Through glitches and things, I always win, 'Cause I am the wind

Summary

  • Collect All Relics (28)
  • Best Ending (1847 Rooms)
  • Abuses Programming Errors
  • Corrupt Map Save Data
  • Uses Game Reset Sequence
  • Takes Damage To Save Time
  • Manipulates Luck
  • Colors Dracula and Animate Load Screens
  • UnOfficial Encodes [1]
  • Download Package [2]
  • Emulator used: PCSX-RR (1.2)
  • RealTime:57:20 GameTime:54:43(last input) Frames:206436 Re-records:84859


Movie Goal's


The 2 main objectives of this movie are to obtain the best ending, and collect all relics (items).
It took me a while to decide myself on the goals of the movie, the main reason i sticked to those is i wanted to use as many glitches as possible.

There is no souls, dds or glyphs in sotn, instead there is 28 relics granting various abilities to alucard (note there is 30 on jap version, but those 2 extra are recycled familliar cards)
Collecting all relics is pretty much the same than collecting all items in super metroid, i think its a classic goal among tases now and should not be a problem.
There is also HP/Heart max up, those function alike the missile tank, im not sure of the exact number of those "upgrade" in the game.
The reason i did not try to acquire all max up is because of a glitch that would let respawn them as many time as you want (can go up to 9999HP), i didnt saw the interrest to farm those just to get the same ammount you could acquire in the castles.
Like for metroid half the items are not used in the run, alltho the others are essential for either glitching or simply move swiftly.

The best ending requires you to explore 1847 rooms (196%) at least, this is determined by the room counter directly.
Like for others castlevania and unlike metroid, the game reffer to % for the map completion and not items, the official maximum is 1890 rooms (200.6%), to calculate % divide rooms by 9,52.
The map screen show the official rooms (squares) in blue, grey mean unexplored (after you buy the extra map at librarian), and white rooms are the glitched/oob rooms.
The only exception are the 2 blue rooms and save point in entrance, those are not official but still can be explored by glitching, and show up as regular rooms on the map, this increase the max map to 201.2% (without white rooms).
Many places in the game have "outside" boundarys way larger than inside walls, the most noticable exemple is the staircase in chapel, layer design are square or rectangle, but not shaped like a staircase, as such it mean the real size of the room is twice or three time more than what it look like on map, exiting the wall boundary and fully exploring this place is rewarding many extra rooms.
The game doesnt care what kind of rooms you explored when you enter the final boss, whether they was only blue or mixed with some white ones, you just need to have 1847+ on the counter for the best ending to occur.

I think those 2 goals have a good synergy, if i want just to get the best ending, ill end up crossing all rooms where there are relics, and if i just want all relics, i will still explore a good chunk of the castle.
Having all relics doesnt influct on the ending, but i felt only the best ending would not fit well as a primary goal, for a "100%" kind of movie.
Arguably i could have just go for all relics, even if the ending differences are very small, i did choosed to go also for the best ending.
My main intention was to make the exploration entertaining by using various glitches to exit boundarys, and quickly gain rooms.
By corrupting the map, i was also able to make any backtrack rewarding more rooms, as just the map does reset and not the room counter.
The direct result is that going twice in the same place register twice the rooms, in a "normal" exploration, many place on the map are redundant, you need to use often the teleporter to go back and forth, and end up crossing several times the same room without the counter increasing.

A last word for dirty sram, i took it from Richter TAS who made it from zggzdydp's any%, im doing that for having a savegame with "clear" status on it.
If i dont have that memory card, the librarian will not sell mana prisms, making the run considerably slower/sloppier overall (this was tested).
The reason im not using the current any% to build the memcard is that its too tedious to get to dracula in that movie (you need to interrupt, save, then kill boss).


Improvements


On the route matter, the obvious improvement would be to be able to corrupt the room count, i was able to get all stats, the kill counter ect... to their max, but the room counter did resist me.
Once we find how to corrupt the room count, then we can simply go for relics, and use the last save room near dracula to "boost" the counter and activate the good ending.
This would shorten the run by half or more, most probably, some lua guru around could maybe help the matter, to test all corruption possibilities (its determistic behavior).

For the technical level of the movie, well, its not exactly perfect, here are some flaw i can list:
  • In the early begin at alchemy laboratory, i farm some extra rooms, they may be not so revelant after all, given the higher speed rate you get later on.
  • It may be possible to obtain mana refill from the stop screen while i use shield rod in the chapel to get accross the statue (then get sword card without waiting for mana).
  • Obtaining 6 fire boomrangs on the way to chapel, and using high jump for reaching sword card wasnt faster, due to the candle you can bounce on (giving good height), but jumping before using boomrangs may be faster.(see next)
  • While using fire boomrangs to make a high jump at central clock room, im not jumping first, klmz founded its possible to do so, this would chope some frames with the bat flying upward since i would end up in higher position.
  • After olrox, to get inside shiftline (todo:link to tricks page) after ET, i use the wolf then revert back to alucard, later on in the run (keep) i found out you can move forward and push backward+jump to enter the shiftline, approx 100-150 frames to save here by not turning into wolf.
  • still more to explain, give it some time :p
Recap Map



Download Package[2]

A Download Package for this movie is available, it contain:
  • This submission input file, and ram watch in pcsx format.
  • A lua script, featuring various ram values overlay (mp, speeds ect...) .

Official Encodes[1]

Closing

This movie is not perfect, and could be better, yet i hope youll enjoy it, and for a first step for the 100% category i believe it could have been worse.
I also want to thanks everybody that helped to contribute to this movie, directly or not, feedback for wip ect... (too many to be cited directly) and i hope youll enjoy! :p
PS: this page is best viewed on the site rather than forum

adelikat: The goal choice was potentially bad but it was handled in unexpected and surprising ways. Viewer response to the movie was very solid. I'll accept it for publication as a "Best ending movie. (It is my understanding that all relics are necessary for best ending, thus "All & Relects & Best Ending" is redundant. Am I right on this?)
Aktan: Processing...


Former player
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 424
Location: UK
I enjoyed both the glitches and the very high average velocity with the bat and wolf, even when having to fly in a zig-zag pattern. I haven't played this game before though, so I wonder: What exactly makes Alucard say "What?!"? It really did sound like he said it only during large wall-ejections. And I hope we'll see an explanation of all the glitches! Yes vote.
adelikat
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DrJones wrote:
Marcokarty wrote:
DrJones wrote:
I really like this game, but I didn't like the pace of this run. No vote.
Please man, don't vote in my movies. hehe
I have not voted here, either.
But you have. You posted a No vote opinion which will be weighed into the judges decision.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
"No vote" is not the same that "voting no", heh. I casted no vote whatsoever. Anyways, I didn't like the run, so I guess I should reflect that in the poll. Corrected now. 100% runs are hard to make entertaining. For examples that managed to do it well, look at the super metroid 100% run with input animations and the All Souls runs of Aria of Sorrow, this one however felt like the Arkanoid warpless run.
No.
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I watched most of this run. As far as I could tell it was well played, and it had high "wtf is going on" factor which I liked. It did get a little repetitive but I guess that's the nature of the goal, and some people want to see the best ending so why not make a TAS that gets it? Not my favorite run just because it got so tedious but I still voted yes.
nesrocks
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How much longer would the run be if the goal was to attain every item in the game?
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Joined: 12/3/2008
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You mean to drop all common/rare items from monsters? (aka fill up the inventory with all items) It would be considerably longer, i think, some monster only have one occurence, and some are realy not on the way of this run. The monster list in this game is quite big. Also have to consider many items are redundant from the librarian or other means (meal tickets for exemple).
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Filling the inventory doesn't strike me as a particularly good goal. Most of the items are useless, or even if useful, would cost more time to equip/use than they would save. Enemies die in 1-3 hits (barring Iron Ball and Guardian), so fighting them would not be very interesting, and largely a matter of very painful luck manipulation. You would have to find all of the unique items that are scattered around the map (e.g. Eversing, Spikebreaker, Silver/Gold rings) so that would be a bit more exploration, but I don't think the payoff is worth it.
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What causes Alucard to shout "What!?" I've never heard him do that when playing normally.
Joined: 7/1/2008
Posts: 272
It happens when you unmorph in a small space that only a transformation can fit through, like outside Olrox's boss room.
Post subject: Screenshoots
Experienced player (960)
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Here a set of unoptimized screenshoots
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. ---- [1592] PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "all relics, best ending" by arukAdo in 57:20.60
Joined: 2/23/2008
Posts: 21
SO GOOOODDDDDDDD I've been waiting for this since I saw the first PSX stuff appear.
Joined: 11/20/2004
Posts: 236
Location: United States
Ya know, I was about to rat Arukado out on this video. I really was. And then I noticed in the little sidebar the following: "- Starts from a saved state or SRAM" Arukado, you sneaky dog. You didn't mention that with a "Clear" game, you can completely skip all cutscenes (I actually got someone in trouble for this over at another speed run site because I'm that fickle), but your rationale for using a Clear game otherwise is completely unquestionable. The run itself is done very well and pretty entertaining! Very nicely done!
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Thank you and to everybody ! :D Theres only 4 rating so far, if you guys dont mind plz do note this movie :p
Patashu
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Awesome TAS! I've watched a lot of Romscout and Mecha_richter SoTN runs and felt like I knew all the glitches, and the combination of knowledge and lack of preparation for how much more a TAS can do blew me away watching. The amount of variance in speed tech alone is awesome, how there are like 8 different ways to move around fast. It would be interesting to see an improvement of this run someday. For example, the Faerie Card alone can now be used to do the shopkeeper glitch, so you can get your mana prisms, duplicator, etc. earlier in the run. Plus, with a game as insanely complicated as SoTN there's undoubtedly a better way to collect all the rooms that just needs to be thought of. (And maybe some other things, like you can swap from shield dashing to dive kick dashing as soon as you get the Leap Stone, right? But I think this TAS doesn't swap immediately)
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Experienced player (960)
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Patashu wrote:
It would be interesting to see an improvement of this run someday. For example, the Faerie Card alone can now be used to do the shopkeeper glitch, so you can get your mana prisms, duplicator, etc. earlier in the run. Plus, with a game as insanely complicated as SoTN there's undoubtedly a better way to collect all the rooms that just needs to be thought of.
As a matter of fact, a "better" or smarter way to collect rooms would be to clear the ennemy list, and while at it why not collect all items... its very ambitious but im having this in mind since quite some time now, it could be technically very interresting, probly less glitchy, less underfloor crazyness, less repeativness and more to explore, hopefully it would make a more balanced movie than current one.
Patashu
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arukAdo wrote:
Patashu wrote:
It would be interesting to see an improvement of this run someday. For example, the Faerie Card alone can now be used to do the shopkeeper glitch, so you can get your mana prisms, duplicator, etc. earlier in the run. Plus, with a game as insanely complicated as SoTN there's undoubtedly a better way to collect all the rooms that just needs to be thought of.
As a matter of fact, a "better" or smarter way to collect rooms would be to clear the ennemy list, and while at it why not collect all items... its very ambitious but im having this in mind since quite some time now, it could be technically very interresting, probly less glitchy, less underfloor crazyness, less repeativness and more to explore, hopefully it would make a more balanced movie than current one.
A 'completionist' run would be absolutely insane. Good luck if you ever work on one!
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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 340
A foll 100% run would be the following. 1) covers every normal map room. 2) collects all relics 3) completes the monster list (ye sthis means a delay at the library demon for mudman 4) fills in the monster drop list. 5) obtains 2 of every 1 handed droppable weapon. (like the famous Crissaegrim) 6) obtain 2 of every ring that it's possible to get more than 1 of. 7) obtains 1 of every other equippable item. 8) collect all life and heart max ups 9) gets best ending. There should probably be a special exception for the sword familiar. which needs to be leveled to 51 i think before you can equip it as a sword. this one item can probably be skipped. I believe that would cover it. would require an insane amount of luck manipulation to get all the drops quickly.
Patashu
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zaphod77 wrote:
A foll 100% run would be the following. 8) collect all life and heart max ups
You can respawn life and heart max ups using the Infinity Glitch, so I'm not sure if they should count or not.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
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Patashu wrote:
You can respawn life and heart max ups using the Infinity Glitch, so I'm not sure if they should count or not.
I'm not familiar with this glitch, but is it possible to get the game into a state where it is no longer possible to perform? E.g. if respawning is only possible within a certain window after getting each powerup or something.
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respawning wouldn't count. each one would need to be collected once. every item lying around would need to be picked up. everything would need to be dropped from the monsters that could be to fill in the drop list. If there's other ways to get the stuff, that's also fine but the drop list needs to be filled up. that's the hard part of the full 100% TAS i think.