I said I wouldn't do this, but this game was too much fun... This run is a little over 1 minute faster than the previous run of this game. I don't think I could possibly describe it better than Walker Boh already did, so read the author's comments of that if you're unfamiliar with Kabuki Quantum Fighter or have never heard of an "elite headbanger" before.
aims for fastest time
manipulates luck
takes damage to save time
abuses programming errors in the game
Made with FCEU 0.98.15, also works in previous versions through 0.98.12
Most of the time saved comes from some new glitches with conveyor belts/water and spikes and ice, and from using stronger weapons on the bosses and fighting them even more aggressively, a few small route changes, and more damage-taking.
When I pause for no apparent reason it's often for luck manipulation, especially in the final battle where the number of attacks done by certain points in time determine how long the boss stays out of reach later. The final battle would have been faster if I'd had more ammo, but I chose to use more of that on earlier bosses that would have done more time-wasting things if not killed fast enough. How much ammo to use in each battle and level was planned out beforehand based mainly on the HP of bosses and what delays they had.
OK, I think that's it. And no more TAS-making for me for a while...
And the final boss from Contra makes a cameo appearance! Lovely. This run should be a huge emphasized example of the "takes damage to save time" flag.
Ah, 'tis a sad day. (Mind if I ask why?)
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Joined: 4/21/2004
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Location: Stockholm, Sweden
There is no such thing as waiting. Nobody has copyright of a certain run. There is no obligation to inform the author that you are planning to work on his/her run, but there are things called, respect, sportsmanship, fair play etc. You would most probably create a better relationship and atmosphere between you and the author of the run by notifying that you want to try improve his/her run.
Voting yes, nice run!
Well... you know Walkerboh was planning to improve the run you were going to submit, so it needed to be perfect anyway to not be obsoleted.
I'm pretty curious at your and adelikats run actually; where the frame counts of a lot of levels the same as this run, or where most of the times beaten? Are there levels you completed faster?
I'm also wondering if Walkerboh is still planning to do QKF...
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1276
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
I just got home and found this. This run was actually much better than I had expected and Nitsuja showed some tricks that I hadn't thought of. In my old run I made some (well, quite many) choices to not take as much damage because I thought that would look sloppier, but apparently it doesn't. Nice! But I think it is improvable further and I will certainly try to improve it. I don't however like this feeling that I must do it, so I won't rush with it.
Anyway, in a way I'm happy that it was Nitsuja who beat my old run and not someone else ;)
I agree to this.
Oh, I guess I forgot about that. So Nitsuja just couldn't wait for you to finish?
There is no such thing as waiting. Nobody has copyright of a certain run. There is no obligation to inform the author that you are planning to work on his/her run, but there are things called, respect, sportsmanship, fair play etc. You would most probably create a better relationship and atmosphere between you and the author of the run by notifying that you want to try improve his/her run.
I agree to this.
Yeah, sorry about that, but I knew that you already knew that some people were trying to improve on your run, and this beats what Guybrush had before. (I guess I didn't hear that adelikat working on this, though.)
EDIT: Also, I didn't think Guybrush was actively working on this yet, since according to his last post in the NES games forum, he was going to work on Captain America with Randil instead.
Walker Boh wrote:
But I think it is improvable further and I will certainly try to improve it.
Yes, you're probably right. Especially the instances of taking damage, which bosses to use which weapons on, and which refills to pick up along the way, could probably have been planned out better. And I'm pretty sure the boss fights haven't quite been pushed to the limit yet, at least the bosses that have randomized behavior.
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I needed to watch it and do some specific frame counts.
Nitsuja, all I can say is WOW. Someone please give him ninja rank!
He certainly found a few tricks/glitches that we were unaware of. Every level and every boss was done faster.
As the bosses are the only thing I know about in the game I'll just comment on those:
Somehow you were able to shoot during the cut scene between the level and the bosses. When the screen appears there is already a shot in the air. Good job finding that out, and of course this allowed a faster completion of the bosses.
In all levels and bosses it is best to have 1 energy bar left at the end to save time at the end. While you did this well and every level, it could have been done better on the bosses as well. Boss 5 in particular you could have taken more damage. When the thing on his head closed, I was able to take a hit without losing any time. I also timed so that I took a hit while delivering the final blow.
Also having minimal chips at the end is faster but requires some planning ahead. In the early levels I wasted all my chips after fighting the bosses. that saved about 20-40 frames after each compared with your run (and as much as 100 compared to walkerboh's)
While this means less chips at the end, we made up for by manipulating luck to get chips in the final levels.
I used the dynamite on the 4th boss, but by the 5th I was wondering whether it was worth it since it is pretty slow and has the same chips : damage ratio as the spread gun. Anyone who is going to improve this should look into that.
I can't comment to much on the very last boss since that was what I was working on the final form when I saw this submission!
I guess we are officially finished with this game too. It would have been nice to submit our work ;)
Also having minimal chips at the end is faster but requires some planning ahead. In the early levels I wasted all my chips after fighting the bosses. that saved about 20-40 frames after each compared with your run (and as much as 100 compared to walkerboh's)
While this means less chips at the end, we made up for by manipulating luck to get chips in the final levels.
Hmm... I considered this, but there were barely any enemies I was able to get chip refills from without waiting quite a lot to manipulate it and pick it up (enough to cancel out the 2-frame gain per level per chip). Getting up to 40 frames faster per level means having 20 less chips at some point which means 7 extra chip pickups to make, and they can't all be made in the last level or two since you'll need enough earlier to take down bosses 3-5 quickly. Maybe it's faster to get chip refills than I thought, though.
adelikat wrote:
I used the dynamite on the 4th boss, but by the 5th I was wondering whether it was worth it since it is pretty slow and has the same chips : damage ratio as the spread gun. Anyone who is going to improve this should look into that.
The dynamite does exactly the same damage as hitting it with your hair 3 times in a row, in the same amount of time. The only reason to use it would be to keep hitting something while it's out of reach or while you're unable to attack because of taking damage (or if you have 3 chips left and don't want 1 of them to go to waste). The spread gun is the only thing that does more damage per hit than a regular attack.