This is a new Rockman TAS, mostly an update to the previous version though.
Changes:
Cutman battle improved by 4 frames. Thanks to Vatchern!
Wily1-Wily4 (excluding Wily4 refights) improved by about 16 frames.
One more refill in Wily2. Costs 20 frames. Wins a couple of seconds in Wily4.
Bombman refight glitched, death. Resulting lots of gain. Other refights skipped totally. Thanks to Arne the Adjective and FinalFighter! (Thanks to Arne again for reminding me about FinalFighter's refined technique to this.)
New attribute: Uses death to save time.
90% of the last battle was played by BisqBot. I created a new algorithm core in the bot that simulated literally what a human would do in such situation; only saving lots of work. (Previous versions of BisqBot have always used random input combinations.)
AngerFist's contribution to this movie comes from his part
in the previous version. He played the Gutsman fight and
the Bombman fight (the first), and he prevailed at luck
manipulation in Cutman stage, and helped optimize
a couple of rooms.
Ps: The rerecord count is arbitrary. At some point, it was going to say 6268371 -- somehow the value was accidentally copied from BisqBot's progress file. So I edited it manually.
Ah, indeed. BisqBot did play some parts of this movie. Specifically, the 14-frame improvement in Wily1 is thanks to BisqBot, and the Bombman refight escape technique was perfected by BisqBot. And of course, he manipulated the refills in Wily2 and beat CWU-01P. And, played 90% of Wily4 battle.
As for Bombman refight escape... I disassembled Bombman's AI entirely. That way, I knew exactly how to make it throw a bomb and how to make it jump a certain height of jump.
Edit: Submission file replaced! (15:52 --> 15:49)
Edit 2: Submission file replaced again! (15:49 --> 15:48)
Edit 3: Round numbers are nice. 56900 frames is the length now, making it 1289 frames (21.5 seconds) faster than the published movie.
Ps: This is a bigame movie. It completes on both Rockman (J) and Mega Man (U).
The whole point in TAS runs is to try to find the most optimal way of completing the game using *any* available tools. What those tools are is irrelevant: The goal is to find the optimal list of keypresses to complete the game in the minimum number of frames.
The point of a TAS is to produce results as close to possible as what a robot built to play games optimally would make. Wouldn't you say it makes perfect sense to have a program TAS for you as much as possible?
No and No
The point of a TAS is to use tools to create a movie that is BOTH fast and fun to watch.
watching mega man zoom through walls at high speed and glitch the screen may be the fastest route to wily, but i see no difference between that and the circle of the moon/zelda 2/zelda 3 glitch runs.
My point is not that I totally hate glitch runs. Sonic 3 + Knuckles and Simons Quest are 2 of my favorite runs that heavily abuse glitches
However runs that break the game to this extent should not "obsolete" runs that play the game perfectly, flawlessly and ARTISTICALLY.
One example of what I feel is the lessening artistry in TASes is the motto of "if it's faster to just ram into the enemy and take the damage than it is to skillfully dodge it, then do that" It's fast yes, but it looks bad. The only times you should go letting enemies hit you is if it lets you skip a large section (like castlevania) or if managing your health in that way makes it exciting (circle of the moon nonglitched run)
Another is this "zip through walls" nonsense. I'll admit when the first mega man 1 glitch run came out I thought it was pretty cool...but the novelty has run out. Now all I see is a game that's so broken that it's almost unrecognizable as a person playing mega man.
And lastly the whole "oh go to SDA, noob" attitude really bothers me. SDA shows human acheivement, and this site is about perfection. That much goes without saying. However I see nothing perfect about forcing mega man into a ceiling and just watching him skip huge chunks of level. It's not interesting anymore and it's not fun. Sure, you could go to SDA, but the point of TAS runs is to watch something flawless, like...say how "God" would play video games, to make something hard look easy, to make something boring look fun or just to be creative. Forcing characters into walls is severely lacking in creativity.
Since I can see thsi problem is much worse than I thought, I'm no longer abstaining. I'm voting no.
However runs that break the game to this extent should not "obsolete" runs that play the game perfectly, flawlessly and ARTISTICALLY.
...
Since I can see thsi problem is much worse than I thought, I'm no longer abstaining. I'm voting no.
But the run this would obsolete is almost identical for most of it. All this does is add a few more glitches and optimizations on top of a zillion others that are already in the published run. You're not going to unpublish the last 3 or so versions by voting no on this new one. Also, what is "artistic" is entirely a matter of opinion, and I'm sure this run is full of things that some people here would consider "artistic".
Warp wrote:
The point of a TAS is to produce results as close to possible as what a robot built to play games optimally would make.
Entertainment is also a big factor on top of that. I forgot to mention it as well, but I was making the assumption that if you can get the results as close as possible to optimal, then it shouldn't be too hard to also make sure it's entertaining whenever that can be done without losing time.
NecroVMX wrote:
One example of what I feel is the lessening artistry in TASes is the motto of "if it's faster to just ram into the enemy and take the damage than it is to skillfully dodge it, then do that" It's fast yes, but it looks bad.
It's up to the author to decide if it looks bad. Several published runs are in the "take no damage" category and were published despite being a little slower for doing that.
You're certainly right, I dislike the current run also. I'm not planning on getting anything unpublished, there are plenty that like these runs. But more traditional runs should coexist with them.
The guidelines might help. Here is a link to it for your convenience. Pay special attention to the "Be quick," "Do something unexpected," and "Be interesting" sections. Also, feel free to make your own run without glitches and submit it.
The guidelines might help. Here is a link to it for your convenience. Pay special attention to the "Be quick," "Do something unexpected," and "Be interesting" sections. Also, feel free to make your own run without glitches and submit it.
And how does reading that make this run actually interesting to watch?
By the way, here's the source code of the Wily killer utilized in the last stage.
I'm still trying to improve it though. (More recent source at http://bisqwit.iki.fi/kala/snap/bisqbotwilykillersrc.html)
(Note: The source might contain typos; this is a cleaned-up untested version. And, apparently the font ate some underscore characters.)
Sig VG wrote:
I think he's referring to the high ladder grab, like in Wily Level 2.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
A very nice movie. Most of it was the same as the last one, but skipping all the boss rematches, that was a great find. I'm voting yes, no doubt about it. Oh, and this should probably be set to "published" soon, too. :)
I'm voting yes because I can't stand Mega Man games at all and nonetheless I think this run is phenomenal. It's even more entertaining than the last published run, because this one skips the boss battles at the end. Easily one of the best videos from the site. Congratulations, starfighter!
I can't believe anyone dislikes this run. I think the only way you actually could make a Mega Man run entertaining is by using glitches and aiming for the fastest possible time.
It seems like there are plenty of people who despise Tool assisted speedruns as it is, imagine if we took away the ultimate goal of fastest time and just started "showing off".
I think TASes lose ALL meaning once they step outside the boundaries of perfection.
Once TASes aren't cold and perfect, they become very deceptive speedruns.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Because of my current inability to run a patched FCEU, I'll have to patiently wait this one out. :) Congrats on improving an already "perfect" movie even more.
Hmm, very nice noticeable and fancy wily 3 boss fight. One question though. When zipping though the last "water" filled long hallway in wily 3, does it make it faster if you rapidly press start/select all the time? I find it kind of annoying :).
Also noticeable, You seem to press select rapidly only at the end of the wily4 boss fight. are there lag problems that cause you to be(or seem to be) slower during the start of the fight(against second form)?
Other than that, Ill vote yes.
EDIT: I think the screen shot of the cutman fight is a neat idea. it looks like rockman/megaman is not even there and it looks like cutman is throwing the rock at some unmasked/fake cutman.
EDIT2: Also, thanks for thanking me for the cutman fight :D
When zipping though the last "water" filled long hallway in wily 3, does it make it faster if you rapidly press start/select all the time? I find it kind of annoying :).
When Megaman is in faintwarp, the game lags less (no collision checking).
No, Bisqwit said you have to be teleporting to zip in the water room because zipping doesn't happen in the water physics unless you teleport to switch back to the regular physics.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
No, Bisqwit said you have to be teleporting to zip in the water room because zipping doesn't happen in the water physics unless you teleport to switch back to the regular physics.
Fractal, he's actually right for once. The zipping mechanism works differently when the corridor has been flooded, but being in warp state gets around this. (I tried to find where Bisqwit explained this, but I couldn't.)
It's a good example of crying wolf though.
Yes, Bag Of Magic Food indeed did post an informative post. Hard to believe, yes.
Truncated wrote:
I tried to find where Bisqwit explained this, but I couldn't.
<adelikat> Bisqwit: after the clone fight there is that long corridor that you zip through. In the old version the sound of you pausing as you zipped started slow and gradually got faster. This time it is fast the whole time. What changed?
<Bisqwit> adelikat: The tempo by which I pressed Start. There's no other meaning to that. I played it differently. Whim.
<Bisqwit> It's not actually a lag issue. It's that the tunnel has a different horizontal movement engine than the rest of the game (due to the liquid). This engine doesn't contain zipping support. Rockman must be kept perpetually in the transformation mode in order to zip, because then it uses the default engine.
<Bisqwit >The rate of transformation is not relevant, only that he must not be allowed to stop transforming before the stripe ends.
<Bisqwit> By pressing Start while transforming, and while the previously created magnet beam still has life in it (preventing weapon dialog from being opened), he is made to transform continuously.
Sorry. I forgot that something weird happens in the tunnel (if that's what you mean by flooding).
I haven't played there in a long time, and the movie doesn't inform me.
I'm still trying to improve it though. (More recent source at http://bisqwit.iki.fi/kala/snap/bisqbotwilykillersrc.html)
(Note: The source might contain typos; this is a cleaned-up untested version. And, apparently the font ate some underscore characters.)
