I had the idea of running this game in hard mode for a long time and I began working on it after I finished my regular TAS. After completing the game once, you are given the oppportunity to play through it once more in hard mode. There are more enemies in hard mode so I thought it would make a more interesting TAS. Unfortunately, many enemies can't be jumped on or comboed, be it due to the level design or due to lag. I asked the community in the Super Mario Land thread if I should attempt the maximum score even at the expense of lag, but I eventually decided to go for the lag-free option because 1) I wanted a clean TAS. Ignoring the lag may have led to some unpleasant moments in my run and it is rather arbitrary. 2) The moments where I can't combo enemies because it would result in more lag are kept to a minimum and it's hardly noticable now.
Why does this TAS run from a savestate?
In order to unlock hard mode, one needs to complete the normal game first. There aren't any save files so starting from reset wasn't possible. I took the regular TAS and continued from there, quitting the end credits sequence as soon as possible. This felt like the least arbitrary way of starting the TAS, better than using a sloppy playthrough for the normal mode. I'm not sure if the game resets the RNG after the end credits, but my assumption is it doesn't. Waiting at the "The end" screen might have resulted in better luck with the x-3 levels... I didn't test it. But I didn't want to use such a strategy to 1) avoid a luck-manipulation mess where I redo many levels over and over (which already is tedious with inserting idle frames in x-1 and x-2 levels). 2) It felt less arbitrary too.
So I cut off the regular TAS since I only wanted to present the hard mode TAS and not a 25 minute movie of both the regular and the hard mode TAS.
The regular TAS was thought to be unimprovable until I came up with the crouching trick which saved 4 frames. If this movie was to be published, I'm not sure how future movies should be handled (should they use the improved regular TAS or not?). Maybe it's the best if the next player is given the option to wait at the previous mode's "The end" screen until the RNG is perfect. I'm not sure if this strategy would work, though, as I mentioned earlier. The luck this TAS had was already very good. Only about 6~9 idle frames needed to be inserted.
Level comments
Level
Comments
1-1
There are many enemies here that I can't hit due to level design.
1-2
This got to be the best level to show off hard mode's potential. Here was also the first occurence where a combo would have resulted in lag so I needed to avoid a part of it.
1-3
-
2-1
This is the level where I stopped progress for a long time because I wasn't motivated to deal with the bonus screen in 2-3 (meaning I would have to redo 2-1 and 2-2 many times). Luckily, no idle frames needed to inserted in these levels at all!
2-2
Many enemies can't be hit here due to level design either.
2-3
Strangely, I was able to kill the boss here with no delay occuring in the bonus screen (which wasn't the case with the regular TAS). This may support the reasoning that someday the 5000 points from this boss can be gotten in the regular TAS without delay.
3-1
There is some lag in the beginning of this level, but nothing much can be done about it.
3-2
-
3-3
Manipulating this level's bonus screen is different from 1-3 and 2-3. The bonus screens in those levels seem to depend solely on timing whereas the bonus screen of 3-3 depends on other things too. This image ([dead link removed]) describes the problem I experienced. This bonus screen may depend on the behavior of the boss, Mario's position, the time he falls down... 5 idle frames needed to be inserted here.
4-1
There is much lag in the tunnel sequences here and I needed to miss a coin block to reduce the lag...
4-2
1 frame was lost at the last falling platform due to how the game works: Falling platforms and enemies are shifted leftwards as the screen progresses so their positioning isn't accurate all the time. Mario steps on the falling platform later than in my improved regular TAS even though both runs had the same movement (they both went 1 pixel, 2 pixels, 1 pixel, 2 pixels etc. at the same screens). This may be caused by a different frame number so the object shifting is much related to how the screen scrolls only at every other frame in 2-3 and 4-3, independant on when the level started. I'm not sure if my reasoning is correct though...
4-3
-
Possible improvements?
I can get one more coin in 1-1, at frame 350. However, this results in one more lag frame in 4-2 so it's actually slower. If I get the coin in 1-1 and miss one purposefully in 4-1, the result is the same as when I miss it in 1-1 (the TAS syncs until the end). It seems like the number of coins has an effect on the lag in that instance in 4-2. Maybe future movies will be improved by missing certain coins in certain levels or keeping the number of coins low...
Nach: Despite this being an excellent run, and being well received by the audience, acceptance isn't easy, due to starting from a save state. This movie is "impure". Ideally any movie trying to obsolete this will start from the exact save used here, but that is unenforceable. Till we can come of with some sort of alternative though, we really have no other way to create a movie of this kind, other than hacking the game to begin with hard mode, and having the movie made with the hack. Therefore, I'm accepting this for now. We'll need some alternative solution for future runs.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
This is getting a very strong yes vote from me. If I could vote yes on it more than once (without TASing the site), I would.
Way more entertaining than the standard run. The way you move with the extra enemies makes it seem like Mario is some kind of Bulldozer Tank with a one track mind. If only all runs looked this good.
1-2 enemy stomp was great, 4000 points! Your antics in 2-3 were your best yet. 4-3 was great too antics-wise, killing 3 enemies simultaneously like that, amazing. This is what TASing is all about.
All in all, one of the best runs I've seen in a long time.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
I agree, the load of extra enemies made the run much more entertaining. Probably GBx TAS of the year material.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
It got reset while creating this movie that starts from a savestate. I took the hard mode part of the full movie (with regular and hard mode) and put it into a movie that starts from the savestate taken from frame 51701. The rerecord count should be something like 29000, but I wanted to keep it 0 since I'm curious how people would handle it. Would it be published as "rerecords: unknown"?
The NES Zelda 2nd quest TAS doesn't have it so I didn't list it. It's not like you can actually choose a difficulty...
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
He did more than keep. If I'm not mistaken he showed more than the others.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Well, I wasn't sure I could keep this stuff as public, as I am uploading TASes not created by myself, and most of the times I'm uploading those videos without asking for permission first. Therefore, I let only people who come from here to see them, to avoid the classic problems linked to the idiotic Youtube userbase, since I don't want to be told "U didn't play thiz", "cheater!!1!1!", and the like. All I am doing is a service for the tasvideos regular users who can't set up an emulator, helping them into watching movies until an official encode is made.
But now let's not go off-topic (I feel guilty otherwise), as Nach said this is quite possibly the best Game Boy TAS of the year, so keep on praising MUGG now, please :]
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
As for rerecord counts, (unknown) would work fine, but if you think it was really about 29000, then I think that's a better number. If you have the full movie consisting of both playthroughs, then you should be able to get the accurate rerecord count for this movie by taking that double-length movie and subtracting the count from the first movie. (I don't know if that's what you already tried... the description in the comments wasn't quite clear.)
As for the actual run though, it's great. Having more enemies hardly slows you down but makes the dodging and bouncing even better. I would in fact recommend this to obsolete the current normal-mode run, since it outperforms in both entertainment and total score. Nice job!
EDIT: Why is this labeled as "judging underway" when no judge has displayed a claim on this? It also seems quite quick to claim a submission like this within its first day in the queue.
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:
This was an awesome run of an awesome game, this used to take a wile to do on the original game boy and boy was it a pain to get the light right on the screen!
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
If this was recorded off the normal mode TAS, which has 35181 rerecords, and the full movie file of both runs (posted in submission comments) has 64068 rerecords, then this run would have exactly 64068-35181=28887 rerecords. That sounds more accurate than "about 29000".
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
So that's why I remembered there being one of those sphinx enemies in 1-1! Confused the heck out of me when I saw the normal run, because an enemy I distinctly remembered just wasn't there.
Run looked quite nice; good work!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Since MisterEpic surprisingly hasn't picked up on it, I'll HD encode this, and I'm currently training a new encoder how to encode... and, well, this movie is the guinea pig.
Wish Alexra luck!
Edit: Grab your YouTube upload here while it's hot.
Wow!
After watching 1-1 alone I think it looks way better than the non-hard mode version. All those enemies you plow past. Very very cool.
Edit: Watched the whole thing. Yes vote.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Why didn't the Publisher upload this run to Archive?
Archive collectionArchive download
Once again, thanks Alexra for the encode... lets hope that he can also become Publisher someday!
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
If this is more action-packed than the regular mode run, and it is only marginally longer, should it obsolete the regular run? Granted, this run doesn't play from a "clean" movie file, but I'm not sure that it's worth having two movies with such quite similar content and quite similar times. For example, the Aladdin "red gems" run obsoleted the normal "any%" Aladdin run (though that decision was definitely not very clear-cut).
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:
I only have two things to say other than it was an impressive run.
1.) You end 4-1 at 337 time. (4-1 337) Just ignore the 4- though.
2.) Are you sure 'Aims for maximum score' should be there for this game? When you have the fire flower (bouncy flower?) there are several enemies you could shoot without having to go out of your way. (Unless firing slows you down.)