Hi there! You probably don't know me, but I've been a regular visitor of this site for a few years now. After having watched countless of TASes, I decided to see what the fuss was all about about and try making one for myself.
The game I used is "Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions", one of the few games I own myself and hasn't been TAS'ed before. During the last week or so, I started making a test run of the game to get familiar with the game again and for route planning purposes.
Daffy Duck - Testrun
Obviously this run isn't optimized at all, since I didn't have as much TAS experience and knowledge of the game at start. Now, I started with another run and I just finished the second mission, being 4160 frames (1m 9s) ahead of the test run.
Daffy Duck - WIP Mission 1+2
Now, I'd love to have some feedback on my work until now, since I'm having trouble criticizing myself. Also if you're having questions about my WIP, I'll be glad to answer them.
EDIT: Moved WIPs to Microstorage.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
This is a great game, and the physics can be totally manipulated for super speeds. The game might get super repetetive, though, since a lot of the levels are very boring and passé.
For past input, the old thread for this game can be found here.
It looks pretty optimized; i can't think of any improvements. Though, aren't you supposed to do it in hard mode? The boss battles would be more interesting that way. Could you explain the up down move you're doing?
I like your avatar, by the way.
Zurreco: Thanks for the link, though it's a shame it didn't contain any usable information. Also, could you elaborate on what you meant with 'super speeds'? As far as I know, the vertical speed is capped at 8 pixels/frame and horizontal speed at 3 pixels/frame (unless you're standing on a moving platform, or sliding down a slope).
Bob A: The only impact 'hard mode' has on the game, is the amount of damage done by Daffy. So when playing hard mode, I thought boss battles might get more boring instead of interesting, since you're basically doing the same thing, but taking more time.
The short answer to the up/down trick is whenever you press up or down, your speed remains the same for 2 frames. However, it also takes 2 frames to change Daffy's sprite from standing to crouching/looking up. So when up and down are pressed every other frame, Daffy keeps moving at the same speed, while his sprite is stuck either looking up, or crouching. The latter can be nice for dodging object, but, of course, it looks kinda cool too :).
I watched your runs and they look solid. After watching the first one I had a big list to give you but I see you found them out for yourself. :D The only difference is that I'm doing it on hard and have to pick up a special weapon here and there and I doubt I'll be able to do your martian level trick of rocketing under the level...
In my opinion, the boss battles are too short and simplistic. Doing it in hard mode would require preserving health and ammo (probably for the bosses that cause the most unnecesary waiting), which would be more interesting and entertaining. By the way, what's your rational for buying the ammo you did for the first mission boss?
I did buy 20x Bomb Gun Ammo since I need 12 of them at the boss and they go in stacks of 10. The 10 Anti-Matter Gun Ammo I buy is not used in the first level. But, since buying one stack of ammo can be done without losing time and I need more than 10 during the second mission, I decided to buy one stack in advance to save one frame.
About the hard-mode issue: it's true that it will be more challenging to TAS, and maybe more entertaining to watch, but I'm still quite new at this myself, so I think I am going to finish this run first. I already did some research on the ammo usage, and playing at hard-mode will require alot of planning since you simply do not have enough cash to buy special ammo required. Comparing the time gained versus ammo spent on different bosses will be easier while having a normal-mode run done.
Edit: Actually, the Bombgun does 48 damage, while the Anti-Matter gun does 44. This is compensated by a large 'cooldown' between shots on the Bombgun, but since the first boss' invulnerability time after a hit is longer than the cooldown, the Bombgun does more damage here.
