Anyone done or working on a run of this game? I myself have no prior experience TASing, but I did a practice run of the first level just to see what it would be like, and it seems that it could be pretty fun. Not counting the frames lost to timing issues (dashing at the first available opportunity, hitting enemies as soon as possible) I think I did okay, except for the stupid bit about not grabbing a power so I could kill the midboss and boss faster (which cost me loads of time as far as the boss was concerned). I didn't bump into any walls at least, though I don't think I handled that deep water optimally. I'll need to do some comparisons to see what's the fastest mode of movement, and what attacks deal the most damage. Anyway, here's the m64 so you can laugh at the stupid n00b trying to TAS.
EDIT: Doh! Noob indeed! I accidentally recorded over my first attempt. Um, ignore that m64, I'll have something slightly closer to worthwhile posted in a bit.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Hmm... Every great speedrunner was a n00b once, I suppose.
Just remember:
*Always use Frame Advance. You can't make a perfect run with slow motion. Not in an action game.
*ALWAYS back-up your movies! You should have a backup folder inside your movie folder.
"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:
Here is the first level done sensibly this time. The fire abilities seem definitely faster, although I lose more time than I think I should when gaining and combining powers.
Edit-before-posting: Ah, went through and did it again, improving by two seconds, though I'm still not happy with the time lost merging the fire powers. This is rather addictive.
Looked at your movie. It's pretty good, but here's a few pointers for the first level (and probably for each level after). Mostly observations, but also hints for your levels.
1. Don't swallow the fire guy, shoot him at the second fire guy you see. It eats frames to pull out the power, unless you pull it out directly on top of an enemy.
2. Always use flame as soon as possible, and at the earliest possible moment, unless it would end with you getting hurt somehow. It eats frames like chocolate to not keep moving. If you need to, just move frame by frame for trial and error until you can past the ledge at the earliest possible moment.
3. Manipulate Waddle Dee to the far right side (easier said than done, I suppose). If you kill him on the right side, it takes less time for the crystal to pop up.
4. You don't lose speed in the air, but you lose speed from any action you take, including flying, pulling out a power, coughing up an enemy, etc... You still even move the same speed if you have something in your mouth or arms, and only get slowed down for a moment. Use this to your advantage whenever possible.
5. The fire/fire is a great form of movement, but you have to be careful of a few rules about it. 1) It's the fastest form of horizontal movement; 2) it stops you slightly when it starts and ends, so be aware of how far your target distance is; 3) it automatically stops itself so you can enter a new area, but not when you hit a wall; 4) the wings at the start damage/destroy enemies, so use that to your advantage (pesky cannons get knocked down below your path if you time it right and get close enough).
A few observations about powers and situations. If I had to guess for vertical movement, I'd guess probably fire/bomb because you don't lose too much horizontal speed with it. (It turns you into a fireworks bomb and boosts you into the air. Chains to 3 blasts that can jump you up an extra chunk) There's also rock/ice for a horizontal boost, if you want to look into that. It starts you off faster than normal speed, but slows down on a straight slope. It looks like it could be useful if you need to go downhill. Maybe... try using it until you slow down to normal speed (n number of frames?) and toggling it off and on to keep speed. You keep speed while going in and out of it, so it may be useful once you can get it in the next level.
I hope this helps you. I'm looking forward to a speedrun of this. I loved this game as a kid. I'd do a run of this myself, but I suck with the frame-advance (can't tell when the first possible frame is for my life, and even then, don't know how to work the controls in frame advance x_x;).
I remember Rock+Cutter being a good combo when you got Pitch as the carving (the small bird). I don't really know about the speed aspect, but at least with this you have all the animal forms to use for different situations.
1. Don't swallow the fire guy, shoot him at the second fire guy you see. It eats frames to pull out the power, unless you pull it out directly on top of an enemy.
Yeah - in retrospect I think the single fire-boost there is not worth the frame cost in switching powers.
2. Always use flame as soon as possible, and at the earliest possible moment, unless it would end with you getting hurt somehow. It eats frames like chocolate to not keep moving. If you need to, just move frame by frame for trial and error until you can past the ledge at the earliest possible moment.
There were some spots in the first level I lost time on as far as this is concerned; I did much better with it in the second level.
3. Manipulate Waddle Dee to the far right side (easier said than done, I suppose). If you kill him on the right side, it takes less time for the crystal to pop up.
Wiith the tactic I was using, I figured that the time lost by him bouncing was irrelevant because of the delay for the fire to end. I realize now that I could have started on the far left when he's on the right, so I finish the attack sooner.
4. You don't lose speed in the air, but you lose speed from any action you take, including flying, pulling out a power, coughing up an enemy, etc... You still even move the same speed if you have something in your mouth or arms, and only get slowed down for a moment. Use this to your advantage whenever possible.
Yeah - I experimented with doing things in the air to maintain more momentum, but it's tricky to balance the time spent moving slowly in the air before I can run again with the time spent busy doing something.
5. The fire/fire is a great form of movement, but you have to be careful of a few rules about it. 1) It's the fastest form of horizontal movement; 2) it stops you slightly when it starts and ends, so be aware of how far your target distance is; 3) it automatically stops itself so you can enter a new area, but not when you hit a wall; 4) the wings at the start damage/destroy enemies, so use that to your advantage (pesky cannons get knocked down below your path if you time it right and get close enough).
Yeah - once again, look for some improvement with this in the second level.
A few observations about powers and situations. If I had to guess for vertical movement, I'd guess probably fire/bomb because you don't lose too much horizontal speed with it. (It turns you into a fireworks bomb and boosts you into the air. Chains to 3 blasts that can jump you up an extra chunk) There's also rock/ice for a horizontal boost, if you want to look into that. It starts you off faster than normal speed, but slows down on a straight slope. It looks like it could be useful if you need to go downhill. Maybe... try using it until you slow down to normal speed (n number of frames?) and toggling it off and on to keep speed. You keep speed while going in and out of it, so it may be useful once you can get it in the next level.
With the aerial gap after the ice guy, it seemed far better to keep the fire/fire. Also, I'm beginning to wonder about the monotony of a speedrun that uses fire/fire all the time - a 100% run would probably be more entertaining, and would showcase the use of more powers. Alternatively, a powerless run might be interesting (I think this is possible). Level 2 is added to the run - I left the first level as-is partly because this is a practice run rather than one intended to be publishable, and partly because I was sick of doing the first level over and over. Same download link as before.
Heh, if you're ever going powerless somewhere, make sure to try holding an enemy over your head to see if you can gain an advantage from it. Many enemies, including ones that don't have powers, have some action they perform after you inhale them and pull them back out, such as lifting Kirby into the air or shooting things at other enemies. I think the funniest enemies to inhale, though, are those green chomping enemies in the background... not because they do anything special, but because I didn't expect you could inhale an enemy like that.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 7/1/2005
Posts: 56
Location: Central Pennsylvania, USA
Before you get too far in this, decide whether it will be a complete run or semi-complete.
Complete (beating Dark Star, showing the end credits) means that you need to get all of the crystal shards, and some of them require certain powers to access. This could not be done powerless because, even if you can unblock the crystals by spitting power combos at them (I haven't tried this), there are some obstacles that cannot be spit at. Still, due to the variety of powers needed to access all of the crystals, you could easily show off all 30-some powers.
Semi-complete (beating the Ripple Star boss) is much faster because it doesn't require any crystals, but isn't "finishing the game." However, you could do the Semi-complete run powerless, I believe.
I would rather see a complete run than an almost complete one.
Complete, 100% runs are regarded higher in my book than any other (ie: Any% Yoshi's Island run is deleted and replaced with 100% Yoshi's Island run) and I bet it's true for several other people, so it's probably better to go for a 100% run.
Roger. After getting a bit more practice with the tools I'll scrap my current run and go for a 100% run instead. SDA has a 100% speedrun that I've watched, which I'll review carefully for route inspiration. It does a lot of revisiting level 1-1 to regain the fire-fire ability; I'm not sure how much time that saves or whether I want to do that. Certainly a 100% run will require much more planning to determine which powers are the best choice to have. No damage, because I haven't seen anywhere it's possible to save time by taking damage and any TAS that involves a game with damage should be in one of those two categories.
Is it possible to search/view memory contents in Mupen64? I may be looking in the wrong places, but I haven't seen this feature.
Level 2 looks good. Much smoother. Keep working on it, I'm sure you'll get it down easily. Just relax and take it one step at a time, and you'll do great. :)
Rock Star will be when you need to deviate from fire/fire. Rock Star 2, especially, cause you'll need vertical power, and a lot of it. Fire/bomb works well. It adds decent vertical height and keeps you moving forward at walking speed. Too bad there's no super jump power, huh? :P
Fire/fire and ice/rock are the two I recommend for horizontal speed. I highly recommend fireworks (fire/bomb) for additional jumps (or reaching that out-of-reach platform). Also, I'll say now that rock/cutter will help you if you have either, a) a really high and straight wall to climb, or b) a mixture of different kinds of obstacles that need different abilities to tackle.
Right now, I'm gonna go test some power combos out. Most are attacks that slow you down or keep you still, but there are a few that are funny or useful. Especially ice/shock, that one's funny. :P
Joined: 6/4/2006
Posts: 97
Location: Everywhere including nowhere
Here's an interesting glitch that might help: Touching an enemy with the Fire/Cutter or Spark/Cutter blades will harm it, even if you didn't actually "attack" with it. You can kill some of the minibosses in about 5 seconds by just standing still.
Also remember that if you're using Fire/Cutter, you can use it to poke above you as well, and the same glitch applies.
Yeah, you just have to get the enemy on your back with the swords, so you may have to turn around sometimes unless you can swing without delay (laser sword probably does in mid-air).
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Not just that, but also rock and rock/rock, along with a few others. Most area attacks have a radius larger than Kirby that can be taken advantage of. Though the only real movement use for rock is rolling downhill, it could be used and traded off for something a bit more useful.
Oh, and I tested rock/ice, and I found out that it is REALLY useful going downhill. So useful, in fact, that you may want to think about using it when the time comes. The biggest place this helps is in Aqua Star.
I'd be doing more testing right now, but my Mupen is screwed up somehow... its running at a slower speed than normal consistently. x_x; I'll try reinstalling it and doing more testing.
Yeah... 100% kills is rather meaningless/impossible in a game with nearly Megaman-X-like levels of offscreen respawning. In the SDA video, the player creates a fire-fire powerup by spitting a fire enemy into its respawned self.
Well, I meant, you could kill every enemy that spawns. It would take more time overall but would probably force things to be less monotonous. Or maybe I'm overestimating how boring it is to fire/fire burst over everything, and/or rock/ice might turn out to be better than fire/fire in most levels.
Joined: 7/1/2005
Posts: 56
Location: Central Pennsylvania, USA
What I fear of the 100% kills thing is that Kirby will have to chase down enemies when it would be much easier just to keep going. Definitely destroy as many baddies as you can, but don't feel obligated to kill ALL of them. Besides, sometimes it's interesting to dodge monsters rather than destroy them in an instant.
Also, with the respawn rate, a monster might respawn near the edge of the screen, causing you to go back to get it, causing another baddie to respawn, ...
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I'm considering doing N64 games when I'm finished with DCK2 102%, Kirby 64 100% will be the first because it does not need an analog stick and will be the easiest to learn how to use Mupen64. I know that swimming underwater with an enemy held above is fastest swimming (might also work with whatever combo I have, because you can re-swallow it) Rock+Ice for fastest downhill motion, Rock+Cutter for the bird, and Ice+Cutter for uphill climb (it's when you get on skates, it has a pretty good jump that gives you fastest uphill speed in the air.)
As far as a TAS, many NES TASes are slower, and Kirby 64 many people are familiar with and it has an AWESOME soundtrack. Plus showing off the many combos will be fun.
Rock+Ice for fastest downhill motion, Rock+Cutter for the bird, and Ice+Cutter for uphill climb
How do those compare to Fire+Fire? It seems like Rock+Ice can beat Fire+Fire even on non-downhill sections, when it's timed perfectly, except it can't be used to cross large gaps like Fire+Fire can.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Fire+Fire does do well for gaps, but the other combos are best for the reasons I posted.
Comparison:
Fire+Fire: Best for long horizontal levels, with little/none blocks/ledges in way, good for big gaps
FF vs. Rock+Ice:
Rock+Ice is superior for downhill, good for horizontal/some uphill (not as good as ice+cutter for uphill) has no delays whatsoever, bad for gaps
FF vs. Rock+Cutter: (assuming using bird form) Takes time to become the bird (frame dependent? if so then not, I seem to recall it not being dependant on how many times I changed but when I changed so most likely luck manipulation makes getting the bird first easy) , no delay in movement (with extra rolls when you land) good horizontal/vertical speed, can't go through slopes vertically (you have to go around them when going straight up) Limited number of flaps so not as much vertical height can be gained as with normal Kirby, but flaps are faster than normal Kirby's puffs
FF vs. Ice+Cutter:
little delay in starting/stopping, good for downhill/uphill, great jumping ability (hard to control but nets good results), potential gap crossing with perfectly timed jumps, only hurts enemies when you jump
FF vs. Rock+Spike:
constant speed slightly faster than normal walking but slower than fire, easy to kill enemies, no start delay, some stop delay, potential boss killer
FF vs. Fire+Bomb
Great vertical scaling combo, wonderful for killing enemies by creating a huge bomb radius, no losing horizontal speed, DO NOT use underwater, make sure the last blast is as close to a horizontal surface as possible for least amount of delay
Rock/Rock+Rock: Avoid these they provide less speed on downhills than ice+rock, and aren't the best boss killers either
I'd say to not rely on any one, but to use all three depending on the situation, you have to strategically change combos all the time to reach certain Crystals but if one level can quickly set up one of the non fire combos, then you shouldn't enter star world level one just to get Fire Fire because situationally, the places to use the other combos work best with said combos.
Boss Killers:
The best boss killing combos are:
Bomb+Cutter: The best in my opinion. using frame advance, it has the quickest damage output from a long range without making you fall down, so you can jump in midair and stay there throwing bombs. This combo is better than Rock+Spike. best place to use: Robot boss
Bomb: the SDA run had it right for the orca boss, I used Bomb+fire on the console when I first played but plain bomb is superior.
Light+Cutter: great speed, constant damage
Rock+Fire: used for one of the minibosses to get a crystal, but a machine gun volcano is never bad
Light+Light: you don't even have to aim, the radius is huge, the damage hits the boss on the first possible moment and kills all the stray enemies too.
Spike: pretty good, hits for consisten damage
Light+Spike: fast damage
Rock+Light: very fun, very hard to control, but you can get the lightning rock stuck and repeatedly damage the boss, or just get close and keep shooting out the rock over and over, because it is fast. But be warned, no floating while the rock is out.
also, if you only need the combo for a boss, you can take out the combo star and use it as the last hit
before each transition to the next part of the level, use a slide, making sure that with 1/4 of the slide left you hit the activation to walk to the next area so there is no delay
when/if anyone besides me starts this ( I am very tempted right now to start working on it after my DCK2 102%), plan in the run which combo to use at all given times in the entire run. For example, in Shiver star level 1 (snowland) you start with fire+fire, then pick up ice and cutter at the first enemies you can and use that all the way through level 2 (clouds) until you need to pick up light+spike for the mini boss. Look at each level beforehand to see if a speed combo is fast to get to- if not go ahead and use fire+fire if the level is not mostly uphill/vertical.
I think that's it. And like Bag of Magic Food said, some enemies do stuff when you hold them over your head- use em.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Just did some testing, have a few pointers and a few questions.
Ice+cutter=bad. it's not as fast as I remembered.
Ice+Rock= great for downhill, it will run out of speed so you have to restart the spinning sequence again
rock+spike=pretty handy
I have a few questions about mupen though.
I got the game tp run fine- I use Kirby 64- The Crustal Shards (U) [!]. however, I tried to use Frame advance but that didn't work. Slow down works, movie recording works (I can see the frame count and such). My problem is when the game is playing the Mupen window dominates, and the analog thing makes whatever mouse action register for the game. I can't access the menu of the emulator, I can't minimalize, I can't click on stuff outside the emulator. the only way I can quit is through crtl+alt+del. Should I disable this function or does Mupen naturally do that?
