Needs to have SRAM disabled from the beginning to stop desyncing, and privacy protection past level 5. (This was annoying as each time the game was loaded, or movie reloaded, it forgot to keep it off.)
About the Game
The game play is mostly a cross between a normal platform game, with the usual style of platformer enemies and a variety of means to kill them, and a puzzle game of sorts where Puggsy is often required to find objects, and either carry them to a specific location or somehow use them in order to complete levels. There are also a variety of objects that have power-up effects, such as allowing Puggsy to be hit once or twice without dying, speeding him up or making him temporarily invincible, and objects that while not necessary, can be temporarily helpful, such as a variety of guns.
Objects react on a clever physics based system, which was an innovative feature at the time and was a rarely used feature in games until two console generations later with the release of games such as Second Sight, Max Payne 2 and Half Life 2. The system allows objects to be thrown, or to topple if stacked without care. Each object also has a different weight. Another effect of this is that Puggsy can carry stacks of objects along a flat surface, but a slope will often cause all items except the bottom one (held by Puggsy) to topple and scatter. Also, any objects carried out of the level exits give different score values, or in the case of the heart object, an extra life.
Cancelled due to faster run, not going to submit again till I am sure everyone is satisfied with the run.
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I was hoping to see the rest of the dragon fight cleaned up and not just the final hit. Yes, I know it doesn't save additional frames, but I think it looks bad in its current form. No, don't go back and do that just yet; I want other people to have a look at this first and see if there are other potential improvements that I missed.
First, copying my edit from the previous submission:
Saw the full run, wacky physics hijinks definitely don't get underway until the Pyramids, which is like the one level I recognize from the Sega CD version that isn't among the first five levels. Some levels, like the one where you methodically and carefully place four balls on four levers, seem like an obvious place where you should be able to simply throw the balls and will them into place (through, if nothing else, "Guess and check").
Also, did you check if using the secret exit/bonus level on level 4 for earlier shoes is worth it?
Second, some commentary about the first four levels, which I'm most familiar with since they're the same as the Sega CD levels:
Level 1: You have a fair amount of control over your jump height: you don't need to use full-height jumps to climb the rocks.
Level 2-3: You can use the object you're holding to hoist yourself up; I know this is faster in level 3 and might be faster in level 2 as well.
Level 4: It is, in fact, possible to jump over the enemy, even without any waiting, instead of running off to grab a barrel to (slowly) kill it with.
While later levels do playful things with the physics and generally look good, the early levels feel unoptimal and overly careful. Voted meh.
I was hoping to see the rest of the dragon fight cleaned up and not just the final hit.
Each previous hit was changed to jump at the second his mouth was open, instead of 4-5 frames after, the last hit was 7 frames before his mouth could open to save the time, but I will see about this when I do submit a new movie
nifboy wrote:
Some levels, like the one where you methodically and carefully place four balls on four levers, seem like an obvious place where you should be able to simply throw the balls and will them into place (through, if nothing else, "Guess and check").
I had tried many times to throw and hope, but due to the bouncy nature of the balls they never landed where I wanted, I will ofcourse try again to see if frames can be saved.
nifboy wrote:
Also, did you check if using the secret exit/bonus level on level 4 for earlier shoes is worth it?
I was aware of the shoes, but never timed how long it would take to complete level 4 to the second exit, enter the secret level, get the shoes vs all the levels inbetween level 4 and where I do get the shoes. Will definately get some numbers on this.
nifboy wrote:
Level 1: You have a fair amount of control over your jump height: you don't need to use full-height jumps to climb the rocks.
Agreed, I did improve later in the game but never thought of redoing this level.
nifboy wrote:
Level 2-3: You can use the object you're holding to hoist yourself up; I know this is faster in level 3 and might be faster in level 2 as well.
Level 2 used to have a jump and hoist, it didnt look clean, I actually saved over a second by just dropping it and jumping. Level 3 I guess it should be possible, and might save some frames of waiting.
nifboy wrote:
Level 4: It is, in fact, possible to jump over the enemy, even without any waiting, instead of running off to grab a barrel to (slowly) kill it with.
I tried this many times while doing this run and kept being killed, but I just booted up the game and done it first time -_- guess I need to be more persistant.
Thank you for all for your comments and feedback, hopefully I will have a poslished article ready in a few days, for some reason splicing things at the beginning of the game desync's bosses later on, no matter how accurate I can be, the splice I made for Level 2 actually cost me a good 2 hours of resyncing and rerecording things.
*edit*
Ok, as far as the shoes go, including 13a and stopping at the first active frame during 13b it would normally take 32112 frames.
If I take the detour at level 4 at get the shoes in the bonus level, and then play upto the same place it took 26720 frame.
This is a saving of 5392 frame, and thats about 1min 29.52sec, this was significant.
When resyncing the levels after this point I also chose to replay some of the other levels, leaving me with a 5783 frame saving by the end so about 1min 36.23 saved in total.
At the same time I removed 7 frames from the beginning, and added them to the end, of each jump during the dragon fight.
Incase someone else would like to give pointers I will keep this open for now, if I did cancel and resubmit now the last 3 submission would have been made by me, and I would like my next submission to be the last one for this game.
I agree with your vote.
I can see your run was faster than my first attempt, but you did take damage and I avoid it.
Check out my new movie here
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/554571498/Puggsy%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv
Your run up to the first inactive frame after boss 2 was 18134 frames.
My new run up to the same point, taking no damage, taking time out to run an extra level and level 4 twice is 20683.
Would you say yes to this new run, if not I would really like your feedback.
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
It's been demonstrated to my satisfaction that major improvements are still possible, so this instance of the run shouldn't be published (i.e. no vote).
I suggest starting a thread over in the Genesis forums (seeing as there doesn't appear to be a thread for this game already) to track improvements on this run which are in progress and cancelling this submission.
I suggest starting a thread over in the Genesis forums (seeing as there doesn't appear to be a thread for this game already) to track improvements on this run which are in progress and cancelling this submission.
