(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page
Lets get back to the root of evil, this game is the prequel to Symphony Of The Night, its the first castlevania using cdrom, and was never release in usa / europe.
There is a SNES port of this game called Dracula X (or Vampire Kiss in pal version), but its nowhere near his big brother.

Summary

  • Aim For Fastest Time
  • Use a Suboptimal Route (Regular Stages only)
  • Takes Damage To Save Time
  • Manipulates Luck
  • First submission featuring mc2 mednafen
  • Emulator used: Mednafen Mednafen-RR revision 249 (mc2)
  • Unofficial Encodes [1]
  • Frames:89962 Lag:xxxx Re-records:31233


Notes



Long story for short: maria should go faster (any% is half done as i wrote this), and shes also faster in the 100% run, so whe wanted a richter run
Richter run start to be different than maria directly after the first boss
The key subweapon seem to be the most powerfull (x2 whip damage...), also richter look like chuck norris and it surely is hilarous to see him key-to-death most bosses (and dracula!)

Ram Watch

Copy/Paste this in notepad and save as watch.wch, then load in mednafen

11
00000 00000094 b s 0 hearts
00001 00000098 b s 0 health
00002 00000093 b s 0 weapon
00003 00001E10 b u 0 X Cam 2nd byte
00004 00001E0C b u 0 X Cam
00005 00001E30 b u 0 X Subpixel
00006 00000720 b u 0 y pos
00007 00000CD0 b u 0 y pos
00008 00000D28 b u 0 Y Subpixel
00009 00000742 b s 0 Boss HP
0000A 000012B8 b s 0 Boss HP
000B 00001E10 b u 0 X Cam 2nd byte

Closings

Thanks to paul_t and adelikat, whe worked all together on rondo, and it was realy fun, even tought i made this one on my own side and im submiting alone, whe mutualy helped eatch others well, and it end up very efficient to have 2 extra pairs of experienced eyes :D
A svn was setup to collaborate in making rondo movie(s), you can have a check on it here : http://code.google.com/p/rondoofblood/

arukAdo Canceled because of recent findings, maria been slower than richter, this "entertainement" run doesnt make anymore sences for now, richter will get its own run anyway, eventually if everybody cry out loud enought for stage3/4 over the fastest route... who knows...

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Watched it. Enjoyed it. I liked how genuinely painful the damage boosting looked in this run, and this is also a great game and underrated due to its lack of exposure. Having said that, I don't know the game well enough to really comment on it technically, but here comes a yes vote nonetheless.
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Underexposed, indeed, but definitely not underrated: a rare Castlevania fan goes without drooling over this (and SotN, for that matter). I believe it's the single most famous PCE game.
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Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Rondo is the Holy Grail of Castlevania.
adelikat
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Sir VG wrote:
It launches the program but just sits on the Press Run screen.
You can use savestates during the intro or cutscenes or it will hang like that, unfortunatley. Fortunately .mc2 is text so it is not to hard to edit the file to optimize those parts.
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If approved, will this run obsolete the Castlevania - Dracula X SNES movie?
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
If approved, will this run obsolete the Castlevania - Dracula X SNES movie?
I disagree on this, well, the games are vastly different, also, theres 3 rondo movies in total :p (if not 4... since apparently its a big deal to mr.sirvg to take stage4, im on doing stage4', witch will be WAY less entertaining, of course)
adelikat
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
If approved, will this run obsolete the Castlevania - Dracula X SNES movie?
I don't see why it would.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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There's no way that this can obsolete Castlevania - Dracula X. That would be like doing a run on Metroid and obsoleting Super Mario Bros 3.
I disagree on this, well, the games are vastly different, also, theres 3 rondo movies in total :p (if not 4... since apparently its a big deal to mr.sirvg to take stage4, im on doing stage4', witch will be WAY less entertaining, of course)
My regards to Stage 4 vs Stage 4' is speed. Especially with Maria doing Stage 4' is considerably faster then Stage 4. Even from a speed run perspective, I can do Stage 4' 30 seconds faster then Stage 4, since it's straight shot. Yes, it's less entertaining, but you have to balance it here. There's plenty of more exciting levels then Stage 4 or 4'. And you fight the same boss anyways. That's all.
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Sir VG wrote:
There's no way that this can obsolete Castlevania - Dracula X. That would be like doing a run on Metroid and obsoleting Super Mario Bros 3.
Actually, would be like Adventure Island run being obsoleted by Wonder Boy's. I'm just asking, relax.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
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Sir VG wrote:
My regards to Stage 4 vs Stage 4' is speed. Especially with Maria doing Stage 4' is considerably faster then Stage 4. Even from a speed run perspective, I can do Stage 4' 30 seconds faster then Stage 4, since it's straight shot. Yes, it's less entertaining, but you have to balance it here. There's plenty of more exciting levels then Stage 4 or 4'. And you fight the same boss anyways. That's all.
Well, i say lets people decide if its more funny to go trough stage4 or 4', that why im making a second movie, remember its useless to speak about speed here, since maria go faster anyway, richter IS suboptimal regardless, the stage4' is lame and straightforward, the stage4 is interresting because there is a bunch of traps that i abuse... so i say lets see what people want to have published, not just what you propose, bearing in my mind that richter is suboptimal anyway, so the entertainement value imo is more important than pure speed Abusing key is also a entertainement factor, obviously, that was "creative" to say the least, that why i sticked to it and didnt trow after minotaur .... i wanted to key dracula... thats fun/creative imo, even if you come with a lame faster method to get an axe just when you need it, it may be faster, but youll surelly make it less entertaining than this On the technical side also, i doubt youll realy go faster without it, see one thing deraklon directly spoted is the need to stop to catch hearts... key cost 0 hearts.... that another reason to make the key more likely mandatory (on a speed matter) As reference the werewolf goes 150 frames faster with key than x2hydrostorm (40hearts...) Key have x2 damage output than the whip, and is generaly not nerfed (except dracula/shaft and few others) Also about your 30seconds, its kinda irevelant, i dont think you can do real time anything near what richter do in this movie with the flipback, but anyway
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talking about entertainment in this situation isn't too wise. your run does aim for fastest time with a suboptimal character. so you would have to use the fastest route possible. if 4' was a feasible option for Richter, and it was faster, you should use it. and i think Stage 4 is very boring anyway. partially because it's so long. i'm not a fan of Beginning, either.
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My run also mention it contain speed/entertainement trade off (this is obviously motivated by the fact richter is suboptimal) Thats your opinion about stage4, not mine, see entertainement can be something very subjective Whats sure is that stage4' is dead, theres nobody to kill, nothing to avoid, and its straight forward to the boss, no stairs to climb or whatever to do for richter I avoid like maybe, 10 traps in stage4 that are humanly impossible Now yeah, you can have your own definition of entertainement, mine doesnt include when nothing happen and everything get flat
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I find stage 4 far more entertaining than 4'. I don't see why he should have to be boxed in to do the fastest route in this case. It isn't a pure any% run anyway. We aim for entertaining runs here, so I support the decision for stage 4 over stage 4' To SirVG: calm down before you accuse mednafen of sucking. Well, it does suck, but not as bad as you think. The .mc2 version hasn't even been officially released. The medfront packaged with the official release obviously doesn't support .mc2, but all you have to do is select "All files" in the open file dialog to open a .mc2. The sound isssue is what it is unfortunately.
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adelikat wrote:
The sound isssue is what it is unfortunately.
Sound issue is just me not been able to correctly rip my own cd :/ lol
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arukAdo wrote:
Derakon wrote:
In the room in stage 4 right after you killed a White Dragon, would it have been possible to damage boost up to the upper area instead of walking the long way around?
I tryed that for hours without any success, if you can do it, your more a man than i am ! :D
[/quote] Sounds like the kind of thing people figure out how to do when they're improving already published runs. The youtube video is still at the intro, so I'll be editing my post shortly with my opinion.
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Sir VG wrote:
I must say, after trying this emulator for a few minutes, I hate it. Especially the audio desync issue. It works perfectly fine in MagicEngine, but fails horrifically in here. And the front end doesn't want to recognize or run the MC2 properly. Yes, I know you can just use the command prompt, but if you're putting an emulator out there with a front and and it doesn't work as it should, maybe it should wait a bit. Granted I don't know how to fix any of this, so I shouldn't speak so loudly, but I just think PC-Engine games aren't ready for TASVideos yet.
Yeah, mednafen's a pain to interact with, but it's the most accurate PCE emulator out there. Magic Engine is very friendly but is the least accurate, relying on hacks to get many games to work correctly. Also, Magic Engine deals the least well with the PSG/ADPCM/Redbook audio combination most CD games use for the various sound effects and music tracks. The volume is often out of whack with what it would be on an original unit and in many cases the pitch and overall sound of ADPCM sounds is wonky. Considering that TASers often watch memory values and even delve into LUA scripting to automate some aspects of TASing, simply dealing with the command line for mednafen definitely doesn't make it ill-suited to TASing, IMO. Frankly, Ootake is my favorite casual PCE emulator, but when it has to be as close to perfect as possible (emulation quality-wise) there's no better emulator than mednafen.
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You guys just need to wait for a stable gui version if the command line is so much an issue, i dont think its like a big trouble to wait a bit, the house is not on fire Memory watch is already there, a bit buggy as i speak now, but youll be able to use those i putted in submission, gens style of course btw ;)
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So, I've tried repeatedly to get a known good cue/iso of Dracula X to open in the newest mednafen but I can't seem to get it. Even when I try to use a batch file to start the program it wants me to open a "pce thing" of either .pce, .cue, or whatever. Not sure why it doesn't support ziproms like everything else... The command line information on the google code site isn't updated with the latest changes AFAICT so I'm not entirely sure what I'm getting wrong.
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fruitbane wrote:
I've tried repeatedly to get a known good cue/iso of Dracula X to open in the newest mednafen but I can't seem to get it. Even when I try to use a batch file to start the program it wants me to open a "pce thing" of either .pce, .cue, or whatever.
Answer was in the question, i bolded it... Anyway judging by that comment, dont try to use it, just wait release... like i sayd in the previous post
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fruitbane wrote:
So, I've tried repeatedly to get a known good cue/iso of Dracula X to open in the newest mednafen but I can't seem to get it. Even when I try to use a batch file to start the program it wants me to open a "pce thing" of either .pce, .cue, or whatever.
Also, PCE CD requires a bios, and you must specify this bios in the commandline argument. What arukado is trying to say is that the next release of mednafen won't need commandline to open. It will have a GUI, a Open ROM menu item, and will startup without a commandline argument.
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fruitbane
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I don't mind a command line. GUI is better, certainly. I had little trouble with the older Mednafen once I figured the CLI out. This newer Mednafen is not behaving in a manner consistent with my understanding of the previous version. I had kinda wanted to watch this TAS in the emulator itself rather than via YouTube (already watched the latter). Experimentally, what command line command would be required to get this movie to play?
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search in mednafen.cfg for pce.bios and give him the path mednafen.exe -mov somewhere\richter.mc2 then pick up your cue when prompted... Also its pretty useless to try to go in a demonstration that stage4' is faster (i say this for sirvg), whe knew it from the begining... and the movie using stage4' will be ready at the same time than the maria one, this week hopefully I might also minor edit this one if i find a way to get more stable on shaft boss, i had countless desync on it
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There must be something wrong with my ISO or with my syscard image. Blah... I dunno why this mednafen is pickier than the older.
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Glad to see I'm not the only one having issues with this emulator. I don't thing an emulator should be this complicated. Getting the basics - loading a game, starting a movie - should be very easy for the end user. Every other emulator I've used I've picked up very quickly. This emulator is the one exception, which to me tells me this isn't ready for primetime yet. And I'm not speaking as some brainless gamer. I'm also a programmer, so I understand the aspects of making a good UI and about simplicity. I'd help, but I'm sure you're programming in C++ or something like that, which I'm not a good coder at. I've just done some very basic stuff with it.
Magic Engine is very friendly but is the least accurate, relying on hacks to get many games to work correctly.
Funny, because since 1.0 it's acted nearly identical to the original. The hacks must be really good, huh?
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Why this discussion about Magic Engine being better then med? Wasn't ME a paid emulator?
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ