Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Yes, it's currently clear that one is significantly better than the other. But we're going to work to make you much better than now, about as good as me :)
If you haven't done so already, I really recommend playing back my Flame Mammoth part again, at 25% speed, with input display on, and take a good look at the input. That way you can see a lot about how I do things.
You can also try the same section again and see if you can be (almost) as fast as me. This is a good way to practice TASing.
Oh, and another useful thing which I forgot about at first is memory values. I collected a bunch of important ones.
C0F3 -- DNA soul digit 1
C0F2 -- DNA soul digit 2
C0F1 -- DNA soul digit 3
C0F0 -- DNA soul digit 4
B851 -- Boss Invincibility (Skullhead)
B857 -- Boss Invincibility (Mammoth)
B85A -- Boss Invincibility (Sponge) (presumably all boss invincibility values are in this range B85x)
C108 -- X (horizontal) position (2 bytes)
C107 -- X subpixel position
C105 -- Y (vertical) position (2 bytes)
C104 -- Y subpixel position
C1B6 -- X (horizontal) speed (2 bytes)
C1BC -- Y (vertical) speed (2 bytes)
C154 -- Dash counter (counts how long a dash goes on before it stops)
B821 -- Boss health
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Much better. In fact, most parts of it looked pretty good. However, there are still a few things I noticed:
-At frame ~11800, you jump higher than needed. If you jump a bit lower, you fall down faster and save a bit of time.
-At frame ~12350, the damage taken looks a bit sloppy. I assume due to the fireball it's not possible to destroy the enemy, but isn't it possible to dash a bit in the part before and jump over him? That would seem faster.
-The wall jumping after that looks a bit slow. (I'll need to look further into the walljumping to see how fast it can go, though. You also jumped as high as possible on the last jump, which meant you spent more time going forward in walk speed. You could've airdashed to get dash speed as soon as you reached floor height.
-It looks like you didn't dash along the conveyor belts in the trash compactor section. It's faster to dash along with conveyor belts, as they speed you up a little bit. (Mind, only if they go the same way you go. Otherwise they slow you down)
-At frame ~13100, that walljump is not needed. You should've adjusted the jumps before that so you don't catch the wall.
-I noticed you used autofire to press right to dash near the end, with the corridors. Please don't use that, as half the time autofire makes you a frame late, so it'd turn out suboptimal. You need to manually try out at which frames you have to press right to dash as soon as possible.
-Also, when you defeat enemies, you should try defeating them at different frames to see if they may drop DNA-souls then. (Make sure it doesn't cost time, though.) The route requires to get 200 souls by the end of the fourth stage, but more is always better.
-As a general tip, don't be afraid to try out different ways, jump heights, dashing on the ground etc. if they could be faster. If you jumped differently before frame ~13100, for example, you wouldn't need to catch the wall and lose time.
However, other than these points, you actually did a very good job this time. Congratulations, keep it up like this.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
I think we should still redo the stage first, as there are still some suboptimalties, but as for the boss, notice that the fireballs drop down where you are standing. So make sure that you're a bit away from Flame Mammoth when the fireballs appear, then you can continue to be in front of him to slash him.
If anything, you could freely take damage without wasting time, if timed correctly. (You could even walk right into Mammoth to get some invincibility against the fireballs).
But you should wait with going on further until I've done some tests with walljumping, and the other mistakes in the stage are fixed. Then we are good to go on.
EDIT: As for walljumping, it can be done the same way as Mega Man Xtreme (1), in a very quick way. When starting a walljump, press A for one frame, and then nothing for seven frames, and then A again, and repeat.
EDIT2: Correction: 6 frames waiting, not 7.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Here's a further improvement:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1919789937/Mega%20Man%20Xtreme%202.vbm
Goes up to the second autosave.
I managed to save 112 frames from your WIP. Most of it is due to much faster wallclimbing using the trick I noted, and some smaller things I noted before, such as a different jump down the shaft and taking damage more efficiently. (I also managed to get 20 DNA souls in this part).
If you redo the next part and take care of all those things I pointed out at your WIP, then I think it will be good enough that it won't need to be redone anymore. Good luck with it!
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Wow, you doned the hardest part of the stage really quick. It's going to take a lot of time to master the walljumping's technique. And I found it funny that we are the only ones posting here LOL
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
I finished Flame Mammoth's stage: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1193348976/Mega%20Man%20Xtreme%202.vbm
With about a second between each hit, it's possible to do a lot of playing around with the bosses, and to show off in general. (Watch out not to cause unnecessary lag frames, though).
I also found a small trick with one ladder in the last part of the stage, where grabbing it and then releasing it and airdashing can save a frame. Otherwise, this part was fairly straightforward.
Also, wall climbing is actually easier than it looks. You just need to start walljumping, and then press A every 7 frames, and airdash once you reach floor height.
ThatGugaWhoPlay, could you encode the WIP and put it on YouTube? That way more people can watch what we're working on :)
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
WIP so far (intro stage and Flame Mammoth) encoded by ThatGugaWhoPlay and uploaded to YouTube by me:
Link to video.mkv encode
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Nice and quick! Funny, I don't remember the stages being THAT short.
For the intro stage boss (Skullhead), I recall that X can hit him with two uncharged buster shots per jump, for a total of 4 damage (invincibility isn't triggered for the first hit, I believe.)
This means that X only needs 8 cycles (2x2=4 damage, x8=32 HP gone), which has 7 invincibility cycles, compared to Zero's 11 cycles (3x11=33 damage), and has 10 invincibility cycles.
Feel free to correct me if I'm completely wrong, as it's been a while since I've played this game, back when there was an real-time speedrun being considered on SDA.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
I used 23.5 svn394. Most if not all "23.5" versions should work.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
We're around the start of Sigma Stage 2. Unfortunately I haven't been able to touch it in a while because I've been very busy IRL.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I cant watch the WIP
it gave me this ERROR:
"Failed to read complete save game tempvbaread.sav (0)"
I dont know whats wrong with the emulator im using vba-rerecording-v21
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Use VBA-rr v23.5. That should work.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.