Sound: Enabled, 44100KhZ Stereo, YM2612 High Quality enabled
Categories
Does not use warps or passwords
Abuses programming errors in the game
Manipulates luck
Takes damage to save time
Aims for full completion
Aims for fastest in-game completion time
About the Movie
Sonic 3 & Knuckles has had several celebrated runs done of it, but I thought it was about time we saw what Knuckles can do. Also, I thought it was about time we saw what the Emeralds can do.
The result is that this is a 100% completion run, as Knuckles.
In-game completion times:
Angel Island 1
0:54
Angel Island 2
0:35
Hydrocity 1
0:54
Hydrocity 2
0:46
Marble Garden 1
0:46
Marble Garden 2
0:43
Carnival Night 1
0:46
Carnival Night 2
0:30
Ice Cap 1
0:52
Ice Cap 2
0:51
Launch Base 1
1:24
Launch Base 2
1:26
Mushroom Hill 1
0:58
Mushroom Hill 2
0:57
Flying Battery 1
1:00
Flying Battery 2
1:18
Sandopolis 1
1:41
Sandopolis 2
1:26
Lava Reef 1
1:01
Lava Reef 2
0:21
Hidden Palace
0:08
Sky Sanctuary
0:57
Total Time: 20:14
Notes and Explanations
There are certain portions of the movie where I do something which may seem slow, or pointless.
at 08:34:40 (frame 30885), in Hydrocity 2, I get crushed under a dropping block. If I did not do this, I would be unable to go past the left edge of the level, to arrive at the boss more quickly, and I would therefore lose 20 seconds of in-game time (and about 13 seconds of real time)
at 14:02:50 (frame 50570), at the end of Marble Garden 1, I get a fire shield that the sign post hit. This gives me a better subpixel position to start MG2 with, and was faster than knocking the signpost away from the monitor.
at 14:56:20 (frame 53780), in Marble Garden 2, I take damage from the boss. I was unable to make the third hit on that pass without taking damage immediately afterward.
In several places in Ice Cap 1, I don't charge a spindash all the way, because the ice columns I have to break through are very picky about what speeds they let you through with, and even with the lower speed, doing one partial spindash is slightly faster than doing multiple full ones.
in two places in Launch Base 1, I hold a spindash for more than 6 frames since, because of the way I landed, starting it later would cause me to reverse direction.
at 23:20:00 (frame 84000) at the end of Launch Base 2, I hold a fully-revved spindash for quite some time, to comic effect.
at 36:54:00 (frame 132840), at the start of Flying Battery 2, I start a spindash early, to prevent Knuckles from going into his balancing animation (which prevents ducking/dashing).
at 38:19:10 (frame 137950), at the end of Flying Battery 2, I end where I am instead of all the way right, to get the acceleration bonus from the jump, saving 5 frames.
in several places, during the special stages, while jumping over star bumper spheres, I bump into multiple spheres. This is because it is impossible to jump over three bumper spheres in a row without hitting the third, however it is still faster unless there are at least 7 spheres in a row.
If you have a question, comment, and I will answer it.
Thanks to
Nitsuja for checking over much of this run, and giving good suggestions for many, many improvements; developing, and helping develop, some tools; and tipping me off to a few glitches.
Dustin for unwavering moral support, testing some things for me, and doing the Launch Base 1 boss fight for me.
SprintGod and Mike89 for their great help in planning special stage routes.
All of The Sonic Center, for discovering and sharing several glitches that I make use of.
Extra stuff
For those (most of you) who feel that the special stages are very slow and boring, http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3511/UpthornS3KTAS050.gmv is a version that does not collect the second set of emeralds in Mushroom Hill, and is therefore 9m 04s shorter. Saves 7 time units in MH1 and 8 in MH2 (for times of 0:51 and 0:49, respectively).
Truncated: Accepted for overwhelmingly positive viewer feedback. Like people commented the bonus stages slow it down somewhat, but the rest more than makes up for it.
POP IT INTO OVERDRIVE GENERAL! SHE CAN HANDLE MORE YOU JUST GOTTA BELIIIIIEEEEVEEEE!!!!
EDIT:
uploading faster than your downloading should be punishable by law.
Wow...what happened there with FB2's miniboss?
I actually LIKED the bonus stages. There's enough backwalking there to make Link blush XD.
But I loved the whole run. Definite yes vote + star.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Submission text should have said that, despite being a 100% run, it does not try to complete bonus stages with perfect scores (i.e. 100% of the rings at bonus stages), but tries to collect as few rings as possible, without changing the route. Perfect scores would just add 50K points (and, thus, an extra life) and also one continue. Since this is a TAS, these "bonuses" are not needed.
I laughed when knuckles started to collect blue spheres while walking backwards! Very funny and unexpected. And yes, I did enjoy watching the bonus stages.
Hum... Maybe a quick run showing the fastest way to reach the top of that glowing-light-balls bonus stage could be cool. (the stage from a starpost, when the starts glow red)
At the first emerald from Marble Garden, just after Knuckles starts walking backwards, he rebounds at a star sphere before continuing walking backwards. Can't he just jump it, like the other spheres? Or was is faster?
How do you get those purple elastic things bounce you so high so fast? Let me guess: you jump at the exact moment you touch them.
I miss the music from Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2. :)
At the last super emerald, looks like you land, after a jump, 2 squares away from the second 4-blue-ball+4-star-sphere+1-ring thing. Couldn't you land just 1 square away (like in the first of those things), instead of 2? This could improve the TAS just a bit.
Any reason to lost all rings at Sandopolis 1? Just to reduce the bonus or to manipulate something else?
What you did to those two ball-like things at Lava Reef 1 was insane. And nice trick at the hand. :)
Do I ask too much questions?
Submission text should have said that, despite being a 100% run, it does not try to complete bonus stages with perfect scores […] Since this is a TAS, these "bonuses" are not needed.
Perhaps this was the exact reason it wasn't specifically mentioned.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Do I ask too much questions?
Yes. The assassin brigade has been dispatched, please don't leave your currect location.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Submission text should have said that, despite being a 100% run, it does not try to complete bonus stages with perfect scores (i.e. 100% of the rings at bonus stages), but tries to collect as few rings as possible, without changing the route. Perfect scores would just add 50K points (and, thus, an extra life) and also one continue. Since this is a TAS, these "bonuses" are not needed.
I can see why people might expect a 100% run to get perfects in every special stage, but this was discussed greatly in the Sonic 3 & Knuckles thread before I even started this TAS. The conclusion was that the perfects don't appear particularly superhuman to get, and they take way too much time, also. Additionally, it was much less work for me to determine the shortest route through each stage without the additional factor of the fastest way to collect each ring group.
Also, collecting the fewest rings was just done to minimize the time spent at the score tally afterwards. It is possible to finish each special stage with 0 rings collected, but changing the route to do so takes much more time than the 1 frame per ring at the score tally.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Hum... Maybe a quick run showing the fastest way to reach the top of that glowing-light-balls bonus stage could be cool. (the stage from a starpost, when the starts glow red)
This might be an interesting extra to link from the submission text when i get around to improving this run.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
At the first emerald from Marble Garden, just after Knuckles starts walking backwards, he rebounds at a star sphere before continuing walking backwards. Can't he just jump it, like the other spheres? Or was is faster?
In the special stages, it is impossible to jump two star sphere's in a row. It's faster to hit the star sphere in front of knuckles and continue backwards to jump the next sphere than it is to hit the next sphere, rebound, hit the earlier sphere, rebound again, and then jump.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
How do you get those purple elastic things bounce you so high so fast? Let me guess: you jump at the exact moment you touch them.
I assume you're talking about Ice Cap zone. There are actually two tricks used there: the first is, as you guessed, jumping and quickly gliding for a frame to land immediately, so they go down farther, because they're impacted twice.
The second trick is that jumping just before the pad would normally launch me causes Knuckles' jump strength to be added to the pad's launch strength.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
I miss the music from Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2. :)
Don't worry, it starts anyway right after the special stage ends.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
At the last super emerald, looks like you land, after a jump, 2 squares away from the second 4-blue-ball+4-star-sphere+1-ring thing. Couldn't you land just 1 square away (like in the first of those things), instead of 2? This could improve the TAS just a bit.
The short answer is "no." I spent quite a while trying, but eventually I realized the cause. Jump duration is fixed, but until the stage has sped up to full speed, knuckles doesn't move every frame. On the first set, knuckles is moving slowly enough to land exactly one motion increment before passing the turn "hotspot". By the time he reaches the second set, though, this is impossible.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Any reason to lost all rings at Sandopolis 1? Just to reduce the bonus or to manipulate something else?
It was a (bad) style choice, the idea is that because, Knuckles would die if I was even one frame slow with the final hit, it would be impressive.
As it turned out, though, it's just confusing.
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Do I ask too much questions?
No, it's nice to know you were paying attention.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
I can see why people might expect a 100% run to get perfects in every special stage, but this was discussed greatly in the Sonic 3 & Knuckles thread before I even started this TAS. The conclusion was that the perfects don't appear particularly superhuman to get, and they take way too much time, also.
Completely agree. In addition, it would be more boring. But, in real-time, getting perfect is tricky in some stages.
upthorn wrote:
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Hum... Maybe a quick run showing the fastest way to reach the top of that glowing-light-balls bonus stage could be cool. (the stage from a starpost, when the starts glow red)
This might be an interesting extra to link from the submission text when i get around to improving this run.
I'd suggest publishing this single-bonus-level extra run to the "Concept demos/Other" category.
By the way, that bonus stage could be entered twice on such run. The first time, aims for fastest completion. The second, aims for most rings (manipulating luck so that only ring balls come up). On the real console sometimes I can get a few hundred rings (200 or more, I don't remember) easily. It would be nice to see what would be the maximum amount of rings collectable from that bonus stage.
Ah, maybe Sonic+Tails would be desired for such extra-run, since tails can be helpful on such stage. Specially in the beginning, they might look like mirroring each others movement.
upthorn wrote:
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
At the first emerald from Marble Garden, just after Knuckles starts walking backwards, he rebounds at a star sphere before continuing walking backwards. Can't he just jump it, like the other spheres? Or was is faster?
In the special stages, it is impossible to jump two star sphere's in a row. It's faster to hit the star sphere in front of knuckles and continue backwards to jump the next sphere than it is to hit the next sphere, rebound, hit the earlier sphere, rebound again, and then jump.
You rebound like described at 10:20, but you just jumped without rebounding at 10:18 and at 10:21, which have the same geometry. So... why?
upthorn wrote:
I assume you're talking about Ice Cap zone. There are actually two tricks used there
Thanks. I actually only got half trick, I missed the second part of the first trick. :)
upthorn wrote:
The short answer is "no." I spent quite a while trying, but eventually I realized the cause. Jump duration is fixed, but until the stage has sped up to full speed, knuckles doesn't move every frame. On the first set, knuckles is moving slowly enough to land exactly one motion increment before passing the turn "hotspot". By the time he reaches the second set, though, this is impossible.
Just watching, I would swear both of them have the same speed, because I didn't notice any speed increase in Knuckles so early on that stage. But hey, you're the guy behind this, you certainly know that better than me.
upthorn wrote:
CrazyTerabyte wrote:
Do I ask too much questions?
No, it's nice to know you were paying attention.
Thanks for the answers. I used to play this game a lot at the real console, and later at the emulator (but usually I re-played the game with all emeralds already, just for fun).
I agree with sticky anyway, just look at this guy posts, its a necroposting master.
I dont remember because you have bad english you are allowed to take a poo anywhere in forum and for no reasons.
Please GGG, stop necroposting without a good reason, surely those youtube crap link are not needed, thanks.
Btw, ill probably look anal on this, but what realy bothered me is he did copy/paste that message also on the old sonic3 run, at best this is spamming, i dont like it at all. (i should have delete it anyway)
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Fabian wrote:
Moderators please, I'm really upset over this can someone do something asap
If I'm interpreting "this" correctly (posting of videos in old threads), this isn't something I view as a widespread problem (if people do consider it a problem, which it seems they do) and any action needing a moderator would be overkill at this point. Pointing out a location where a movie is hosted (whether that be streaming or a file mirror) or, better yet, uploading it oneself is itself useful (granted, that most recent link in the thread wasn't relevant to the publication, for what seems like the first time), and I think the publication thread is the most relevant place to post such links. If people disagree, the solution would be to start another thread altogether for that purpose (and arguably split offending posts from publications to later be merged there).
I agree with Grunt in regard to posting links where it's most appropriate. However, doing it more than once in the same thread is redundant and pointless. Keep this in mind, GGG.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I just watched this for the first time, and I'm very impressed. The strategies used in the bonus stages are my favorite part; I don't know that most players would be able to figure those out or even can understand them when watching. My mouth was hanging open.
