Welcome to my first TASing attempt. This was my first N64 game so I thought I would run it. The goal was to get from the start of adventure mode to the end of Wizpig II as fast as possible. Banjo seemed to be the fastest character so he was used.
Aims for fastest time
Abuses programming errors
Tricks
Sliding - R sliding makes you go faster but not fast enough to be able to snake.
Zippers - Zippers give you a speed boost. Releasing A over a zipper results in a better boost accompanied by a green as opposed to purple flame.
A tapping - The A button can be pressed repeatedly rather than held to gain speed. This trick is exploited in every cart track and to a lesser extent in the hover and plane tracks. The tap rate differs between the vehicles, though.
Hovercraft snaking - Holding R and alternating between left and right is faster than travelling in a straight line.
Barrel rolling - Used in the plane tracks to gain speed. Releasing A increases this effect.
Boost jump - After a zipper, if you manage to get airborne, the speed boost continues until you land. This effect is displayed in Jungle Falls towards the end of the lap.
Wall boosting - I jump off some walls to change direction or because it was better to do so.
Other Comments
In the Fire Mountain challenge, the eggs can only be stolen a few seconds after they are dropped hence my rolling to kill time.
The boss race in Dino Domain can supposedly be won by staying at the starting point you will mysteriously win. A few people claimed this but I have no idea how to replicate it.
The credits can be skipped with a console reset but that is not yet possible with this emulator. Skipping the credits would have brought the time below two hours.
The trophy races are essentially the same as the other races so I displayed the minimap the whole time to give it some replay value. The exception is Boulder Canyon where the speedometer was too important to be hidden.
There are a few times in this run where a weapon is deployed behind my vehicle. Even though you cannot see it, these weapons always hit the person in first place helping me to lap the CPUs in some races.
The A button is only pressed once during the first Windmill Plains race.
I wasn’t able to use hex editing at all during this run. I changed the minimap/speedometer once during a race but a desync managed to find its way in three tracks later.
Thanks to...
Yasutaka Mitani - I watched his videos to get some strategies.
The members of the forum who me gave encouragement, ideas and various comments.
adelikat: Accepting for publication due to overwhelming viewer response. Even most of the no voters approved of the game choice and voted against it due to claims of improvements. No claim of such improvements were confirmed by any type of testing. Therefore, I was unable to weigh them into my decision.
i have one question for the guy who did the movie: any dkr vet knows that pressing "a" early terminates the green boost from a zipper early, what is the amount of time specifically before you can hit "a" after hitting a zipper to maximize the boost?
This is only relevent to the hovercraft. It seems the boosts in this game are often based on luck. The starting boost for instance varies in speed from boosting you to 60 to 90 even though you press A at the same time on a different track.
...no sorry that isnt right, i am 100% certain otherwise because i and a friend were testing it out while doing co-op adventure a few months ago
and since that was the "swing" question if you will between whether it is optimized enough to vote yes or not, for all the reasons i and others said i have to vote no despite all the work it seems was put into this
however, this will almost definitely be accepted since it is a n64 movie and those are by far the most entertaining to watch and there already seems to be a surge of people voting yes just so they can watch it since they cant on their emulator
so, now i should say congrats! and thanks for doing a n64 run; and i look forward to any improvement
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
this is me wrote:
however, this will almost definitely be accepted since it is a n64 movie and those are by far the most entertaining to watch and there already seems to be a surge of people voting yes just so they can watch it since they cant on their emulator
Thats a very... bold statement.
First of all, N64 movies aren't the most entertaining to watch. Theres nothing that says an N64 is instantly better entertainment. In fact, I would say that the opposite is the case due to many N64 games filled with long cutscenes.
Second, what makes you think people are voting yes just so someone will make a video/publish? Just because people are voting yes and you disagree doesn't automatically mean that 20~ yes votes means people aren't watching it. More people can sync this game up than you think.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Yes, this movie should not desync if you choose all the correct settings. Sure it takes a bit more of an effort to playback a movie in mupen (like 2 more clicks) than other emulators, but I think the majority of the community should be able to playback this movie if their computer can run mupen.
Besides, votes serve as a guide to publishers in order to sway their view whether to publish the movie or not. It's ultimately their decision.
Also, there a QUITE A FEW people in this community who believe that most N64 games are BORING to watch.
(I agree with fabian)
With the amount of fluff present in most N64 games (such as unskippable cutscenes) I'm inclined to agree. Fortunately, we have the luxury of choosing what games to run, and we choose the entertaining N64 games. We'll run out soon, though. ;)
Just want to go on record saying I don't necessarily think N64 games are more boring to watch than the average NES/SNES/Genesis/etc game. I've seen way too few runs to make any sort of generalization like that.
DK is right on track though. We can choose which games to run, how awesome is that?
whoa i just thought of another "botchery"
since he has to go back to the character selection after beating wizpig the first time anyway, he can select drumstick there, who of course has better speed than krunch even and decent handling to boot
whoa i just thought of another "botchery"
since he has to go back to the character selection after beating wizpig the first time anyway, he can select drumstick there, who of course has better speed than krunch even and decent handling to boot
You have to waste time in the overworld in order to get drumstick.
Borg Collective wrote:
Negotiation is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
Using Drumstick for the second part definitely seems like a possibility, as he probably the best overall character available in such a run, and squashing the frog to unlock him in the overworld could easily be done in less than a minute
Other than that, I see nothing wrong with using Banjo, since Krunch is way too lopsided as his handling is absolutely pathetic.
Although a few tracks seemed slightly improvable, most of them are pretty solid
Still, I vote a slightly weak yes.
According to a brief calculation, unlocking Drumstick is roughly a 20 second diversion maybe less. In the nine tracks remaining you would be looking to save 2 seconds over Banjo. Banjo and Drumstick have equal acceleration but Drumstick wins out in top speed but loses in turning capabilities. It is therefore difficult to say which decision is better. I am sure that whichever driver is better is only better by a thin margin.
Banjo and Drumstick have equal acceleration but Drumstick wins out in top speed but loses in turning capabilities.
well documented drumstick is better in all three categories
see: gamefaqs
The sources contradict each other and none that I found said that Drumstick is better in all categories. I tested them myself to come to the conclusion. If you really don't believe me I could upload video proof to show this.
AKA wrote:
Using TT is also a distinct possibilty as well, it only takes about half an hour to obtain him.
Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom
Well it's a definate "Yes" vote for me. I disagree with pretty much all that's been said against this run apart from one thing: that it seems like things are planned as they come rather than planning the whole lap and doing the same thing each time (it only looks it from first view, but of course each lap isn't the same as you have more bananas each time around and other racers are in your way later on). I don't think there is much that can be optimized, much more than it already is (there's usually something).
Good work.
Joined: 6/4/2006
Posts: 97
Location: Everywhere including nowhere
I voted yes. The movie demonstrates a firm grasp of the game's engine - especially abusing the horrendous sprite collision detection (used for balloons and silver coins) to pick up items at a great distance. It does admittedly get a bit repetitive though.
Some of the tracks reminded me of the Carebears theme song, you know, the "bouncing here and there and everywhere" part.
It was a little lacking in entertainment in some areas (or do items slow you down?), but he makes Speedy Gonzales look like regular Gonzales, so I vote Yes.
The only complaint I have is that you didn't mess with the computer nearly as much as I'd hoped. There were several times that you were lapping, armed with 10 rockets, and didn't do anything. that really pissed me off kinda. I would have loved it if you shot one into each person in cases like that.
As well, IIRC you didn't use any oil slicks that you got, when you could guarantee it makes contact easily.
About Drumstick, couldn't you easily unlock him in one of the Genie's challenges? On a close tangent, couldn't the hovercraft challenge be faster by instead of going under the arch of the ramp in the begining, to go around to the right?
Anyway, definite yes vote from me. I've played this game more than any other (except for SSB) still to this day. I loved how you made the computers look like complete idiots for trying to drive straight on a straightaway... even though you didn't use the level of violence I was hoping for.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Character selection is deffinatly worth looking into, namely, using drumbstick or krunch. Still though, the game had a good pace to it, dispite the repitition.
The only complaint I have is that you didn't mess with the computer nearly as much as I'd hoped. There were several times that you were lapping, armed with 10 rockets, and didn't do anything. that really pissed me off kinda. I would have loved it if you shot one into each person in cases like that.
As well, IIRC you didn't use any oil slicks that you got, when you could guarantee it makes contact easily.
It's not as simple as firing a rocket on the right frame. In order to do stuff like that you need subframe precision and being in a position to do that usually loses time. I used oil slicks 3 or so times to hurt the computers IIRC. You never see the slicks hit the computers so there is not much point in my eyes.
The Great Morphologous wrote:
About Drumstick, couldn't you easily unlock him in one of the Genie's challenges? On a close tangent, couldn't the hovercraft challenge be faster by instead of going under the arch of the ramp in the begining, to go around to the right?
Drumstick can only be unlocked after you finish the Dragon area and at that time all the challenges are complete. As I've already said, unlocking Drumstick takes 20 seconds so it is difficult to determine whether using him is a good idea. I'm not sure about the hover idea. Remember that if you stray too far from the course the challenge ends.
