I've finished a test run of this game:
Part 1Part 2Movie File
You can sustain flight indefinitely by turboing the up button, which I use to save time in some levels.
Awesome! I've been waiting for a TAS of this for a while. :) Glad to see someone finally made one. Here's my comments as I watch:
Stage 1a:
* You get some lag, which might be reduced if you weren't firing all the time. Then again, it might not be. Still, it looks sloppy to be firing if you don't need to (and I know the EX-UP fires when you do).
* You seem to be flying up to the targets and then dropping down to shoot at them. Wouldn't it be faster to be flying at their level in the first place? Particularly the one at ~42s in seems like it could be done faster. Of course this is a test run. I'm going to stop commenting on minor flying errors after this.
* Funny how all the enemies you skipped through the level pile up at the end. Might be some opportunities there for playing around. Or if they're contributing to lag, it might be worth killing them.
Stage 1b (first boss):
* Wouldn't it be faster to start out in the EX-UP, kill his legs, and then do the rest flying? With your path, you have to start at the top of the boss, work your way down, go into the EX-UP to kill his legs, get out, and go back up to the top to kill him. I know the EX-UP divides its fire between the different targets, but it seems like the cost of going into/out of the EX-UP an extra time (and the cost of the extra flying) would make up for not being able to use the flamethrower as much.
Stage 2a:
* Is there a significant difference between flying forwards and backwards?
* Have you done any damage checks for the guided laser vs. the other subweapons? It's a big help in normal play for augmenting your machinegun since it fires straight forward if turboed and will destroy bullets (especially useful against the plasma turrets in the last two stages).
Stage 2b:
* It looks like two of the "fightercraft" things lagged significantly behind the others. Might just be their flying speed, but it might be that you're getting too far away from them and something weird's going on?
* You use the flamethrower against the fightcraft and then the single machinegun against the boss since you're out of energy. Seems like going into the EX-UP for doubled machinegun would be worthwhile for one or the other (if the EX-UP doesn't track the boss, then of course use it on the fightercraft). How does the other subweapon (rolling landmine?) compare damage-wise?
Stage 3a:
* You use up your energy early on and then hover along the top of the map; hovering has a slower horizontal speed than straight flying, though, which means you don't get to some of the targets as quickly as you could. You also use the birdmissile against some mooks, which means it's not available for use against targets.
* Picking the right route here's gonna be tough. I almost wonder if it'd be faster to fly all the way over to the right and then head back to the left, picking off targets as you go. Probably not since the birdmissile would get confused.
Stage 3b:
* I always used the rolling mine on the first half and the seeking lasers on the second half. You don't have the lasers, but you should have time to switch at halftime. Properly-timed, a rolling mine will make him close his eye as soon as he opens it.
Stage 4a:
* Stylistically I think it looks better if the only window you break is the one with the mining laser.
* Now I know why this level was impossible in normal play -- I didn't have a turbo controller! Thanks a lot, game developers.
Stage 5a:
* This is lagtastic with all the ships flying around as soon as you break stealth. It's probably worth going undetected for at least a little while.
* Oh, you died! Bah! I can understand why, given how little time it takes to continue, but it still rankles.
Stage 6a:
* When you do this for real, it's worth investigating if the boss dies faster if he's at the bottom of his up-and-down motion.
Stage 6b:
* Any way to dodge those shots aside from using the jets? Or do you fall for a fixed amount of time, as opposed to a fixed amount of distance?
* You start firing early; do those shots deal damage?
* The death here might actually cost more time than it saves.
* You never did use the mining laser. Oh, well. Cool weapon, but the power draw means it's probably not worth it.
All in all, looks very solid! I think the only major question is if it's worth picking up the seeking laser weapon.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for watching. :) Here's answers for most of your questions:
1a: The game is laggy in general, so minimizing what's on the screen at any given time is probably a good idea. It's hard to avoid the enemies that come up from the sand when flying lower, but I'm sure it could be faster than it is.
1b: I tested your idea and it seems to be slower. The EX-UP spends too much time shooting the projectiles.
2a: Some testing suggests that the speeds are equal. The guided laser does 1 damage per hit, which is the same as the flame weapon. It's not totally clear which one is better, since they fire at different rates and the laser can hit a target twice.
2b: I think that's just because they have longer to travel. The boss could definitely be faster by using the flame weapon more effectively, but the trade off is spending more time on the other enemies. The EX-UP doesn't track the boss. The mines are hard to use due to the way the boss moves, and the boss is too high to take damage from one that hits the ground.
3b: I tried the mine and it seems to be slower since you have to do additional rounds of having the eye closed. The lasers don't seem to be any more effective against the second part than the flame weapon.
4a: It's not obvious at all, but if you crouch before pressing up you can actually make it to the ledge unassisted. I've been playing the game for years but never knew about that until a couple of days ago.
5a: I think it would be difficult to do this stage quickly without dying.
6b: It's a fixed distance, so it's faster to take the hits. You can do damage well before the health meter shows up.
Hm. The big problem with the flamethrower is that its projectile speed is variable -- if you're flying forward, it has practically no range. There were a lot of missed shots against the second half of the stage 3 boss because of that (though a tightly-optimized bossfight might be able to avoid that problem). If you can deal double damage with the seeking laser (by having both hits land), then it might be faster to use against the stage 2 boss/fightercraft and the targets in stage 5 at least (you might also be able to die less against the targets with the laser, since it'd destroy their shots). How much damage do the plasma shots deal? I assume it's 1/projectile.
There's also the question of energy drain; IIRC the flamethrower kills your energy pretty quickly while the laser's more efficient, and you definitely ran into energy problems with the plasma shot. If only the laser wasn't off-path!
I think plasma's definitely the weapon of choice for stage 6, though, since the laser doesn't work well against the targets (it hits the center, not the gunpods). So it's not like you could grab the laser and then skip the plasma. :\
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I just did a test on the stage 2 boss, it can be beaten in under 13 seconds with the laser weapon, and it only takes 1/3 of the power meter. Since it takes about 5 seconds to pick up the weapon, I think the time savings may justify picking it up.
The plasma does 2 damage per shot, so a direct hit will do 10 damage.
Here's a chart of damages tested right on the enemy so the shots don't have to travel in the air. It doesn't tell the whole story due to the various quirks of the weapons which will slow down the actual gameplay.
Normal Gun - 6 damage every 60 frames
Laser - about 8 damage every 60 frames (more like 12 damage on large enemies)
Flame - about 11-12 damage every 60 frames
Plasma - 12.5 damage every 60 frames
Mines - about 22 damage every 60 frames
Bird - about 33-35 damage every 60 frames
I was pretty entertained by your test run. One thing to bear in mind is that the searchlights in Stage 5 help recharge your weapons gauge, so it might be worth hanging out in front of one to recharge while using the Seeker Falcon (the bird weapon) to keep the enemies off your back.
ALSO: Is there a reason you picked up the Proton Burst (in Stage 4) if you weren't going to use it?
ALSO ALSO: The Twin Laser has no effect on the Stage 3 boss; it just bounces off him.
Presumably he picked up the Proton Burst (is that its official name? I always called it the mining laser) because he thought it might come in handy, but it didn't, and he didn't want to go back and fix it, this being a test run. :)
You sure the laser weapon doesn't hit the second half of the stage-3 boss? I know he has all those balls flying around that could get in the way; maybe the shots hit those some of the time?
I didn't know that the searchlights recharged your energy; that's cool. Neat little touches like that in this game. :) I think though that he'll be best-served by simply being more frugal with energy use (and using the homing laser! Can you tell I like that weapon? :D) and not stopping along the way.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
(is that its official name? I always called it the mining laser)
I called it Proton Cannon. Well before Marvel Super Heroes / Marvel VS Capcom made it popular.
I haven't watched this run yet, but some general tips anyone playing the game should know:
- Use the jetpack on short bursts to maximize your flight time, it helps avoiding overheating. (not relevant if you can use it indefinetaly in a speedrun)
- Jump from crouch, like previously mentioned, saves a lot of jetpack power.
- On stage 4 (skyscreaper), you can do that huge flight even without jumpjetting, I think. Extremely barely, though.
- You can damage many enemies by ramming into them. Your mech will do a "kick" animation when this happens, and a loud metallish hit sound is played when this happens.
And importantly, your mech is solar powered, which means your special meter will recharge in light. Source of light varies per level:
- Stage 1 has a steady supply throughout.
- Stage 2 requires you to shoot holes in the ceiling (sort of). These light-beams also kill those floating sperm enemies, and act as an impenetrable wall for them.
- Stage 3 has a steady supply throughout again, but do note that light cannot penetrate the thick forest. You have to ly out of the forest to recharge. Gotta love how the background palette changes as you do this.
- Stage 4 is completely in the dark, but you can recharge by shooting out the brighter windows and moving close to them.
- Stage 5 is completely in the dark, except for the searchlights, which charge you up but also alert the security forces who attack you with a couple of nasty drones.
- Stage 6 has so much light that you can almost use the proton cannon throughout the stage. Quite a bunch of places are best cleared with this weapon. A lot of the level has panels covering the background though, which puts you in the shadows, and you can't recharge.
You can recharge your HP by converting your energy, stage 1-2 have converter machines for this, stage 3 refills your HP if you shoot down the apples (?) from the trees and pick them up before they fall on the ground, Stage 4 and onwards have one-shot converter powerups that fix as much damage as they can when you pick them up (either as much HP as you are missing, or as much energy you have).
You can get the ex-bike into the stage 6 boss if you havent done so yet - and the proton cannon does extreme damage to that boss. It also does gigantic damage to the last boss, as I recall.
In the Japanese manual, the special weapons are called Fire, Bomb, Metal Bird, Thunder, and Wide Beam. Bomb is the ground-wave (note that in the air, you actually throw a kind of grenade that turns into the ground wave upon landing), Wide Beam is the 5-hit plasma shot, and Thunder is the dual crystal laser. The "proton cannon" is not named, and neither is the hidden shield weapon which you get from destroying the first few walkers on stage 6 with melee attacks (by ramming into them continously).
The blue ground-wave weapon does the same damage if the grenade itself hits the enemy, at least on the third boss.
Another thing, will there be a run for the japanese version? It doesn't have a "Heavy" difficulty, but the ex-bike rate of fire does not double when you enter the bike, so you may need different tactics for a few parts.
edit: oh, and the game is 6-button compatible, you can seperatly control the ex-bike that way. On a 3-button pad, you have to crouch and hold left/right to control the bike, with 6-button you can do it (literally) on the fly.
Here's an updated test run, saving about thirty seconds due to improved strategies and weapon choices.
YoutubeMovie File
Solon: I originally thought the weapon would save time at the end of the game, but found out later that it doesn't as far as I can tell.
satan: Great info, thanks. I'm actually not sure what the difference between Heavy and Hard difficulty is anyway. It seems like a slower rate of fire for the bike wouldn't make a big difference since you can almost always do more damage out of it.
I was partially wrong about the Twin Laser on the Stage 3 boss; it can hit his first form, but the Flamethrower is a better option there anyway. On his second form, it was VERY effective.
Joined: 4/2/2009
Posts: 376
Location: Porto Alegre - Brazil
Ok, major improvements to you:
3b-4a: you can change to falcon after killing the boss, instead of waiting for the next stage to come up =P
5a: you don't need to kill the bosses, you just need to make them fall from their rails ... actually, it can look really incredible to overpass the big guys and defeat only their supports =P
4a: if you're not using the proton cannon, you shouldn't get it (or maybe I failed to realize where you used it?)
1a: having that much of enemies on the screen is creating delays and lags, I think =P
3a: did you check the order the generators fall for a better route? o.o
Otherwise, nice job with the plasma shots, they're the most effective weapon against stage 5 & 6's enemies, ... or maybe it could be worth to try the proton cannon on stage 6 since it recharges so fast? =P
Lastly, do you really need to throw out all your continues like that? Or do they count as lives in this game? XD
EDIT: Sorry, I wasn't commenting the current version ... but I stand right on most items on the list o_o
2b: is it really faster to go through the stage ignoring the enemies?
5a: can you reach Eos after stage completion to change to Plasma earlier instead of slowing it out on 5b? =P
Oh, 5a: is it really faster to kill the bosses? =P My idea of making them suicide is still possible, I think ...
Hey Jungon!
I think all the points you suggested are correct. That movie up there is pretty old though, and paul_t doesn't seem to be around anymore.
Me and RandomPie have fixed all the problems you mention in our current movie. It's progressing slowly, but I think it will pick up speed now that we are on stage 3 (stage 2a was hard to optimize).
I can believe it! 2a has some pretty tight energy constraints, plus those barriers to shoot down. 3 in contrast should largely just be a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Infinite flying would be so handy for playing that stage normally...
Are you planning to abuse death at any point? The penalties for dying are pretty minimal, after all.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
No plans to use death, but I guess we will use it if it turns out to be faster. So far it hasn't, but if a level has many possibilities for damage boosts it might be beneficial to use a continue. We'll see! :)
The drop time for the targets in level 3 aren't constant... they depend on the RNG seed at the start of the level. We think we have it figured out though, much thanks to mz who dug through the assembler.
For anyone listening, we have finished stage 4 and boss 4, and made tests for stage 5 to decide which weapon to go with (bombs again) and how the searchlights and moving targets work (synched at staged start). We thought we might have another RNG hell on our hands, like stage 3 and 4, but it seems this level is pretty static!
Letting everyone know that we have not given up. Stage 5 including the boss was just finished, so now there is only 1 stage + 2 bosses left, and the last boss is expected to be trivial. We're getting there, slowly!
If someone try to beat this game "Glitched", this is the values that you need
0xcc74 change 0xcc76, work from both versions
EX-Ranza
0000 Secret Easy
0001 "1-1" Easy
0002 "1-2" Easy
0003 "2-1" Easy
0004 "2-2" Easy
0005 "3-1" Easy
0006 "3-2" Easy
0007 "4-1" Easy
0008 "4-2" Easy
0009 "5-1" Easy
000a "5-2" Easy
000b "6-1" Easy
000c "6-2a" Easy
000d "6-2b" Easy
000e Final Easy
000f "1-1" Normal
0010 "1-2" Normal
0011 "2-1" Normal
0012 "2-2" Normal
0013 "3-1" Normal
0014 "3-2" Normal
0015 "4-1" Normal
0016 "4-2" Normal
0017 "5-1" Normal
0018 "5-2" Normal
0019 "6-1" Normal
001a "6-2a" Normal
001b "6-2b" Normal
001c Final Normal
001d "1-1" Hard
001e "1-2" Hard
001f "2-1" Hard
0020 "2-2" Hard
0021 "3-1" Hard
0022 "3-2" Hard
0023 "4-1" Hard
0024 "4-2" Hard
0025 "5-1" Hard
0026 "5-2" Hard
0027 "6-1" Hard
0028 "6-2a Hard
0029 "6-2b" Hard
002a Final Hard
Ranger-X
0000 "1-1" Easy
0001 "1-2" Easy
0002 "2-1" Easy
0003 "2-2" Easy
0004 "3-1" Easy
0005 "3-2" Easy
0006 "4-1" Easy
0007 "4-2" Easy
0008 "5-1" Easy
0009 "5-2" Easy
000a "6-1" Easy
000b "6-2a" Easy
000c "6-2b" Easy
000d Final Easy
000e Secret Easy (Yes, the secret stage is present in U version)
000f "1-1" Normal
0010 "1-2" Normal
0011 "2-1" Normal
0012 "2-2" Normal
0013 "3-1" Normal
0014 "3-2" Normal
0015 "4-1" Normal
0016 "4-2" Normal
0017 "5-1" Normal
0018 "5-2" Normal
0019 "6-1" Normal
001a "6-2a" Normal
001b "6-2b" Normal
001c Final Normal
001d "1-1" Hard
001e "1-2" Hard
001f "2-1" Hard
0020 "2-2" Hard
0021 "3-1" Hard
0022 "3-2" Hard
0023 "4-1" Hard
0024 "4-2" Hard
0025 "5-1" Hard
0026 "5-2" Hard
0027 "6-1" Hard
0028 "6-2a" Hard
0029 "6-2b"Hard
002a Final Hard
002b "1-1" Heavy
002c "1-2" Heavy
002d "2-1" Heavy
002e "2-2" Heavy
002f "3-1" Heavy
0030 "3-2" Heavy
0031 "4-1" Heavy
0032 "4-2" Heavy
0033 "5-1" Heavy
0034 "5-2" Heavy
0035 "6-1" Heavy
0036 "6-2a" Heavy
0037 "6-2b" Heavy
0038 Final Heavy
0039 NONE
003a Non Used Stage ?
