Huh, I seem to be imagining things. When you jumped up the stairs in 1-2, it looked like it was faster then just walking. o_0
Also, for some reason I can't find the horizontal position RAM address to check that.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Yea, I didn't notice that until I just watched again at full speed. I made it so that he hit the 3rd step on the stairs on the first frame possible, which made him sort of "warp" past the second step. If it was indeed faster, I may have to jump up the stairs earlier in that room as well. Though in case you didn't notice, jumping wastes 2 frames (I'm pretty sure) each time you do it. I'm not sure whether the characters behave differently, but I remember in that other test run with Whip guy, he jumped the whole time and said it was faster on the ground as well. From what I could tell, jumping on the first frame possible every time with spear dude was not faster.
The other thing I should probably work on is manipulating that first boss to do 1 flaming breath followed by 1 howl. I think this would be the fastest way to kill him, because the flaming spear does more damage than the axe. The howl lags the game out, but you can kill him before it starts to lag (I think) if he does as his second move. I'm not really sure how to get him to do that move is the problem right now.
Is there a guide anywhere for memory addresses and using them? I'm sure it would be very helpful against the bosses especially to know on which frame they become vulnerable, versus just testing out each frame.
I find it very interesting that your movie author notes says "truncated minicompetition week 1" when I load it.
moozooh> Huh, I seem to be imagining things. When you jumped up the stairs in 1-2, it looked like it was faster then just walking. o_0
You're not imagining, jumping up stairs is faster than walking and has been done since the first movie posted for this game. (What you might not notice is that jumping is faster than walking also for flat surfaces.)
The horizontal RAM position is very tricky indeed. The horizontal position on screen is 00FF9EC0, 2 bytes unsigned, but obviously this is constant while the screen is scrolling (because you're always in the middle of it). It works well for non-scrolling rooms.
The scrolling register of where the screen is in the stage is saved in some other format I haven't been able to understand.
stanski> I might slowly work on this, as it doesn't seem like anyone else wants to.
I do want to work on it, but that shouldn't stop you. I'm busy with another game at the moment. And as you said, this game is a bitch. :/
For missing things, watching my movie you seem to have on your harddrive would be good. For example, jump more, and get more item ammo.
Yea I stole the first button presses directly from your movie, sorry for not asking but I doubt I'll finish this anyways, as you are right about the jumping. I just tested it out in real time while doing a regular speedrun, not thinking that jumping on the very first frame possible would make a difference.
I would have to redo everything to jump everywhere, which would be gay :-(.
You are much better at TAS'ing than me, every time i go back my run is not optimal. I might try again, but right now the first boss is so frustrating to me that I don't know how long it will take just to do that optimally.
Seems that no one is actively working on this game so I'll be doing the "Whip Guy" run. I've got a WIP already done, of the first level which is a little more than 2 seconds faster than Truncated's (quite possibly 3 seconds). Let me know what you think, if there are improvements that I did not see or something.
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 359
Location: Borlänge - Sweden
Love to see more of it.
I have always played this game with Lecarde, so its alittle odd to see this game with the "whipguy" rather with the "spearDUDE", not guy... or else I'll will get Truncated on my neck for saying that ;)
Nice going there, continue :)
Unfortunately you also forget to turn "quick demo display" to off in the options menu. It takes 2 frames to do and then skips that little short cutscene at the beginning there. Hopefully you can hex edit this in.
Both boss battles looked great though, great manipulation on them.
One thing I wanted to just let you know is that opening 30 "gem/point containing candles" will give you the blue powered up whip also. This means that there might be some opportunities to take damage to save time if you ever find you have a long space between a boss battle and a regular enemy is in your way. Thinking mostly about level 5 here.
Unfortunately you also forget to turn "quick demo display" to off in the options menu. It takes 2 frames to do and then skips that little short cutscene at the beginning there. Hopefully you can hex edit this in.
Both boss battles looked great though, great manipulation on them.
One thing I wanted to just let you know is that opening 30 "gem/point containing candles" will give you the blue powered up whip also. This means that there might be some opportunities to take damage to save time if you ever find you have a long space between a boss battle and a regular enemy is in your way. Thinking mostly about level 5 here.
Alright, I'll spruce it up and post another WIP later on and by the way stanski, check your PMs.
Edit: Okay, here's the new WIP. It's quite a few seconds faster which is, well, good. Thanks stanski for the time saver that will continue to save time as the run goes on.
This game is pretty Hex-editable unless there's some manipulation involved. Shouldn't take too long for another WIP to come out. I'll probably release one more after that and then finish the run before you see anything more.
VANDAL: That was a really good WIP. As far as I can see you did everything right. I need to check the framecounts for the individual rooms as well, which I can do tomorrow.
I was actually looking for a partner to do this with a while ago but noone was interested. I'll try contacting you on IRC so we can discuss that.
As you may or may not know, I've decided to work with Truncated.
In doing so we decided to redo the first level from scratch which we gained about 242 frames on.
Most of the improvements came from optimizing movements and new strategies.
The first level looks pretty damn good and as before, there'll be at the most 3 WIPs.
So, here's the first WIP.
Enjoy.
Nice, though it's too bad that it seems that jumping is faster than walking since that's kind of annoying to me.
But hey, I loved what you did with level 2. :)
1-8 looked really smooth, looks so effortless when you whip swing. Loved how you skipped the enemy in 1-9, that was ridiculous and cool. I knew the boss could glitch out like that for a couple of hits (have had that happen in real time), but I couldn't manipulate it ever. Should have mentioned it so you guys could try it, sorry about that.
Hello everyone who is following this. After a few setbacks and redos, here is our WIP of the second level.
There should be some surprises here for everyone who has played the game...
Wait wait wait...what happened to that frail-wielding mini-boss in 2-3?!
Couple things I thought were possible improvements:
1 - I thought that the password screen could be skipped faster then that, but that could be just falty memory.
2 - The middle sections of the 2nd level boss weren't completely destroyed, which I believe if they are, he goes off screen faster.
Just a couple ideas, but I'm probably not right on either.
1 - I thought that the password screen could be skipped faster then that, but that could be just falty memory.
2 - The middle sections of the 2nd level boss weren't completely destroyed, which I believe if they are, he goes off screen faster.
For 1, any idea how? Is there some other button than start involved? It seems to be equally fast compared to the speedrun I've seen.
Number 2 is a very interesting idea which we'll have to check out.
It definately takes less time for the boss to die in level 2 is you take out all of the sections. Thats why you see me take out his sections after the boss fight is over in the speedrun. Thats all you need to adjust, is just the end of that fight.
I found the autoscrollers very entertaining, and some of the jumps i found myself going "uh oh, thats a miss!" at. Good job!
Well, it's finally here. Hope you enjoy it as, like the subject says, it'll be the last before the run is submitted.
Level 3
I can't give you a real estimate of when the run will be complete, that's out of our hands but I can definitely see it being finished in 2008. All questions and comments/criticism are very much so welcome.
Joined: 4/30/2006
Posts: 480
Location: the secret cow level
Looks good... even without taking damage, you still manage to get through without taking much (if any) time to avoid enemies.
...and dang, they did some pretty impressive stuff on the Genesis with this game.
Nice job. I only have a question, are you sure it's faster to swing those bulls instead of killing them?
Yes, swinging is the fastest manner of movement for him if you do it correctly (it usually goes like this; as soon as you start swinging, hold down for 62 frames then let go. That way, you not only are going faster than usual, you also get the highest lift in speed when you are no longer swinging but unfortunately that speed wears off as soon as you hit the ground.)
I can definitely see it being finished in 2008.
zggzdydp wrote:
January 2008, you can do it. :)
I really love the run, but it has been kept for a long time. So I'd like to see the submission early.
Well, January is a bit of a stretch, haha :D . But as of late, working on Bloodlines has been overly fun so progress is coming real easy now. As soon as Truncated comes back, the run shall continue onward so in the mean time, relax, the wait should be worth it :) .
I try to do an Eric run, this is first stage I did. The guy's Item Crush is bad, it makes a lot of lag and isn't very powerful. I didn't use it, boss fighting is slower than John run. How do you think of it?
Interesting. Perhaps some improvements are needed.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days
<adelikat> no doubt
<adelikat> klmz, they still do
It looked okay. Things you should look into:
The axe is a lot stronger than the boomerang, it does 10 damage compared to the boomerang which does 5. This can be compared with green spear, which does 8 damage.
Walking is faster than jumping for Eric the spear dude. o_O I was wrong previously. I should have checked thoroughly instead of assuming that he had the same speed as Whip Guy... sorry about that.
I think you can use both the stairs in 1-2 and 1-6 to get a boost in the same way as in 1-1, at least it's possible with Whip Guy.
You get some lag in 1-3 because you don't kill the floating eyes.
You get stuck against the platform in 1-11 (around frame 8690) which loses you some time. Getting the boss to stay in the corner like that was impressive, it is difficult to make him do that.
