An improvement to my last attempt. It is now nearly 1412 frames faster, around 23.5 seconds.
Soon after submitting my first movie, I found a TAS on Youtube by someone who calls himself suklaalevy1. While my run was 8 seconds faster due to better optimization and a much better route in level 2, he dealt with various situations in ways that were better than the way I handled them. This inspired me to go back through and incorporate and improve his strategies while developing and finding others.
Another thing I did was go through and do some analysis of Wile E.'s speed and acceleration. This actually didn't amount to too much improvement, but it was still quite handy. A few generalities:
When you press the run button while jogging and you don't have any boosts, Wile E.'s speed increases a tiny bit. Keeping mashing the run button and you'll achieve and maintain near-boost speeds.
After triggering a boost, it is generally better to keep running for a short while before jumping.
All levels were improved, some more so than others. Significant savings:
Day 2 (or Level 2): Made use of a third cannon to move much faster. Train 1: Used and improved suklaalevy1's rocket skate pattern (among other things) to save 5-6 seconds on this level alone. Night 1: Hit the bumpers and some subsequent cacti in a way that allowed me to maintain insane speeds for much longer. I even managed to run straight through a pile of powder kegs, giving me a boost to spare. Night 2: Used the spare boost to skip the first bat suit.
I was hoping to save about ten seconds, so color me pleasantly surprised.
mmbossman: Two enjoyably fast runs, with pretty significant route changes for each character. I think that this game easily warrants a separate category for each character.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Nice! high marks here, but I want to note that I never did get it to sync properly, ended up watching it in your youtube channel.
anyway, fun to watch, and just the right length for what it is.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Twelvepack wrote:
Nice! high marks here, but I want to note that I never did get it to sync properly, ended up watching it in your youtube channel.
The current Youtube is the old one. Not sure why it isn't synching up for you.
Thanks for watching.
Edit: Both submissions have been updated with Youtube videos.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
How many times you catch and even surpass the roadrunner? This TAS is hilarious, and much more awesome after having seen the previous attempt so you can understand how crazy this one really is!
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
DrJones wrote:
How many times you catch and even surpass the roadrunner?
By my count, 11 times caught, four of which were in the first level. I should also mention that none were intentional. The Road Runner just kept being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong things.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
Wow, this game is very impressive as a TAS, a great watch. The game looks like a lot of fun aswell, it reminds me of the days when games based on popular franchises were actually pretty good. The genesis was best for this :P
Anyway, a solid 8/8 from me. Nice!
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
(nice pick of screenshot)
Quick question for any Genesis hardware experts out there. When playing on an emulator, the title looks kinda rough. Most prominent is a ton of vertical dithering - empty spaces between solid vertical lines. Quite ugly.
However, when I play it on the original hardware hooked up to a CRT TV, this dithering is gone. Where it should be is smooth coloring. When it comes to character animations, it comes across as a transparency effect. As a result, it looks much cleaner and prettier.
This is obviously some kind of hardware trick similar to abusing LCD's afterimaging by using 30 Hz flickering on GBx titles to get a transparent effect and push more colors from the hardware. What are the mechanics behind this? I find it interesting.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
(nice pick of screenshot)
Quick question for any Genesis hardware experts out there. When playing on an emulator, the title looks kinda rough. Most prominent is a ton of vertical dithering - empty spaces between solid vertical lines. Quite ugly.
However, when I play it on the original hardware hooked up to a CRT TV, this dithering is gone. Where it should be is smooth coloring. When it comes to character animations, it comes across as a transparency effect. As a result, it looks much cleaner and prettier.
This is obviously some kind of hardware trick similar to abusing LCD's afterimaging by using 30 Hz flickering on GBx titles to get a transparent effect and push more colors from the hardware. What are the mechanics behind this? I find it interesting.
Because of the low quality of the RF connection, when you play with a Genesis on a real television, the image tends to blend horizontally consecutive pixels. This supposed weakness has instead been used for several kinds of cool effects, from smoother gradients to fake transparency.
This post by ICEknight, on the Sonic Retro forums, shows many of those effects, which can be emulated in the Kega Fusion emulator. Gens doesn't have that kind of filter, though you can press F9 to enable the quick blur -- it's not the same thing at all, but it will blend pixels together.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
nineko wrote:
Because of the low quality of the RF connection, when you play with a Genesis on a real television, the image tends to blend horizontally consecutive pixels. This supposed weakness has instead been used for several kinds of cool effects, from smoother gradients to fake transparency.
This post by ICEknight, on the Sonic Retro forums, shows many of those effects, which can be emulated in the Kega Fusion emulator. Gens doesn't have that kind of filter, though you can press F9 to enable the quick blur -- it's not the same thing at all, but it will blend pixels together.
Using a connection's low quality to bring about something of higher quality. Fascinating. I thought it was something along those lines, but I didn't think the effect would be so pronounced, which is what had me confused.
Thank you. I'm fascinated by things like this.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
