No, he means that if on that frame you can't pause, then that frame is lagging. It's a good idea, theoretically, but I wonder if pausing the game would eliminate some of the lag that would otherwise be experienced normally?
I can already see it lagging when Mario stays in the same place for two frames. Mostly it's that screen with the four koopas, especially when Mario jumps there, but the lag there is different depending on what happened earlier in the level.
The clues I have left are:
falling through a block at full speed seems to give a slight boost forward, enough to save about a frame
the jump over the pirahna plant at the start could be faster by about a frame
scrolling the screen more seems to cause more lag
spending more time in the air might increase lag
covering up the P-meter sound effect with other sound effects might decrease lag
enemies seem to start in slightly different positions when the game lags
in theory I could let the P-meter go empty after getting the mushroom and reaching full speed, then use the same trick as in 1-2 to get to the goal without slowing down, but I didn't notice any lag frames after the mushroom
getting the mushroom optimally is extremely difficult and I think it must be possible to do better there. However, what I did there was somehow faster than what Genisto did, and I have not been able to repeat it.
jump height can controlled with extreme precision by releasing A before the height of the jump and then pressing A again within the next 4 or 5 frames, to jump higher than holding A for X frames and lower than holding A for X+1 frames.
Super Metroid style short-charge works in this game to charge the P-meter to full while moving a shorter distance than normal. But skidding sound effects might contribute to lag.
Only a little (between 4% and 7% less distance depending on when you start measuring), but it could be enough to make a difference somewhere. It's not quite enough to get a full P-meter before having to jump over the goomba at the start of 1-1, unfortunately.
EDIT: demonstration
Hey I just had a thought, and I couldn't find anything about it on the last few pages of this thread (actually it surprises me). Would anyone want a 100% SMB3 completion video?
Though defining "100%" itself in this game would have to be thought about. We could take the New Super Mario Bros. way and count all warp pipes (on the map) for it, but that would be far too boring and imo pointless. Besides all the numbered levels, how much of the rest of the game should be done? Include the warp-whistle in World 2 or not, or even several optional non-numbered stages (the pihrana plant thing in World 7 comes to mind . . .).
Well, it is an interesting thought... Suppose some guy knows a bug in SMB to accelerate Mario to double speed. Now, his favourite level in SMB3 is 1-4, for example. He looks around for a published run that beats it. If he finds it, he'll register and post, and eventually make a comment in SMB along the lines of "You know this, right?"
But if he DOESN'T find the video, maybe he won't register and we'll lose a great trick.
Plus there's the sheer WTF value of doing everything in the game faster than most people can win with warps.
Well, I doubt many people take over 50 minutes to beat the game with warps, maybe they'd take around half and hour, but still...
For a 100% run, we should probably discuss what we need to play. Obviously all the numbered levels are included, but after that it's unclear what should be done, especially since the game doesn't have a in-game percentage to base it on (does the SNES version have one? The GBA version has something almost like it..). I wouldn't do any of the mini-games that pop up based on your playing (treasure ship, N-Spade game, etc), and not any of the silly stuff like the three rows of spinning pictures; avoid things like hammer bros (on the map).
Besides a 100% run, we can use nitsuja's trick to improve both runs on this site. Let's see if we can get a sub-10 min run :)
You shouldn't reply to a thread unless you have read it. Even with the tricks he listed, nitsuja hasn't found a way to really improve Genisto's movie at all. How do you suggest we cut 34 seconds off?
As for a 100% run, IMO all Hammer Bros. and Piranha Plant levels etc should be completed. Anything with monsters/pits/anything that can kill you should be considered a level. Toad houses, spades and memory games should of course be skipped.
I consider a mini game to be a "level" in a way. I mean, the 16 star Mario 64 run is called "16 star", not "14 star, 1 Toad freebie and 1 Bowser red coin" mario 64 run, right? A minigame completed amazingly fast is very entertaining, and doesn't slow down a run much.
Excuse me for not having read this thread since its first post, but I haven't seen anything in the past few pages to the extent of "Despite finding faster methods in the game, it still ends up being exactly as fast as Genisto's run". Besides, I didn't mean I thought that sub-10m was possible, but it would be pretty cool.
Makes sense. That will probably be how it'll go -- World 1 should be fairly straight forward, but in most of the other worlds, an optimal map-route should probably be planned out. Maybe I should watch the warpless run for some ideas :)
Ugh, is it possible to get a full P-meter after the first pipe in 1-2 as small Mario? He seems to lose speed faster than Super Mario when travelling up hill. :/
I figured it'd be faster to go through 1-1 the nitsuja way without power-ups, go through 1-2 without them either. Then I either run through 1-3 without powerups and get a mushroom in 1-4 (auto-scroller), or a mushroom in 1-3 then get raccoon Mario in 1-4 (I like the first option better since it'd probably be quicker).
Or maybe it would be faster entirely to just get the power-up in 1-1 and avoid the whole mess :x
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ins10p (Microstorage not working atm)
Through 1-2, and copied nitsuja's 1-1 opening. I really don't like how 1-2 is played, especially the slow beginning. Some experimentation and I couldn't really see if I can apply the same opening 1-1 trick to 1-2, but it seems to work best on flat ground. I'm going to try re-doing World 1-1 with obtaining a mushroom, and that'll probably let me finish 1-2 much quicker. This is far too slow compared to Genisto's run to be acceptable.
No, not yet.
Your WIP has a lot of problems:
- The 1-1 opening you copied was a demonstration not aiming for speed.
- The hammer bros movement costs you too much time on the map screen.
- Your 1-2 was extremely slow, try the method I posted here instead. Also, I don't know why you're blaming not having a mushroom for not being able to go as fast as Genisto did.
Thanks, I'll have to play around a bit more. I'm still getting used to how this game works, in the sense of controlling it in a TAS (I've been playing it for years... <_<)
You'll want to use FCEU 0.98.16 and use memory watch on these addresses too. It will make your life a lot easier to know exactly how fast you're going and understand what makes the P-meter go up instead of guessing all the time.
off topic: The post I just linked to is not at the top of its page. I wish more people would realize they can do this instead of linking to something several posts before the post they are talking about.
I remember a time when I went down the pipe in 5-3 with the shoes on, and somehow I went down through the right side of the pipe and didn't come out on the screen below, but could move horizontally. When the time was up the game froze. I wonder how that happened.