I'm not quite sure I get what you mean when you're talking about Vile when to make it dash up to me, if I do make it dash after it's shot, It's gonna dash past the shot and jump backwards again, landing a bit away from me.
I'm sorry, if anyone could do that fade out crap for me and post the new video for me... I really don't get when to do it. I'd need someone to show it for me to understand how it works. :/
It may help to have the frame counter on (the period button). Take note of the first frame that the screen begins to fade if you don't press any buttons. Then, go back and try pressing start 10 frames before, 20 before, etc. keep going farther and farther back until you find the first frame that pressing a button will make the screen fade out earlier than it would having pressed nothing at all.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
I can't believe you'd actually do something like that for me. :)
Thanks man, we'll see how it turns out.
Sped through Chill penguins stage (That's the name right?) and currently 38 frames faster than FractalFusion in his last posted attempt at the door of the bossroom.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/385/-%20mmx.smv
Good job, Graveworm. Now for luck manipulation. Don't wear yourself out!
I suggest you go in boss order, but you can do Storm Eagle next if you like.
By the way, next time you run the intro stage, forget about trying to get to the left side of the screen to reduce scrolling. It doesn't save any time.
What do you mean by the last thing, I don't really don't get it. :/ I believe that I'd wanna have the storm tornardo for the Spark Mandrill miniboss, but if it's faster to kill it with the Buster than to kill Storm eagle with it I'll most certainly do Spark Mandrill second, though I'm not entirely sure of how the miniboss on the Spark Mandrill stage works if you didn't kill Storm eagle before.
After you destroy the second car, X freezes in place and the screen scrolls him to the left. It seems you stayed on the left to get rid of the screen scrolling. It doesn't save any time, so don't try to stay on the left side. If you never thought about that, then forget about it. Just stay away from the left and right boundaries.
Without defeating Storm Eagle, the Spark Mandrill stage has a few more sparks moving along the floor, and the miniboss shoots lightning downward, but it's probably not something to worry about.
Since I'm playing frame advance I don't think that's gonna be a problem, the only thing is that I don't know how effective the X-buster will be, and I don't know if the boss ever falls down to the floor if the electricity is still active.
I really didn't think that much about my positioning after destroying the second car, I was tired when I did it, and I didn't think about the consequences.
I hope you're joking. About starting over.
I understand, though. Luck manipulation can be very difficult. The best and most reliable luck manipulator by far is having X slide down a wall, and I use it extensively. Or you can try hitting Chill Penguin a couple frames later and see if it works. But you have to do this before the game determines the boss's next action.
By the way, I'm trying to luck-manipulate Tunnel Rhino right now.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/494/
I made this little video, didn't take long, and the shooting isn't even optimized, but I think it shows that it might be possible that killing Spark mandrill as the second boss could be faster.
Or is there any other stage you really need the tornardo?
The Storm Tornado is useful for the giant sea serpent in Launch Octopus' stage, but other weapons may be useful as well.
Other than that, nothing else. You're doing this only to save 5 seconds off the Storm Eagle battle.
Sorry. Just stating the obvious.
Although I wondered if you thought that there was an opportunity to save more time in Storm Eagle and Flame Mammoth stages with the other weapons.
So how much time is lost by fighting the serpent with the next best weapon? I have a feeling it might even be more than five seconds, in which case this route might not be worth exploring.
I just got another idea, which involves going:
Penguin dude, Boomerang guy, Chameleon, Storm eagle, and you know the rest, I think it would be faster, I think I'm gonna go for that, because the battle against the Boomerang boss certainly wont be 5 seconds longer just because I don't have the right weapon.
My impression from playing on the console is that you might lose even more time by fighting Boomer Kuwanger with the X-buster/shotgun ice, but good luck to you testing that.
Have you guys measured the exact frame counts for the first and second Storm Eagle battles on Dehacked's run? Unless either fight is significantly improvable, this difference ought to give a good measurement as to how much can be gained from these order changes.
You can deal 3 damage every second instead of 2, saving 300 frames or 5 seconds.
Boomer Kuwanger will take 3 damage from a charged X-buster shot just like the penguin, potentially making it a fight just as fast as the penguin.
Actually, it's 5 damage every 2 seconds. You can't charge the buster fast enough.
2 damage/1 second: 16 seconds battle. e.g. X-Buster on Storm Eagle.
5 damage/2 seconds: ~13 seconds battle. e.g. X-Buster on Chill Penguin.
3 damage/1 second: 11 seconds battle. e.g. Chameleon Sting on Storm Eagle.
I was fighting armored Vile for no good reason, and I noticed that when you hit him with ice he ends up facing the opposite direction while being sucked in towards X. For kicks, this can even make him run backwards or shoot fireballs backwards. Maybe this could be used to draw him in to get damaged a couple frames earlier, and might also help with placing Vile in the right spot at the end of the battle.
edit: Looking at Dehacked's movie, I watched further on to the boss fights and wondered about some possible improvements, particularly involving charged weapons. FractalFusion's 100% test run does try out various boss fight strategies involving charging, but so far they've all looked slower to me. Here are some ways that I think fights could actually be made faster. I'm sure some of them might already have been brought up.
- The shotgun ice appears to be slightly faster than the regular shot, although I can't tell for sure. If it is, you could save maybe 1 frame by using it to start off a fight in a battle that can afford the 1 unit of damage slack. In Dehacked's movie, only the second battle with Chill Penguin seems to fit this category.
- Boomer Kuwanger (second encounter): First fire a regular missile while using the bug to continue charging. Then jump around and fire a charged four-missile blast and time it so that Boomer Kuwanger gets hit by one, dashes away, then gets hit by one of the other charged missiles. Then finish the battle and it should be faster despite a little time lost by starting with a missile instead of a fast regular shot.
- Armored Armadillo (second encounter in any% run and first encounter in 100% run) strategy: Was this already mentioned? Start off with a charged spark, then use a regular spark, then get another charged spark ready in time by taking advantage of the waiting time during his electrocution animation.
- Sting Chameleon (second encounter in any% run and first encounter in 100% run). I think FractalFusion's test run demonstrated this somewhat, although not perfectly. It's theoretically possible to get a boomerang to orbit X indefinitely, so set that up early in order to buy some charging in order to fire a second charged boomerang blast without losing time.
I'm fairly new to TAS, and Megaman X is one of my favorite games, so I'm giving it a whirl (with no pretenses of beating established records as of yet). At any rate, I have a question for the more experienced players about luck manipulation on bosses.
I presume that the bosses can be manipulated during the fight? That is, when I'm fighting Armored Armadillo, at some point during the fight the AI is calculating what move to do rather than loading a pre-set pattern from the outset of the fight. Is this accurate, or are there pattern templates that the AI chooses at random for the duration of the fight?