I don't know about anyone else, but I think this is one of the best games ever made for the Nintendo 64.
Certainly one that is easily 100% completed in less than four hours, perhaps even less than three, depending on your experience with the game.
Anyone, thought I'd bring this one up.
I just saw the SDA run of this, actually. The game is fairly long, doesn't seem to have many bugs at all, and I think it forces you to get pretty close to 100% just to beat it anyway. But, normally you have to play cautiously to survive, and it would be fun to see what sorts of tricks are possible with high precision, especially in the more dangerous levels like Rusty Bucket Bay.
The SDA run was good, but it had a lot of flaws that could be used to make the run faster by at least thirty seconds I think.
It would definately be fun to see.
haha, yeah i'd think the human player to frame perfect time improvement ratio is something like for every five minutes of human play, at least a second can be knocked off with perfect control and timing. that ratio probably grows exponentially when approaching hours and such.
Hehe. I'm not exactly "Exceptional" when it comes to playing this game. I've never even beaten it I'm afraid, not that I remember anyway. I have a bad memory these days..
But then again, even with my memory as bad as it is, I've never forgotten beating a game. :3
Well, yes. With perfect timing and stuff, you can easily beat the time of the SDA Run.
This is actually one of my favourite runs from SDA. I think marshmellow did a very good job on it, especially for a run of such length. However, if someone does do a TAS of this, I very much hope that whoever does it finds a bunch of new tricks for the game, as I do not beleive that a simple rehash of marshmellow's would be entertaining.
I do not beleive that we should just redo SDA runs with more precision to get a better time. In my mind that is not what this site is about.
haha, yeah i'd think the human player to frame perfect time improvement ratio is something like for every five minutes of human play, at least a second can be knocked off with perfect control and timing. that ratio probably grows exponentially when approaching hours and such.
I should imagine it's closer to 2 seconds gain per minute of human play, maybe 3 seconds, just from optimization.
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
I was thinking of making a short testrun of Banjo-Kazooie, but I noticed something wierd in the very beginning.
After selecting the savefile (where banjo wakes up) starts the very long prelude (or something) that shows Gruntilda. You can't skip that with Mupen64. I tried both (E) and (U) but neither of them couldn't skip that. Then I went to my closed and dug up my real Nintendo64 console and Banjo-Kazooie and tried them. I could easily skip the intro just by pressing Start.
Since I live in Finland, I'm quite sure that the casette I have is European. Another thing that led me to this conclusion was that the casette was exactly samelooking than the (E) rom. You were able to choose from 3 languages in the beginning, unlike in (U).
So where does this "bug" come from? Is it only in Mupen64 or what.
The intro would take quite a much time to watch it and that's why I'd like to be able to skip it (and because it is skipable in the real console).
I'm not sure, but, I think it may be due to the fact your console version already has saved games in the RAM. Some games only allow you to skip cutscenes if it sees you've done them already, in the case of Banjo-Kazooie since opening the ROM with Mupen there is no predefined save, it probably won't let you skip the intro. We should test and make sure, though, by starting a new game up to the point where we can save, then restart a new game on one of the other slots to see if we can skip the opening.
If it turns out this is the issue then, well, we'll just have to put up with watching the intro. I don't mind so much, I always found the way 'voices' are used in this game to be hilarious, especially Gruntilda's.
EDIT: I just ran the test, turns out that is the problem. After watching through the intro on a clean SRAM I started a new game on the second slot, and sure enough I could skip the intro by pressing start.
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
I just did a little testing and it seems Spoony_Bard was correct.
When you start a game with emulator (Mupen64) it has completely clear SRAM. But when I started the game with the console (and even erased the previous save) it still knew that the game has been played before and allowed me to skip the intro.
So this means: if there is going to be a TAS of Banjo-Kazooie, it must have the intro also in it, because we (mostly Bisqwit ;) ) don't allow starting a game from a save or without a clear SRAM. And I completely support this. The game should start exactly like it has never been played before.
Okay, so what you're saying is that it's only unskippable if SRAM is completely cleared, and normally erasing the saved files with the in-game option doesn't erase that you've seen the intro movie. So maybe it would be unskippable if you JUST bought the game.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Hmm, using that same SRAM I used before I erased the save in the first slot, making all three empty again, then started a new game. And wouldn't you know it, it WOULDN'T let me skip the intro. So I guess the game will only let you skip it if at least one of the slots isn't empty.
I believe that there was the same issue with Secret of Evermore. It's not a big deal, there'll just have to be the storyline shown in the movie. (assuming this gets done)
I really liked Banjo-Kazooie too, even more than Mario 64 in some ways. I was wondering whether it would make more sense to cut off some time by skipping 90 notes and 6 jigsaw pieces and all of the honey comb pieces, or just get everything. In a real run it isn't practical since you want the extra life and the refills of eggs and feathers, but in a TAS it could easily be done. But then the ending wouldn't show the secret key and eggs. And of course it's a lot harder to plan everything. Especially those 90 notes. The honeycomb skipping would be easy, but if that's done, you might as well skip the 90 notes too, and there's a lot of planning in that.
Other than that possibility, I don't see a whole lot more that can be done with a TAS compared to the run there. I can see a lot of areas to optimize, but it'll be nowhere near a Mario 64 run since there are very few tricks that can be used to go through places faster. I'm sure that a good run would be published, but I can't really think of anything that would make a run of this game worth a star. On the plus side, I think it would be easier to do this than a 120 star Mario 64 run. Maybe I should do some testing with the game. But I haven't really played it since I beat the game the year it came out.
My guess is that a run that's done in the same manner as the speedrun could be about 30-60 minutes faster (in terms of gameplay time) with tools for precision, luck manipulation, etc. But if there's a new route and/or a lower than 100% run, it could be more. After all, there are some really inconvenient jigsaw pieces and notes and honeycombs that you have to get. It may get to about an hour and 30 minutes for a minimalist run. Although it'll probably be more likely between 90 and 120 minutes. But this is all guessing in my head. I'm probably way off.
Yeah, skipping 90 notes total means you skip an average of 10 notes per level... unless you want one of those full refills at the end.
It's a shame we have to be so choosy about those 6 puzzle pieces. I bet some of the Witch Switch pieces would be good to skip, or just anything that takes too many steps and is too far off the path from everything else.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
Okey, now i have done a short test. I collected the honeycombs in Spiralmountain.
I also included a save file in the .rar so you can skip the intro (if you don't want to watch it or you're going to rewatch it).
I found out that Banjo moves faster when he is rolling, BUT after the roll he stops for a littlewhile. That is if you don't interrupt the roll with jump.
Also something about jumping. When Banjo lands from a jump, the speed seems to slowdown a bit. But you can come around this too. Just by pressing A again so that Kazooie spreads his wings to make Banjo float down. That way the landing doesn't reduce your speed.
My own oppinion of the test: It looks kinda crappy.. :( Don't know why but somehow I expected a little better.
[EDIT]: Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a suitable video plugin for Banjo-Kazooie. Each I tried had some sort of problems :( So the one I finally chose to use was Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6.
Also the rom which I used was Banjo-Kazooie (U) [!].z64.
I think that's all the necessary info you need.
[EDIT2]: Deleted the save file from the .rar.
So marsh's record at the SDA is 2:55 single segment. I personally know that someone else has gotten roughly 2:45 using death abuses/save and quits. I also know that the routes marsh used were pretty much compiled from just the two of us (I helped him for his run) and using the speed FAQ on gamefaqs. I know for a fact that the routes can be improved, since we were just two people and a guide.
If you had a few people working on this just to test out which routes were the fastest for each level, you have the run right there. The execution is very easy. I'd expect that this run would be 100%, excluding finding Cheato three times and using his codes; basically just 900 notes, 18(?) honeycomb pieces (cant remember), and 100 jiggies. Just take the time to plan out which routes are the fastest in each level and I wouldnt be surprised if a 100% run goes below 2:40, or even 2:35 for that matter.
I know the two games are similar, but so different, but the mario 120 star run un-polished is 30-40 minutes faster. Mind you, there is alot less to get mario, but i could see a tas of this breaking the 2:15 mark.
Not to mention that once a game has started to be TASed a lot of new, interesting glitches tend to pop out of the woodwork. B-K will probably be the same way, even if we don't know of any NOW. So I think it's likely that a TASed run will wind up being quite a bit different than the current Speedrun.
I would be fine with dying and quitting as shortcuts (Clanker's Cavern comes to mind...). I still think "any percent" would be cooler to try for, though.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Okay, Maza, I watched your run. And you didn't stop conversations by pressing L+R+B! Oh no! You could also try to make your movements a little straighter, but I bet that's pretty hard with changing camera angles.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a suitable video plugin for Banjo-Kazooie. Each I tried had some sort of problems :( So the one I finally chose to use was Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6.
Actually that plugin handles this game perfectly (from what I've seen). It's a popular enough game that plugin support for it is quite good. If you mean about the puzzle piece transitions showing black, that's because they're off by default because it's really slow to do on a PC compared to on an N64, but you can turn it on to get more accurate graphics by enabling "Copy framebuffer to RDRAM" in the Advanced tab of that plugin's graphics settings.
Anyway, I also think that any% would be much better for this game, and that a 100% TAS in addition to it would be unnecessary (because 100% is almost the same, except a little slower and easier to play and easier to plan). And if someone wants to attempt this they should plan that out and hopefully find some interesting strategies before actually starting.
Heh... Actually, I have seen the very first push of Start cause the screen to go black on a real Nintendo 64 with the right timing. But not the demo screens.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 5/27/2005
Posts: 465
Location: Turku, Finland
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Okay, Maza, I watched your run. And you didn't stop conversations by pressing L+R+B! Oh no! You could also try to make your movements a little straighter, but I bet that's pretty hard with changing camera angles.
Oh, I didn't even knew you could skip them with L+R+B. Thanks for this.
And the reason I couldn't make straighter movements was because I was using keyboard. And that makes it a bit difficult to control.
nitsuja wrote:
Maza wrote:
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a suitable video plugin for Banjo-Kazooie. Each I tried had some sort of problems :( So the one I finally chose to use was Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6.
Actually that plugin handles this game perfectly (from what I've seen). It's a popular enough game that plugin support for it is quite good. If you mean about the puzzle piece transitions showing black, that's because they're off by default because it's really slow to do on a PC compared to on an N64, but you can turn it on to get more accurate graphics by enabling "Copy framebuffer to RDRAM" in the Advanced tab of that plugin's graphics settings.
Nice to know this too. I hadn't ever heard before of this "Copy framebuffer to RDRAM".
