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Voting meh on this... not doing a certain glitch somewhere doesn't bother me that much, if the rest is optimized... but it was too appearant throughout the run that stuff could be optimized, which took away some of the entertainment value for me.
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I didn't know about this, but since I'm working on a TAS for this game, I tried it (on fceu).
It doesn't seem to be an emulation bug... here is what happens:
If you press start, right before/at the point where the ball hits a block, the block won't disappear. The block is gone (balls will fly through it), but the sprites of the block are still there. If you keep playing, and destroy all blocks where you didn't press start right before the ball hit the block, you will be left only with these fake blocks, and since you can't hit them, you will be left to die. If you die, all fake blocks sprites will be gone, but the game still doesn't count them as gone... so the level can never be finished.
The glitch can easily be done in real time, just by hitting start as fast as you can. You can however never complete the level where you did the glitch.
Even if the level could be completed with the glitch, I don't see any possibilities of saving time with it. I think I'm done testing with it and can move on... which is great, since it would be terrible if everything I've done sofar on this TAS would need to be redone.
Here is a movie showing the glitch.
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It might have been better if I hadn't put that up so early... I still plan on doing it, but I want to finish several other TASes first (arkanoid, mega man 5 and zelda second quest with morrison). So it will take quite some time before I would get started. I don't want to 'claim' this TAS, so if anyone wants to try it, then please do.
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Time to release a WIP of this second quest movie Morrison and I have been working on:
WIP
This WIP plays up untill level 8 is entered. You will notice that it's glitched up, due to entering it early. At this point we found another way of entering it about 4 frames faster without the graphics glitching up. This is probably better anyway. It might be fun for one level, but only level 8 will have different sprites for the enemies. After the level is completed there will only be additional dots on screen, which would probably be annoying anyway... so this glitch will probably not be included in the actual TAS. Either way, enjoy the WIP :)
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All of the other movies we improvements to previous runs... so I was kinda on the save side, not needing to defend why they should be published (I guess either someone already did that, or no one complained). With making this movie (that doesn't have a published movie already, and thus could possibly not be published), I knew people were gonna say something like 'all of these runs (including the other runs) are too much of the same' or 'we do not need two movies for this game'. I wouldn't have made this movie if I didn't think this provided something new, entertaining, and publishworthy.
As JXQ already said, this game is very different than all other tetris movies. One could even wonder why they called this tetris in the US (well, probably calling it tetris and putting in nintendo characters made it sell better in the US). Either way, the only thing this game has in common with the other tetris games is that it has tetris in the name... the feeling that it's all the same (although I disagree with this) probably comes from the fact that they were submitted in a relatively short period of time.
I basically already said in the submission text why I think this game should have this second movie, but I'll adress it again:
This game has two kinds of scoring (combo's and chains), the US version has to fully rely on chains, this version fully relies on combo's... so the gameplay is completely different (just watch both movies, and even if you have never seen the game, you can clearly see it's being completed in a totally different way). It's nice to see how fast the original version of this game can be beaten over twice as fast as the US version, and the different characters and sounds they make does give the game a different feel than the nintendo characters gave.
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If the movie is done, it might be a good idea to make an avi where the score adding is skipped. It will make the entertainment rating go up by like 3 points :)
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I'll be honest with you here, I didn't use a score memory adress. I can't imagine it being more useful than the actual score that is displayed. There where two things that attributed to score (making tetrisses and holding down), and I knew for both exactly how much score would be added (see submission text). I can imagine though that there need to be at least 3 adresses to store the score.
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emu wrote:
Towers are much more efficient, when the way from one entrance is longer, so the two waves pass the towers at different times.
Depends on what towers you are using to defend. If you use towers which only damage 1 enemy, then this is true (these towers will also hit enemies in the air). If you use towers which damage enemies at a certain spot (these will only hit ground enemies), then it's better to have lots of creeps at the same spot.
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Now reached wave 86 on level 6. Obviously air enemies were the problem again.
Here is a pic: http://xs217.xs.to/xs217/07283/40608594.PNG
(Note that all the enemies at the left aren't really the problem... the air enemies that are about to show up killed me.)
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Ok, I voted yes. The goal of clearing all blocks sounds strange, but makes perfect sense in this mode. It might just be the only way to make a TAS of this mode which makes sense.
I do think you should edit your submission text, and delete the "I finish the run with a tetris (it wastes a little time, but I think it adds entertainment).". It appearantly didn't waste time. I think you should add a Aims for fastest time.
Btw, this is a missed opportunity for a TAS of the original gameboy tetris. It also has a B mode where something similar is possible. Now, a there is no real objective for that game to make it distinct of the other tetris TASes... Too bad, since I kinda was hoping for a TAS of that game.
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Vatchern wrote:
Another submission of a Hack, *sigh*.
Wow, you sure noticed this fast :)
I think the goal of the site is to provide entertaining tool assisted speedruns (with clear goals). If a TAS of a hack is able to do this, then what's the problem?