an upload to work for the 'start from savestate' movie I made, so I'll describe what I did. Oh, and I suck at TASing this game apparently, so if I could somehow get the .m64 to work/uploaded don't laugh at my n00bishness. (I'll try and see if I can post the .m64. edit: see bottom, the 2nd one desynched, and the 2st one won't play for me.) I tested sidehopping in different ways- up slopes, down slopes, and a few other things. I compared the sidehopping of MM to OoT, and there's very slight similarities and differences, especially if tool assisted. when I redid I used 75% speed, and got very good results. bottomline, use sidehops, because I was able to replicate the same sidehopping results as OoT. here's what I found. up slopes- normal, slight angle: maybe because I did it in real time, but on some angled slopes it was a few short hops in a small amount of time, but turbo didn't work so I had to button press really fast. it didn't get a lot of good results, which is probably due to me not using tools. edit: after using tools, (75% speed) I was able to scale 15ish degree slopes very well, and fast. up slopes, really steep angle: I was able to scale up these incredibly fast with sidehops. the degree of when even in realtime that the speed increase is notable is around 35 degress above the horizontal. horizontal, no slopes: Link sidehops just as fast in OoT, so could be better than a roll if backwalking and then needing to readjust without needing a new angle. best part: on frictionless surfaces, Link can immediatly sidehop in the opposite direction that he's facing. I was literally able to on ice sidehop back and forth without feeling any frictionless affects. I might try and redo the .m64, and I'll try and post my results. edit: hm, made another one and it desynched. and I did some testing using slowdown, and was able to get much better uphill sidehops. in general, I found sidehops in this game to actually be very close to that in OoT; so here's some final pointers. use it for uphills, especially steep ones, or where you would normally readjust yourself and backwalk up it (like the hill just before the ice crystals in Termina field). If it's at least a 15 degree incline, I would suggest to try to optimally sidehop up it, and test if it's faster. if it is 30 degrees or higher, I highly recommend sidehopping up it. I got pretty fast up very steep hills; you can get much faster with frame advance. use it instead of rolling to make some adjustents, where you'd need to move to the left or the right some; use rolling for backwalking at a different angle. since you're good at testing a lot of stuff and finding fastest paths, I highly recommend adding sidehops to whatever testing you do for finding the fastest way to get somewhere. with full TAS tools, Frame advance and savestates, I'm sure you'll get even better sidehop results that I did.

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Posted: 1/4/2007 5:01 PM

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djs

Joined: 10/13/2006
Posts: 62
Location: Sweden, Norrbotten, Tärendö

Nice WIP! [Thanks Raiscan for making AVI].. But I saw one thing, In the "Goron place" when youre going to the Mountain Village i think you should used Backwalking instead of rolling cause, It looked like you where stucked for a moment there. and you could backwalked to Darunia's (Or what the hell hes called) grave!

Those who sees this must accept that TAS'es almost skips the whole game..

Posted: 1/4/2007 6:09 PM

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bkDJ

Joined: 7/26/2006
Posts: 1215

...Yeah, I have no idea how the fuck this happened but there you go: it's using direct64, too, so on the positive side, pause screens look good, but on the negative side, there is no fog. anyway, http://tas.monotoli.org/mov/mm has the mkv if you want a single file for the whole thing so far.

Posted: 1/4/2007 6:59 PM

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Wyster

Active player (302)

Joined: 9/2/2006
Posts: 504

How do you play .mkv files? I've tried every player that exists. Someone said VLC but that only gives audio, no video. And the "recommended" player according to Matroskas homepage Media Player Classic can't play it either(only audio....). I also tried downloading every codec and stuff from the Matroska homepage but none of them made any diffrence.

Posted: 1/4/2007 7:01 PM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

I have media player classic and it works fine... since you have all codecs, I don't know that the problem could be.

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Posted: 1/4/2007 7:02 PM

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laughing_gas

Former player

Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp

Use the combined community codec pack

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Posted: 1/4/2007 7:28 PM

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Andypro

Joined: 5/24/2004
Posts: 262

Matroska (mkv) is a video container format (like avi). Just download mplayer or ffdshow. I suggest avoiding "codec packs" at all costs.

Posted: 1/4/2007 8:19 PM

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bkDJ

Joined: 7/26/2006
Posts: 1215

yeah codec packs aren't cool. mkv is just the container. inside is x264 video and vbr mp3 audio. For all_264 related video, I use coreavc. look around the web and you'll probably find 1.1 or 1.2 which work great. once that's installed, any media player (including MPC) should play it. As for VLC doing only audio, that is strange. VLC and mplayer don't use external codec and should handle my mkvs without fuss :/

Posted: 1/5/2007 4:36 AM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

Oh, and I tested rolling before all jumps. you do get a boost, so they definetly should be used; if not at the invisible ice blocks then definetly in the future.

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Posted: 1/5/2007 4:56 AM

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petrie911

Joined: 7/16/2006
Posts: 635

It seems like more supersliding needs to be done, as there are many straight paths that could be superslid along. From Tingle's platform to the entrance to goron village comes to mind, as do many parts of goron village. Also, it might be faster to leave hitting the owl statue until after you return to mountain village.

Posted: 1/5/2007 7:05 AM

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Comicalflop

Editor, Experienced player (730)

Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA

I think there is some stuff in the way in this section; I don't know for sure. returning to the village and hitting the owl statue then; I see no difference in time. You're hitting it, just at a later time. seems right to get it on the way the first time around.

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Posted: 1/5/2007 12:40 PM

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Mukki

Skilled player (1090)

Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom

I checked that. It doesn't seem to save any time because it is awkward getting from the entrance to mountain village to leaving it so you might as well take the long way and hit the statue. Any way, a few questions -- 1) What needs redone here? all I can think of is roll jumping the first platform (both directions) and roll jumping off te bridge on my way to the goron graveyard. What else? Superslides? The owl statue? 2) Let's now look forward to the third (and final, yay!) cycle. Inverted song of time? Is this needed? I calculated (on my PAL version) that without it I will only have about an hour of play time to complete the game. Is this enough? I don't want to get within touching distance just to run out of time. Also, the scarecrow song, I want something good/imaginative/different. I have a few ideas running around my head, but I am definitely open to others.

http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html

Posted: 1/5/2007 4:14 PM

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bkDJ

Joined: 7/26/2006
Posts: 1215

the superslides you did do seemed perfect. it looked like there was maybe one other super slide you could have done around the bridges but I dunno. I don't think you will need the inverted song of time. but if you do end up needing it, then you'll probably realize it in time to play it at some other point besides the first second of gameplay on the third cycle. Unless you are afraid that would look sloppy?

Posted: 1/5/2007 6:33 PM

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Mukki

Skilled player (1090)

Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom

The reason I never did a superslide on the last part of the bridge is because the White Wolfos always got in my way (where I dropped the bomb was where it always appeared). I could try different ways to try and luck manipulate its white ass out my way, but even doing that would probably take more time.

http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html