I'm hoping for feedback. Even negative feedback is more welcome than no feedback. I've been moving slowly, mostly because I got busier, but I think a small part has been that I got no one saying anything about my 30 second run. Then again, it's hard to say whether the lack of these posts did contribute...
I now realize that when I said I was going slower than I hoped, the pace I was going actually would count as pretty fast. I've got another five seconds now, but I don't think it's enough to actually upload those five seconds.
About those 30 seconds, I see a few things I could have done differently. While 1P is spinning around that power-up, I probably should have lowered 2P's first shot by a few pixels. Another thing is possibly add in a little action at the times the players are holding still and not doing anything interesting.
Any advice on hex-editing? Since the .fm2 files are in ASCII, I've been using Notepad on a run of another game (
Dungeon Magic, the first game I TASed. This is my first mention of my TAS on it). I'll try to hex in lowering the shot for a start, and see if the rest of the run survives the hex-edit.
I saw the Gradius TAS. Fwee! That ship is fast! Okay, circles ARE interesting! That, and the general craziness of insane speeds made for a great watch. If I can't think of anything better, I might steal a few of those designs, with adjustments to them as needed...
Now, as for the speed, I can't even go at half the insane speed. My speed limit is at 3.75 pixels per frame, after 10 speed-ups on each ship. However, with two ships and as many as three Options, I might come up with more complex designs that work with 5 controllable sprites that can go on two separate paths. I don't think the entertainment I may produce will be on par with
adelikat's Gradius TAS, given how new I am at this, but I can try.
Somehow, making this post made me feel a bit better about things. I will see if I can continue on this TAS.