In this game, a chameleon is transformed into a human-like chameleon with various abilities. This run demonstrates just how amazing this simple, transformed chameleon can be!

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Mupen 64 Re-recording v8
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Genre: Action/Platformer

Comments

With not many Nintendo 64 game having published runs, I thought it would be interesting to try out this game. Chameleon twist has a total of 6 levels, which only 4 are needed to be played through in order to reach the end.
If you noticed, I submitted a 15:46.83 run that used the stages Ant Land and Sand Castle, but those stages were quite slower than the alternative stages.

Stage by stage comments

Level 1 - Jungle Island

Outside the cave- Pretty Straight forward. I found that spinning on the poles was a lot faster than just walking. Inside the cave- Did a lot of jumping over corners to save some small time instead of just walking around them. I also manipulated the "spiders" to favorable positions in the room with the two stone guards. The in game timer's final time for this stage was 02"11".

Level 2 – Bomb Land

This stage proved to be over two minutes faster than Ant Land, which surprised me. A decent amount of luck manipulation was needed to get the enemies to appear in good locations to quickly clear rooms. Also, damage was taken to quickly get through two rooms. The boss was also a lot more fun than the Ant Queen. The in game timer's final time for this stage was only 01"32".

Level 3 – Kids Land

This stage also proved to be about a minute faster than Sand Castle. This bright and colorful stage is interesting. There are three rooms with these giant cookies with an X on them. In the second room, the cookie was slightly too far out, so I couldn’t just jump around it like I did in the third room. Also, in the two rooms where you had to ride on cookies to get across it, I found that if you jumped in the direction it was staking you, it would give you a little extra speed to fly forward with. Lastly the boss battle was quick. Took damage on purpose to show you can walk through the cake, which I found amusing. The in game timer's final time for this stage was 03"29".

Level 4 - Ghost Castle

Most of the rooms in this level weren't as complex as the ones in Kids Land. The 2 rooms where I had to light these candles using enemies involved just waiting for the right time to eat the enemy. The in game timer's final time for this stage was 02"47".

Other comments

The Final in game time for this game was 00:09'59" which I am very pleased with.
Some possible improvements might include
  • Improved Routes
  • Better Luck Manipulation

Thanks to

  • Johannes (formerly z0MG) for hex editing some stuff.
  • ThMrksman for telling me that Bomb and Kids land were probably a lot faster.

mmbossman: Good, short movie, with decent quality; accepting.
ShinyDoofy: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2144: Bobmario511's N64 Chameleon Twist in 12:40.33
Player (80)
Joined: 7/7/2008
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...much better.
Joined: 3/14/2008
Posts: 152
Location: United Kingdom
OH NOES!!!!! A GIANT CAKE!!! *encoding* Edit: Watched now and rated 6.5/8.5 Edit2: Avi Here Has pause screen at start and subtitles and stuff, so possibly publishable. (320*240 44MB)
Joined: 4/30/2007
Posts: 150
so when i tried this game out i thought there were mandatory levels and then a bonus level if you got enough crowns i must have missed something anyways good job
Former player
Joined: 12/5/2007
Posts: 716
duksandfish wrote:
OH NOES!!!!! A GIANT CAKE!!!
The cake is a lie!
duksandfish wrote:
Edit2: Avi Here Has pause screen at start and subtitles and stuff, so possibly publishable. (320*240 44MB)
Watched your encode and voted 6.5/8. While the overall quality really wasn't bad, I'm afraid I can't publish it like this for several reason that should be relatively easy to fix: Your logo screen at the beginning starts out blurry and sharpens while watching it. It's better to have it at a good quality from the beginning so that I don't focus on the picture getting better but on what's written there. x264 has an option for this with mencoder called "zones". Also, I think that "Tool-Assisted Emulator Movie" looks odd, to say the least. You used B-frames in an AVI container. I can't quite judge the encode because of this and can't give you an exact source, but afaik it's discouraged as MKV works far better with B frames. Maybe an experienced encoder can give you a more detailed explanation. Your subtitles are shown a little too short for my taste and falsely formatted. Check the Encoder Guidelines for more on this. Very small mistake: it's bobmario511. Although I know it's a 30fps game, not exactly every second frame is dropped due to the N64's variable framerate. So 60fps should have been taken here. The game's sound frequency is 44095Hz, downscaling it to 22050Hz may not break a rule I could find, yet again, seems meh to me. /edit: dispute settled. He doesn't bother his encode not to be considered and I misinterpreted "possibly publishable" (as opposed to nineko's and my previous understanding that we really wanted it to be). The difference in sound frequency seems to result from different versions of mupen being used, I guess (Linux vs Windows).
Joined: 3/14/2008
Posts: 152
Location: United Kingdom
ShinyDoofy wrote:
duksandfish wrote:
OH NOES!!!!! A GIANT CAKE!!!
The cake is a lie!
duksandfish wrote:
Edit2: Avi Here Has pause screen at start and subtitles and stuff, so possibly publishable. (320*240 44MB)
Watched your encode and voted 6.5/8. While the overall quality really wasn't bad, I'm afraid I can't publish it like this for several reason that should be relatively easy to fix: Your logo screen at the beginning starts out blurry and sharpens while watching it. It's better to have it at a good quality from the beginning so that I don't focus on the picture getting better but on what's written there. x264 has an option for this with mencoder called "zones". Also, I think that "Tool-Assisted Emulator Movie" looks odd, to say the least. You used B-frames in an AVI container. I can't quite judge the encode because of this and can't give you an exact source, but afaik it's discouraged as MKV works far better with B frames. Maybe an experienced encoder can give you a more detailed explanation. Your subtitles are shown a little too short for my taste and falsely formatted. Check the Encoder Guidelines for more on this. Very small mistake: it's bobmario511. Although I know it's a 30fps game, not exactly every second frame is dropped due to the N64's variable framerate. So 60fps should have been taken here. The game's sound frequency is 44095Hz, downscaling it to 22050Hz may not break a rule I could find, yet again, seems meh to me.
*resolved*
Kaylee
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Awesome improvement Bobmario! ^^
Mitjitsu
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The cake is worth an extra 1.5 points in the entertainment department and the movie had slightly better execution, but still contains relatively imprecise movements so I'll give 7.6 for entertainment and 7.5 for tech.
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
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This looked much better than the previous run. I must say I'm somewhat hesitant on the optimization in this run. Not noticing that the other levels are over 2 minutes faster is a fairly large oversight. The other two levels were then redone in 1-2 days which seems to be a pretty quick redo. One particular part I'd like to point out is in Kids' Land when you spin around the pole to land on the specific platforms. I would think it would be faster to spin around the minimal radius possible. There were a couple rooms where it seemed to me that you chose a bad spot to start eating enemies from while walking across a room. This could be you using luck manipulation that I couldn't see though. In ghost castle is it possible to vault up to the next room in the spinning room faster than you jump up? A couple movements and strategies seemed a bit suboptimal, but overall the run was pretty good, and I have been wanting to see a TAS of this for some time. I'm glad to see this run completed. 7.5 / 7 EDIT: Is there any potential for an all crowns run? I think it would make many rooms a lot less linear. We would also get to see all the levels in one run. You can eat crowns with your tongue right? Here's the only FAQ on GameFAQs. It mentions a few things. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/n64/file/196896/6844
Joined: 4/30/2007
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if he did every level i think you would see the entertainment rating start dropping like crazy
Kaylee
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Yeah, an all crowns run wouldn't be the least entertaining. But that's just IMO.
Joined: 8/3/2008
Posts: 157
Location: The Land Down Under
Woo, I'm in the credits! All in all it seems like a run worth publishing to me, there are still the occasional rooms which don't look optimal (Kirkq beat me to mentioning the room with illuminated platforms) but also a few rooms which are clearly broken and get bypassed very quickly, adding to the entartainment. I gave it an 8/7.5 and the entertainment rating is only really high because i know this game well and enjoyed seeing the occasional tough enemy completely ignored/bypassed. Also, the bomb snake got owned :P
Kirkq wrote:
Is there any potential for an all crowns run? I think it would make many rooms a lot less linear. We would also get to see all the levels in one run. You can eat crowns with your tongue right?
When i'm done with bomberman hero i might do an all crowns run if there's any interest in that, otherwise I might try and beat this submission. Either way, i will probably be doing something related to this game once im done with my current run. EDIT: Please ignore my previous sentence, Bomberman is taking me a long time and assuming i ever get it done i will probably take a break from TASing.
Joined: 4/30/2007
Posts: 150
oh man we really are seeing all the 64 platformers being tackled i have a reason to be all excited over tas again
KennyMan666
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Joined: 8/24/2005
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Location: Göteboj
Kirkq wrote:
I would think it would be faster to spin around the minimal radius possible.
No, you spin faster the farther away from the pole you are when you grab it. And I'm pretty sure the tongue stretches faster than you can walk. So grabbing them from as far away as possible is the fastest way of doing it.
Kirkq wrote:
You can eat crowns with your tongue right?
No, you have to walk into them to get them.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
Joined: 4/30/2007
Posts: 150
youre both addressing different questions the kirk guy is asking about time the kenny dude is discussing angular velocity this all sounds like a fun little physics 1 problem for the undergrads but i would rather kick myself than do it
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KennyMan666 wrote:
No, you spin faster the farther away from the pole you are when you grab it. And I'm pretty sure the tongue stretches faster than you can walk. So grabbing them from as far away as possible is the fastest way of doing it.
I understand that it is faster to grab the average pole from as far away as possible. I was discussing this with regard to the specific rooms in kids' land. I'm talking about the "step on the lit up platform" rooms. I would think getting your tongue to hit the pole as soon as possible would be the fastest. I would also think that no matter how far you are away from the pole it takes the same amount of time to rotate a specified angle. I may be wrong, but he chooses neither the minimum or maximum radius so surely something is wrong. Thanks for addressing my other question.
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Nice improvement. My encode will be up in a few hours.
KennyMan666
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Right. I haven't actually watched the run yet, I just assumed that was what you were talking about. My bad. I know what room you're talking about now, though.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi. "I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
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[URL=http://www.filedropper.com/chameleontwist-tas-bobmario511]Encode (48 MB)[/url] which should be suitable for publication.
Skilled player (1099)
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
I watched this and thought it was pretty good. I didn't watch the first version, but this seems to be markedly improved. I've never thought this was the best game in the world for TASing, but I think this run makes it work so positive ratings from me. 6 for entertainment. 7 for Tech.
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Joined: 2/23/2008
Posts: 266
Location: CA, USA
I have uploaded this run to Youtube, in 2 segments due to my account. If anyone cares to watch it, but haven't felt like downloading either the m64 or the encode here it is. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RC6u-nrMr1k
Player (80)
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Posts: 873
Location: Utah
I really thought that this run is better than some of our N64 runs we published, such as GoldenEye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, and the occasional Mortal Kombat 4. In short, I really liked this run and I hope it will be published. If it doesn't, then at least I can still enjoy this run. I've said so much stuff about this movie cause I played it when I was a kid.
Joined: 7/10/2007
Posts: 280
4/7.5. Never played or really heard of this game. You make this game look very easy, which is a compliment to the hard work you put into this TAS, but the game doesn't even look fun. The TAS doesn't make me understand why anyone would even like the game.
Player (80)
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Location: Utah
Oh yeah, almost forgot. 8/7.5
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saw it yesterday, as far as tech is concerned, I gave it a 7 because everything was always traveling in curves. The camera movement was never accounted for. Apart from that it was great. entertainment: sorry just above a six, this is only because the game is relatively slow compared to many others, not your fault.
Measure once. Cut twice.