Hey guys. Since last year I'm not very prolific at TASes, but this year I was working on somewhat related thingy.
Binary City
It's a ROM hack which could be useful for people who wish to learn TASing. It doesn't directly show "how to TAS" (that's what video tutorials are for), but instead it's supposed to develop TAS-oriented thinking.
This is not a trivial task, so I'm not sure I did it right. So I hope to receive comments from everyone who feels he has mastered TASing enough to judge the game.
Here's the hack page on Romhacking.net:
http://romhacking.net/hacks/569/
If you want extra materials like NSF music from the game, you can also visit my own page (sorry, russian text only): http://shedevr.org.ru/cgi-bin/parse.cgi?id=BinaryCity
Here's cool but uninformative trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZe7q6Ki42g
Don't expect the game to be THAT fun though. TASing is hard, after all.
Basically the hack is applying Binary Land's idea to action game Battle City. You're controlling 2 tanks by 1 gamepad, the goal of each level is to destroy all enemy tanks.
More important, each level slightly changes the rules, forcing player to:
* optimize movements
* optimize object positions
* abuse game engine
* discard solutions that were eligible before
* use solutions which previously led to losing
* manage time used for each operation
* manage 2 lifestocks
* make decisions based on lack of visual information
* manipulate enemies
All this can be done without savestates or other tools. In fact, using savestates will ruin the learning curve. So try not to use them as much as you can!
But this only applies to first part of the game. That's what I'd call "TASing theory", abstract experience.
Then at the end of the game there's also a bit of practice (Chapter 6):
* using several savestate slots
* manipulating luck
* using slowdown
* understanding frame advance
* managing several counters to find safe periods for actions
* frame-bitching to death
* abusing global game rule
This is it. I know I should have taken more popular game like SMB, but SMB just didn't motivate me enough.
Hope you'll like the game, and maybe someone finds it useful.
