Jackal is one of those games that suffer from lags. Thus using only one jeep can be faster than using two.
This movie is 3530 frames (58.83 seconds) faster than
the obsoleted 1-player movie and 655 frames (10.92 seconds) faster than
the published 2-player movie. I didn't submit it because I thought 1-player movies wouldn't be accepted if they were similar to published 2-player movies.
moozooh said that I should let the audience judge it, and I realized that this could be accepted in a new category. At last, I decided to put it here and let you judge it.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: FCE Ultra 0.98.24
- Uses only one player
- Aims for fastest real time
- Plays at the highest difficulty level
- Takes no damage
- No deaths
- Abuses programming errors
- Manipulates luck
- Genre: shooter
FAQ about entertainment
I set such goals for the sake of entertainment: 1-player, hardest level, no damage/death.
Does the game let you select any difficulty levels?
No, but this game has a dynamical difficulty system. It's depended on what grade your grenade/rocket weapon is in. Generally speaking, the better weapon you have, the more enemy the game will be in. In order to play the game at the hardest level, one needs to upgrade his main weapon to the 4-way rocket.
With this set, I could create many explosions on the screen. I tried my best to avoid lags during explosions. However, I had to leave some enemy there at times or I would have got lots of lags.
This is hard to answer. In my opinion, a 2-player movie will benefit from:
- Shorter non-scrolling peorids.
- More firepower.
- More dancing
while suffer from:
- Too many enemy there and thus lots of lags either to destroy them or not.
- Too few enemy there and that one jeep (usually the latter one) can be idle.
One player can destroy as many enemy as two can and beat this game as fast as two can. So I don't think 1-player movies of this game is inferior to 2-player movies. So I decided to TAS the less laggy and faster-in-real-time 1-player movie.
However, I think this movie should be put in a different category if accepted, because this movie looks different from
the published 2-player movie, as well as in fact that this movie aims for fastest real time, and the published movie aims for fastest ingame time.
But can't you still utilize two players while avoiding lags?
Yes, sucide can be abused to have only one jeep on the screento avoid lags, and the game-over player can "borrow" a life from the other to join boss fight, and then commit sucide again. This can be a faster way than this movie uses, but I deprecated it for the sake of entertainment.
Stage 1
I skipped one flashing POW since taking him would cost me many frames. I got all the other 3 flashing POW's and set the difficulty to the highest level before the boss fight, so those boss tanks came out the fastest way.
Stage 2
A shortcut was taken. I made luck manipulation to reduce lags around the ramp area. You'll notice that one enemy coloumn "fell down" but it then mysteriously vanished.
Stage 3
Destroying parking enemy vehicles was likely to cause lags, so I left them there.
Stage 4
This stage is surprisingly hard to improve since enemy scatter here and there. I intentionally "missed" one shot right before the boss.
Stage 5
Now you'll see the true power of TAS! I managed to destroy all 4 gates in just one round, which is impossible without TAS power.
Stage 6
Lag reduction is the key to be fast. I spent more ingame time to destroy many enemy and I got faster in real time. Conveyor belts were glitched that I could go through it without being slowed down.
During fighting the giant tank boss, a lot of lags occured, but there was nothing I could do with them except for committing sucide and downgrade my weapon before the fight, which would violate my No-Death rule.
Thanks to TheAxeMan, Xipo and others who made their Jackal speedruns that I used for comparations.
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots
of this movie and placed them here.
klmz: NesVideoAgent, it seems that you have got it desynced. I have no problems in playing it with either FCEU 0.98.15 or FCEU 0.98.28. I've removed the screenshots.
mmbossman: Accepting as an improvement to the current, 2-player movie. See clarification in the discussion thread for details.
