Well, looks like third time's the charm. I managed to shave over a minute off this run using Nitsuja's recommendations for the fights.
Menu manipulation is MUCH better this time around, and the fights have all been improved.
Takes damage to save time
Manipulates luck
Aims for fastest completion
The 3 fights against the ninja's are somewhat frustrating since it's hard to keep them from dissapearing. I knocked them over a couple times, just since it's faster than waiting for them to re-appear. I took a hit in one of them since the orb knocks me closer to where I need to line up the next attack.
The Goliath fights may be improvable, but not by too much (unless someone finds a way to land two hits before needing to line him up again)
OK, better, but the fights are still not optimal. You need to be more sure that it's not possible to be faster, and you can't be sure of that since I already showed you how to do first fight faster than you do here... (And besides that fight all the other ones can also be better, especially the ninja boss and final boss.) It's not good enough just to be faster than you were before. To be fair, this game's combat system is not easy to get as many frames out of as possible.
Dang. I thought mine was better than your's but you're faster than me by about 70 frames or so. I think I'm gonna sit back and re-plan this one (been spending a lot of time on it lately :P) and see what I come up with, maybe in a week or so.
Final boss isn't too bad, since you can only hit him once before he dissapears, but I've managed to get three in :) Prolly could be faster though. I'm actually kind of curious if you'd have a different strategy for the ninja's?
Very nice improvments from your last version, the fights do look like they can be improved. I'm lookin forward to your next version but voting yes for now.
Final boss isn't too bad, since you can only hit him once before he dissapears, but I've managed to get three in :) Prolly could be faster though. I'm actually kind of curious if you'd have a different strategy for the ninja's?
Well I had a sort of different strategy for the final boss that also applies to the ninjas. If you kick them on exactly the right frame it'll connect and prevent them from teleporting away, and you can keep repeating that with perfect timing until they die. Sometimes it requires waiting a few more frames than you would think. I didn't test this extensively, but did manage to beat the final boss before he sent out a mummy or was able to teleport more than 2 times, and I would guess that even less is possible with more precision and an earlier first hit. Note that I had to manipulate him to teleport in close to the wall so that I could hit him there without worrying about knocking him out of range. The ninjas seem to take less damage from kicks than any other enemies, so maybe uppercutting them could be faster, but my guess is that it still isn't (this should be tested, of course).
About re-planning, that's always good and could uncover major time-savers, but I think it's mainly the lack of precision and experimentation while making the run that's the problem with this one. Little delays before attacking in some of the fights were noticeable. And I know it's not good to judge just by this (and I don't), but when I see only about 1000 rerecords made for this movie it makes me wonder how that could possibly be enough to get it close to perfect - I would expect at least 5000 would be necessary for a decent run of this game... (Personally I'd probably use 1000 before even getting out of the first room, but maybe I'm a bit wasteful of re-records.)
We are here to strive for perfection, so I'm gonna take it from scratch. I think i'll hold off posting the finished product till i'm absolutely sure it'll pass your scrutiny, cause even I wasn't super-impressed with the fights.
I figured they could prolly be done faster, but wasn't sure if a few seconds would make or break the movie. I know that's not the greatest attitude, but after staring at the same fight for four hours, i think you just get frustrated (sadly, that ninja mistress fight took me almost a day, and it was frame advanced ... i'm not impressed :P)
Zalien, thanks for the vote :)
Nitsuja, no comments on the menu navigation this time though so i'll take that as a sign of progress ;)
I think i'll hold off posting the finished product till i'm absolutely sure it'll pass your scrutiny
You know, it's a good idea to post partial progress in the NES game forum, so you can get opinions before finishing the whole thing and possibly avoid having to start all over if something wrong is found...
Maximus wrote:
no comments on the menu navigation this time though so i'll take that as a sign of progress ;)
Yes, it looks like the menu navigation is fine now. Actually I could've sworn some parts look slower than before, but I couldn't find any supporting evidence so I'm probably wrong about that.
See if you can find any bugs or even more things that the game lets you skip. Also, is the bomb in the beginning on a regular timer or does it explode sooner if you go behind the wall? I'm wondering if it would be faster to take a hit there so that the instant the bomb goes off you get set free and save the time waddling over to the candle after the explosion.
I did a quick test and you actually save about 200 frames if you take a hit from the bomb. This halves your life though so i wouldn't have enough to finish the sewers. However, I'm using a slightly different route right now and it's possible that I can actually do it faster if I take the hit, get the gas mask and use that in the sewers, since using an item is faster than wading through the dialog prompts.
Once I get a good first fight, I'll post a WIP for you to check out cause I think you'll like some of the new paths I'm using :) (I'm still stuck around 270 frames for this fight .. have yet to come close to your time)
Well guys, I've got a new route (slightly) and I think i've got the first fight down now.
The route looks better. The fight too, but I think the method you're using to interrupt the kicks is a few frames slower on each kick. What you should do is: the frame before the kick will make a damage mark appear, press the punch button alone (after releasing it earlier, of course), then wait 1 frame, then press and hold up+attack for 5 frames to kick again, and repeat. It won't make a huge difference in this fight (maybe 1/4 of a second), but those few extra frames will probably be necessary in the ninja / final battles since every frame that they could get hit but don't seems to count down a timer to their next teleport.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
This run just keeps getting faster and faster... I see that you found some new ways to improve this run (again :) ). I'm gonna watch this submission and your newly posted WIP when I get the chance. But I just really wanted to say that I'm surprised by how much you managed to cut down the time on this run. Thumbs up! Do you think you'll be able to break the 10 minute barrier with your new run, Maximus?
Randil, using Nitsuja's reco's, i'm pretty sure i can get this run under 10 minutes. The real time killers are the ninja fights, so if i can ace those, then this run may actually be ready for final submission :)
