Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
If it really takes that long, then kraid early may be the better option if it is decided to keep the charge/wave beams. If I recall, when I timed them both, doing the kraid detour later in the game was faster than doing the early pbs in red brinstar. I will need to check on the exact times again to see how they stack up against the 15+ seconds it costs to do varialess norfair.
I timed the Backtrack for the Early PB to be around 15 seconds plus the difference in the PB room because you don't have PB to blow the wall earlier and the difference in the next room till the activation of the door transition. If these two rooms are for example 3 seconds slower, then Early PB would cost around 18 seconds. Of course the PB will save some time in Norfair so if you consider that the backtrack would be less.
Here is how i timed it:
Red Brinstar Shaft up with CWJ till pre-pb-room
04:03:35
03:55:10
-----------
00:08:25
Spiked room right to left:
07:17:73
07:15:25
----------
00:02:48
Brinstar Shaft Backtrack (The time it takes to go all the way down from the top less the time it takes to go all the way down coming from Noob Bridge)
00:09:67
00:06:23
----------
00:03:44
TOTAL
08:25
02:48
03:44
-------
14:57
EDIT:
Using JXQ's run i timed the backtrack to the Missile in Kraid's area as beeing 19 seconds and 51 frames. It's probably improvable, but it still seems more than it takes to get the PB earlier in Red Brinstar.
I am having trouble understanding where any time would be saved by going down blue brinstar. To me it seems that every room would be a wash with the exception that you would need to fall down the old tourian escape shaft 2 additional times, which would add a ridiculous amount of time to the run. Also, not having the screw attack for blue brinstar is way worse than not having the screw attack for pink brinstar. I could be wrong though, so if you wouldn't mind, can you explain in greater detail where time would be saved?
As for the ice beam, I can only think of 1-2 places where it would save time. Of course as you mention, the spring ball area is the biggest. Again in this case, I cannot see how the cost of doing the ice speed gate room twice is less than the time saved having the ice beam early.
According to my spreadsheet, hitting the gauntlet, going down blue, and then going up green used 15647 ingame frames, while going hitting the gauntlet, going down green, then going up blue used 16549 ingame frames. That's a difference of 902 ingame frames, suggesting an in game savings of around 15 seconds.
"Why" is a good question to ask here and unfortunately I don't have the conclusive answer you are most likely seeking. I would assume it's to do with the way the game naturally flows, as an example you can save a couple of seconds traversing the Dachora room going left instead of going right. However, I specifically did all of this examination so that I WOULDN'T have to think about what conceptually "feels" faster. I'd just have numbers to point to (see the bottom of this post.)
I apply the same reasoning to getting the Ice beam early. However in this case, it's easier to explain. You have a lot of really short rooms with a lot of door transitions, so while you're burning a lot of realtime, you're not burning a lot of gametime. I wouldn't have suggested this route with a realtime goal in mind. For realtime, you either get ice, or you get grapple before WS, but not both. For game time, you get ice for sure, and you maybe get Grapple before WS. Only about a third of the time spent in the ice beam area actually counts toward the game clock. The places where it saves time either substantially reduce ingame time (springball being the prime example) or just allow you to move more quickly (like the red brinstar shaft)
I will also note that I don't agree with going for early power bombs in this run because you will likely be heading up the red shaft anyway, and also you'll likely be getting Crocomire's PBs before WS. You can find my comparison of early PBs vs. no early PBs as B1 and B2 in my spreadsheet.
--
Here's a zip with the spreadsheet plus all of the movies files relevant to it: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6998359/SM100routes.zip The spreadsheet is Excel 2007 format and the movies are SNES9x 1.51.
Feel free to go through at your leisure and determine if you do or do not agree with my conclusions. An effort was made to have a consistent cutoff point for each room (the script I used cuts at the first frame of a door transition.) I also did my best to eliminate things that were unnecessary to time, for example anything before charge beam. Rooms that were applicable to other branches simply had the times duplicated. Hence a segment labelled "Norfair elevator to Ripper shaft" could happen at several points in the run, and likely in consistent ways. I tried to used common sense when determining whether I needed to record a new segment or not. Room times listed in blue in the spreadsheet are duplicates and simply point to the original cell. Room times listed in black are the originals and should be represented in a movie file somewhere in the zip.
This package is not geared toward TASing, it's geared toward console play, and thus tries to emulate a "perfect" console player (but not to the extremes that a TASer would be.) Rerecords were not spared in these recordings, but they were all recorded at 75% speed.
Let me know if you have any questions about this.
It seems going for early pb and kraid would cost around 23 seconds if i timed it right. Around 18 seconds for early pb and around 5 seconds (maybe more) for doing kraid's area without speedbooster. It seemd to me that varia suit + power bomb would save less than 15 seconds in Norfair which would make this route at least 8 seconds slower.
I tried but couldn't test the difference between early missile pack and late missile pack on bubble room. Could someone take a look, please?
Also, don't the strategies linked to charge and wave save enough time? I'll try to time the differences later.
Early missile pack does seem slightly slower, but the energy might be necessary to avoid an extra round of refills, (which saves a lot more time than getting the missile late), and there's no extra drop you can pick up anywhere else. Don't know how much time the damageboost on the ripper before the missile saves, if it's really necessary that could be skipped too if it doesn't cost too much.
I don't remember all the charge/wave exclusive timesavers that were found or how much they added up to. I know that I thought it would be a close call but too much time spent on refilling might push it into being unlikely to save any time.
Early PB or early Kraid can probably be ruled out though, it seems like early norfair must be the best choice whether you get charge/wave or not.
Yeah, I have one that goes up to the pipe bugs after the speedbooster, but everything from the bubble rooms is preliminary.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/user/cpadolf
The damageboost on the waver definitely makes taking the missile late faster as I'm pretty sure that damageboost is not possible after taking the missile pack. I really really want to get two big energy balls from the green enemies but it's close to impossible to do so. I thought about refilling my health in the reserve-tank at this point to manipulate luck while in the pause screen, but this means I get full health before the first visit to the pipe bugs (and skipping it and doing an extra on the way back is ~40 frames slower). This is probably the most crucial part of the run, and it's accordingly frustrating.
Nice! I'll take a look at this as soon as i get home. Btw, are you sure taking the missile pack later is just slightly faster? Maybe it could garantee a wave of bugs...
Well I really don't think it could be enough to justify another round of refilling but I'd have to test taking it later more closely.
EDIT: If I counted correctly then according to the test I made, taking the missile late seems to be about 90 frames faster if the damageboost on the waver on the way to speedbooster is taken on the first trip through the room. If the 20 energy that you lose doing this absolutely forces another round of refills it should still be slightly slower, but hopefully its manageable.
smv
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
CP,
I just ran a quick test on that smv you posted. If you land on the spikes and damage boost towards the missile pack, it is actually about 8 frames faster. Also, you can plant the PB right above the missile pack and the blast radius will clear the blocks.
Based on the bizhawk file you posted above, I don't see why you would need to get the missile pack early.
Dessyreqt,
Thank you for posting your smv's and detailed spreadsheet. Your route suggestion really intrigues me. I will take a look through all the smv's to see where most of the gains are being generated.
I think you need to place the PB too high up for it to possibly be beneficial, because placing it after getting up doesn't really waste much time. But with boosting on the spikes and maybe a few more frames from optimization, it does put it almost exactly at the time it takes to get another refill at the pipe bugs. This is perhaps another slight help to justify early charge/wave. Without them, and without picking up either that missile pack or the missile pack on the way to wavebeam, and also wasting the additional 5 missiles back at the first super missile as well as not having charge on croco, missiles would probably run a bit short at croco (and potentially at Phantoon) and some time would be wasted refilling them.
Would another wave of bugs be enough to solve the health/ammo issues?
Edit: Managed to improve it a bit more by landing the power bomb earlier.
Not Optimized smv
Edit 2: Just watched your wip, Cp. In that room with the missile pack inside the lava, the one before the lava rising room, isn't it worth getting a big health drop from the first crab?
i have trouble to watch a bkm.. or even play super metroid on this new bizhawk thing..
ive installed pre-reqs .net 4.0 and then a fresh bizhawk
when i load super metroid it runs with 21~ fps and the sound awfully stutters and lags
what must i do?
(i dont think its my PC-specs 2,6ghz dualcore/8gb ram/512mb gfx card/ssd or?)
Edit 2: Just watched your wip, Cp. In that room with the missile pack inside the lava, the one before the lava rising room, isn't it worth getting a big health drop from the first crab?
Yeah it was, it was actually even faster to get it that way, so that's good :P
Great work on the smv too!
EDIT: Managed the run to Wavebeam with 4 rounds at the pipebugs, which is the best that could have been hoped for. Had to make some small sacrifices on the way to wave though, getting an extra energy ball from a fireball on the way down and opening the first red door with only missiles. I still need some pretty good drops at the two spots with pipebugs before croco as I'm low on supers and still pretty low on health but it should be possible. Still didn't manage to get two big energy balls from those green enemies that hang from the ceiling which is frustrating. Also didn't manage to get en extra energy ball on the way down after speedbooster either in the way the previous RBO did, but I think that costs ~20 frames to do so it might not have been worth it anyway if I can manage with what I have. I'm probably going to look through some parts again before proceeding to see if there are any possible improvements.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/user/cpadolf
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
I just watched the updated run.
I was wondering if it may have been better to do 2 rounds of pipe bugs in the first visit, and use the Rtank in between the rounds. This would allow for perfect luck manipulation on the 2nd round. Maybe you did this when you used the rtank on the speedbooster escape, so sorry if that is the case.
I am also unsure if the slow downs in the wave area were necessary. You have enough health to run through it, so slowing for to get the big E did not seem needed. I also think that since you will have the wave beam for croco, super missiles are not as important and 1 could have been spared here to open the door faster.
You also missed a huge damage boost when leaving the speed booster area. This saves over half a second, and the time saved should save enough HP from the heat to be almost equal to the cost of the damage boost.
Yeah I used the refill pause to manipulate the first wave after speedbooster. I considered doing what you said, but because I was relatively close to full health I couldn't have gained an optimal amount of health on the second round without some of it going to waste. The big energy ball on the way to wavebeam is definitely necessary, because although I leave the area with 23 HP I get down to 4 or something before I reach the refills at the end. Doing the damageboost when leaving the speedbooster area cost 6 more energy than not doing it, which again would make me go under 0 before leaving the wave area. Although, it might be possible to still use it and do a pause when I reach 0 HP which would keep me alive, and if I could reach the door before entering the pause screen the pause would be cancelled.
About the super missiles. It's possible, I don't really know exactly how much time each one would save.
It's a shame lady luck didn't smile at you. A big health drop from green creatures when returning from speedbooster or two when going for speedbooster would probably make possible the damage boost mentioned by hero and probably would cancel the need for that big health drop from the fire ball. Btw, if you use a super missile on the pink door going for wave beam you would save some time which means waste less health, would it make any difference?
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
If using 1 super missile on the red door would save the 2 hp needed to do the damage boost in the bubble room, I would say that it might just be worth doing the damage boost.
That's definitely possible. Might have to run some tests on croco though.
Anyway, I don't think Ice beam seems to be worth getting early. The detour seem to be a little under 5 seconds, and adding the extra time it would take to get icebeam without springball, possibly having to refill on the crawlers and definitely not being able to damageboost on them on the way to icebeam, as well as probably having to spend some extra time refilling before going to the ice beam to survive the heat with enough health for Kraid it's probably getting closer to 6 seconds or more. The time saved getting springball looks to be around 4.5 seconds, and I don't think there are many more gains.
See how it goes till crocomire, iirc you can get to him with just 1 health point and use a CWJ from his hitbox to reach the E.T. without dying. If health is not an issue and if you can handle him well enough without many supers, maybe that damage boost falling on the vertical room could still be worth...
Just curious, is it possible to know around what frame you would have a double health drop from the green bats on the way to speedbooster? Or maybe one health and one super...
Just curious, is it possible to know around what frame you would have a double health drop from the green bats on the way to speedbooster? Or maybe one health and one super...
I noticed while working on the RBO that some drops would change when doorlag was added, predominately rare drops such as Super Missiles and Power Bombs. So even though a droppattern was repeated it could be altered slightly to change some drops into more favorable drops (this is even more apparent while manipulating drops from Botwoon, where all the drops could be the same but one when doorlag is added). This made no sense to me at the moment, but that's Super Metroid for you. We managed to change 2 Super Missile drops to 2 Big Health drops.
Isn't that normal? I mean, i noticed that what determine the drop is the realtime frame it appears, so adding lag during door transition would change the realtime frame the drop will appear changing it to another. Isn't that right?
