All the videos that have been linked from here are awesome. But there's still no pure-speed Arena run.
Sure there are lots of videos around where the player only uses a particular ability. But I'm curious about a run that shows the absolute lowest time after beating Marx. And no, it would not just involve Wheelie Rider....
Some things to take into account:
Apparently, the ingame timer doesn't run if the boss's HP Meter isn't loaded. So you can waste as much time as you want in the rest area between fights, destroying helpers and getting powers. In fact, you can take your sweet time walking up the boss's area (such as the Computer Battle).
If you have a helper with you when the boss's HP meter loads, the boss will have about 25% extra HP. This isn't in all cases, however.
You don't just consider the amount of damage an attack does, you also consider the amount of invincibility frames the boss gets after being hit by a particular attack. This is why, in some cases, TAC helper can outdamage Wheelie Rider -- bosses are invincible for far fewer frames after being hit by TAC than after being hit by Wheelie Rider.
Anyways, here's a quick plan I whipped up to get everyone thinking:
Heart of Nova
- No helper, so has less HP
- attack close so diagonal shots also hit
- destroy first 4, weaken next 2, destroy last 2, backtrack to destroy weakened ones
Halberd Reactor
- no helper, so dies in 3 hits instead of 4
- probably Stone or Plasma (use Spark/Laser on cannon, not Wave Cannon -- longer invincibility frames for cannon)
- destroy the laser-blaster the split second after it starts shooting its laser -- brings up next attack quicker
- destroy the "under-the-ground" cannons as soon as possible to bring up next attack quicker
- destroy the main cannon as soon as possible -- hopefully before it fires the first time
Fatty Whale
Wham Bam Rock
Dynablade
Heavy Lobster
Meta Knight
- TAC rapid hits until Kirby can finish off with Stone, Jet Cracker, or Hammer Flip/Throw
- Kirby finishes off with Down Air Stab in case of Meta Knight
Waddle Doo
- rush up with Wheelie Rider.
- once hit (knocking Waddle into the air), Normal Kirby jumps off and eats
Lololo & Lalala
- each player takes a "Loa"
- helper either smashes with TAC hand or uses Kirby's Ice strategy
- Kirby either immediately grabs block with Suplex quick-stamping, or uses Freezer Ejection + Sprinkle + Blizzard combo
Twin Woods
- TAC rushes to one tree and smashes it
- Stone Kirby rushes to other, hits with Turbo Stone and follows up with 2 Stone Smashes
Combo Cannon
- TAC helper smashes cannon until it fires its first cannonball, which Kirby grabs
- Kirby would ideally use Air Body Down Slam (Suplex), as it hits for 90 damage, and can hit twice.... If not, Jet's Diving Rocket (80 damage per hit) (TAC attacks in downtime between hits)
Computer Virus
- use Stone - one-round witch and knight
- try to manipulate Mario and Samus statues in downtime
Miniboss #1
Miniboss #2
- Kirby uses Ultra-Jet Jump to OHKO each miniboss
- helper is positioned to quickly destroy corpse -- probably Plasma, Jet Cracker, Stone, or Bomb (place on enemy)
Whispy Woods
- no helper to reduce HP
- either 4 Stones, 8 Wing Bomber-Heading Ground Sparks, or 12 mid-air Bomb Farts (use down+Y when back touching enemy)
Kracko
Chameleo Arm
King Dedede
Marx
- Stone (no helper to reduce HP)
- try to throw in a Turbo Stone inbetween falling-stone attacks if it still takes the same number of attacks
- Wing Bomber-Heading Ground Sparks may work for Chameleo Arm
I don't think it would be worth it even if the timer did stop during the Crash animation.
As far as I can tell, you can only get mixes against Chameleo Arm, Wham Bam Rock, Fatty Whale, Kracko, or Marx. In all cases (except Marx), stalling until it's possible to get a mix would take too long.
Anyways, a few revisions:
Miniboss #1/2:
- use Capsule-J to OHKO each miniboss with Ultra-Jet Jump, while Normal Kirby immediately eats the corpse.
Whispy Woods
- If Wing Bomber-Heading Ground Sparks are used, Birdon should join in with Kirby. Whispy then has some more HP, but you're throwing out sparks twice as fast. If Whispy's natural invincibility frames are too high to be hit that frequently, then Stone or Bomb-farts are probably the way to go. (Although, I do love that twitch he gets when you do the Parking Wheel attack by his mouth...).
I'm sure you don't need to change powers to beat the arena ASAP. Plasma does good amount of damage & can be charged really quickly.
I think a TAS run with plasma will be around 3 minutes, maybe even a little lower :)
I'd still like to discuss how my aims should be.
any% is a problem because there are several individual modes.
100% is a problem because it requires one to cancel MilkyWayWishes' ending in order to play the arena. Arena's ending sucks.
My thought was: Every mode's ending should run till the end.
Your thoughts will be appreciated.
Apparently, the ingame timer doesn't run if the boss's HP Meter isn't loaded. [...]
I would aim for real time instead of ingame time.
My current progress:
Spring Breeze Boss 2. I should finish this mode within a week.
I think that watching the endings to each game would kind of be a pain since the Metaknight one is fairly long, and if you got all of the treasures in The Great Cave Offensive, that would be extremely long. Plus it would make the file size bigger for stuff that people will probably skip anyways. I'm all for watching the milkyway wishes credits though, and (at least on my cartridge) you aren't able to skip them anyways unless you do the in game reset.
I think that the arena would be a bit boring to watch if you'd just use T.A.C and Wheelie Rider to beat them up quickly, so I see no harm in just ending it at the end of the credits. Although if you really want to do it, you can.
As for the problem with the lousy ending with the arena, I guess if you wanted to, (though it's a bit dumb) you could go to the sound test that appears after the arena, and play the Kirby Dance Victory theme. After that, end the video.
I hope that someone carries out a 100% Kirby Super Star since I think that'd be neat. (Though I'd rather see a 97% run of Kirby's Dream Land 3)
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
In order to get 100% on the file selection screen, do you need to get all the abilities in Milky Way Wishes? For some reason, I remember it not being necessary. Either way though, I'd like to see all of them collected since I remember having a hard time finding a couple of them.
In order to get 100% on the file selection screen, do you need to get all the abilities in Milky Way Wishes?
In order to get 100%, you must get all the abilities (including Copy), all 60 treasures in the cave, and both switches in Dynablade. Of course, you also have to beat all of the games (besides the 2 minigames).
MUGG wrote:
Apparently, the ingame timer doesn't run if the boss's HP Meter isn't loaded. [...]
I would aim for real time instead of ingame time.
Of course, if you're stringing everything together in one video, you're going to go for real time instead of ingame time.
But I think that it's completely stupid to do everything in one video. Spring Breeze, Gourmet Race, and Meta Knight will be completely identical to the any% video. Dynablade is barely different -- just detour for 2 switches.
In my opinion, there should only be a Great Cave offensive 100% and Milky Way Wishes 100%, nothing more. Does tasvideos not like having tables for runs like speeddemosarchive?
Another argument is that if an everything-at-once 100% run is done, then the Arena will have to be done in real time (after the unskippable Milky Way Wishes credits... *shudder*), which involves boringly spamming Wheelie Rider/Plasma/Stone on everything. Really, videos of those already exist. A minimum ingame timer one would be much more interesting, as you get a variety of powers -- TAC, Jet, Normal, Wheelie Rider, Stone, and possible Plasma/Bomb/Wing. Plus, it hasn't been done yet. Sonic games use the ingame timer precisely for this reason -- to increase the entertainment value.
Don't know =O
I don't have plans how to get all abilities in that one mode, and how to press two switches in the other one.
Personally, I'd rather aim for any% the way Nitsuja did it, skipping arena.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Sorry if I'm not understanding something obvious, but how exactly would I go about checking the following memory addresses:
s00894,2x,X Cur Pos (1P)
s00988,2x,X New Pos (1P)
s00A7D,2x,X Sub Pos (1P)
s0090E,2x,Y Cur Pos (1P)
s00A02,2x,Y New Pos (1P)
s00AF7,2x,Y Sub Pos (1P)
s016BF,2s,X Speed (1P)
s016C3,2s,Y Speed (1P)
Admittedly, I'm used to the "7Exxxx" format, and don't quite understand this.
Joined: 6/21/2006
Posts: 401
Location: Japan, Nagoya
@ElectroSpecter: Those variables are located in SRAM ("70xxxx"). If you are using Snes9x...
v1.51: You can search and watch the memory address with "Cheat Search" function.
v1.43: You can watch the memory address with my Snes9x memory watch tool.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Downloaded the Snes9x memory watch and it's a great tool, thank you!
Also, for those of you TASing, it's interesting to note that if you are jumping in a certain direction, actually letting go of the direction you want to be going in for a certain number of frames during the jump will extend Kirby's jump and actually allow him to keep more momentum. Counterintuitive, but it works. If anyone is interested, I can explain in more detail, but a few minutes of messing around with it and you'll probably figure it out.
Actually, come to think of it, I only tested this on the J ROM, but there's no reason it shouldn't work on the US one.
OK, here's the technical version: Say you're jumping to the right. Your x movement speed will stay the same until a point in the jump where the game basically says, "hey, slow down" and almost cuts your speed in half in just one frame. Letting go of the directional button before you reach the this point where your speed is cut will also cause your speed to decrease, but much slower, over the course of a bunch of frames. This decrement in speed takes precedence over the sudden speed decrease described earlier, which causes a faster jump.
Aaand, to be even more specific, jumping for 17 frames (starting with the first frame you hit B), letting go of the direction for 18 frames, and then resuming holding the direction seems to preserve the most momentum.
I actually knew this one! It only really works well in the gourmet race though. doing that properly can save loads of time in the course 2 race. My best time for that individual course (on the actual cartridge) was 00:31:99
I've tried doing that outside of the race, and it doesn't really work as well.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/614663951/kss-jap-mugg-tas.smvhttp://youtube.com/watch?v=Pk9ucbr0xoA
(Improved WIP, Spring Breeze done)
Japanese ROM required!
Thanks to gocha, for posting SMNS' Testrun.
Also thanks to the others for their advice.
Notes:
- ~160 frames faster than SMNS' run.
- I did not use the trick ElectroSpecter mentoined to save momentum while jumping (but I will in the next modes).
- Fighting the first mini-boss is ~30 frames faster than flying across him.
- I flew a loop before entering the door to DeDeDe, so I can get onto my Wheelie helper midair (I wonder how that's possible).
Feel free to ask, if you think you've seen a flaw
This mode was rather a welcome-mode for me.
I never played this game before (I don't even own a SNES), but I like it so far.
The next mode is Gourmet Race.
Best times I found:
Round #1: 20.29
Round #2: 30.27
Round #3: 6.92
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Mugg, you seem well suited to this TAS and I'm glad you discovered that holding start is faster to skip the tutorial. I didn't notice any room for huge improvements, and the first mini-boss fight was extremely cool.
One question though, shouldn't Spring Breeze be skipped in an any% run?
Also, if you wanted to hex edit in that momentum saving jump, it shouldn't be a huge problem. It wouldn't be that much work to find the few locations it would be helpful and splice it in.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Well, you have no idea how hard splicing in one move into normal playing is. Redoing an entire stage and inserting it is one thing, inserting one move every time it's needed is suicidal.
MUGG, if it saves time I'd recommend redoing to use that extended jump thingie.
Also, since you're using the J ROM (oh boy, now I gotta go and hunt for that) I'd recommend looking at all the glitches and oddities that Gocha and others have found in the J version, and seeing if these glitches can be replicated elsewhere.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Comicalflop wrote:
Well, you have no idea how hard splicing in one move into normal playing is. Redoing an entire stage and inserting it is one thing, inserting one move every time it's needed is suicidal.
I figure the move is only helpful in a few occasions in his relatively short WIP. I dunno, it doesn't seem like it would be too big of a project.
Also, the Japanese version is called Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe. This should help if anyone was ever trying to search for the game.
