Something amusing I discovered while replaying this: you can get the Eversing armor (second-best armor in the game) as soon as you get to the waterfall room. I just did a dive kick through the waterfall towards the left wall, and managed to break through. I don't know how picky the placement is; I did it without even trying.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that a glitchless TAS would want good armor because it planned on taking a lot of damage...alternatively, the armor does sell for a decent sum too.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Is there a reason why you won't upload to, say, YouTube? At least there's a full screen option there :(
And I could easily download the video instead of watching on with the cpu-sucking flash plugin.
I'm looking forward to watching this when I have time, of course, but I just wanted to say that.
You could always split it. It's easy with mkvtoolnix.
But hey, thanks for the new links. This makes me happy ^_^
Now to download and watch your WIP run!
EDIT: It cannot be said anything about it other than it was awesome! Slopiness and unoptimization be damned! This was one enjoyable run!
Awesome run. One question - are all the bosses required in order to reach the Abyss? Or is it just to improve stats?
How interesting of Konami to reuse Dracula's "true form" sprite from SotN for Soma's "true form". ^^;;
Very nice run so far. The only thing I could think of is to find a way to avoid the save rooms, but I guess it's still faster waiting for the boss' death animation to finish.
Thanks for the mp4, Gocha! That was quite nice. I'm curious why you chose different characters for movement at different times. It seems clear that Julius is the slowest and Alucard is generally the fastest, so why did you sometimes use backdashing as...er, whatever her name is, the mage?
Also, I take it Paranoia is not a boss that must be killed to access the Mine. Given that his only purpose is to reveal the fire demon boss, who's there automatically in Alucard Mode ]...
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I decided to give this game a try. A non-glitched any% run could be interesting, but I'm not sure if motivated enough to do one =P
Instead I did an attempt at the boss rush mode.
I always find warpless castlevania runs far more entertaining than the glitched ones, because those show off more of the game and are generally more entertaining. (Take the Portrait of Ruin run for example, a huge portion of the run was glitching quests, zipping across the map and fighting Dracula and Death incredibly slowly)
Good luck with the project if you decide to start on it, I'd be all too eager to see a WIP
Neat, I enjoyed the boss rush. Not sure if you're looking to refine your attempt, but there's a faster TAS here: http://bbs.cvcv.net/thread-57790-1-1.html
I think most of your strats are a bit faster though, except Aguni and Abaddon, but the Bat movement through the doors ends up saving that half second or so between your times. How do you manage to throw so many Killer Clowns? Looked like something with switching Doppelganger, but I'm not sure.
Last question is, what's goes on in the Paranoia fight? I might be trying to improve my current boss rush with some of your strats if I can wrap my head around them. Quite impressed with how much the game can be sped up (12 seconds faster than my best boss rush), and the variety needed for it as well.
Thanks for the reply.
The run you posted used some interesting strategies - but getting beat because of Bat soul pisses me off a little (considering I used faster strategies). lol
I'll try to improve my run. Appearantly, using Bat, sub 1min and possibly sub 0:55 seems quite possible.
I don't exactly understand what you mean with killer clown. You mean how I throw them so rapidly? I abused black panther cancel. I mentioned that trick in the description.
Paranoia is quite simple actually. Devil + death scythe attack + special bring him down to 255 HP, so all I need is a bullet soul that deals at least that amount of damage, just like great axe armor. So I throw 1 gaa, use death scythe special, cancel out of it (the animation remains) and hit him with a regular attack. All three attacks hit the frame he becomes vulnerable and thus instantly dies.
If you have any questions left, feel free to ask me.
Edit: I made a new run. The time is 1:00:20 now.
Ok guys, I gave the boss rush mode another try and I finished it in less than a minute:
-> Click
There are some minor strategy changes compared to my other run as well as better optimization that save some time.
Btw, I most likely wont do a normal run of this game as I don't have the time/motivation for it.
I'm getting a bad Mega Man 9 vibe here.
I need to be honest, I find the video very unwatchable with the constant pausing. Literally more than half the video is spent in the pause screen and it breaks flow unbelievably badly.
Don't get me wrong, you did great work and I appreciate the effort, but please, orient yourself on real-time, not on ingame time.
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
Would be awesome to watch it with all the pauses cut out, Super Metroid style :D.
It was really nice though, even though the pauses get a bit annoying.
I'm getting a bad Mega Man 9 vibe here.
I need to be honest, I find the video very unwatchable with the constant pausing. Literally more than half the video is spent in the pause screen and it breaks flow unbelievably badly.
Don't get me wrong, you did great work and I appreciate the effort, but please, orient yourself on real-time, not on ingame time.
Boss-Rush TASes of Metroidvania games all suffer from either this problem or repetitions.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days
<adelikat> no doubt
<adelikat> klmz, they still do
Thanks for the feedback!
As for the pausing, I am pretty aware myself that it looks awful, but not doing so would simply waste time. My goal was to see what the best time could be.
scrimpeh wrote:
Don't get me wrong, you did great work and I appreciate the effort, but please, orient yourself on real-time, not on ingame time.
I don't really care about real-time. I just wanted to see how fast it could get.
Tompa wrote:
Would be awesome to watch it with all the pauses cut out, Super Metroid style :D.
It was really nice though, even though the pauses get a bit annoying.
You should totally post the movie file for it, yrr.
Problem is, I couldn't get my emulator to start recording from a snapshot, so I ended up using cheats to give all items, souls and unlock the boss rush mode. It could work with a save-state though. Where should I upload it?
moozooh wrote:
I have no idea what's going on there. :D Care to write it out in detail?
Sure! I probably should have done it in the first place anyway.
First of all, I need to mention a trick I call black panther cancel. I described somewhere else, but I'm just going to explain again for the sake of completion. When dashing with black panther by simply letting go off the R-button, you will not only cancel black panther movement but all other actions you are currently performing as well! So by simply pressing R and letting go the next frame you can 30hz-spam killer clown even while airborne. It can also be used cancel attacks.
About death scythe... You can cancel the special attack immediatly and the attack animation (and damage) will continue. So it is better to use special, cancel it, and then do a normal attack. Much faster than the attack-into-special-cancel.
Also, killer clown=kc, death scythe=ds, muramasa=mura
Flying Armor: Two KCs is one frame faster than one-hitting with ds special.
Balore: KC again is the fastest way to go. I managed to optimize the fight a little, so the exact strategy is to use three KCs, one mura hit, a black panther hit and a kick.
Dimitrii: Really easy, KC spam and finishing the job with a mura hit.
Puppet Master: The first fight that gets complicated. Figuring out the best method of killing him took quite some time. What I did was: Throw 3 KCs, jump, mura, kc, mura when hitting the ground, using flame demon (long hit-cooldown, but high burst damage) and finally ds combo. You could also save one mura hit and instead hit him with black panther and a kick, but it is slower.
Dario: I love dead pirate.
Rahab: Alternating mura and kc is the way to go. Boring and annoying to watch, but fast.
Gergoth: This guy really gave me trouble. Should I use my mana prism on Gergoth rather than saving it for Death? I figured the extra mp boost probably isn't worth it. Also, using too much mp here would make bat company slower, as I can't use ds special there. But I did it anyway... not sure what's faster.
This fight can be divided into three phases:
1. Devil is charging up. Deal as much damage to him as possibly, either with kc-spam or with mura. Kc, which is what I used, is faster, but drains mp.
2. Devil is charged. Mura now deals over 300 damage per hit. Hit him with mura enough times, so Gergoth can be killed with one ds combo. The more damage you dealt in phase 1, the less hits you need now. I needed three hits. Getting him with two hits only is probably not possible.
3. Finish with ds combo.
Zephyr: Easy. KC spam -> mura hit -> ds combo. I could have used dead pirate, but it's not worth it.
Bat Company: Six KCs, two mura hits, ds attack. Didn't have enough mp for a ds special.
Paranoia: Really an awesome boss! All you need is devil and a bullet soul that deals at least 255 damage. With the right timing you can hit him with that soul, your ds special and your ds attack at the same frame instantly killing him! I used guillotiner, but great axe armor, for example, works just as well.
Aguni: Ds special has a longer hit-cooldown than the normal attack, so while I used only three specials, I could actually normal-attack him four times, saving a little bit time.
Abbadon: I love this strategy. Two bomber armor souls plus a ds combo empowered by devil, all further enhanced by dead pirate, killed this guy pretty fast. Luck-manipulation is required to make him jump towards you.
Death: Luck-manipulation is used here as well to make him fly in your direction. Spam kc while charging devil, and when he gets in range, a ds combo will end the first phase. Finally, two bomber armor souls + mura hit + mura special + ds combo (with devil of course) to get rid of him.
Appearantly, kick-attacking is faster than a pure black panther rush, as it saved two frames to kick towards the potion as opposed to just dashing.
I hope this covers most of your questions. Feel free to ask if something is still unclear!
