Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
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ElectorSpecter wrote:
I discovered that the fireball takes away 100 HP per frame from the bosses no matter what level it's at (making me wonder what point there is in leveling the thing up).
When hitting an enemy with it, its power meter will go down before its health does. Leveling it up will cause the power meter to drain slower, allowing you to keep it on enemies longer before it starts taking damage.
I have been looking forward to a run of this game. I am so happy to see work being done on it!
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Ferret Warlord wrote:
ElectorSpecter wrote:
I discovered that the fireball takes away 100 HP per frame from the bosses no matter what level it's at (making me wonder what point there is in leveling the thing up).
When hitting an enemy with it, its power meter will go down before its health does. Leveling it up will cause the power meter to drain slower, allowing you to keep it on enemies longer before it starts taking damage.
I have been looking forward to a run of this game.I am so happy to see work being done on it!
Ah! I had an inkling that it had to do with the power bar. Do you know if it still hurts enemies even if the power bar has been drained and it's being hurt?
The Ball o fire hurts enemies and itself any time it is touched, the power bar only acts as a health buffer. Though I'm not sure if it hurts them less if the power bar is lower.
You need at least lvl3 lightning to insta-kill the second boss, and god knows what levels to do significantly hurt on the other ones.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Does anyone know how the ranking system in this game works? I think it would be a nice touch to go for max rank in a TAS, but it might not really be feasible. As far as the shoot down rate goes, it seems that the game uses the formula:
[#of enemies shot down]/[# of enemies that have appeared on the screen to this point]
Which is why I think it might be a bad idea to go for max rank (you'd end up causing lag trying to kill all enemies, and you'd have to stand around zapping some of them for a while to kill them, or even turn around). Still, it would be nice to see a 100% on that screen.
I have no idea how the shot down ratio works, but I did write down my records in the manual. It seems the rank you get depends on not just your ratio but your current level and stage as well (meaning the "Ogre Magician" "Wizard" "Salamander" and such titles).
The best I ever got was 96% by the way.
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Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Maybe that was because Muhammad said a cock crows because it has seen an angel and donkeys bray because they have seen Satan.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Satan, are you sure it's possible to kill the boss of level 2 with a full rolling blast at level 3? I can't quite get it to kill him. I could have the Dragon out at this point, since I think I'll need to switch to him anyway for the boss of the battleship, so that could possibly help.
Level 4 kills him no problem, like you said.
I'm starting to think that the only animal that needs leveling is the Dragon, meaning I may just keep him out from the get-go. This would make the first boss a bit longer, but it would prevent the need to switch to the Fireball and then back to the Dragon later, which may waste a bit of time. I guess I'll have to test which route would be fastest here...
...I may need to add to the list how many frames it takes to switch from any given animal to any other given animal, and do tests on each boss with the fireball and the dragon. There's no way to use the cheat codes to level up your animals, is there? Things could get ugly.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Another interesting note: Looks like the game does count the number of enemies that have appeared, and the number of enemies that you've downed (boss inclusive). These values are handled at FF00CC and FF00D0 respectively, and the game does use the aforementioned formula when figuring out your shoot down rate.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Yeah, I found (most) of the HP value holders. There's no set address for any given boss or enemy. Rather, there's a whole bunch of addresses that act as placeholders for when an enemy is loaded. So I just have a huge list of the potential HP addresses up and watch which ones fill when a boss appears :p
Satan, are you sure it's possible to kill the boss of level 2 with a full rolling blast at level 3? I can't quite get it to kill him. I could have the Dragon out at this point, since I think I'll need to switch to him anyway for the boss of the battleship, so that could possibly help.
Level 4 kills him no problem, like you said.
I retried in hard mode and I can't one shot kill the 2nd boss even with lvl4 thunder. I guess that tactic is only valid in normal mode.
However, a rolling blast in the face and 3 hits from the ballofire seems to do the job very fast.
Can you post the HP values for each boss? I'd be interested in these, for documentation. Also, if you have it, the damage each level of thunder does (fixed amount multiplier, or whatever else is used to calculate its power).
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
satan wrote:
I retried in hard mode and I can't one shot kill the 2nd boss even with lvl4 thunder. I guess that tactic is only valid in normal mode.
However, a rolling blast in the face and 3 hits from the ballofire seems to do the job very fast.
Can you post the HP values for each boss? I'd be interested in these, for documentation. Also, if you have it, the damage each level of thunder does (fixed amount multiplier, or whatever else is used to calculate its power).
It's definitely possible with Lv. 4 Thunder, but you have to duck his projectiles at the right time (press down for one frame as early as possible so that she ducks his shots without getting hit). With Lv. 3 Thunder, it's probably fastest to hit him with the rolling blast and then move the ballofire into his mouth. However, I haven't tested the fight with the dragon at full power. If a volley of three fireballs can hit him in the mouth, it may be possible to kill him the first time he opens it, even with Lv.3Thunder.
I'll check out the HP values right now.
How many frames does a rolling blast take? Multiply that with the rolling blast damage and you can compute, exactly, if a boss can be instakilled or not.
edit, uh, nevermind, I think its 33. So the max damage you can do, assuming all frames hit the enemy (should be possible if hit stun is more than 33 frames):
This way, you could possibly kill the stage 7 boss in two rolling blasts only (!!!). In fact, seeing these numbers make the bosses look ridiculously weak...
I have just started working on a TAS of Alisia Dragoon. I figured rather than starting a new topic about this game, I would revive this old topic. It seems that a lot of groundwork has been done already, which will help me in the long run.
Anyway, since this is also my first TAS, any assistance will be greatly appreciated. I have only done the first stage for now, I'm planning which powerups to go for for the second part of level 1, since they are fairly out of the way.
The first part is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DG5fniUu44
I recorded this using Gens11a, on the U version of the ROM.
Yeah this is the case. Doing the same jumping trick that I used in the part with two mushrooms next to each other would be slower, because at the end you are forced to walk forward at a certain point, just like at the start of the level. However, upon reaching this point, if you are not on the ground you just jump straight vertical with no further forward movement until you land. So, it turned out slower if I took the hit, and slower still if I jumped and took the hit. With the amount of enemies on the screen at that last point, I was able to minimise the lag to about 15 frames, which seems a lot but appears to be the fastest thing overall. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I am just getting started.
Oh, and about the very short hop at the end of the level - the white flying enemy that goes for Alisia's legs would hit if I didnt jump, but coincidentally I am able to take it out on the frame just after the jump animation starts. Alisia's legs move back on the first few jumping frames, allowing the space to avoid being hit. I only need to hold C for three frames here to achieve this.
EDIT:
I completely redid the first section of Stage 1, and managed to reduce the lag down to 1 frame. With the amount of enemies on screen at the end part of that stage, I dont think its possible to reduce it further than that. I also managed to speed up the level itself by a few frames from my last attempt.
I wont be publicly releasing any more videos until it is completed, but I am definitely going to continue working on this now. Stay tuned!
Sounds good. I've been wanting to see a run for this game for a long time now. Too bad you won't release any more WIPs.
I've had a rethink about that. Since I'm still learning as I'm going, it will help me if I have some input about possible improvements. I will make a WIP for release soon, once I've made a run that completes the game, and then I can seek advice for possible improvements, of which I have seen several already.
Unfortunately, this is the sort of game where you need to get most if not all of the Thunder Level Ups for Alisia if you want to do significant damage. With L3 Thunder and a L3 Ball-O-Fire I can beat the first boss, the mini-boss of Stage 2 and the Stage 2 boss in significant time (BOF is doing most of the damage for the Stage 2 bosses however). I'm currently working on optimising the Stage 3 boss at the minute, there are several small parts to hit, so finding the right places to stand and which parts to target is hard to plan.
I'm also planning to replicate something I have been able to do once before on the PAL console version - beat the Stage 4 boss on the first phase WITHOUT getting the fairy that gives you infinite Rolling Thunder for 15 seconds. I need a L3 Dragon Frye to accomplish this, and the BOF will probably be used there too since that can do significant damage quickly. By this point I can have at most L5 Thunder, but if I am bypassing one Thunder Level Up I'm not sure if L4 Thunder can accomplish the same thing. If I do decide to bypass a Thunder Level Up it will likely be the one on Stage 1-3 (the same substage as the boss) since that takes the longest time to get. The one on 1-2 also gives me a Level Up for BOF which is necessary to beat the first three bosses quickly enough.
