Post subject: Aero the Acrobat 2
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Since Random Pie is doing the first one (at least I think he's still working on it), and doing a good job so far, I've decided to tackle the sequel. This version is a lot more straight-forward than the first, but the character still moves pretty fast at maximum speed. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1357248248/Aero the Acrobat 2.gmv Here's the first level. Let me know what you think.
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
Looks pretty good. If you hold start during the Sega logo at the beginning it disappears much (~3 s) faster. Also in Areo 1, I've noticed that there is a slight variation in how fast you accelerate when coming out of a spin attack and in the angle of the attack, and that it can be manipulated slightly. I have no idea if this is the case in this game though. I didn't spot anything in the level that could be improved, but I'm not familiar with this game at all.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
How does manipulating that acceleration work, exactly?
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
I've had a play around and it doesn't seem to work in Aero 2 at all, but it worked by changing which d-buttons you used or by delaying a frame.
Post subject: Re: Aero the Acrobat 2
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
arkiandruski wrote:
Since Random Pie is doing the first one (at least I think he's still working on it), and doing a good job so far, I've decided to tackle the sequel. This version is a lot more straight-forward than the first, but the character still moves pretty fast at maximum speed. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1357248248/Aero_the_Acrobat _2.gmv Here's the first level. Let me know what you think.
Your URL was missing some underscores, but the url in my quote works perfectly (Just a heads up, no hate intended) 2320 - 2339: I notice you hit the very end of the bed and then fall off the side of the bed. Did you lose any frames from either hitting the bed's bar or falling off the bar when you continued running? I dont know if it would have been any easier to jump later and miss the bed completely instead of jumping and then landing on the bed. ~2700: Sorry for not being more exact, I forgot to pause the emulator @_@ It appears you didnt do the Aero spin at the top of his jump to get onto the ladder. Could it be possible to skip grabbing the ladder all together, or grabbing the ladder higher than where you grabbed it, thus cutting down the climbing time by a few frames? 3400 - 3500: I notice that you lose momentum when you do that spin move. Instead of spinning, would grabbing the bells strings preserve your momentum and get you to the end faster than spinning? 3500 - end: Is there any earlier moment you can jump into the door, or does the door have to be relatively big for you to jump in and end the level? Great work so far, keep it up!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Jumping does not effect velocity. The side of the bed does not slow you down at all. If you watch my input during the time on the ladder, you'll notice that I don't even hit the up button. In other words, you're forced to use a ladder when you have a ladder. Try jumping off the bells yourself for the answer to the third question. I jump on the first frame possible for going in the door. The door doesn't pull you in until fully formed. By the way http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1307428439/AerotheAcrobat2.gmv There are some problems here. Mostly because enemies got in the way. Ideas are welcome
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
It seems the ladder dismount can be skipped in the exact same way as it can in Areo 1. Also in Areo 1 you can't accelerate whilst in the air, I would guess the same is true here. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/185047281/Aero%20the%20acro-bat%202.gmv
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
It looks like you're right about the acceleration. However, everytime I jump in level 1 I'm at maximum speed already, so it looks like the first level is optimized except for that ladder dismount. Alright, how does that glitch work. I've been able to repeat it, but I don't know exactly what I'm doing.
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
The important bit is that you kind of wedge yourself against the wall at the side of the ladder that you can't see. It usually takes a few attempts to find the right frame, but as long as you have enough height it is always possible.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Hey, it's been a while. I'm going to be moving at a snail's pace through this production. Theere are certain things that are taking up a lot of my time right now, but here's level 2 http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1262873881/Aero%20the%20Acro-Bat%202%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv Every improvement I tried didn't work for one reason or another. I'm not completely satisfied, but this might be the fastest it can go.
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
Nice work! The new stage 1 looked flawless. The only thing I noticed is that it's faster to clime down the ladder for a few frames and then jump off it and do a downwards spin straight after (it was slower to do this in stage one only because of the sloped floor under the ladder). Also have you tried shooting enemies with the stars you collected, it doesn't slow you down if you are in the air, but then you have to jump anyway so there's a good chance it won't help.
Experienced player (828)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I had thought about doing this at one point, and your work so far is looking really good. It sure would be nice to find a way to use the spinning gears w/o having to go around them twice before letting go (I saw you only did one revolution on one near the end of level 2, why not the rest?) Anyway, keep it up.
Living Well Is The Best Revenge My Personal Page
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
I checked, and it's still two revolutions. I think the difference is where I started on the wheel. I tried throwing stars at that enemy. It didn't work. The problem is Aero is traveling faster than the star at that point.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/687250413/Aero2.gmv Goddamit I hate these enemies. There's very little youcan do to manipulate them. Most of the time if they're going to jump, they will jump, and evey time they jump they jump right when it's impossible to avoid them. Anyway, I'm restarting the run because I realized something stupid. You can skip level introduction text. Hopefully my luck will be better this time around. For now enjoy the weird cutscene after the movie is done.
Active player (487)
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 114
Very impressive, stage 3 was the best yet. I know how you feel obout the enemies though, I have much the same problem myself..
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/193836592/aero2afteralonghiatus.gmv Boarding Zone is boring. That's all I have to say about that. In other news, I've improved both level 2 and 3, saving quite a few frames. How many? I'm not sure. I didn't do the math.
Skilled player (1512)
Joined: 4/28/2005
Posts: 240
Location: Finland
Sorry to come here this late. @ 1:35 You can jump from wheel to left. From 2:10 to 2:18 you can improve 85 frames. Check my movie.
Projects: Warlock, Ren & Stimpy (impr) / Generations Lost (impr.)
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/41773442/Aero%20the%20Acro-Bat%202%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.gmv Yes, I'm back (though technically I never left). Not much is changed, just implemented the improvements from the previous post as well as a few new discoveries.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Editor, Experienced player (931)
Joined: 7/20/2011
Posts: 345
Hello arkiandruski, I noticed this post is about 2 years old but I still have to ask: any plans on finishing this? Your WIP looks good, and I would start on this but the boarding zone really puts me off. Three of the same autoscrolling levels right in a row seems like it gets kinda boring. Anyways let me know as I'm just messing around trying to beat the game once right now to get a feel for it, but I probably won't do this one. Also your last link seems to not work. Edit: I've found that in one of the Fort Redstar's levels you can glitch through the slides, I'm not sure if this will have any uses though, how to reproduce it, or if it has already been discovered. Here are some images I took (going through it from the bottom):
Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.
NitroGenesis
He/Him
Editor, Experienced player (556)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
arkiandruski wrote:
Wow, it's been a while. This is a link. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/877246273/Aero%20the%20Acro-Bat%202%20U%20%5B%5D.gmv I finished one more level.
This link should work, Exxonym.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Editor, Experienced player (931)
Joined: 7/20/2011
Posts: 345
Well in the interest of getting back into TASing (with DTC6 coming up) I decided to fool around with this. I improved world 1 (bell castle) by 237 frames over arkiandruski's WIP. Some quick notes on where the time saves came from: 1-1 If you're running at full speed and jump onto a slope for some reason you preserve your speed, even with aero's sprite turned backwards as though he were sliding down it. I used this combined with a hidden ledge to save a few frames over the previous route. If you're going slower than a drill attack (which has a speed of 3) you can drill to instantly set your speed to that value. If you use this as soon as you hit a slope you can immediately set your value to 3 by doing a drill and start gaining speed from the slope from that point. (if this makes sense) Other than that not much to say about level 1, only a small amount of time saved here 1-2 Manipulated the enemy to jump at a favorable position so that I could do a downwards drill into him for just enough height to reach the spinning wheel above. I also used the stars near the end of the level so that I could preserve my max speed all the way until the wheel section, as opposed to saving a star for the caterpillar near the very end (which is only like a few frames slower). 1-3 This level sucks because of the swinging bells, and their unfavourable cycles. Anyway, first time saver is not drilling underneath the second jumping clown and rather slowing down slightly and have him jump over you. I also use the above trick to to bypass the first enemy and use the second one to drill into to reach the ledge above. This is used as opposed to using a downward drill on the first enemy (this is slower because downward drill halts your momentum). Unfortunately because of the time saves, the final bell cycle catches me twice that I have to drill through. Perhaps if more optimizations are found it could be in a more favourable cycle. There are other various minor improvements by watching x speed and x pos, etc. The good thing about this game is that it is very edit friendly, at least so far. So any optimizations or tricks that are found can be implemented and then resynced with the rest of the run. Here's the file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/36385939669716209
Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Okay, I'm pissed and I'll tell you why in a little bit First off, I'm coming back to this run. Projects are never really fully abandoned. They're just put on hold. So far I've only got Bell Castle Act 1. Here's a WIP, it's 3 frames faster than Exonym's WIP posted above. Believe me I had to fight for every one of those frames. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47189917528496898 This is not a game where you can check a few possibilities and call it a day. There are some times where it looks like doing things a few frames later makes things slower, but then you go a few frames later than that and it gets faster again. Working with the acceleration gives lots of possibilities. Exonym's WIP was also pretty solid. It's a big accomplishment to get just that. So why am I pissed? Because the first time I ran through the stage, I was 4 frames faster than Exonym's WIP, but that got saved over and I couldn't figure out how to get it back. On top of that, when I tried to reproduce it based off of what I learned from doing it the first time, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get that one extra frame save to go. I know exactly where it happens, too. I should be 2 frames ahead of Exonym's WIP after I jump off the slope that I slide up backwards. I also know because I worked on that section a lot, that I should hit the mid checkpoint at frame 2465 rather than 2466 like I do in this WIP. I know one frame is pretty small to make that much of a deal of, especially at this stage, but if I can't manage to find this one frame improvement that I know is there because I've already done in in the past, it'll put a stain on the entire rest of the run. Please, anyone, if you are reading this, please help me figure out how to get my one frame back. This is bothering me so much. I know it's possible, but I can't for the life of me reproduce it.
Reviewer, Active player (287)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47198956148359800 Found it. Exonym's WIP and the WIP I posted jump on the first frame possible after they enter the hidden passage in the wall. In this latest WIP, I delay that jump by a few frames. The end result is while I land on the pipe afterward on the same frame, I'm 3 pixels farther to the left. This allows me to grab the ladder at the highest point sooner.
Editor, Experienced player (931)
Joined: 7/20/2011
Posts: 345
Nice to see some renewed interest in the game! In the first stage, I recalled being able to improve my old WIP by just running off the ledge before the bed we spring off of, instead of jumping onto it. If you drill back down into the bed the very frame that you're released from it, you'll get the extended height as if it were two bounces. That being said I messed around with it for a few minutes in your file but I wasn't able to save time. Even so, I think it may have uses in other places. Nice improvements though! I uploaded a file of some quick WIP through a lot of the game that I have had sitting on my computer for a while. I know it's not totally optimized, specifically the snowboarding levels. I'm pretty sure for those levels you want to hit every ramp as much as possible, as being in the air was faster I think... (my memory is fuzzy on this honestly). It does serve as a good comparison file though hopefully so I'll leave it here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47230706369637470 Looking forward to more improvements you come up with, and I might take a peek at some stuff a bit later.
Current thoughts: Hachiemon (J) for GBA.