Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
Well, it's not really much of a time-attack seeing as how the game goes on forever, but here: http://www.freewebs.com/rickcressen/spy_hunter_(u).fcm I wanted to go for some entertainment and go as fast as I could to learn some things about this game. I tried some random shooting to see if it manipulated luck. I tried playing around with the enemy cars and tried to be as interesting as I could. My biggest problem though is that I don't really know what kind of goal to achieve. I end the movie at about 2:43, soon after I switch to the boat because I got tired of doing it for the moment and I knew it was going to be a test movie. Thoughts, comments, concerns? If there's enough interest in doing something with this, maybe I can make this my first-ever submission once I get the movie re-made.[/url]
Skilled player (1886)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I thought it was entertaining to watch and would be interested in seeing a full run. But what are the differences between this game and the game Super Spy Hunter? We already have a run of that game, but maybe they are completely different... As you said, this was only a testrun, so you are probably aware of what can be improved, such as not missing a single shot and things like that. The usual "autoscrolling TAS" rules. :) By the way, did you have any luck with manipulating luck by firing shots randomly? This is probably a question that's difficult to fully answer, but have you tested what factors that can speed this run up? I mean, sometimes you loose some speed if you turn, or maybe you slow down slightly when firing a shot. If there's nothing in a level that neither speeds you up or slows you down, you might as well go for 100% entertainment. And last, your link doesn't work if you click on it, you have to copy-paste it and open it in the address-window. Perhaps you could rename it to get rid of the " " in the filename. Or you could upload it on DeHacked's microstorage. Other than that, I wish you good luck! I'm not familiar with this game, but it looked interesting. How long do you think a full run would be? I should probably watch the Super Spy Hunter movie too. :)
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I believe Super Spy Hunter is a different game altogether. Anyway the random shots fired were to try and manipulate luck. I think I was successful in getting the cars to appear, but I'd have to do more testing on that to say for certain if it worked or not. While I was doing the frame-by-frame bit too, it was difficult for me to tell if I was going at top speed or not, therefore the changes in speed were in that video. Going into those trucks was necessary only for the sake of more entertainment, since you can't get weapons any other way. I finally fixed the link to the video too.
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I did a second movie to try out some different tricks, including shooting Motorcycles at the very last second to make them move, and just try to make things more entertaining. I don't think there's a way to make cars and stuff appear at this moment, as shooting hasn't really resulted in much, though moving differently seems to do something, although I have no idea how it works yet. I still don't really know of a goal to reach either. Does anyone have any idea what I could do for a game like this? Anyway, here is the new movie. This one's 1:25 and it does stop mid-way, but this, once again, is only a test movie to garner some ideas for a real one. www.freewebs.com/rickcressen/spy_hunter_tas.fcm
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
Rick wrote:
I still don't really know of a goal to reach either. Does anyone have any idea what I could do for a game like this?
What I'd find funny is if you pulled of a trick I did by accident a while back. Essentially, one of the tire popping cars ran into me as I went through a puddle, and instead of spinning off the road, I actually was able to control the car ^^ The thing is, I couldn't shoot, but I could keep going full tilt and avoid cars ^^ It was an absolute riot to see happen, and I think it'd be intriguing. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
Thanks for the idea! I'll have to try and do it at the end of the run. It takes a little while for the tire popping cars to start pulling out the blades in their wheels, and plus I can't shoot, so it'd be a sweet trick to pull off at the end of the run. Or, now that I think of it, I wonder if doing that, and then making it into a truck would fix things. Now to just find something to be accomplished. I'd go for trying to hit 1,000,000 points, but I fear that would take about an hour and a half.
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
Rick wrote:
Now to just find something to be accomplished. I'd go for trying to hit 1,000,000 points, but I fear that would take about an hour and a half.
Yeah, about that... and the game doesn't even roll over! It just shows garbled stuff in the score! It kinda looks cool honestly. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
It would be cool to see, but I don't know if people would get tired of me doing the same ol' schtick for 90+ minutes in order to attain that score. If the game was actually separated into stages or something, I'd be going on a mad dash to get this baby done and get it to the end and call it my first TAS. The only true way out is "Game Over", but then that'd just be another matter of finding out when to kill myself. Oyez, nothing is ever simple in these things. @_@
Active player (405)
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708
I can't shake the feeling that this game could be worth doing a TAS of. Shooting for the maximum score sounds like a good goal, even if it would take a while, but I think the time could possibly be shortened. Some ideas: - The enemies that appear onscreen can be luck manipulated. So it's possible to manipulate it so that all the enemies that appear are tire-slashers (killing normal cars loses you points, bulletproof cars are bulletproof, and you have to slow down to kill the limos.) - After getting the highest score, you'd want to kill yourself. You have three lives, so you'd have to find creative ways to lose these earlier on without losing a lot of time. Solution: I know that towards the end of the boat areas, if you crash at the right spot, you respawn on the road as a car so you can bypass the "convert back to car" sequence which probably takes just as long. You also gain extra lives as the game commences. I think you'd probably be looking at more boat sequences than lives all around, so this can't be done every time. It's really hard to say how long it would take to reach the max score, even if you manipulate it well enough so that a tire-slasher appears every minimal spawn period, so I still don't know how long a TAS we're talking about here. If it's unavoidable to complete it in less than 90 minutes, as was suggested earlier, this would be excrutiatingly boring to watch.
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I doubt it's really be 90 minutes. I was just kinda exaggerating the time there. I really don't think I'm going to end up doing this run. I want to do something that's going to get published and that's (hopefully) gonna stick around a while. I dunno, I guess it's just a boring game to TAS. Have fun with it if you want Hyena. I plan on just doing Dudes With Attitude once the mapper on FCEU for it gets fixed.