Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 384
Yeah, I'm supposed to not be here anymore. Blah. Anyway, the urge has hit me again. And, after staring at a number of games in my attempt to find one I wouldn't go crazy playing, I decided on this. Think Metal Slug crossbred with Zim. Or Stitch. The gameplay's basically identical to MS - you have your default peashooter and various powerups, in addition to a knife thing you can slash enemies with up close. You also have grenades of varying types. I just now found the game, so I'm not even to the planning stage of the thing yet. The good news is that it lets you select hard mode right from the start, which is good. An easy mode run would be faster, though. It seems you have infinite lives there. >> And every time you 'die,' your grenade supply is replenished. Alien dudeman has a roll akin to Link's and can hide underground and drag enemies down to their doom. Plus there are weird boss stages and UFO stages. So yeah. Interesting game. Thoughts, comments, etc, yaddayadda? Edit: Urg. An hour and twenty minutes in level 1-1 on hard mode at 5% speed. For 2:41 of insane action. Was it worth it? Totally. http://rapidshare.de/files/15690138/Alienv1.vbm.html There it is, if anyone wants to see it. The rom name is 2310 - Alien Hominid (E)(Trashman). And yeah, it's still a v1. The fight with the miniboss, for instance, coulda been done quicker. Hiding in the ground is MUCH better than jumping. Plus it seems that when you start the digging animation, you're invincible. Which is useful. c.c I kill some enemies that don't REALLY need to be killed... but I think this game will be more stylistic than 'fast as possible,' anyway. And I'm sure someone will come along and royally trounce any time I might get for the game, but meh. It's fun. >>
Qlex
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Joined: 2/25/2006
Posts: 193
Location: Available
The original version of it was a little game made with flash that was one level long. It's here in newgrounds, but I don't remember where it was. That small game had quickly a lot of success, and the website wanted to make a real game of it. A few people know that little history and played the game. Let me tell you : It's addictive. I was wery disappointed, here in France there is no releases of Alien Hominid on any console yet, since nobody knows newgrounds in France. So I would encourage anyone to do a speedrun of it. In many ways it can be entertaining as hell (well hell can be really funny sometimes you know!). To anyone that has a little experience in TAS, don't hold back. I gladly hope you will not regret it.
Post subject: Re: Alien Hominid
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Posts: 5712
KaitouKid wrote:
Yeah, I'm supposed to not be here anymore.
Why are you not supposed to be here anymore?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 384
Because I got sick of the idiocy. (OMGZ NO ONE DO SMB2 RUNS THE WORLD WILL SURELY IMPLOOOOODE) And I'm canning this project. The game forces you to take way too many deaths. ._. Unless I'm just not seeing it, you're forced to die ALL the time. This is especially noticable in the roswell/area 51 stage(s?). Between the buzzards you can't avoid and the sandstorms you ALSO can't avoid, combined with the awful hit detection on those scorpions... just... no. Just no. I'm not playing for an hour+ per level for that. My hands/arms aren't gonna take the punishment. Someone else can take over.
Post subject: Re: Alien Hominid
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
KaitouKid wrote:
Yeah, I'm supposed to not be here anymore.
Why are you not supposed to be here anymore?
Because he hates me personally
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
Are you sure you can't avoid those things? Sandstorm sounds like you're supposed to dig in.
Post subject: Re: Alien Hominid
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Boco wrote:
Because he hates me personally
??? That's a reason for anything?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Joined: 4/17/2004
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Wow, great game choice. Mayhem and chaos all around. I had only played this game on flash before, at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/59593 for anyone interested. The first subboss can be done faster, yeah. You didn't use the charge move or the grenades, probably they can speed it up. There's also a riding + headbite move with down+jump which you could show off some time when the game waits to scroll anyway. I'm playing normal and for some reason I just can't seem to die. I must have died tens of times at the bosses and still no game over. >Because I got sick of the idiocy. Pah, come on now. I think you have been to online communities before. The squabble here is small compared to most places I've been to.
Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 384
You didn't use the charge move or the grenades
Charge move took too long for not a lot of damage. It's fine for plowing through regular enemies, but... it's quicker to just mash the fire button if you're on a boss or something. And yeah, there seems to be a lack of death. If that was true, I could probably restart and just spam death, because it refills your grenades. But that wouldn't look stylish at all, and as I said - the game lends itself to more of a stylish run than a for-speed run. c.c Also
Because he hates me personally
Awwww, you know i wubses yo--*shot* ... *repeatedly* Edit: Just went back to mess around in 1-1 again. This time I clocked almost 30 seconds more than the first one. Mainly because I was playing around. But I did get something useful. Seems the green weapon, whatever it is - seems to be biological death - doesn't hurt the robots for CRAP. All the extra time I picked up were on the robots because I could just NOT get decent enemy drops. The enemies always come from the direction you AREN'T facing and weapon drops seem to be semi-random. I tested things on the docks for like 20 minutes. The only drops I ever got were the green ones, which sucks. I only got a green powerup during the final boss fight, when he smashed the building. Ach. I'm-a go read a FAQ or something, see if anything useful can be learned.
Joined: 7/5/2005
Posts: 10
I loved this game online, I loved it on the gamecube, and I love it on the GBA. Currently I don't have time to do anything fun, let alone a TAS, but I'm hoping to do a run of this when I get the chance. Preemptively:
Who the hell are you?
I was referred here quite some time ago, but I've done little but watch runs and lurk on the boards every now and again. I've always thought it would be cool to do a TAS, but every game until this one has seemed like it would be more work than fun. Kaitou, if you're still planning on giving up on this project, I'll gladly take up the reins.
Disclaimer: The above post was not intended to make sense.
Joined: 6/6/2005
Posts: 384
Topic rez. I took another stab today, just at random. Still don't have good knowledge on what weapon hurts what best. Still don't see anything but severe death abuse as making this short. Unless I'm just missing something, nothing but death refills your grenades. Did a quick little run through 1-1 and 1-2, got sick of it. But I have a feeling, like I did with Ninja Five-O, that if I don't put out something, no one else will go 'hmm, I bet I could beat that...'
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Well, Now that the DTC3 has ended, I wonder if anyone wants to seriously TAS this and submit it. :)
NitroGenesis
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Sonikkustar wrote:
Well, Now that the DTC3 has ended, I wonder if anyone wants to seriously TAS this and submit it. :)
You mean you put no effort into your contest run? For shame.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
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oh crap... boco and kaitoukid
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself. It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success." - Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Drama, too long, didn't read, lol.
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0x03000332 - Camera lock flag 0x03000328 - Kills left to unlock scene 0x0300031A - Enemy spawn timer Seeing as I'm familiar with the winning run, there's the breakdown of 1-1:
1-1
 2508 ->  2675  S 1 Input begin to unlock
 2766 ->  2885  S 2 (22)
 2944 ->  3040  S 3 (30)
 3206 ->  3248  S 4 Van
 3306 ->  3654  S 5 3471: boss dead
 3719 ->  3816  S 6 ( 0)
 4077 ->  4846  S 7 4460( 3) Kill counter appears
 5044 ->  5304  S 8 heavy guy
 5368 ->  5528  S 9 (25) 5 frames away, is it possible?
 5581 ->  5707  S10 Can't avoid losing a spawn...
 6187 ->  6487  S11 Boss kill

 7193  Clear score screen
Definition of "scene" in this case are all the locations the camera locks. The first number is when the camera locks, or in the case of the first scene, when the first frame of input is allowed. The second number is when the camera unlocks. The S## is scene number, for our convenience. The (##) for some of them represents what the spawn timer was at when the kill counter starts. The spawn timer is the frame rule of this game. It ticks down every frame. After it hits 0, it resets to some upper value and spawns an enemy. Since it goes through every number from 30 down to 0, there's a 31-frame rule in place. In 3-4, it resets to 10 instead. If the number is at 30 when the camera locks, you've hit exactly the moment, down to the frame, where the game can produce a new enemy. 29 is one frame too late, sorry. This is important as the game usually has an upper limit of 2 enemies on the screen at once. Time a kill right at the perfect moment, then when the enemy finally disappears entirely, it's right at the exact moment where the screen locks. The kill counter already has 1 kill marked off, and a new enemy has spawned because you're now under the limit. The best possible case. 1-1 Scene 1 We've decided on picking up the purple auto-firing weapon. It produces a very short death animation, compared to other weapons. We waste no time picking up the weapon gift, as the enemy spawning won't begin until it's picked up. We wait until tossing grenades after the weapon pick-up. There is, after all, a building ripe for dropping what we want: More grenades! We're stuck waiting for agents anyway, so why not? The kill counter is set at 1 in this scene. We kill the first agent as early as we think possible -- The moment his hitbox accepts an in-flight bullet. 1-1 Scene 2 On the way to this scene, a grenade pack is dropped. The timing these two agents were killed were such that they were counted when the screen finally locks. Not a lot to say except that the last kill needed to end the scene was done with a bullet killing that agent at the moment he spawns. 1-1 Scene 3 ... And this is why we needed that exact moment. When this scene locks, the spawn timer is at 30. A single frame of wait, and that delays clearing this scene by 31 frames. Thanks to this, we also have a one-frame window to kill an agent to coincide with the screen lock. We hit that window. We made sure to keep using the auto-firing weapon right up until we picked up the spread gun. The short death animation is certainly nice, and we get to keep all the spread shots for later enemies. This is also the first instance where we begin charging up and keeping our charge while still shooting enemies. Maybe a tad late, since we reached 9 damage charge, not quite 10. 1-1 Scene 4 The FBI van. We used the car so that we can fire while still moving at a decent speed. A short delay was taken here so that our shots have a longer travel time, and thus can shoot earlier. We still lock the camera at the same frame anyway. Poor FBI van barely even had a chance to get any screen time. We jumped out a frame or two early (I forget now) so that we have a slightly better height against the following mini-boss. 1-1 Scene 5 The robot. If we kept the car, it would promptly explode when this boss lands. Then we're launched upwards for a position that is no good for grenades. However, I'm pretty sure the flame or ice weapons would be more effective against this boss. Far worse start-up compared to the spread, so maybe manipulate an agent on the scene to drop a flame weapon. Whatever the case, any new strategy here must be good enough to beat this scene at least by 30 frames to beat the frame rule. 1-1 Scene 6 The spawn timer was 0 when we reached this scene. Not bad, any improvements means that at least 30 frame must be saved to have any hope of getting through this scene earlier. I really should experiment with the flame/ice weapon sometime. Probably flame, for a reason involving death animation length. In any case, the spread gun's death animation is far too long. Knife, grenades, anything that has a death animation shorter than roughly 60 frames. Else, we lose a spawn. We saw a grenade drop, but I said something to the effect of "forget it and move on." The building was used for a weapon change to the purple auto-fire weapon. 1-1 Scene 7 Off camera, I was manipulating two grenade packs. On camera, it's very obvious I'm shooting numerous times while still charging. When you roll or backflip, releasing B does not dissipate your charge. On the frame you finish rolling or backflipping, you can press (and hold) B to shoot your gun without losing your charge. Not shown here, you can also jump to keep your charge -- On the frame you press A, release B. Hold B again on the following frames and you shoot. This also works on the frame you land. I left the scene with maximum charge of 10 damage. Not bad. 1-1 Scene 8 Somehow, this guy takes double damage from grenades. Sure, 6 damage per grenade? I'll take! 50 HP disappears from 10-damage charge, 36-damage from a 6-pack of grenades, and the remaining 4 from our gun. You can dig down and bury him to skip his death animation, but this involves killing you and all the lost weaponry this implies. While you can reach the next scene earlier, you most certainly have sub-optimal weaponry that will eat up any time this would save. 1-1 Scene 9 The spawn timer was at 25 when entering this scene. Now, where can I save 5 frames to beat the frame rule? Gah. It's also why we're technically behind Team 1 for this scene -- We've been frame-ruled. Not much else comes to mind about this scene, though. Never saw the agents come from anywhere except by rope from above. 1-1 Scene 10 Another unremarkable scene. That first agent also insists on coming by rope. Only when the scene locks does it allow agents coming from either left or right sides, by my tests. 1-1 Scene 11 For those curious, the flower seen while rolling to the boss scene is an extra life -- Dig under it, and you can have it! Not that it'll help, but still... Anyone knew of this little secret? There are more flowers like it in later stages. I suppose the only scene of 1-1 not commanded by the frame rule would be this one. As for weaponry, I'm pretty certain the spread gun is the best choice. We can try flame/ice, but that tiny hitbox coupled with the fact this boss only allows one hit per frame makes it less effective. Spread is likely the way to go. Also, that stray enemy bullet could have been manipulated away, I believe. Eh... Anyone want to see if there's any way to improve what we got for 1-1?
Twisted_Eye
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My plan was to bury the heavy weapons guy and just manipulate, say, grenades from one of the on-screen agents and the rapid gun from a building using the new life's three grenades. Sounds like it really would be faster in a perfect world, but that's a dang lot of manipulating. Why would flame/ice be better than spread? Did I miss something when I was checking their damage output? --Yeah, sometimes it does an extra one, even two damage every 8 frames, I never noticed. This makes your final battle, starting with fire switching to ice, much more impressive than I first thought. I'd like to hear why 2-4's boss fight (the second spaceship stage) came out how it did. Was turning away from him better for controlling his movements or some such? I never got to the point of trying to TAS him, so I'm only going on a feeling of it seeming counter-intuitive. I can't think of anything else in particular strategy-wise that could possibly help Team 5's run, just awesome TASing on display there!
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Posts: 1084
Twisted Eye wrote:
My plan was to bury the heavy weapons guy and just manipulate, say, grenades from one of the on-screen agents and the rapid gun from a building using the new life's three grenades. Sounds like it really would be faster in a perfect world, but that's a dang lot of manipulating.
Might be a good idea. But like you say, the amount of manipulation required to have the right drops come from the nearby agents makes it particularly difficult to do. I might want to look into it for a bit, however. Would be a great way to go if the drops work out. But in return, I will need a weapon that produces a short death animation, two extra grenade drops, and something to cure the headache of trying to even get it to work. Might not be possible given how the RNG works, but we'll see...
Twisted Eye wrote:
Why would flame/ice be better than spread? Did I miss something when I was checking their damage output? --Yeah, sometimes it does an extra one, even two damage every 8 frames, I never noticed. This makes your final battle, starting with fire switching to ice, much more impressive than I first thought.
The unique thing about flame/ice weapons (and the green cloud weapon) is that they leave a lingering hitbox. No other player-usable weapon in the game has a hitbox that lasts more than a frame after hitting something. There's a few properties involving this fact that the game has to deal with, such as keeping a short list of hitboxes to ignore. The length of this list is apparently 4. The cooldown of the weapon and the length of each "cloud" means I can only have 3 ongoing clouds at once. However, I can still trigger an overflow of this list with the regular projectiles and grenades. So the game forgets to ignore the first hitbox, allowing it to hit again. In essence, each hit is effectively improved by one damage. If it were possible to have 5 ongoing clouds at once, it breaks the hit detection. The game forgets the first cloud, lets it hit again. Oh, another hit, better forget something else: The second cloud! Oh, let that hit again. Then it forgets the third cloud... See where this is going? Repeat until the final cloud. This is all in the span of a single frame, so with 5 ongoing clouds, it hits 5 times per frame for 5 damage in that frame. But you need to break the natural cooldown of your gun to do this. This can be done by switching weapons, either by running out of ammo or picking up a new weapon. Unfortunately, to break the hit detection like this, it requires at least 3 weapon drops right by the boss in question, all ready to be obtained 2 frames apart, and the player has one of three weapons (green cloud, ice, flame) already in hand. Still, for one shining moment against the final boss, you see me pick up the ice weapon. For a short time, I have 4 ongoing clouds. Each hit from a grenade dealt an equivalent of 7 damage instead of 3 -- Grenade hit made game forget the first cloud had hit. In turn, it forgets the second cloud had hit. Then the third and forth. 3 from grenade + 4 from clouds re-hitting. So the flame/ice weapons are usually optimal versus bosses. But the cost is a worse start-up: The spread can at least be shot from a long distance and have every hit count by the time the boss shows up; The flame/ice weapons are 1/3 as effective in this sort of case. There may be other reasons like the fact the 1-1 boss stands too short to be hit by the cloud when it is moving.
Twisted Eye wrote:
I'd like to hear why 2-4's boss fight (the second spaceship stage) came out how it did. Was turning away from him better for controlling his movements or some such? I never got to the point of trying to TAS him, so I'm only going on a feeling of it seeming counter-intuitive.
I chose to use the back guns because each hit from those dealt 9 damage. As it produces two shots, that's 18 damage. The main gun only produces 1 shot, despite the graphic, and deals only 13 damage. EDIT: The boss stays enough away so that I can't stay inside the boss. There might be some tricky movement we could do, but on a time restriction, I didn't look too hard. The boss naturally wants to just hang a small distance away from you.
Twisted Eye wrote:
I can't think of anything else in particular strategy-wise that could possibly help Team 5's run, just awesome TASing on display there!
We have indeed worked pretty hard at it. But even so, there are improvements to make. I've already found a way to save a frame on our starting menu navigation, anyway. Involving the use of the start button instead of A when applicable.
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Posts: 1084
Okay, I'm not beating this boss any faster than what we did in the DTC3. Too bad, as I've successfully got the charged shot to 10 damage instead of 9 against the van. Severe lag takes place in the battle that follows, even though I managed to pick up the ice gun and start hitting harder. Technically, I am able to save a few frames off what I did in the previous run, but I'll promptly lose more than the savings due to the now lagged spawn timer. So, I think I'll just try to match the winning run. Not much else I can do at this point, really.
Post subject: A Contribution of sorts!
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Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 1354
Location: U.S.
Wow, Thats a nice WIP FatRatKnight. Keep it up! EDIT: I might as well contribute something to this huge project. New Boss Strat I completely autofired this, so there are probably several frames you can save. EDIT 2: About 10 frames faster
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Sorry for the double post, but I just want to see how this is going FatRatKnight. This is the only game that I know of where it forces you to be entertaining.
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Any news on this?
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To be blunt, I seem to have lost all interest in TASing. Unfortunately, it included this project. And as it is all interest, that includes just about everything else related to this site. I only popped back here to let you know my status. I find it is nearly impossible to work on something you have no desire to do. I'm not sure how I managed to lose it, though. It happened. ETA of my return to this project is indefinite. I guess I can never really stay in one place forever. This might be farewell... As for your attempt at destroying that boss, you've got 5 lag frames. In addition, you didn't save enough frames to beat the 31-frame spawn timer, so those 5 lag frames actually slow you down. It is slower than the DTC run thanks to that now-lagged frame rule. Here's where I dropped my run.
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Posts: 1084
To be blunt, I seem to have regained interest in TASing. Fortunately, it includes this project. And as my interest has returned, that includes many things about this site. I popped back here to let you know my status. I find it fairly easy to work on something you have a desire to do. I'm not sure how I managed to regain it, though. It happened. ETA of my return to this project is right now. I guess I can never really stay away from one place forever. This might be a new greeting! ... Now, why did I practically repost my last message, replacing a few choice words to report my change in status? http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1112729135/AH_FRK.vbm As for my latest attempt at destroying the end boss of 1-1, I'm 9 frames slow. As the frame rule only applies to spawns, I need to figure out how to save those 9 frames. Actually, I do manage to lock the boss screen 2 frames earlier -- 1 frame from better menu navigation in the beginning (alternating start and A where possible), and 1 frame for getting rid of a lag frame the DTC3 run did. So net loss of 7 frames. I still need to remove 9 frames somewhere to stay on par with the DTC3's boss-kill. EDIT: Look! I beat the DTC3 boss-kill by 8 frames! With the two other frames I saved earlier, I can start 1-2 with a 10-frame advantage! I'll be checking a few more things just in case I can squeeze out another frame, then come up with a different "finisher" that's does a bit more than my stupid boring jump. Perfect moment to manipulate luck, too, once I know what I want to get in 1-2.
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Posts: 1354
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:O Horray! The FattyRat is back! Good luck on this run. :)
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Good to have you back, FRK. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.