Finally, the long anticipated Bubble Bobble improvement arrives! This movie was started early January of 2008. This movie improves the published movie by 2 minutes 40.68 seconds.
As with all adelikat submissions, I recommend you download the release package found here
It contains the movie file, memory watch file, and most importantly, level savestates; including a savestate to go directly to the boss fight.

Contributers

  • Tompa 72
  • adelikat 64
  • Bablo 12
  • CtrlAltDestroy 5
  • Baxter 7
  • Cardboard 4
  • Randil 2
Numbers reflect the number of levels each author worked on. They did not have to be the "final version" to count on the list.

The movie

(flowplayer module removed)

Warps

We decided to use warps in this movie (whereas the published movie did not).
To warp you must collect an umbrella. Umbrellas warp you 4-5 levels (depending on color) Umbrellas appear after you pop 20 water bubbles. Water bubbles are spread out over several levels. Unfortunately they appear in the levels at 240 frame intervals. So it is actually not worth it to hang out in a level and pop 20 of them. We determined that the optimal amount is to pop 2 bubbles in each water bubble level. Doing so allows for 2 warps to occur in the game. The reason for 2 is that all levels are completed with a 240-480 frame time span, so no bubble is waited on for a full 240 frames this way. In reality not all levels work the same. As such, some bubbles are waited on for a full 240 frames. Still, enough aren't that warping is profitable.
Unfortunately warping is only 1 level if used in A6 or A7! As such the optimal situation is to collect extra bubbles in 92 to initiate a warp then.
Water bubble levels:
5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 40, 49, 52, 64, 74, 77, 87, 92, A6 and A7
We use the warp in 21 to skip to 26 and in 94 to skip to 99

EXTEND

This is perhaps classified as a warp. Spell the word EXTEND and you go to a bonus screen immediately then to the next level. This allows you to skip a level and is often faster than completing the level.
To get letter bubbles, you must kill enemies in combos. The bigger the combo the more letters. Even then, the letters are very random and require manipulation. In later levels, it requires delaying frames to make the right letters appear (whereas in earlier levels, movements during the level wait times was sufficient).
To make matters more complicated, later levels often give you letter bubbles in the level you got the combo. This is unfortunately useless for collecting the final letter. This reduced the number of times we could effectively EXTEND.
We managed to use EXTEND to save time in many places throughout the movie.

Power-ups

There are 3 useful power-ups in the game. The shoes for increased speed (a must!), the blue candy for longer range bubbles (comes in handy often), and the green candy for faster bubble delivery (a must). Only 1 power-up can appear in a level at a time. Each dragon needs each of these upgrades. The upgrades happen based on certain events: Blowing bubbles, popping bubbles, hopping on bubbles. The first levels of the game are devoted to making these power-ups appear in an optimal fashion. Once both dragon's are leveled up, they keep them until they die (making dying never profitable). The hardest part in planning the TAS was figuring out the optimal power-up strategy.

Glitches

One useful glitch was found in the making. When the bubble pops at the beginning of a level, you are able to jump in the air. This is used in almost all levels.

Ram Values

  • 0439 Water bubble counter
  • 0435 Bubbles blown
  • 0436 Bubbles popped
  • 0437 Bubbles hopped on

Categories

  • Uses warps
  • Aims to get chicks (Best ending)
  • Uses death to save time (on final boss)
  • 2 players
  • Genre: Platform

mmbossman: Congratulations to all for knocking the famtasia list down by one more! I will accept this to obsolete the currently published run from way back in 2004.

adelikat: Replacing with a 34 frame faster boss fight by CtrlAltDestroy.

Post subject: Re: Uploaded to Archive.org
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
I've been watching these guys work on this for a LONG time, and I am so glad to see the fruits of their labor are ripe and delicious. Yum... adelikat's fruits.... Where was I? Oh yeah, yes vote.
Flygon wrote:
Longest filename I've ever hard to create for an encode. I'll upload it to DailyMotion when I can be assed splitting it.
You missed the commas. tompa,adelikat,bablo,baxter,cad,cardboard-tas-bubblebobble.mp4 Or... 6authors-tas-bubblebobble.mp4 Or various as listed above.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
adelikat
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tomasabrahamssonakatompa,adelikatakaadelikat,aleksikanervaakabablo,lennartwakabaxter,chrisstrakeakactrlaltdestroy,andcardboardakacardboard-tas-bestending-warps-bubblebobble.mp4 Just a suggestion.
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Does someone could provide a list about all the level that needed to be manipulated?
Experienced player (953)
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Ill trow my 2 cents yes vote in the pile
Joined: 11/4/2007
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Location: Australia, Victoria
I did actually insert commas... Archive.org removed them. -_- Edit: AND I can't edit them in! If there is going to be a 'proper hotlinked' upload, It'll have to be from Mediafire or something like that, at least that preserves the filename.
mklip2001
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Is the currently-accepted submission the one with the improved final boss fight?
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Publisher
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mklip2001 wrote:
Is the currently-accepted submission the one with the improved final boss fight?
I'm not sure either, but I PM mmbossman about it.
adelikat
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in 57 minutes we will be doing live commentary on ustream. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/adelikattas
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Experienced player (821)
Joined: 11/18/2006
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Err, you guys are right, I overlooked that it hadn't been updated. I'll set it to delayed until the last few frames have been whored out. EDIT: adelikat beat me to it with the updated submission.
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mmbossman wrote:
Err, you guys are right, I overlooked that it hadn't been updated. I'll set it to delayed until the last few frames have been whored out.
Talk about timing, it seems adelikat has already updated the input file, so our concerns were not needed.
Dwedit
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I thought it was interesting that they threw out the arcade levels later in the game, then threw them back in as bonus levels.
Mitjitsu
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Did anyone notice any subliminal message on level 87?
mklip2001
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Nice try, Mitjitsu. I'm pretty sure that said S. T. A. (I watched the ustream thing earlier, though I had to do it as a Guest since I couldn't log in.) That's a pretty awesome edit though!
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Experienced player (576)
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Been waiting for this, I remember trying to improve the old run and saving a bunch of frames, just to find this was in progress. I'll have to watch the Uploaded stream when I get home, I'm curious about it now as I have only seen a bit of the first levels like half a year ago. Great job guys!!
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1449] NES Bubble Bobble "2 players" by Tompa, adelikat, Bablo, Baxter, CtrlAltDestroy & Cardboard in 24:37.70
Active player (324)
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Publication! This should have the "uses warps" tag. Also, I think "whole" in the description should have been "while"
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I'm sorry about that, I was literally leaving the door as I clicked the 'Publish' button. Fixed, sir!
adelikat
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I also added the "Uses death" tag that was omitted. (Ironically the screenshot shows the time-saving death ^_^)
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Lord_Tom
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So glad you guys did this; that boss fight was a treat. I can only imagine what it must have been like to TAS 100 some levels of this game. One question on the timing between levels. Does the transition timer go off when the last enemy is killed or when the last fruit hits the ground?
Skilled player (1399)
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When the last enemy is killed. In some levels, we wait with killing the last enemy so that we can collect more water bubbles. Collecting 20 water bubbles triggers the item that warps us a few levels.
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Nice run !
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monotonous, but interesting to watch (yes)
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Just a single question (I'm sorry, I don't really know this game well) : was there no alternative to waiting for the "Hurry !" mode in level 92 ?
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Post subject: Necro posting
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Level 21 uses a warp but it doesn't trigger with an umbrella. How did you get this to happen?