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That was fast! A lot of levels like Giraffe Pen look even more TAS-like now. I like the trick in Arctic Pen 1 to destroy the third fan in one frame by using the fish while falling off a ledge. When you have time, it'd be nice to see tricks you used like the double jump documented in the submission text or a Game Resources page, too.
In Zebra Pen 1, did you skip a dance at the end? It sounds like Private's voice starts to play, then cuts out and the BGM restarts in the second room. Something similar happens at the end of Monkey Cages 2 with Alex.
At 1:27, you toboggan across part of that pond, but on revisits at 10:37 and 16:37 you don't. Could it also be faster to toboggan across at 13:50, 17:20, etc? Otherwise, looks good and it's great you shaved off almost a full minute.
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SuperSqank wrote:
You and YoungJ did a really good job with the original TAS and it helped us formulate the RTA run for this game as well. This game has a really neat speedrun and you guys truly pioneered the run. ... Thank you for returning and pushing this game even further.
Wow, thanks for saying that! It worked out that we made the TAS back when SRC was just getting started. I'm glad our efforts brought you all together for a common goal.
SuperSqank wrote:
RNG in Final Battle is definitely strange. I couldn't figure out how it works. It is possible to save more time earlier in the run but it could mess up the RNG on Final Battle.
I don't understand it either. It's good you found that saving frames as late as Island Getaway affects it, as the right frame/input there could give us a faster Final/Arena too, but it's just trial and error for now.
Alyosha wrote:
I seem to be unable to add SuperSqank as an author, when I click on the '+' nothing happens, can a judge please do so?
This sounds like a site bug. It might be worth reporting on GitHub.
Also thanks for your work on GBAHawk; this is the GBA game I most wanted to see console verified, and you made it possible along with Operation Penguin.
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Have you also read the forum thread? FriiedPorkchop discovered some glitches involving tobogganing mode that help preserve speed and can even clip through things, skipping part of Arctic Pen 3. The Giraffe Pen demo encode used the mGBA core, while the BK2 from the later post used VBA-Next in BizHawk 1.11.1, and I couldn't get it to sync in BizHawk 2.3.2 so it might require an older version. I did format and paste its input into a GBMV but only the very first level (Mr. Chew) syncs, the rest may need to be resynced for every room if you want to directly compare strategies.
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Good work, both of you, and thanks for keeping YoungJ and I on as coauthors! SuperSqank, thanks for sharing your knowledge and improving the run. Alyosha, thanks for resyncing and improving, and congrats on achieving sub 28!
I saved 177 more frames using the trick I noted in the published run's submission text: kicking the last gray lemur (or two, if they're close enough together) to make it run instead of walk to the right. Because the level ends when the 20th lemur reaches the right side of the screen, this saves almost 3 seconds. Foosa Arena is now a 0:50 IGT, and it's likely it can go lower with better RNG manipulation in the future. I used GBAHawk so it's ready to console verify and have a judge replace this submission, if there are no more improvements.
SuperSqank wrote:
CoolKirby/JCool stated that they could get as low as a 45 IGT in this level.
JCool and I are different people. Unless he also said that, which would be a funny coincidence.
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The framerate could be edited on the site's end, but first it's worth looking into how the framerate ended up as 2.372212666982621E-14 in the first place.
It must be a bug in the site parser because the LTM's config.ini gives 30 FPS for 437,596 frames, which should be a time of about 4:03:06.53. Not 10,675,199 days (~29,227 years).
Very fitting for a meme category though. Good one.
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Great port! It's just missing the ending vocals. Maybe an update could at least add the lyrics in time with some 8-bit music.
Optimization looks fine. Thanks for introducing us to another version of this game!
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Normally an editor or staff could change it to Flash on the site's end. But there isn't an entry in the Flash dropdown for 59 FPS, and I'm unable to add one.
I think the easiest fix is to add Platform: Flash to annotations.txt like you meant to, save and upload the new .ltm, and ask a judge here to replace the submitted file with the new one. That should add 59 FPS as an option for Flash and keep the calculated time (1:04.95) correct.
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If this is a 2-player game mode, wouldn't it save time to move the second tank closer to the shots so the levels end sooner? Is TASing with only one player suboptimal (necessitating the "One player in a multiplayer game" tag)?
You pointed out that this is very trivial, and I agree, especially since you're just beating up on an absent Player 2. This seems similar to TASing a 2P Smash Bros match in which the absent player is knocked off the stage repeatedly until either their stock or the timer runs out. I see that triviality is no longer a rejection factor, but I don't see anything in the rules about 2-player Vs. with only one active player being acceptable or unacceptable.
Great job on that page! I'm probably not the only one who's been meaning to update those for months and never got around to it.
I haven't looked through all your examples yet, but I agree that Wiki: DesyncHelp and Wiki: DesyncHelpTAS should be merged in a sensible way.
Randomno wrote:
I don't suppose we have the manpower to implement a category system at the moment, but it's something to consider before diving head-first into subpages.
We can start with moving eligible things to subpages first, since the system's already implemented, and skip over anything that could be better represented by a future category system. Looking at the site map, Wiki: AdvancedLuckManipulation could be a subpage of Wiki: TASingGuide (where AdvancedTools already is). Maybe TASingGuide could become an actual online course combining many stray pages, organized from beginner to expert skill level, and adding additional text (and a "Hello World" TAS?) to tie it all together.
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I used to play the original PC fangame version of this, before I had any Mario games. Was nice to see it in some form again, and it's a pretty good TAS. It might be improvable, but it's hard for a casual viewer to notice. Yes vote.
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Innovation like this is exciting to see on the Workbench. This is my new favorite Pokemon run because of the monumental amount of route planning, and because there's always something interesting happening on at least one of the screens. I don't know much about Gen 2 but I was surprised you can use Yellow to speed up the completion of later games in the series.
I hope we can expect more TAS content from you, gabraltar. If it explores another new frontier, too, that'd be even better (but not required)!
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Took me a while to realize the filled/unfilled dots (and later, bars) are the fractions in question. I actually watched the whole thing to see all the fractions; Yes vote.
The graphics remind me of Moonside from EarthBound.
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That was pretty fun for the first minute. I'm glad I was introduced to this game and console.
Sasa does appear to be the English title. I'm not sure why the time is appearing as 03:54.24 though, or why the parser used the PAL framerate unless this really is a PAL version (and not NTSC-J).
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For some reason, your movie's SHA1 differed from the [a1] RomHash, but I got it to sync on the standard [a1] as cataloged for this submission with hash 9FDD739A05F496837946F42C3EF08EBE7DF142DC.
Pretty fast-paced movie, though pretty repetitive also. I liked it though, reminded me of Dragonfire.
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Well now, that was impressive. Lots of technical one-frame tricks culminated in a fast run. If the full game is ever finished, a TAS of it should be as entertaining as GB Donkey Kong (which is currently starred).
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Seems like a nice, simple Atari game/TAS. I noticed some paths appear faster, but are just narrow enough that the dog doesn't fit through them, so optimization looks fine.
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Thanks Darkman425, I had the same idea with repacking the file.
After I did that, I managed to keep it as a tasproj with a GreenZone file still included. It's available here. Mike, try both the bk2 and tasproj and see if one of them works for you.
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I don't think there's a way to attach a file to a forum post here. If it won't upload to your Userfiles, you can upload to Sendspace without creating an account, for example.
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Try loading your most recent savestate. If it loads and plays your movie back successfully, save the movie file and it'll retain your progress to that point. You might lose some progress based on when you made the savestate, but it should be easy to redo since it's the most recent part you TASed.
