Posted: 8/21/2005 7:05 AM
Post subject: Hyperzone
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DukeNukem007
Joined: 9/24/2004
Posts: 75
Well, I'd taken a long break from Macross after bumping into some desyncs and I'd better get back to it soon, but I can't believe no one's done Hyperzone yet to the best of my knowledge. I love the music and the pretty clever Mode 7. It's an auto-scroller, so I know I have to be creative...so I decided to go pacifist and take 0 damage. For once, zero damage and fastest time go hand-in-hand, since your ship slows down on contact. I go 448 mph (or whatever the units are) the entire recording except at the start of levels, and try to weave around enemies creatively Bosses are where you have to be quick; I tried to get it as close as I could reasonably on the first try, and try to follow the patterns and make all my shots connect. My time is 6:30 a good ways into the 3rd level...how do I look? http://www.angelfire.com/comics/calvinator/Hyper_Zone__U_dukenukem007.smv Edit: 11:46 early in Level 5...man, staying in line with the bosses is hard. I didn't accidently drive off the edge for a frame or two at any point, did I? http://www.angelfire.com/comics/calvinator/HyperZoneDukeNukem007v2.smv Edit: Dang, now I remember I'm going to have to settle for "no ENEMY damage..." unless there's some way to jump between the energy panels in Level 7 that I don't know about. Am I using the charge-up laser to beat the bosses as well as I could? Time is 18:46 midway through lev.7. http://www.angelfire.com/comics/calvinator/HyperZonedukenukem007v3.smv
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Posted: 8/21/2005 8:28 PM
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DukeNukem007
Joined: 9/24/2004
Posts: 75
Done...time from power on to last input right around 26 minutes. Fighting all the bosses again was frustrating... http://www.angelfire.com/comics/calvinator/HyperZonedukenukem007full.smv Suggestions?
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Posted: 8/22/2005 12:54 PM
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daniayaw
Former player
Joined: 7/29/2005
Posts: 459
Location: Brazil
it was a little boring to watch imho, maybe because i woke up now =.- anyways gj^^ the 3rd boss u couldnt do it faster?
<small>My big signature was cleared by admin; i should read <a href="http://tasvideos.org/ForumRules.html">forum rules</a>. But... who does?</small>
Posted: 8/22/2005 5:29 PM
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DukeNukem007
Joined: 9/24/2004
Posts: 75
daniayaw wrote:
it was a little boring to watch imho, maybe because i woke up now =.-
Yeah, auto scrollers are simple to do but you need to be creative to keep them from being boring. Certainly the mode 7 gives it more potential to be fun than a lot of plain 2d shooters. I did try to make it fun, by moving the ship around a lot and trying to "just miss" a few enemies. There were some times that I let the ship just sit there going into an enemy field to look like I was "tempting death" too. I tried using pacifist-play to make it fun too, of course; I swear 100% kills can't be done, but if someone can figure out how to, more power to you.
daniayaw wrote:
anyways gj^^
Thanks...I worked pretty hard on it even though it's probably unsubmittable without some improvement. It's good to just have some feedback--I get the feeling that a lot of people never even heard of the SNES Macross.
daniayaw wrote:
the 3rd boss u couldnt do it faster?
Like I said, the bosses were agonizing...at least the first try on the "Super Famicom control pad" I thought I went close to as fast as I could, considering you have to hit the side buttons at just the right times and your ship doesn't have very fast lateral movement. I need to work on the later bosses more--I probably didn't time the charging as much as I could and I probably went slower on some in the final level than the first try. From a style standpoint (and from a time standpoint, since you have a limited number of shots on screen at once,) the flat-out missed shots were probably worse than missed opportunities where I didn't shoot. I'm also going to have to try the one area in level 7 where I have to take damage again; I get the feeling that if you stay on the energy panels at the right times that you'll never drop below 300 mph.
"If all you did this year was sit in your cubicle and masturbate...say you're a self-starter who proactively reengineered your personal inventory with Total Quality, conforming to all EEO/OSHA/ISO9000 requirements."-Scott Adams
Posted: 5/16/2011 11:55 PM
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FatRatKnight
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
This is a post that is reviving an ancient thread. This is the .smv I was working on, a 100% kills and/or maximum score run, that beats the first area. This post will also list out a few things of note. The screen turns completely black at frame 9500. Any speed-related records I should be aware of? The game has assigned three different buttons to shoot with. This means that one can fire every single frame, basically 60 Hz. But a 3 onscreen bullet limit for the player generally means you're rather restricted in how often you can fire anyway. However, this also allows a way to shoot regular bullets while charging up a powered shot without any interruption, as demonstrated at the end of the .smv file, as I begin the second area. Against the second wave, I highly doubt there's any way to kill all enemies without flying "off-road", so to speak, so I'm forced to slow down. I expect worse cases later on. Against the third wave, the yellow blocks each have 3 HP. I need to shoot three times to destroy each one, and with the 3 bullet limit, a few has come frighteningly close. There was one moment in the TAS attempt where I had to optimize input at what is roughly the equivalent of sub-pixels in order to destroy one set of yellow blocks without slowing down. A little secret I accidentally discovered is the fact you can get an extra life by setting your speed to a specific value on area completion. This extra stock, unlike the kind you get at score thresholds, do not affect what ship you get for the later areas. This is demonstrated in the .smv file. Incidentally, this also answers a question I had since childhood as to why they display one more stock slot than there are possible stocks from score and starting amount.
Posted: 5/29/2011 12:01 AM
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FatRatKnight
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Area 2 beaten. Though I'm not sure what I should do for entertainment. Feel free to give suggestions. For those curious, I actually get enough points to earn two stocks in this area. This means I skip a ship upgrade animation, going directly to the fourth ship. Incidentally, the ships have the following qualities: 1st: Basic shots only 2nd: Gains a charged shot 3rd: Graphically wider charged shots (I haven't checked if it is mechanically wider) 4th: Faster charged shot 5th: Going "off-road" no longer slows you down. You still take damage, though. 6th: Very fast charged shot A two-byte value at address 7E18EF tells you how charged your shot is. When it is 0xE000 or greater, you may release a powerful shot. The 2nd and 3rd ships charge at +0x0200 per frame, 4th and 5th charge at +0x0280 per frame, and the 6th ship charges as +0x0400 per frame. Effectively, it takes 112 frames to charge for 2nd and 3rd ships, 90 frames for 4th and 5th ships, and 56 frames for the 6th ship. I demonstrate many times in the above run that I can fire basic shots while charging up a powerful shot. Firing these basic shots like this delays the charge time by a single frame per shot. If anyone who plans to beat the SDA record on console wants to know the mechanics of shooting while charging, it is difficult to pull off consistently. You must, on the same frame, release one firing button, Y A or R, and press a different one of Y A or R. Any differences, and either you don't shoot, or you lose your charge. If they overlap, you don't fire a single shot, meaning you pressed the other button before you released the one you were previously holding. If there's a gap, you lose the charge and fire a basic shot or two, meaning you pressed the new button after you released the old one. The timing necessary is cruel, down to frame-precision is necessary. But at least you can feel what your hands are doing, and you get quick feedback on whether you failed or not, and which way you failed on top of that. Trouble is the fact that, from console power-on, unless there's some cheat code I'm unfamiliar with, you need to play through the first area or two before you can get a ship with charged shots to practice with. It's not convenient to get to the point where you can practice. But if those SDA console speedrunners want to try, I hope these instructions let you know what to shoot for. Have fun, as always!
Posted: 7/12/2011 10:02 PM
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FatRatKnight
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Area 3 beaten. The holdup was due to the fact I couldn't find the solution to kill everything successfully without help. But there help came, and here's the result. For a better listening experience, you might want to try disabling sound channel #6. The engine whine uses that channel, and it might put less of a strain on your ears to turn off this channel while viewing this run. I will now talk about health. It is a 2-byte unsigned value found at address 7E18ED. Yes, it uses the full range of 0~65535, despite only ever showing 16 bars of health (each bar is worth 4096). When you take damage from actual hits, it's always in some multiple of 4096. There are three sources which affects your health in finer values than 4096: - Flying in a healing zone: +300 per frame - Flying "off road": -160 per frame - Held the brakes too long: -160 per frame Notably, holding brakes and flying "off road" do not stack. You still only lose 160 per frame. There was a point in Area 3 where I had trouble. The spot is where the track splits for the first time, a fair ways along this split. When I outlined where the enemies spawn, a non-TASer pointed out a possible solution, to which I then used and found it works. The result is I stick around "off road" for a long time, enough that my health drops to 575 -- 4 more frames "off road", and I'm dead. The game lies -- I don't have 1 HP left, I have closer to 1/7 of an HP left. One of the trouble enemies only had a 3-frame window where I could hit it before it vanishes. Those green enemies give very little opportunity to attack them. I did say "I expect worse cases later on" in an earlier post. This is probably the worst case I can handle. Probably the worst one to worry about for most of the run. ... I hope... But at least the puzzle here is solved. We'll see about later areas...
Posted: 6/1/2014 5:53 AM
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FatRatKnight
Editor, Skilled player (1202)
Joined: 9/27/2008
Posts: 1085
Area 4 -- Well, half-beaten. Restarted the run on lsnes and dealt with motivation issues. One trick I've been abusing readily is the fact charged shots can "double hit" at times. Which is to say, the boss takes damage from it twice. This requires that the charged shot is "close enough" to do damage two frames in a row, which only works at certain times. It should come as no surprise I abuse this fact for bosses. The Area 3 boss has all four of its orbs hit twice per charged shot. About the charged shot: Against most normal enemies, the game skips the damage check and destroys it right away. Against bosses, it naturally doesn't keep the instant destruction, and instead does a certain amount of damage, depending on what is being hit. Some hits do only two damage (such as against those colored orbs around boss 3), while others do five damage (against the center part of boss 3). The double hit comes from the fact that it's within a certain depth difference to deal a hit, and still within that depth range when it continues on behind the enemy at the next frame. I really should measure this out at some point, but it effectively dictates what frame this can be abused on against bosses, as their relative depth is completely independent of your speed. Each of those colored orbs have 10 HP each. Charged shot hit does 2 damage to those. With a pair of double hits from my charged shots, and the fact it can hit all four orbs at once, meant I only needed two normal shots per orb. My limiting factor is when I can get my third charged shot, so I feel that battle is fully optimal. Now, Area 4. I've been getting through this place, salting the "off road" time carefully to minimize time loss while getting at every enemy. Those "fluffy snowballs" were rather difficult, as they spawn relative to your position and not based on an absolute position, so don't mind me hugging the left side in an attempt to manipulate their positions. It still took some careful positioning to even get them all, and once they start spawning, it's time-based, not distance-based, so slowing down wouldn't help at all. The part I stopped at is the real pain. Look at those green things. They grow. Each one of those segments is an entire object. Each fully grown "tower" is four objects. The limit is twelve. They are also durable and the bottom segment can only be reached by charged shots, which often can't destroy that particular segment in one shot, as for some reason it does 2 damage (they have 3 HP) instead of instant-boom, yet the other segments do go instant-boom. Optimizing my score looks like I'll need the brakes. This will give me more time to charge some shots. Making sure I don't destroy the "towers" behind the ones I want gone will be a tricky puzzle to solve. Making sure I stay within the 12 object limit will certainly make things real hectic. There will be "fluffy snowballs" that I want to spawn for maximum score, which just pushes the limit ever harder. It looks like I can't catch every enemy and spawn, at a glance, so I might have to concede a few kills. We'll see if I attempt to continue.