First hello people. I've just registered an account here because I'm a fan of TAS videos and very fascinated of it. Altough I don't make own speedruns, I would like to be a part in your discussions and learn from them! =) Be aware, my english is sometimes horrible.
Few months ago, I was looking through Romhacking.net, searching after new hacks of NES games. There I found a very special hack which in my opinion deserves a TAS.
ROCKMAN - NO CONSTANCY
It's made by a japanese rom hacker called "IKA", released on 21.10.2007. The rom for the patch is "Rockman 2 - Dr. Wily no Nazo (J)". By far the most spectactular hack I've ever seen. Made with much love for details.
Graphics: Some graphics were used from othewr games like the Palace Rooms from "Kirby's Adventure" (Airman Stage), the Opening Stage from "Megaman X1" (Crash Man) or the Cave-Palette from "Yoshi's Island" (Flash Man). There are also customs ones, which are very beautiful and colourful.
Sound: Mostly soundtracks from the Megaman X-series were scripted to NSF and the result is awesome. Never heard such badass sound.
Gameplay: There isn't much improvent, except Megaman climbs up ladders much faster. Enemies have more health, have quicker weapons and the game got harder! There are actually two IPS patches, one with normal difficulty and the other with incredibly difficulty.
The game's levels are very well designed but it's really hard to not get hit. Jumping can be sometimes a hard task (but I think it won't be a big problem if played Tool-Assisted).
Also the weaknesses of the Stage Bosses were replaced. Here's the list.
Metal Man: Bubble Man
Crash Man: Flash Man
Flash Man: Air Man
Air Man: Heat Man
Heat Man: Metal Man (note, that Heat Man's ability Megaman will recieve is the Mega Buster from Megaman 5)
Bubble Man: Crash Man
Quick Man: Air Man
Wood Man: Quick Man
In my opinion it's absolutely worth a TAS speedrun. It would be very interesting to see how to accomplish these stages. Especially the Difficult Patch.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/nes/patches/[321]RockmanNo_constancy.zip -> Link to the patches
Remember: Get the "Rockman 2 - Dr. Wily no Nazo (J)" rom.
Discuss.
Yeah, this hack rocks.
Nice level design; fresh and interesting behaviors for the weapons and enemies; and Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, and MegaMari tunes for great winnage. :D
Couple errors in that weakness list though: Heatman's real weakness is Woodman's weapon, and Quickman is weak against Metalman's weapon.
This actually completes the weakness loop, then:
Heat -> Air -> Flash -> Crash -> Bubble -> Metal -> Quick -> Wood -> Heat
...which, incidentally, puts all three item-giving bosses at the beginning. It'd be nice if the TAS could take advantage of that...actually the one mentioned in the other thread already does. :p
Air, Wood, and Metal's weapons are pretty powerful. It's a shame you get two of these three close to the end if you go by weaknesses...they'd probably be pretty useful for clearing enemies during the running of the levels themselves. -_-
Actually that's the final boss gate on the right there, and the only time this screen appears in the game.
It doesn't look as weird after you've gone through Flashman's level, which is where this tileset first shows up. :p
I've actually been working on a TAS of the hard mode, I've already found a few places where even the normal run linked here is slower than mine, but mine ends up being slower because of having to avoid more enemies (abusing invincibility is a lot harder in the hard patch) and bosses being harder to kill.
Dailymotion PlaylistWorkbench
So far there's at least a few spots I'd like to go back and improve, but I'm pretty satisfied with it so far.
There is already a TAS of NC. See this thread. I can't remember anything about the run other than that I enjoyed watching it and the final time was 28:16.
Joined: 3/2/2007
Posts: 123
Location: Lake Havasu, Arizona
Kyrsimys wrote:
There is already a TAS of NC. See this thread. I can't remember anything about the run other than that I enjoyed watching it and the final time was 28:16.
Yea i've watched it before. And i really loved it. Lots of wall zipping glitches just as playing the game originally watching the the TAS's from this site :)
Ex: flash, and especially the beginning of quickman with the lazers where the screen order gets all screwed up and out-of-order which is really funny! :p
I hate to say it, but I find zero entertainment in rockman tases... Not one of them is entertaining to me (although the X series rules, with that red dude and his sword beam thing)
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
If someone haves Rockman 2 (glitch, technique etc.) related questions feel free to contact me through irc or e-mail.
And also UraniumAnchor's work looked pretty good so far even it is one of he's first TAS attempts. :)
If someone haves Rockman 2 (glitch, technique etc.) related questions feel free to contact me through irc or e-mail.
Or me.
Guess we should look into this in more detail. The screenshots look good, but it may be biased.
I agree and still this hack gives me a really nostalgic feeling for some reason maybe the new graphics, hardness and musics are the main reasons. It's going to be pretty interesting to see how glitches are going to work out because item1s won't move any further up and item2 can be used as a replacement in a later levels.
UraniumAnchor used a clever boss order to start with Heatman stage to obtain item1 and abuse it nicely out in Flashman stage and in the Airman stage you need Flashman's weapon to stop the slowness of the stage.
I've already gotten a fairly substantial improvement to Clash Man's stage, it'll end up slowing down the boss fight some but it'll end up being a net gain I'm pretty sure. The only thing I can't quite figure out is if it's possible to zip all the way through the wall here:
http://www.uranium-anchor.com/misc/rnc3.png
Best I can get is a four block zip, which doesn't save any time after you factor in the weapon switch required.
Edit: Hold on, I need to fix my hotlink protection...
Editx2: Ok, my host is either retarded or I'm doing something wrong, might have to copy/paste to get it to work.
Editx3: Also Shinryuu it turns out getting the Time Stopper (The World in the hack) first ends up losing you a crapload of time in Flash Man (mostly due to the boss taking a lot longer to kill) so it's very much not worth it. I don't think it's even worth it in the normal hack, but I have yet to verify that.
Editx4: A little clearer about where I want the zip to occur:
http://www.uranium-anchor.com/misc/zip.png
The best I can do is just over the lamp, which doesn't save any time when you factor in the weapon switch time (you'll be on Item-2 going into the screen, with my current route).
Bumping for new version of Clash Man, 170 faster than previous version.
Clash Man v2.2
New FCMs are here.
(WIP2 is always the latest version, at this time)
Just saved another 216 frames in Flash Man with some Item 2 use that in retrospect seems incredibly obvious. Splicing it in desyncs the run during the Clash Man fight because of a lag frame being different, so I'll have to tweak/redo that some before I upload a new fcm.
Should be quite possible, unless item1s work differently in this game than in Mega Man 2.
They don't rise, so it's harder to wedge yourself into a ceiling. I don't think I can get high enough to zip all the way over before I end up falling out.
There might be another spot where I can use the two charges of Item-1 left over to make things faster but I'm having a hell of a time finding anything.
They don't rise, so it's harder to wedge yourself into a ceiling. I don't think I can get high enough to zip all the way over before I end up falling out.
They don't rise? Well that's a problem. I don't see how you can do zipping tricks at all with item1 then.
Unless there's a similar off-by-1 error as with the magnet beams in Mega Man.
There's a 3-pixel threshold you can use to induce a zip in a similar fashion. It's actually not that hard to abuse, but it requires a bit more effort than it would otherwise.
Have you noticed there's an odd glitch that occurs at least in Heat Man's level? Basically, around where the birds start appearing, there are sometimes invisible blocks that seem randomly rise and fall at half of the jumping speed Mega Man has. I don't know the exact cause, but it might have something to do with lag caused by the birds and the hack's way to make stuff disappear (enemies, refills etc.) without any obvious reason.
Not only can it utilized as an invisible platform, it can be used to make Mega Man "clip" up about jumping height.
It's not probably worth it to try and use it on Heat Man, but it might create opportunities elsewhere.
Anyway, your WIP is looking great, UraniumAnchor. Can't wait to see more.
Have you noticed there's an odd glitch that occurs at least in Heat Man's level? Basically, around where the birds start appearing, there are sometimes invisible blocks that seem randomly rise and fall at half of the jumping speed Mega Man has. I don't know the exact cause, but it might have something to do with lag caused by the birds and the hack's way to make stuff disappear (enemies, refills etc.) without any obvious reason.
Not only can it utilized as an invisible platform, it can be used to make Mega Man "clip" up about jumping height.
It's not probably worth it to try and use it on Heat Man, but it might create opportunities elsewhere.
If you could show me an example of this I'd appreciate it, I haven't noticed anything like what you're describing here but it might be worth looking in to.
I won't have time to work on this again until tomorrow most likely so you might not see anything for a bit, though the rest of the stages before the castle are pretty simple so it might not take too much longer to do them.
Here you go. It's usually more stable, though, and may move you up and down instead of left->right, as seen here. It's unassisted, so I take my time on this. Action happens where the birds start to appear.
Also, I did find out a much more surprising outcome, too. What happened this time was following: Mega Man warped or "clipped" from very low altitude to about altitude of 4/5 of the total screen size. This happens after a game over + 2 deaths. I was not expecting that and, again, I don't use tools, so please bear with me on this.
I don't remember what the fancy storage for movie files was, so I used FileFront.
I use:
RockmanNo_constancy_hard
Rockman 2 - Dr. Wily no Nazo (J)
Hmm, that's an interesting glitch. It looks like the falling platforms from the previous screen aren't getting removed properly and they end up 'ghosting' a bit. I'll have to experiment and see if it's usable for any speed gain. Nice find, regardless!
Workbench - LATEST is now the newest FCM file, just for clarity's sake
If I keep finding improvements like this I'm NEVER going to finish.
Any of the video links will contain the playlist, meaning you can watch it from that point without having to click 'next' ever.
Heat Man - No different than before, merely here for convenience
Air Man - 313 frames faster than before, better precision, less weapon switching, and a faster boss fight
Flash Man - 216 frames faster than before, Item 2 usage that in retrospect seems incredibly obvious
Clash Man - 12 frames faster than before, just a tweaked boss fight, nothing else is different
Overall, 529 frames (almost 9 seconds) faster than the old videos. 6248 rerecords now, if you count hex editing a byte or two as a rerecord. Which I do.
