have you seriously been stuck 2 or so years for a camera hack? O_o isn’t it as simple as finding a camera X/Y address and cheating it?
anyway I can’t believe I had never watched the WIPs before… stupendous work, can’t wait for it to be all polished up and submitted
(I agree you should skip bosses where faster)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I guess I could take this time to sum up the difficulties with optimising Croctopus Chase...
For those who don't know: We are using a glitch so that you can roll and jump in water stages. This is heavily faster than the swimming and you are also able to jump through walls.
In order to finish the level, the game has to spawn the exit. Which it can only do if the camera is close. The problem is that the camera is moving insanely slow, so you quickly outrun it. And when you are jumping through walls the camera won't follow you as it only follows the intended level path.
Sometimes the camera can go through the walls, when this happens is however not fully understandable as of now. But most of the time the camera is simply stuck, where is where (one of them) the problem lies.
We (Arne has done most of the work) have a camehack that can be used. There are a few problems with playing the stage this level however. Enemies will be spawned normally with the camhack which you aren't able to jump through. When you replay the run, with the camera in its intended position, the enemies have yet not spawned yet which means you can actually jump through them. The enemies may also cause lag while you are recording, lag that shouldn't be there as the enemies don't yet exist. The same goes with the enemies that are actually spawned with the normal camera, which may also cause lag.
In the end you have a pain in the ass level to optimise to such level that will make me satisfied.
Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Tompa wrote:
The problem is that the camera is moving insanely slow, so you quickly outrun it.
I can confirm how painful it is to deal with those camera quirks, on DKC3, for example, it's possible to reach the target 1000 frames before it spawns in Ripsaw Rage. It would be great if the DKC camera, on all of the three games, worked like Nosferatu's camera, in this game no matter where the camera is, the exit is always there.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
Oh oh. I totally forgot to post this... SilentWolf444 (Youtube, a DKC speedrunner) gave me a link to a Japanese DKC TAS on Nico Video (link, needs an account or online nico viewer: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16345209 ). This TAS gets through Croctopus Chase using Expresso...
dude, you linked part 2
here’s part 1 http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16344609
I don’t know how to link to the one without account…
btw, this guy doesn’t do the victory dance cancel trick for some reason
edit: wow, the glitch was weird and fantastic :D
in part 2 at 4:04, is he doing a roll in midair? O_o actually, he’s doing it twice in a row…
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I know about that run. I just haven't cared for it much as it is very unoptimised. So is Croctopus Chase.
Skipping the dance doesn't work in the Japanese version. This adds up to about 52 seconds for a run that beats all levels. There are also a couple of other differences in the versions. Most of them are listed here: http://dkc-atlas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=151
A new DKC 101% run has been restarted (V11 =D). Except extremely slow progress however, as I have too many other projects.
I’m happy to see you’re motivated to keep restarting the run to bring it to its maximum optimization :)
looking forward to it, DKC easily makes for some of the best TASes in my opinion
before asking this question I went to the Game Resources page, but it wasn’t very helpful in explaining how these work…
Jumproll: how does this work? the page only explain what happens visually, but I see that myself
Roll in midair: this is explained better, but I don’t remember the above JP TAS to have Diddy invincible to do this trick… I’ll check again / edit: ok it actually does happen, even though it’s long before the double midair roll, weird stuff
btw that page says the weird rolling that’s become normal to do whenever possible isn’t faster than roll-jumping in most occasions… that sounds wrong seeing as how it’s abused
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
That page really needs an update, but I'm simply too lazy to do it. That has to change someday...
A jumproll works by landing on an enemy the same frame you start a new roll. This can be done when you fall off a platform with an enemy below.
Roll and jump in midair is kinda weird as I'm yet not sure exactly why or how it works. One way to do it which is pretty consistant is to have both Kongs, preferly Donkey in the lead to sacrifice, run straight into the cart, no rolling or jumping, and ride the cart until you get hit by the necky - again, no jumping. When you get hit Diddy will jump out you'll now be able to roll and then jump in midair.
The glitch deactivates the moment the platform with the tire is spawned.
Copy and paste the nicovideo link here:
http://www.mmcafe.com/nico.html
they say it's simple as that... and it is!
edit:
finished watching it, nice tricks by the way.
I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.
I think it would be cool to have 3 categories for this game: Glitched any% (ie the 8:13 run by Tompa), any% and 100%. Would basically follow the same logic as the glitched any% and any% Super Metroid categories.
Basically I think it's worth seeing a run that completes all stages without also doing all the bonus barrels, and I don't think it's too arbitrary to separate categories based on whether a game breaking level skipping glitch is used or not.
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
The "any% All Levels" category is the most common one for real time running afterall. I personally will probably never make such TAS. But if someone else wants to, go ahead, it has been requested several times afterall.
The "any% All Levels" category is the most common one for real time running afterall. I personally will probably never make such TAS. But if someone else wants to, go ahead, it has been requested several times afterall.
I was looking for some DKC hacks the other day and found an entire forum dedicated to them! Unfortunately most of the hacks only modify a couple of levels or are very kaizo (ie over-the-top difficult), but I did manage to find a complete game hack that was very well done.
TopicPatch
Preview:
Link to video
I think it would be really cool to see this game TASed, I might even have a crack at it myself if I feel particularly bored.
Kremling's Revenge is a pretty neat hack, yeah.
It does have a few flaws, though, and it doesn't entirely escape from the whole "kaizo" descriptor. Later in the game, you'll find lots of sections of levels that are just narrow platforms with Krushas on them. Also, all of the water levels aren't redone at all, unless you count cutting them from the game entirely, as they've all been changed to a single screen-length each.
Platform Perils (the last level) is, appropriately, by far the most difficult, and I actually did a makeshift TAS of it myself a little less than a year ago:
Link to video
Not very optimized by any means, but it was more of a demonstration than anything.
I wouldn't be completely opposed to seeing a full-game TAS, though. Some of the levels have some interesting features and it would be entertaining to see a "perfect" playthrough.
Wow, that is pretty ridiculous. I just got to W5 and I'm already tearing my hair out on every stage. A pity too since the first 2.5 worlds (- the temple levels) were just right in terms of challenging.
Another hack I find interesting is a japanese kaizo hack of DKC2. It's trolltastically difficult from the very first stage, but at the same time it seems fairly complete and well done, despite the graphical glitches.
Creator's youtube playlistPatch (use on a Japanese V1.0 rom)
Preview:
Link to video
I'm still hoping to find a truly amazing DKC hack, similar to what Redesign was to Super Metroid or what Kamek's Revenge was to Yoshi's Island.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Does anyone know how the banana clumps hidden in the ground / trees are handled by the game? Are they hard-coded into the level maps themselves, or will information about them appear in the memory watcher, so that they could be tracked as they come on screen?
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
No, they aren't coded in the map themselves, they are seperated objects so that you can indeed check some memory addresses to see when they are spawned. I don't know the sprite value or the addresses for them currently however...
If you check the maps here you are able to see where they are all hidden: http://www.dkc-atlas.com/maps/dkc/1-1
Just enable the first overlay.
