So after searching for vampire games on ps1, I stumbled across this little gem. After watching the rta run of it, thought I'd give it a go, and it turned out to be an interesting experience.
This is one of those games that has tank controls. For those who don't play Resident Evil, tank controls is movement where the d-pad doesn't act like it would nowadays. Left and right have no function in moving your character forward, only turning them.
So, instead of going diagonal when you press up and right/left, you go straight while being turned. This creates a weird loop you do. The analog stick is almost exactly the same as a d-pad, therefore I don't use it in this run to make it easier on me
when TASing.
Also, the rta run of this was done on PS2. PS2 has significantly faster loading time compared to PS1; so much so that I lose nearly a second for every loading screen compared to the wr.
From the beginning to the first Borgoff fight, it's just making sure the movement is as clean as possible, with a couple of things to note. On staircases, anyone and everyone's instinct would be that jumping down would be faster, however you actually
lose 2 frames for every jump compared to just running down like normal. Enemy placement and movement seem to be on cycles which are dependent on a global timer. Because of this I do wait a few frames to open doors to get preferred enemy placement. Also
the bats are fast as hell and usually catch up with you while you're running. However their bite attack is very minor in its knock back, and you recover in a few frames. Because of this I do take damage from them at times because I just can't avoid them,
and it's faster to just take the hit than to take a longer way around. Also, the game has a function where pressing L2+R2 turns D 180 degrees. I make use of that where I can.
For the first Meier Link fight, I just stun lock him by being quick with my attacks. I mention this because when we get to Borgoff, I do the same thing. He normally dances around the stage, and the rta strat is to use the darts
to hit him while he's dancing, however I'm just able to stun lock him with my sword. By this point in the run I was behind the wr by a full minute, but doing this saved so much time that by the end I was only 5 seconds behind.
His fight isn't anything magical from a TAS perspective, but his hitbox is very strange, and you can clip into him and miss even when you're standing directly in front of him.
The first Carmilla fight is where things took a turn for the strange. She needs to use her orb attack in order for me to hit her, but the rng around her using it is so complicated that in order to see a finished TAS, I finally had to accept I wasn't going
to get an optimal cycle. However, due to a desync after I finished, I had to redo this fight, and my mistimed inputs actually lead to a faster fight. Before, I was only able to get her shoot orbs on her fifth attack, but with this fight, I was able to do
it on her third. While the fight looks strange, I wasn't going to risk losing such a pace. It's still behind the rta run, which got it on the second, but having a cleaner fight, I still saved almost a minute and a half comparitively.
Everything goes normally until around the end. The last Borgoff fight was annoying as in his first fight I was close enough to get him in a stun lock, here I'm not so lucky. Therefore I unfortunately had to resort to darts to down him, which when compared
to the rta run doesn't appear to be any slower.
Carmilla 2 was interesting as her first tentacle attacks were easy to manipulate, however the very first attack appears to be linked to a global timer. Normally moving forward would make her use other attacks, but the first movement manipulated her to use
the claw. Afterwards I move back to get into the proper placement for the others.
Then, after those have been dealt with, she's got a lot of invincibility frames after you attack her, so I had to carefully space out my attacks while dealing with her orbs.
Possible time saves would come from figuring out how Carmilla's rng works as well as Borgoff's movement pattern to catch up to him
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Gameplay is still visibly faster than RTA (barring some running screens), accepting.
Spikestuff: Publishing