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  • Aims for fastest time
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Colors a DNA
  • Staves off alien invasion using only the power of multi-layered time paradoxes
  • Drives author to verge of suicide
  • Drives encoder to verge of suicide
Emulator used: Gens9f - Gens10a + ecco2 autofire&hitbox display.

For those of you who are not familiar with the game

I have provided this gmv: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/928439988/Upthorn-Ecco2_Texty_2.gmv which sonars two more dolphins, and delays presses at every dialogue screen in order for the text to be readable.
Ecco: The Tides of Time is the sequel to Ecco the Dolphin, and has been one of my favorite games for a long, long time. Like Nitsuja did with the original, I made the mistake of thinking that this game would be easy to TAS, got disabused of that notion rather quickly, and only managed to complete the TAS by writing a few special types of autofire into gens. Ecco is a dolphin that controls like a tank with a jet engine. He can get up to very high speeds, but his turning radius is large to begin with, and is greater than the size of the screen at top speed. Additionally, hitboxes are quite difficult to determine just from the game graphics, there's an entire set of levels that involves navigating along mostly dry-land while the gravity changes almost at random, and many levels are sprinkled liberally with obstacles or enemies that will kill you instantly upon contact. Additionally, this time around Ecco must jump through hoops in long 3D levels, and rebuild the Asterite from a single pair of globes.
Neither of the really impressive glitches that Nitsuja used in the first movie remain, but there are still a few subtler ones, and I do make use of them.
Since I don't really know what more to say about this game, I'll just submit and answer any questions that come along.
Oh, for just a taste of what TASing this game was like:
16:04:21 * Upthorn almost done with ecco 2
16:33:52 <Upthorn> wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
16:35:03 <Upthorn> when I said "almost done" there was exactly 1 second of gameplay left.
As you will note from the timestamps the last 60 frames of gameplay took TWENTY NINE MINUTES to complete.
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots of this movie and placed them here. I'm not sure I got the right ROM though. (I tried ECCO - The Tides of Time (U) [!].gen, which was the closest match to what you wrote.) Well, here goes! Feel free to clean up the list.
Truncated: I'll do the honors. It seems this movie is very popular with the audience. I found it very good too, minus perhaps some of the ball catching, but the rest of it made up for that.
Raiscan: I'm currently trying to encode this, after which I will process. Imagine it to be like Gunstar Heroes but worse :(
Expect it to take a few more days, but rest assured I am making good progress. Heads up: the output will likely be mkv and be greater than a 4:1 size ratio...
Raiscan: Processing.

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Posted: 8/14/2008 12:01 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2054: upthorn's Genesis Ecco: The Tides of Time in 47:38.72
Posted: 8/14/2008 12:59 AM
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ElectroSpecter
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Joined: 8/6/2006
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Location: Connecticut, USA
Never has a video game scared the living hell out of me as much as Ecco the Dolphin. Voting yes for dolphins on speed and turtle rape. Out of curiosity, was air management ever an issue? It doesn't look like he needs air in this game, though... Does getting crushed into the walls in the later autoscrollers actually save time? Looks like it makes the screen move differently. Wow. what a depressing ending. =[
My Backloggery
Posted: 8/14/2008 1:04 AM
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upthorn
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ElectroSpecter wrote:
Out of curiosity, was air management ever an issue? It doesn't look like he needs air in this game, though...
Not really. He does need air after the bit in the third normal level where the screen goes all shaky and it looks like a bomb went off, but it's not really an issue for TAS, because if you do things as fast as possible, there are enough air vents placed around the levels that you'll never have to worry. I actually do run out of air meter at the very end of "The Hungry Ones" (the level where ecco turns into a shark) though. But it's close enough to the end that there's not enough time for my health meter to get totally drained.
Does getting crushed into the walls in the later autoscrollers actually save time? Looks like it makes the screen move differently.
Nope, it's just playing with death for entertainment purposes.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 8/14/2008 1:05 AM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
What?! It doesn't colour a dolphin?!
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Posted: 8/14/2008 1:32 AM
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Mitjitsu
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TAS of 2007 N64 TAS of 2007
This game is long overdue, and it's always nice to be reminded of that long tedious quest to find all the globes. It wasn't too difficult to follow given my familarity of the game. I'll give this one a yes vote.
Posted: 8/14/2008 1:42 AM
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XIF
Joined: 2/7/2006
Posts: 58
anybody wanna drop some helpful suggestions on where to get a good dump of the game for my view pleasure? Seems interesting, especially with the image in my head I get with "handles like a tank with a jet engine" Aside from that... I felt like posting this somewhere... So the past week saw the publication of 24 different runs, where as before we were getting 1 run about every 3 to 5 days. All the runs on queue seemed to be up there for weeks or months, and even saw a mario run staying in queue for over a month I think, where as before over a day was like an eternity for such runs. wtf is going on?
<3 time attacks
Posted: 8/14/2008 1:52 AM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
XIF wrote:
anybody wanna drop some helpful suggestions on where to get a good dump of the game for my view pleasure? Seems interesting, especially with the image in my head I get with "handles like a tank with a jet engine"
No. This is against the rules. Please don't ask, because you won't get. Perhaps you should consider googling, or waiting for it's possible (likely inevitable) publishing and get the AVI.
XIF wrote:
I felt like posting this somewhere...
I'm sure Upthorn will appreciate it.
XIF wrote:
So the past week saw the publication of 24 different runs, where as before we were getting 1 run about every 3 to 5 days. All the runs on queue seemed to be up there for weeks or months, and even saw a mario run staying in queue for over a month I think, where as before over a day was like an eternity for such runs. wtf is going on?
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=175019#175019
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Posted: 8/14/2008 1:57 AM
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paul_t
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 8/12/2007
Posts: 102
Very nice. Is the cart better for a TAS than the CD?
Posted: 8/14/2008 2:04 AM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
The movie won't work for the Sega CD - it's a different emulator. :) Even if they were the same, there's probably minute differences in timing that would prevent the movie from working on that version. Use the cart.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 8/14/2008 2:06 AM
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upthorn
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paul_t wrote:
Very nice. Is the cart better for a TAS than the CD?
Yes, because the Sega CD version has longer loading times. Even if not for that, though, the Genesis version has better music.
Derakon wrote:
The movie won't work for the Sega CD - it's a different emulator. :) Even if they were the same, there's probably minute differences in timing that would prevent the movie from working on that version. Use the cart.
I think paul was asking why I chose to TAS the cart instead of the CD, rather than which he should use when playing it back.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 8/14/2008 2:30 AM
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Comicalflop
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Joined: 6/13/2006
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Speedy TAS of 2009
Ah, Ecco! Scaring little kids with its eerie music since 1994. This is good. I vote yes. I'm curious, with what you're learned TASing this, might an improvement of Nitsuja's ECCO be possible?
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Posted: 8/14/2008 2:44 AM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
upthorn wrote:
Derakon wrote:
The movie won't work for the Sega CD - it's a different emulator. :) Even if they were the same, there's probably minute differences in timing that would prevent the movie from working on that version. Use the cart.
I think paul was asking why I chose to TAS the cart instead of the CD, rather than which he should use when playing it back.
Ahh, yes, good call. I thought it was a rather weird question. Sorry about that, Paul.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 8/14/2008 2:45 AM
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upthorn
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Comicalflop wrote:
Ah, Ecco! Scaring little kids with its eerie music since 1994. This is good. I vote yes. I'm curious, with what you're learned TASing this, might an improvement of Nitsuja's ECCO be possible?
With what Nitsuja learned while TASing the first one, he openly admitted that improvements were possible, like he didn't discover the fastest method of accelerating until halfway through. In addition to that, there is perhaps one thing I learned while TASing this that Nitsuja might not have learned from TASing Ecco, which could be used in a couple of places for very small improvements. The problem, though, is that TASing Ecco is an exercise in concentrated frustration, and having to go back and do levels over could bring great men to madness. Which is why this is the first TAS I've ever submitted that didn't involve me starting over from the beginning to incorporate new tricks I've learned upon the way. Nitsuja didn't have the stamina to do so with the original Ecco game, and this one is nearly twice as long, and a bit more annoying because less can be skipped.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 8/14/2008 3:25 AM
Post subject: THIS IS A JOKE: I LOVE ECCO MOVIES AND I VOTED YES
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Xkeeper
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Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
I vote no because this movie is boing, bland, and only people with nostalgia factor will enjoy it. Also it's too blue, features more of the same redundant globe collecting, and is boring to watch for more than five seconds because nothing different happens past that. On that note, can you guys start posting the versions of Gens you used for this crap? Watching the hitboxes would make it better.
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Posted: 8/14/2008 3:27 AM
Post subject: Re: THIS IS A JOKE: I LOVE ECCO MOVIES AND I VOTED YES
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upthorn
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Xkeeper wrote:
I vote no because this movie is boing, bland, and only people with nostalgia factor will enjoy it. Also it's too blue, features more of the same redundant globe collecting, and is boring to watch for more than five seconds because nothing different happens past that. On that note, can you guys start posting the versions of Gens you used for this crap? Watching the hitboxes would make it better.
The hitbox display is part of the gens 10 source package you need only uncomment "#define ECCOBOXHACK" in hackdefs.h
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 8/14/2008 3:53 AM
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J.Y
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Joined: 5/24/2008
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NES TAS of 2022 Homebrew TAS of 2022
yes vote even the time is very long ~!~ - -!!
Posted: 8/14/2008 4:52 AM
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WarioMCP
Joined: 1/9/2006
Posts: 22
On a slightly unrelated note, how many more of Nitsuja's runs are you going to obsolete? lol
Posted: 8/14/2008 5:32 AM
Post subject: Re: THIS IS A JOKE: I LOVE ECCO MOVIES AND I VOTED YES
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Xkeeper
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upthorn wrote:
you need only uncomment "#define ECCOBOXHACK" in hackdefs.h
I can't compile Gens (or other programs), so changing my request into one for the binary.
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Posted: 8/14/2008 11:48 AM
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Aqfaq
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This is an overdose of fast-paced dolphin mysticism. Strong "yes" vote and a few screenshots here:
Posted: 8/14/2008 2:22 PM
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nesrocks
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Nice graphics. I'll watch this run so I'll never have to worry about finishing the game myself :)
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Posted: 8/14/2008 8:29 PM
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MattyXB
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Joined: 4/23/2005
Posts: 435
Location: Germany
Yes, always love these games to watch. To play they are to hard for me. I most swim in the first Stage a bit to see the nice graphics. So see a complete TAS is great. Now only Ecco Jr. is missing as TAS. ;)
Last TAS finished: Final Fantasy Adventure (4.0 Warp Glitch Run) WIP in the moment: Tail Gator (GB) Matty
Posted: 8/14/2008 11:37 PM
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Raiscan
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Just watched twice. Graphics are amazing, and the run makes the game just as fast as a Sonic run in some places. Yes vote.
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Posted: 8/15/2008 3:01 AM
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p0rtal_0f_rain
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Uh-huh! This gets more interesting beyond Ecco 1 - I vote yes.
Posted: 8/15/2008 8:17 AM
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LagDotCom
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
Despite the long orb collecting sequence (which is actually occasionally interesting), this was a good watch, and overall a pleasing experience. Upthorn bugged me with stuff while he was TASing it, and I'm quite happy with his decision not to go back and redo it all. Yes.
Voted NO for NO reason
Posted: 8/15/2008 3:00 PM
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KDR_11k
Joined: 1/23/2006
Posts: 352
Location: Germany
So, was that helix thing you built just a McGuffin or was it supposed to do something that you glitched out of?
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