Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Here is the text displayed during the last fight:
Also, when playing the jap version, I noticed that there is a backstory sequence that plays if you let the title screen sit. I guess they decided to take all that stuff out and just give the action to us Americans.
I only played through the normal mode, but it looks like there is a big difference in level 6. The jap version has a barrier which prevents you from wrapping around the screen vertically, though you can take an armor hit and pass through it. This makes things considerably more difficult since the ground is also moving vertically. There also don't seem to be any P powerups in stage 6. For these reasons, I think a run on the jap version would probably be tougher and most likely slower, but not necessarily more interesting. It's been commented that stage 6 is the most interesting part of the current run, and it definitely wouldn't be as fun without those wrap-around falls.
Ugh, tricky translation. Is this text displayed before or after the final boss? Who is saying it? This would help a lot.
オロカナマネハ ヨセ
The stupid MANE (behaviour? imitation?) is over (lit. endgame)
ワタシノ シメイハ。。。
クサリキッタ チキュウジンヲ
マッサツスルコト
My mission/fate is...
to obliterate the earthlings who cut the chains
ヨセ ヤメロ。。。
Stop the endgame (?)
(depending on where you think the previous sentence ends, his mission could conceivably also be to stop YOSE (or endgame) from obliterating the humans etc.)
コウカイスルゾ
Do repentance/renewal/voyage/presentation to the public (?)
(I'm guessing repentance/regret is correct in this case, but I put up the other possible interpretations too just in case.)
オマエモ、ワタシトトモニ。。。
シヌ。。。ノ。。ダ。。。
You too, together with me...
will... die... (lit. are dead)
Very mangled... and maybe robotic or near death.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Oh, the text appears on the bottom of the screen while fighting the final boss. It's not really clear who is saying it.
Anyway, cancelled my submission. Still some work to do on v2, but it's going to be at least 4 sec faster, and hopefully more entertaining as well.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
<flagrant self-hype>Just thought I would give an unrequested update for all my fans. :) Though it's taking more work than I expected, I keep learning new tricks and I've managed to cut out more time as well. With accurate shooting I become a much more efficient killing machine, and cutting through the crowds of enemies faster reduced slowdown and cut my time on just about every level. Each boss fight is a little faster, some significantly. I have to credit Cheez with some help, including some of the boss strategies and even entering the password faster. This ultimate run will be an improved hybrid between our previous runs, with even more improvements on top. I'm currently over 6 seconds ahead of my previously submitted run with a few bosses left to kill. Ok, back to work on this...</flagrant self-hype>
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Cool, I hope this gets finished. When I made the current published run I didn't have a lag counter. If you keep an eye on that you should be able to keep gaining time. I don't think it should be tough to match otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7cW1q888-w
This is improvable by at least 4 frames on 2-1 alone, I think I can eek out 5 though. It's currently 35 frames faster than the published TAS at the end of 2-1. Savings currently comes through faster password input, optimizing lag frames, and slight movement optimizations. Heplooner and I are currently working on this one, I'll get the fm3 WIP posted when I'm home from work.
It has been some time since THIS was found but maybe someone will be able to recreate it.
The game was played on either FCEUX or NEStopia emulator (runner cannot remember anymore). It happened on US rom and 1st loop.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Whoa, huge! Yeah, we need to figure that out. Next question is whether it works on any level or just that one. Then again it might not be possible in in some levels just because of the placement of the Armor powerups.
Edit: Another thing possibly worth discussing is switching to the J version. It would add time but also a little difficulty in level 6 at least. Plus there is the text at the end.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Reviewing this thread, here is Cheez's old run on normal mode.
Also here is a movie that reproduces the glitch! It's a simple matter of touching the armor powerup and an enemy on the same frame. Haven't looked any further into this but there are a few other places where it might be possible. Probably more chances on normal mode where there are more Armor powerups.
Finally, further back in the thread I had already looked into U vs J issue. I totally forgot about this since it was over 10 years ago!
What we found out so far:
- if you use a password to stage 4, the warp will bring you to the beginning of the stage, however when you password to stage 3,beat the stage and go on to stage 4 the warp will bring you to the mid-boss
- if you die and/or game over, the warp will work on your next attempt but you will get warped to the beginning of the stage
- if you pause before you are going to attempt the warp you will go through the enemy, grab the armor and then die, so the warp does not work at all when you pause the game
- the last digits of the score have rather no influence on the warp since I got the warp with different digits
After talking with z1mb0bw4y it seems I will be taking over this run. The password was the first thing to get my attention so I decided to look at the code to see how it is implemented. Turns out it is pretty simple.
The level you go to is determined entirely by the 4th and 10th entries, so keeping those fixed it is easy to modify the password to get checks to pass while still going to the correct level (i.e. expert mode level 1-1.)
The current run uses B,1,0,5,<3,R,J,2,7,V (that's not what appears on the screen but that is what shows up in memory.)
z1mb0bw4y used a slightly modified version, but I thought I could do a little better.
I used B,1,0,5,<3,G,J,2,0,V which starts the level 18 frames faster then the published run. (It starts with C7 lives but hey not bad for a first attempt.)
I'm pretty confident that I can save another ~20 frames here with some more testing. I'll post all my findings once everything is sorted out.
Well overall I saved 50 frames on password input. The password I am currently using is:
0,1,0,5,Q,R,L,2,9,V
This removes most of the long distances between entries, while still starting the game in the same manner as the original password.
For anyone interested, here is a brief overview of how the passcode works:
RAM of passcode: 0300-0309
The last entry (0309) determines the offset for an array that modifies the other entries and stores them in 0120-0129
From there, 0123 determines level you start at, 0125 and 0127 determine lives and powerups you start with.
The checks to determine if the passcode is valid is determined by:
1st check: 0129+0125+0128+0121=0120
2nd check: 0122+0123+0126+0127+0129=0124
Conveniently, the array operations that convert 030X to 012X are just subtractions, so you can maunipulate the checks just by balancing changes to the entries for a net sum of zero.
It's pretty straight forward, but the number of possibilities are very vast. There are 8 possible arrays as well. I certainly don't plan to check all or even a large subset of them. Saving 50 frames is good enough for me!
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/30844685210962094
was playing around with the skip and found another one that skips all of 2-2!
Still looking for other places this might occur, pretty neat!
I also confirmed that this glitch occurs on NesHawk.
So in researching passwords a bit more it seems like you can get a pure 'start game on expert mode' password that is not just a continuation of a normal mode game.
Basically I took Cheez's normal mode run and hex-edited the score and power up state to 0 at the end of the game so that the pasword generator will give me a password for expert mode with 0 score and no powerup, exactly the same as normal mode start up.
The result is:
F,P,P,M,K,2,P,7,8,6
I feel it would be more correct to start the game in this way then with the flame powerup, so I think I will go with it even though it will be a bit slower in level 1.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/30857121059171598
Here is a WIP that implements everything so far. It still needs some work so probably 1-2 more seconds can be saved. It includes 2-2 and 4-1 skip as well as the new start from 0 password. This adds about 8 seconds to the run, but seems worth it to me.
The whole starting with a power up think always kind of bothered me in the previous TAS, but I just figured it was part of having expert mode.
So figuring out how to have expert mode without a power up and using it is a good thing in my mind, even if it slows things down a touch.
Edit, watched the file and I'm getting a desync somewhere around the skip n 4-1.
You do that thing grabbing the powerup and skip to the sub-boss, kill boss and then at about frame 15344 you die, and again two more times quickly thereafter, and stay at the game over screen with input continuing.
Using fceux 2.2.2, never used for anything but watching so settings as set by default and how its in the movie file.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
molerat wrote:
Edit, watched the file and I'm getting a desync somewhere around the skip n 4-1.
You do that thing grabbing the powerup and skip to the sub-boss, kill boss and then at about frame 15344 you die, and again two more times quickly thereafter, and stay at the game over screen with input continuing.
Using fceux 2.2.2, never used for anything but watching so settings as set by default and how its in the movie file.
I'd assume everything from that point on just hasn't been resynced yet, so it'll be fixed and working by the time the proper submission comes in.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Also, when playing the jap version, I noticed that there is a backstory sequence that plays if you let the title screen sit. I guess they decided to take all that stuff out and just give the action to us Americans.
I only played through the normal mode, but it looks like there is a big difference in level 6. The jap version has a barrier which prevents you from wrapping around the screen vertically, though you can take an armor hit and pass through it. This makes things considerably more difficult since the ground is also moving vertically. There also don't seem to be any P powerups in stage 6. For these reasons, I think a run on the jap version would probably be tougher and most likely slower, but not necessarily more interesting. It's been commented that stage 6 is the most interesting part of the current run, and it definitely wouldn't be as fun without those wrap-around falls.
