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Posted: 8/28/2006 2:15 AM
Post subject: Mission: Impossible
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Heisanevilgenius
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Has anyone attempted a TAS of this game before? It seems to have potential.
Posted: 8/28/2006 7:14 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Okay, I decided to try it out. This game is actually very easy to optimize for a TAS, which is funny because the game is really hard to play normally. You'd probably have to be familiar with the game to find the run very entertaining, but there is some universal appeal I think. The basic tactic is to constantly use Grant. He's the fastest of the three agents. His attack is close range, but it's just as powerful as Max's gun, and his secondary attack is extremely useful to stun enemies (and thus prevent them from blocking his way so he can just ease his way past them.) I may experiment with some of the others for certain areas. Max might be better for certain boss battles because of his range, and Nicholas can be useful for dealing multiple hits with his boomerang, or using disguises to run past enemies (if Grant's gas doesn't do the job.) I may also switch to other agents quickly so they can take damage instead of Grant (if he runs low on health) which in the long run can save time and prevent me from having to seek out medical kits. Since two of the levels are vehicle levels (fast-paced racing/shooting, similar to Spy Hunter) that alone would make this very well-suited for a TAS.
Posted: 8/28/2006 7:51 PM
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hero_of_the_day
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This is indeed a very hard game. Though it wouldn't make for a jaw dropping tas, it would be cool to see such a diffuclt game get owned. Have you seen the console speed run at the speed demo arhives yet? It has some good strategies. If I recall correctly some key items have random placement, so luck manipulation would play a huge factor in getting a good time. I am looking forward to see how this runs turns out, good luck.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Posted: 8/28/2006 8:07 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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hero of the day wrote:
If I recall correctly some key items have random placement, so luck manipulation would play a huge factor in getting a good time.
Yes. As a matter of fact, the first randomly placed item (The pass in the first level) seems to spawn in the closest possible place when the game starts optimally (I skip each dialogue at the earliest possible frame, etc) so the luck was manipulated for me. :D As far as I remember, all randomized items only appear in one of two places, so luck manipulation would be 50/50 and thus not hard at all.
Posted: 8/29/2006 2:12 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Nice! I just discovered my first exploitable glitch. If you walk right at the very edge of a plank of wood when deadly sludge is pouring out a drain, you can walk right through the sludge without taking damage.
Posted: 8/29/2006 2:55 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Here's a WIP: http://hyena.kiwibonga.com/Mission%20Impossible.fcm About maybe 1/3 to 1/2 done the first level. I should note that sometimes the switch between two characters is so fast that you don't even notice. At one part where I get hit head-on by a molotov and seem to take no damage, that's because I quickly switched characters so that Nicholas would take the damage instead, then switch back once it's done. Also, I've discovered that the glitch in the above post doesn't always happen. It seems to happen only when walking through sludge from a storm pipe on the south wall. It's either that or I have to walk along the northern edge of the plank. I'm not quite sure. I may have to find out, depending on how much damage I'm able to take throughout the level.
Posted: 8/29/2006 4:38 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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http://hyena.kiwibonga.com/Mission%20Impossible.fcm I've made it to the blowers. Those are Hell to navigate, TAS or not. I imagine even a completely optimal route through them will look very very sloppy.
Posted: 8/29/2006 5:21 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Hahaha! I have honestly no idea how or why this worked, but in one of the rooms with trip lasers that sound the alarm, I walked right through them and nothing happened. Obviously a huge time-saver. I seriously do not know how I glitched it, either. I just tried to run through as fast as possible. Not just once, either. I walked through at least three of them. By the way, the blowers weren't as hard as I'd thought. I managed to shoot through that area pretty quickly. I can't wait to get to Level 2.
Posted: 8/29/2006 7:58 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Heh. There's something remarkable about the amount of progress I'm making in this game. Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six is six levels. I did the TAS in 6:03, and it took me months (on and off). This TAS, so far, is 5:28 long, I'm still on the first level, and I've made that much progress in two days.
Posted: 8/29/2006 8:12 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Although I seem to be the only person posting here, one person did express interest and so far this is going really really well. I'm finished the first level. WIP here: http://hyena.kiwibonga.com/Mission%20Impossible.fcm Point of interest: Normally you're supposed to hit a switch to turn off the power grid on an electrical trap. I didn't, and just walked right through it. I managed to get in and out fast enough to only take four points of damage from the trap. Playing normally on a console it's difficult to take less than six, and you wouldn't dare take that much damage on such a difficult game.
Posted: 8/29/2006 8:25 PM
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Shinryuu
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I'll watch your WIP tomorrow.. :) I like NES games but i have not heard this game before ~ keep going :)
Posted: 8/29/2006 8:48 PM
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Randil
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I just watched this, and it looked good, so keep it up! :) Two things: 1. Have you checked out the speed run at SDA yet? Here it is if you haven't seen it yet. 2. This is not really fun to say... and I don't want to complain or anything, but it is actually possible to start the game a whole 185 frames faster. I have a WIP showing this if you want to see, but you could probably find out how to skip the start menu faster by using frame advance or so... Perhaps you could hex-edit this into the run or so, I know it's a pain to redo things. Although 185 frames is quite much, moe than 3 seconds, so you should probably look this up. Here is an .fcm showing how to do the startmenu 185 frames faster. Other than that, I look forward to the next WIP, good luck, Hyena! :)
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Posted: 8/29/2006 11:59 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Ouch. Don't know how I missed that. Thanks for pointing that out. Is the only way to hex-edit to convert to Famtasia format, edit, then convert back? I've never done hex editing with NES games before. Looks like a pain :/ And by the way, I haven't watched the SDA run yet. (Downloading now.) I just figured the game, although horrendously difficult, is pretty straightforward and I thought I could figure it out pretty easily. Edit: I'll figure out the hex editing later. I'll just finish the movie, and fixing up the starting dialogue will be my last step.
Posted: 8/30/2006 2:46 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Finished Level 2. :D http://hyena.kiwibonga.com/Mission%20Impossible.fcm As a funny footnote: Ending the level the way I did, once again luck manipulated the pass in the next level to show up in the much faster route. I'm not sure how or why, since Level 2 seems to be fixed-length, but I later played from a save state just before ending the level and the pass was in a different place. I wonder if your health at the end of the level has anything to do with it.
Posted: 8/30/2006 6:59 PM
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Randil
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About hex-editing, I have no idea how to do it either. Though I do know that you don't need to convert the moviefile to .fmv or anything. If you ask Bisqwit or perhaps Hanzou or Guybrush nicely, perhaps they will help you with the hex-editing. I'll take a look at your new WIP later.
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Posted: 8/30/2006 7:13 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Heh. Worst comes to worst, I can just start a new one from the beginning and open the original run in a new window and copy everything it does :p. Would be a huge pain in the ass, but much faster than redoing everything from scratch. Hmm. Then I might hex-edit to add the re-record count from the original to the new one, to make it more accurate. Otherwise it would be ridiculously low. I can just see the reactions. "What? 15 re-records!?" Anyway, the FAQ says that using nesmock to convert to FMV is the way to go. If that's not completely true, it should be updated.
Posted: 8/30/2006 7:15 PM
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JXQ
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You should hex-edit anything at the beginning as early as possible because it may desync later, and that would mean less overall work to redo. For FCM, converting to FMV is the way to go with hex-editing, because FCM's format is not straightforward one-byte to one-frame like FMV is.
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Posted: 8/31/2006 3:44 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Okay, I'll attempt to do so now. By the way, Randil, I managed to beat your startup by five frames, so I save 190 instead of 185. Let's hope everything comes out okay. I'm always very wary of doing hex editing. Making a backup just in case. Edit: Wait a minute.... You need a C++ compiler just to run nesmock? Am I missing something? Edit again: Wait, I see it. The latest version for Windows is two versions ago. Is there anything in the latest two versions that are crucial?
Posted: 8/31/2006 5:24 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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What the?? Okay, I did the hex-editing. All the input all the way up to frame 1724 or so is identical in the new movie. Yet, it causes a desync before that frame. (The pass spawns in a different place) I don't understand the problem. Every single frame, up until past that point, is exactly the same. Edit: Hmm. Looking at the FCM files in a hex editor shows that stuff other than just the frame count has been messed with. Maybe a problem with the old version of nesmock? By the looks of it, it no longer considers the movie to start from a reset (even though they both start on the same frame) and the md5sum of the ROM, rom name etc, are all rearranged. Lucky I made a backup, eh? So how would I fix this?
Posted: 8/31/2006 6:20 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Okay, crisis averted.
JXQ wrote:
You should hex-edit anything at the beginning as early as possible because it may desync later, and that would mean less overall work to redo.
Man, were you right. It's going to take quite a while to fix the desyncs. They mostly seem to be with scene transitions. Enemy behaviour and whatnot are all seemingly based on stuff that happens in each room, so that's not a problem. But here and there it looks like the black screen between scenes takes up shorter or longer periods of time. Periodically I'll have to move my input back by one frame at some places, and forward one frame in other places. It should probably even out so that it takes the same amount of time, and I'll still have saved 190 frames. I hope it's all worth it.
Posted: 8/31/2006 11:49 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Here's the funny bit. Everything is now syncing properly up until the room with the trip wire lasers, which now sound the alarm when I step on them. Since I have no idea what caused the walk-right-through-them glitch in the first place, I'm now going to need to find out. I'm hoping it's some sort of case of luck manipulation. Once I have that figured out, the rest of it seems like it'll be very easy to reproduce.
Posted: 9/1/2006 4:57 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Okay, I've figured it out. It's actually pretty easy. Strangely, the key seems to be walking through them at exactly the edge of each "square" that the laser goes through. This means that hugging the wall will allow you to pass right through them, but also walking at the exact middle between two squares will do it. You can do this diagonally as well. I wasted a lot of time and re-records when the answer was very simple. This seems to somehow be related to the sludge damage principle, but I'm not sure exactly how that works either.
Posted: 9/1/2006 5:10 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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Okay, this is crazy! The time-saving feature Randil brought up saved be 190 frames exactly. Because a car was spawned differently, I may have wasted one frame to avoid it. So it's a difference of 189 frames. One scene transition required me to add a frame so we're now at 188 frames saved. Then later, I find a transition is actually four frames faster. So now it's 192 frames. Apart from the one wasted frame dodging the car, this was all done with hex-editing, so no new stuff was added. I went through that very short laser grid room and re-recorded it. The room takes a couple of seconds to shoot through. It's possible it may be a few frames faster than before, but I may have also been a frame or two slower because I had to reposition myself a little bit to go through the exact middle between laser grids (which I didn't have to do as much before because the run spawned me at the right moment that the laser switched just before I walked through). The exact frame I exit that room in the original run is 15261. I checked twice. In the new run, I exit the room at frame 14083. Again I checked twice. I subtracted 14083 from 15261 and I got 1178. I checked this many times. How could I possibly have saved 1178 frames!?!? I'm baffled. Edit: Somehow after checking this thing TWICE I read it wrong. It was 14261. I saved 178 frames, which is MUCH more believable.
Posted: 9/3/2006 8:57 PM
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Heisanevilgenius
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After a lot of trial and error, I now have it back up to normal, with one small difference. In level 2, I now take damage from the helicopter shootout (where I narrowly miss it before all the new improvements) otherwise the boat race is exactly the same. I'll probably have to edit it (was thinking about redoing the helicopter bit anyway since half of the time I unintentionally manipulated the helicopter into not firing instead of dodging the attacks, which would be more entertaining.) I'll back it up anyway. The way it is right now, the pass is still spawned in the good place in level 3. Hopefully redoing the helicopter part won't alter that somehow. Overall, thanks to Randil's tip, I've saved 181 frames. My rerecord count has shot up, though, from 1943 to 2445. This is because of three rooms I redid (a couple weren't quite optimal anyway) and because I manually altered the FCM files to add 1 to the rerecord every time I hex-edited. I figured hex-editing is like a re-record anyway, and that would keep the number more accurate. I'm a dork that way.
Posted: 9/4/2006 7:18 AM
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Heisanevilgenius
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:D http://hyena.kiwibonga.com/M-I_NEW.fcm Certain parts of Level 1 are more optimal, level 2 is more entertaining now, the pass in level 3 is still spawned in the good place. Yay!
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