Topic by Randil

Posted: 3/29/2007 9:52 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

*Bump* Have you had any more luck yet, CtrlAltDestroy? If you really can't shave off any more frames, you could post what you have and I'll continue from there. Saving 21 frames on that area is pretty good anyway, in my opinion. I'll be away for the weekend, but I have a school break for two weeks now, so I think I can do some work on this on the upcoming days now. Woohoo, my 800th post! :)

My own page on this site.

Posted: 3/30/2007 3:53 PM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

Bear with me, I'm almost done. I re-used your first bear fight since that luck manipulation was AMZING, even though there were a few lag frames when shooting the first enemies. I couldn't seem to beat your time there. I got a much better manipulation with the second bear fight, it wasn't amazing, but it worked... It saved about 10 frames. For the last part, I realized that it's faster to kill the swooping bird to eliminate lag before shooting the door, but I can't seem to open the door before I approach it. I'm 23 frames ahead now, but I think I can make that 26-30 if I can get the door open properly. Edit: Eh, I'm done. 23 frames saved. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4703/randil.fcm If you want to try the door again, keeping in mind that you should kill the swooping bird, you might be able to save 3-5 frames there. I couldn't figure out how to do it, though. I could never seem to open the door fast enough. Maybe if you perform a calc equation of sorts on the swooping bird to find the optimal jump height and timing for the first shots, it'd be possible. :P

Posted: 4/2/2007 4:22 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Looks good. I worked some on this today, and I finished level 3. Here's the WIP. Some things to point out: *I tried to enter the door faster by killing the bird, but without luck. *It took me a whole 9 frames to manipulate luck to get the fairy to appear. This pained me, but there's nothing I can do about it... *I tried hard to reduce lag on this area. I think I managed pretty well, I tried several different approaches when encountering enemies. *The boss fight went well. There isn't much lag here, and I got him to be a lot to the left when hitting him. I gotta do the laundry now, but I'll see if I can do some work on level 4 later today. If I understood you right, the remaining levels are all up to me now. I'll post my progress here however, so you can enjoy the show, and point out things if you find any. :) Point of interest: We're now around 30 seconds ahead of the published movie. Again, this is compared with the .avi, but it's still a pretty big deal I think. So, we saved about 2 seconds on this level, even without Minnie's weapon. :) EDIT: I just finished level 4. I had some good luck on the boss manipulation - I only had to wait for 1 frame for him to throw the daggers the way I wanted him to. I lost about 20 frames or so on the boss, so it's still no huge amounts of time lost. All in all, level 4 went well. :) Here's the WIP.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/2/2007 7:31 PM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

Wow, it's a real shame that you couldn't manipulate the snake to come at you. I tried it myself, and he just doesn't want to budge. Looks good, I guess. One more level to go! Edit: I found something else interesting but useless. For the physics engine used in level 4, which is the same as the one in 1 and 5, taking damage in midair lets you change direction. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4773/birdjump.fcm Now if only you could make Pegleg throw a knife backwards. :P

Posted: 4/2/2007 9:16 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Haha, nice find. :) This game seems to have a few moer bugs than I knew of. :P It's quite likely that I finish this movie tomorrow, or at least within a few days. Although I haven't said so straight out, I will put you as co-author of this run, CtrlAltDestroy. You've truly earned it, with all your findings and contributions to this run. After all, almost all of level 3 was played by you. :) I will write the necessary stuff (the things listed in the submission instructions) in the author's comments when submitting, but if you want to write your own section of the comments, you could post it here or send it to me in a PM.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/3/2007 1:12 AM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

It's quite likely that I finish this movie tomorrow, or at least within a few days. Although I haven't said so straight out, I will put you as co-author of this run, CtrlAltDestroy. You've truly earned it, with all your findings and contributions to this run. After all, almost all of level 3 was played by you. :)

Wow, thanks. I feel special now. :) I don't think I have very much to say about the run, so I'll just go ahead and comment in the submission thread. Good luck with level 5, I can't wait to see the finished product.

Posted: 4/3/2007 10:19 AM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Could someone please tell me exactly where to find the fairy just before the last boss? I've been looking for it, but I can't find it... EDIT: Nevermind, I found it. :) EDIT 2: Okay, I'm having serious problems getting this fairy... and I mean serious. Normally I only have to try 5-10 times, entering the area at different frames, to make a fairy appear. This time I've entered the area about 300 different frames, if not more, and I still haven't gotten the fairy. It seems impossible, and if I still get no luck, I'm thinking about skipping this fairy and beat the boss without it... If this keeps up, it would waste around 2 seconds just to manipulate luck to get this fairy... :( Please, please, please, CtrlAltDestroy, if you have time, give it a try and see if you can get the fairy to spawn. I'll try some more too and see what I can accomplish. Oh, and if you don't remember, the fairy is just to the left of the window. Here's the WIP. EDIT 3: Okay, I'm done testing this for the moment... Still no luck at all. I'll wait and see if you can manipulate luck better than me at this place. I'll go play Final Fantasy 12 instead. :)

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/3/2007 3:09 PM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

If your earlier theory about the randomness being influenced by the score is true, you could try going back a bit and shooting more or less enemies. I'll see if I can help at all.

Posted: 4/3/2007 3:44 PM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

I found a new trick! This trick is very difficult to pull off correctly but if done right, it saves 1-2 frames of vertical jump time. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4790/weird_ceiling_jump.fcm You could try implementing this and then hoping you get better luck. :) Edit: Updated with much better demonstration. It's kinda hard to see what's going on, so I'll explain... When I jumped to the last platform, I walked a few frames to the left, then waited 1 frame for Minnie to catch up, then walked to the right a few frames, then jumped at full power to the right. The result is that Minnie jumps to the top of the screen and Mickey is allowed to keep moving to the right for a while, but somehow he's still in range to trigger the screen change. When the next screen loads, he's warped up through the floor and starts out standing on solid ground. It's hard to tell that this saves time since you have to burn some frames for it to work, but if you look at the memory addresses in the next room, you'll see that Mickey is indeed farther along.

Posted: 4/3/2007 9:33 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Nice find. :) I've made a few more attempts to get the fairy without luck. But i did learn some stuff about randomness in this game. I'm not 100% sure about this though - I used the cheat-function to enter an area with different conditions. So, here's a summary of fairy-randomness in this game! :) Things that I know affect randomness: *Which frame you enter the new area. This is the most trivial way to manipulate luck. Things that could affect randomness: *The enemies' positions when you enter the new area. I'm not sure about this, but I guess it could make a difference. *Which frame you entered the previous area. What you've done before seem to have affect on randomness. Things that don't affect randomness: *Your current HP. *Your current score. *Mickey's and Minnie's position when you enter the new area. Basically, all this randomness is pretty confusing. I just hope we can get that fairy to spaws without too much more work. Unfortunately I'll be away from home for a few days now, but I can continue working on this on Friday or so. We'll see how things turn out. If you want to, you can go ahead and try to get that fairy to spawn. Oh, here's an .fcm that gets the fairy - however, it took me about 9000 frames to get it. ;) You can just fastforward to around frame 33000 where I get it. This is if you want to check out the memory values when I entered that area that time. Here's it is.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/4/2007 1:00 AM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

I'll try to replay through this again with using the ceiling jump and see how far I get. We'll be like 12 frames ahead when we get to the final rooms, hopefully that will give us some better luck or toggle something in memory that will. Edit: Just as I suspected, I suck at this. I'll keep trying, though.

Posted: 4/5/2007 3:09 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

If you manage to reach the room before the boss, it might be a good idea to check out exactly how many frames we save by killing the final boss with the fairy. If "time it takes to manipulate luck to make fairy spawn" > "time saved on the boss by using the fairy" we'll just kill the boss normally. As it looks right now, even if we do manage to make a fairy spawn, it might take too much time. Good luck, in any case! PS: I'm at my mom's house now, and I'll be here over the easter weekend. I'll won't be able to TAS anything until monday or so... BUT I will be able to check out the forum, and even submit the movie, if you manage to beat the whole thing. Just don't feel any pressure or anything, it's not like we have a deadline on this. Do this if you feel like it and have time to. :)

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/11/2007 8:26 AM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Have you had any luck yet, CtrlAltDestroy? My Internet broke down at home, so I can't check out this forum too much in the next few days. I'll see if I can do some more testing too, but if we're still stuck on this place after some more time, I think it's safe to say that it simply takes too much time to manipulate luck there. In that case let's just kill the last boss without the fairy.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 4/11/2007 4:50 PM

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CtrlAltDestroy

Active player (325)

Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

No, I'm having a bit of trouble playing through the rooms again. I'm just not good at it. I keep losing frames on the 3rd room, when I'm supposed to be ahead. If this goes on for any longer, let's just forget about the fairy and the jumping trick and finish this off.

Posted: 4/13/2007 4:46 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

I've done more testings today, and I still can't get it to work. I'm submitting this movie now, since I beat the last boss. Expect it in the workbench soon! :)

My own page on this site.

Posted: 10/28/2015 8:15 AM

Post subject: Mickey Mousecapades

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2729
Location: US

I've been working on this on and off for quite a while. I haven't made a lot of progress so I thought I'd post a WIP in case anyone else was interested in working on it too. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/26476033887292740 So far I have a pretty optimized level 1 done. I think Minnie is captured in the optimal way. And I didn't lose a lot to RNG in the rest of the level. Recovering Minnie and using the warp trick saves about 5 seconds (if you don't get the second star.) If you do choose to get the star it costs 200 frames to do so. So having the star for minnie will need to save 200 frames throughout the remainder of the game for it to be worth while. I also have a file for the no star case I've been working on in tandem. I also tried the other smaller warp suggested by Tangent but it turns out to be slower by about 15 frames. I've been stuck on working with the RNG to get the correct fairy spawn in level 3. The WIP file doesn't sync past level 1 in its current form, but most of the inputs to beat level 2 are roughly in there. Having the second star for minnie to shoot in level 2 does seem to save some frames in lag reduction by killing additional enemies, I haven't done any firm calculations though, since its seems I need to do level 2 and 3 together to get that fairy to spawn. EDIT: oh yeah, also I'm pretty sure Randil's run starts from a savestate, so I didn't get the same spawns in room one. Seems it suffers from the same problem as Arc's ghosts and goblins run.

Posted: 10/28/2015 8:49 AM

Post subject: Was searching

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Yoni_Arousement

He/Him

Joined: 5/1/2007
Posts: 294
Location: MD

I found two other topics regarding this game.

I like Doraemon

Posted: 10/28/2015 9:20 AM

Post subject: Re: Mickey Mousecapades

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Randil

Skilled player (1885)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Alyosha wrote:

EDIT: oh yeah, also I'm pretty sure Randil's run starts from a savestate, so I didn't get the same spawns in room one. Seems it suffers from the same problem as Arc's ghosts and goblins run.

If I remember correctly we used a soft reset somewhere at the start of the run to manipulate RNG.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 10/28/2015 9:24 AM

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Spikestuff

They/Them

Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2297)

Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6337
Location: The land down under.

Alyosha wrote:

EDIT: oh yeah, also I'm pretty sure Randil's run starts from a savestate, so I didn't get the same spawns in room one. Seems it suffers from the same problem as Arc's ghosts and goblins run.

According to TAS Movie Editor: Movie Start: Reset According to input: Reset held for 3 frames. According to author(s): Reset According to author(s) Pt. 2: Post above this. Please don't assume what the author(s) did when it's written out for you to read.

WebNations/Sabih wrote:

+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.

Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.

Posted: 10/28/2015 11:01 AM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2729
Location: US

FCM file format wrote:

Even if the header says "movie begins from reset", the file still contains a quicksave, and the quicksave is actually loaded.

What I mean to say is that the movie file contains a quicksave (savestate) which contains RAM values other then the power on initialization values. This state is apparently loaded by FCEU 0.98.15. This game does not clear RAM upon reset, so this is important for this particular game. EDIT: It looks like the quicksave in this case is made on frame 5 from power on. I just tested this, and it turns that if you convert Randil's FCM to FM2, then add 4 frames to the beginning of the file, it will correctly sync in FCEUX 2.2.2 So yes, the published run starts from a savestate, that state just happens to be frame 5. (Arc's ghost and goblins run had this same issue.) I'm sure many runs from that era suffer the same hiccup.

Posted: 10/30/2015 6:15 AM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2729
Location: US

http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/26518553074730814 Once I realized I could sync the published run in FCEUX (it also syncs in bizhawk too with adding a few frames at the start) I made a bit of a breakthrough in understanding how RNG works. And was able to make some pretty rapid progress. This complete WIP is the result. It is 100 frames faster then the published run. After the warp trick in level 1 I am 300 frames ahead, so clearly this still needs some serious work, particularly the last level. So for side scrolling levels (2 and 3) the addresses of interest are 006C,006D,006E. These are modified by certain enemies on screen, the bears in level 3 for example. They cycle the RNG for when in a section of the level a fairy will appear. Once a randomizer function does its work, the result is stored in 07F9 when the next section loads. The value is 0-3, 0 being the start of the section, 3 being at the end. Keeping track of these variables makes the fairies in level 3 pretty easy to manipulate, it is still guess and check, but at least we know what to check now. I'm still working out RNG for the other levels. I expect the final submission to be about 4 seconds ahead of the published run, losing about 1 second of what the warp saves in trying to deal with lag and RNG. Also I don't think having minnie's weapon helps, it more often then not just makes extra lag, so I've stopped development of that run.

Posted: 10/31/2015 2:02 AM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2729
Location: US

http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/26536987742402642 Much improved WIP closer to final version. I think everything up to the last level will be final now. I am about 20 frames down by the start of the last level, not too bad for struggling to get decent RNG the entire way. Just a mater of getting the last level in shape. If anyone wants to help / co-author this run I would appreciate the help, surely someone with a fresh perspective could save even more frames. Feel free to jump in!

Posted: 11/11/2015 5:32 AM

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Alyosha

He/Him

Editor, Expert player (3532)

Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2729
Location: US

http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/26784423977105053 Here is an improvement WIP. Most of the improvement comes from having Minnie longer in level 1 by getting a better spawn on the capture enemy. It gains and loses lag frames for the rest of the run after that. Manipulating fairies / capture enemies comes down to killing or not killing enemies. So it's actually not too hard to manipulate what room to spawn the last fairy in the room with the pirate. The harder part is getting it to spawn in the correct spot near the left side of the room. This seems to depend on the frame I enter. Similarly with the enemy that captures minnie in level 1, it would save more time for it to spawn near the window instead of the ladder, but I couldn't quite get it to work. More importantly, this run also syncs in NEShawk. The published one does not, while Randil's one before that did (with some added frames at the start.) The desync in my curent published run happens at the first set of bears in level 3. SO this time I made sure that it would sync in bizhawk for the best potential chance at being console verifiable. I don't think this is the final version, the better enemy spawn and some more lag reduction should still be possible. Once again anyone can feel free to jump in, I'll probably need the help to get a final V2 done.