I have to do a personal project for school. So I'm making a TAS. Are there any good ones that I can do impressively in under 20 minutes? I'd like a game that won't take 8 months, like Mega Man supposedly did.
Hmz... I wish I could do a TAS for school...
Either way, NES Kirby is a great game (also for TASing), and the current published run is improvable. But since you mentioned you didn't want to spend too much time on it (if Kirby is done 'right', it will take a long time), I wouldn't recommend NES Kirby.
I wouldn't really know what to recommend, since the more time you put into it, the better the result will look. I would pick a game which, when TASed, shows something that obviously couldn't be done with regular playing.
Check out the Famtasia movies in the thread here (in General). Most of these are pretty easy to obsolete with FCEU.
Some games needing runs are Paperboy, Klax, and Dr. Mario.
If you're not worried about getting your run published, you could try doing a different category run. Like, playing Tetris in B-type, level 19 height 5. Or, a Mario run without getting any powerups.
For making the TAS, you should allocate about 1 hour per minute of gametime. Although some games take even more time than this.
I would suggest doing a super mario 2 TAS. If it's for a school project, you don't need to get it published here, so it wouldn't matter if it's slower than the current run (your teachers/classmates won't care for frames anyway). You'll have a short movie which shows plenty of cool stuff, which wouldn't be possible in normal playing.
Luke wrote:
Some games needing runs are ... and Dr. Mario.
I'd vote 'no' to any Dr. Mario movie which isn't faster than this+1 second. I'm completely accepting that this submission was rejected... but I do think it sets a standard for what a Dr. Mario run should at least accomplish (note that I mentioned '+1 second' since I used a soft reset).
Super Mario 2 sounds like a fun game to TAS; however, I want the created run to also be submitted to this site, because I love having my work shown off. I'd definitely consider it if I didn't have much extra time, though. Survival Kids is short, but not impressive.
I have to do a personal project for school. So I'm making a TAS. Are there any good ones that I can do impressively in under 20 minutes? I'd like a game that won't take 8 months, like Mega Man supposedly did.
1) Have you discussed this with your teacher?
2) Have you considered making a "How a TAS is made" documentary instead of making a TAS? Running an entire game takes a long time. Just about any TAS will have moments where not much happens. Most people won't at your school probably won't understand what a TAS is. Also, while making a TAS is certainly a fun hobby, it's not very scholarly. A report that provides and in-depth explaination an unusual activity to those who haven't heard of the activity before, on the other hand, can be quite scholarly.
You could make a documentary video that explains concepts like save states and slow motion. You could then use short clips of various games to demonstrate TAS techniques and, instead of having to go through a long run of one game, you could pick and choose moments from games that best illustrate a particular concept.
Examples of games that would make for good clips for illustrating a particular concept:
* Monopoly--Show a non-TAS first turn that ends up with the player rolling some random number. Then, show how one can manipulate luck and get any die rolls you want, whenever you want them.--e.g., you can roll 6-6, 4-4 and 5-3 and buy both utilities on the first turn.
* Almost any console RPG: Set up a fight that's too tough to beat normally. Show how playing the fight normally leads a quick, overwhelming defeat and the Game Over Screen. Then show a clip that demostrates how one can manipulate luck in a TAS to make that same fight an overwhelming victory by having perfect offense and defense.
* Pit Fighter--show some normal non-assisted attempts at combos and then string together one of the many insane combos one can make using frame advance. Dr. Kong Jr. is also another great game for showing how frame-by-frame precision can grant entirely new abilities.
* Mega Man 1--show a nonassisted run of a room where Mega Man goes from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen to move to the next room. Then show how using the Elec Beam and frame advance lets you skip all that running around by jumping so far above the screen that the game.
* You might want to show a clip that demonstrates how a TAS run can keep a boss in permanent hitstun. I do this on boss #4 in my unpublished Shadow Dancer run (http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3510) but there might be a better example in another game.
A documentary would take lots of work - perhaps more than a TAS. At any rate, anything short of pornography is allowed in this personal project. I feel that a TAS of Gunstar Super Heroes will be impressive enough that people will be interested.
