Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
awesome job evilchen!
I really liked what I have seen thus far. You are using the route I posted before, correct? I would strongly advise against collecting the ice beam. You should keep this as low% as possible, plus the time is takes to collect the ice beam will really ruin the flow of the run. Taking out the metroid with power bombs is pretty easy anyway. If you can find a way to refill your power bombs after performing the crystal flash, you can avoid collecting the 3rd power bomb pack and this would become a 9% run.
Like moozooh said, the best way to get through the huge spike room is to use the ripper for damage boosts. You will have to wait a long time for it to get into position, but I have done it myself using no energy tanks so I know it is possible.
Also, I am not sure that you have to die in the room below the save room. I thought the first death could be anywhere, or you could reset the game. I seem to recall that only the second death matters for where samus dies.
wow you liked it? even with that low quality? hm..
well ill finish this in the low quality first now i guess - and later ill try a much better version because i will have more time in some weeks after my school finish(and then i can continue my metroid music vids too^^)
you need 3 powerbombs for a crystal flash i know so far (11 are needed) and i guess its not possible to get a powerbomb pickup in the statueroom ;)
and yeah i thought about dying anywhere else, but i was too afraid that it does not work then because kej did too - if anyone knows better tell me i might use all improvements for the 2nd version after it
Looks great, evilchen!
It's still not the top level (but already close to it), but it looks MUCH better than anything you did before, in quality. You see, experience and practise pays out. :-)
I would also aim for smallest possible percentage if you already attempt the Kejardon-run, and thus I would definitely skip the Ice Beam.
Good luck to find your way through the long pre X-Ray room.
And regarding the death after the 1st save in Brinstar:
I think you can't skip it in any case. You need it in order to copy your save file in the game-sram. IIRC Kej said you have to load that copy after saving in the last save station in Tourian, in order to allow Samus to skip Mother Brain at all.
And regarding the death after the 1st save in Brinstar:
I think you can't skip it in any case. You need it in order to copy your save file in the game-sram.
The thing is that it could possibly be substituted by a soft-reset, which is faster at least in realtime.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
you know, it's not like I don't read this board... ;) I take it you're doing a no-boss run and x-raying to Tourian.
For getting the x-ray scope, you really need to abuse the wavers and fireflys. They give good invincibility time and can drop lots of energy.
As moozooh said, you might want to consider taking the Ice beam anyways. It may literally take hours to luck manipulate the Metroids into dropping as many power bombs as you'd need. If you're really out for lowest percent though, you can kill the bosses and only need 9% (though you'd still have to choose between ice beam and speed boots). If you're determined to make a 10% No-Boss run though, it would probably be faster to use the pause screen to help with luck manipulation: Frames spent on the pause screen *do* affect the RNG, and they do so differently than normal time passing, I think. None of Samus's movements affect the RNG at all IIRC, and I don't think Rinkas or Metroids do either (except through item drops), so the pause screen would be the easiest way to manipulate the RNG.
For skipping Mother Brain, the first death can be anywhere. Or you can simply reset as soon as you save.
Though if you're going for fastest in-game time, you'd actually want to skip the first save entirely and only save in Tourian, reset, and play a new game up to that room in Brinstar. The only purpose of that first save is so you don't have to spend real-time later getting to the Brinstar spike room.
Actually, come to think of it, you could reset and use the auto-save during the Ceres explosion cutscene to cut off a nice chunk of real-time without having to sacrifice any in-game time.
Wow. Super Metroid brings up a whole plethora of questions about entertainment value of movies now. :P
::edit:: Bahahahah! I just now noticed that that room is loaded DURING THE DEMO SCENES. I haven't tested, but you shouldn't even need two games at all because of that. Just get a save in Tourian, reset / die / whatever to get to the title screen, let the demo play until it gets to that room, and then press start and load your game. You can check offset... 7FA0F3. As soon as that turns to 01, load your Tourian save and you should be able to skip MB.
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
None of Samus's movements affect the RNG at all IIRC, and I don't think Rinkas or Metroids do either (except through item drops)
Sadly, it does — maybe just not directly, but still does. :\
I tried it today, and got different results by executing different movement patterns for both myself and the metroids even if placing the bomb on the same frame. I'm not going to make it fully optimal, I'm afraid, since for all the 4-metroids rooms, I'll have to kill at least two of them with the same bomb each time, and trying to nail the perfect luck would take me years.
It was the same when I manipulated the kago drops back when I was TASing SMR: being at different pixel positions (maybe just tiles, whatever) affected the drop that was being generated. It really sucks.
[EDIT]
Is there an address that could say me what drop is being generated or at least allow me to see if the RNG is being shuffled? I suppose that would help greatly. So far randomness is pretty much the only thing where I [can] lose frames.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It's definitely going to depend on what frame the power bomb kills the metroids, but I don't think it matters where that happens at. And after the Metroid is killed, I don't think there's anything Samus or Rinkas can do to change the drops, though pausing the game should be able to.
The RNG is a word (two bytes) located at 7E05E5 - 7E05E6. The rng is updated *every* frame, even during the title screen. The bytes are also swapped every frame if the game is unpaused. I think. I never pinned down precisely what caused that extra step.
(Almost) Every time the RNG is used, it's also updated again.
Trying to mathematically manipulate the RNG is a nightmare. I played around with it a few times, the RNG had a period of around $800, and that was *without* the extra byte-swap and extra steps when the RNG is used.
So no, knowing the workings of the RNG is not likely to do you any help.
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
The drops are determined the moment they appear, no sooner.
You could calculate them in advance, but I don't see the point. It's faster to just test emperically. I guess you could reverse-engineer what numbers you need for the RNG to get the drops you want though, and watch the RNG.
The RNG's code is located at 80:8111 in the rom. The routine for determining the drops should be listed in my random routines document too, and you can get the drop chances from SMILE. If you put all those together you can calculate what you need. I don't have the time to be working on this though, sorry.
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
Actually, come to think of it, you could reset and use the auto-save during the Ceres explosion cutscene to cut off a nice chunk of real-time without having to sacrifice any in-game time.
Wait - isn't that auto-save overwritten when you save in tourian, thus not copyable? Or do you intend to reset after ceres, then copy the file, play one of them up to ceres etc?
not that it matters, because your edit really warrants the "Bahahahah"-prefix. Nice find.
yeah thanks saturn :)) ill keep trying in getting better
::edit:: Bahahahah! I just now noticed that that room is loaded DURING THE DEMO SCENES. I haven't tested, but you shouldn't even need two games at all because of that. Just get a save in Tourian, reset / die / whatever to get to the title screen, let the demo play until it gets to that room, and then press start and load your game. You can check offset... 7FA0F3. As soon as that turns to 01, load your Tourian save and you should be able to skip MB.
hm.. thats good and bad i think..
good - saves much frames
bad - i have to redo from the save
tell me when you tested it kej :)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
evilchen,
Since this is only a test run, you should not go back and redo it from the save point. You could just finish the run and test it yourself when you get to tourian to see if the new method works. If it doesn't work at least you can still perform the original method, because you have already used the save point.
evilchen: Sorry, I seem to have a knack for ruining runs. :P
I haven't tested it, but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work. It sets the important bit of ram correctly, and that's all it needs to do.
Tub wrote:
Wait - isn't that auto-save overwritten when you save in tourian, thus not copyable? Or do you intend to reset after ceres, then copy the file, play one of them up to ceres etc?
The latter. Play a game through Ceres, reset during the Ceres explosion cutscene, copy the save, play as normal to Tourian. Using that as a save doesn't cost any in-game time.
Using the auto-save at Samus's ship immediately after Ceres, though, does cost some in-game time.
moozooh: I just noticed I still have my disassembly of the random drop routine. I'll upload that real quick...
http://drewseph.zophar.net/Kejardon/ItemDrop.txt
It's not plain enough to be understandable without assembly knowledge, but given how much of a mathematical pain the routine is, the disassembly can be an immense help still. And you might want the ram map open alongside it.
kwinse wrote:
Kejardon wrote:
Kriole wrote:
Samus is damaged by a Rinka in the opening.
That's a script action; no damage.
... it just dawned on me I know way too much about SM.
wow, you guys really made me afraid getting to the xray would be a horror but it did take 3-5 minutes to do it O_o
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/5572/10.smv
iam before the xray now ;) and i guess the way back is as easy as this
how did i do it, i fooled arround with my savestates and saw the ripper flying arround perfeclty without manipulating! :D *lucky*
Alright, after a lot of testing and failed attempts, I did it: Torizo can now be skipped on NTSC.
Proof:
- SMV (needs Snes9x 1.51, though works on any emulator if done right);
- AVI.
I was close to skipping it a few months ago, but had my attempt at getting stuck in the door at X=28 (which is crucial for this to work) accidentally overwritten. That time I simply forgot to use the turnaround animation, but some time ago figured it was the only thing I needed beside that X=28.
I wish to thank Saturn and Hero of the day for poking me to try it more. Also, hooray for memory watch.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
moozooh is a beast!
He succeeded where many have failed. This new trick will make 24 minutes in-game timer possible for my new any% run.
The only thing to do now is figure out the best spot to recollect the 5 missiles.
OMG, this is totally awesome! You are a genius, moozooh, thanks for finding the time doing it that quickly, man!
Fabian:
Reading helps sometimes. As you see, I very much wanted that moozooh does this skip, because I knew he could do it, but was too lazy trying it myself. I'm happy he saved me the hard work doing it myself. :-)
EDIT:
As a reward for this incredible work I will show you my Torizo fight from my older any% WIP, that is 30 frames faster than JXQ's 100% v2 one, to convince all disbelievers, and proof/confirm that my statements about it before were true:
http://rapidshare.com/files/31800996/SM_-_Improved_Torizo_Fight.avi.html
Just compare the frame count from the first movement of Samus after the item pickup screen, which is at frame 24782, till the last one before hitting the door exit-transition at 26141. It's a 1359 frame range, JXQ's v2 one is 1389.
