- Emulator: Snes9x rerecording 1.51 v6 svn113
- Uses fake mute and sync sound
- Aims for fastest time, using different weapons in every levels
- Uses Hardest difficulty
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
The Game:
"Super Earth Defence Force" a horizontal shooter based on a arcade "Earth Defence Force". Super Nintendo version has adjusted graphics and eight selectable weapons instead of four.
What separates S.E.D.F for example from Gradius is the game mechanics. From the beginning of the game your ship has two indestructible drones. Instead of collecting power ups from defeated enemies, you choose a weapon in the beginning of each level that affects only to those drones. Much like in any of the horizontal shooters, you get points from killing enemies, but this time they really matter, for they level up your droids. Level ups make droids more powerful and give them new movement patterns.
The plot of the game is the usual: Aliens attack and you are the only hope of the mankind.
This run:
Because of the nature of the game, there are only four ways to affect the frame count: proper menu usage in the beginning of the game and between the levels, quick boss killing, lag reduction and quick killing of the last enemies before the bosses.
The biggest time-saver would be the bosses. The drones make minor damage if they hit enemies. This could be used to save time in bosses and is good for general fooling around (as it's much done). Instead of using the most powerful weapon in every level, I wanted to make the run more varying and viewable and used different weapons in every level. Because most of the game is going through the levels to the bosses, I tried think which weapon would look best in each level (speed wasn't never my primary goal but if a run needs a goal, so be it). The game contains 6 levels and 8 weapons so 2 of them couldn't be used. I decided not to use homing and S.laser. Homing is the most underpowered weapon in the game and S.Laser aims itself to enemies, which can't be controlled properly. Afterwards thinking S.Laser could have been good choice because it is pretty powerful and using it could have resulted quite interesting gameplay after all. The weapon choises in the levels are more or less arbitrary but I'll try to reason them anyway in the level section :)
Maximum lag reduction would require keeping the amount of enemies in minimum and preventing them from shooting. I didn't want go for that because I found that bad for the entertainment value. I did pretty much the opposite of what lag reduction would have required, there are plenty of enemies in the screen at the time and the gaps between the enemies are kept minimum (except in minibosses that are dealt as fast as could). Better lag reduction could have been used in bosses, though. The run contains 3195 lag frames (before the credit screen) and most of them are come from menus and thus can't be avoided.
Bosses don't appear if there are other enemies in the screen and because of that the last wave of enemies should be dealt as fast as could... I found this out quite late, so I completed the run and fixed things afterwards with "Tas Movie Editor". That's why the record count is so low, it's only for the edited part, the real rerecord count is 24094.
The same "appearing thing" works backwards too, for if miniboss isn't dealt fast enough, some enemies don't appear (this wasn't really a problem because I tried to destroy minibosses also as fast as could.
Glitches:
I didn't found any major glitches but there are some minor noteworthy:
- Somehow it's possible to kill enemies without the kill register to killcount. When I redid the end of the second level I found that second killcount was 8 lower than in the original run, even all of the enemies are killed and they all appear. I don't know why it happens and it doesn't have any use (atleast 1000 points were lost because of it).
- When enough shots are hitting the boss, some of them might go through. This happens more with some weapons than others. This can be avoided if shot is delayed. Delaying shot a frame or two is better than letting it through.
- If there is too much stuff in a small area, cpu forgets to draw some things in it. This doesn't have any practical use, but could be used to vanish the ship which looks kinda funny.
Commentary for the levels:
- 1st level: At first level explode scatters only three directions and none of them is to the backward section. That's why it's very easy to keep scatters at minimum and maintain very rapid firing speed. I had very bad false assumption that this could be achieved only with first level explode... With this method explode is the best boss killer in the game, too bad I wasted it in the first level. There are long barreled enemies in the level that doesn't seem to get much done. Their barrels don't do damage but the shots come out of the barrels so it's possible to situate the ship between a barrel and the enemy without it hitting the ship.
- 2nd level: Laser was chosen because I already decided what weapons to use in other levels. As mentioned in glitches -section, some of the enemies doesn't somehow count to kill count. Compared to european version tas, that can be seen in youtube, I kill 9 enemies less according the killcount.
- 3rd level: Level contains small enemies firing with weak shots that can be destroyed with atomic. Instead of just killing all of the enemies I decided to also destroy all of the shots that could be destroyed.
- 4th level: The level contains great ammounts of small weak enemies. That's why I thought vulcan would be the most impressive way to complete the level. In the middle part of the level there are bouncing small enemies, it can be clearly seen that two of them (appearing in the right corner) aren't shot, that's because of there aren't any frame they are vulnerable. Compared to european version tas, one of the enemies might not have registered in the killcount. Boss might have been done little faster if used the follow mode of the drones.
- 5th level: Iceblocks in the level are real pain and there are only two effective weapons against them, atomic and grenade. Because atomic is already used grenade is the only option. When I redid the boss I saved 50 frames in the enemies before the boss but lost 40 frames because of lag. The boss is very laggy and grenades don't really help the situation. After the boss you can see one of the two vanishings.
- 6th level: The final level contains three bosses that have very high HP. That's why the photon, as the most powerful weapon in the game, seemed obvious choice. Afterwards thinking, that was a wrong choice. The bosses could be dealt faster with explode if situated very near them. If done correctly it's possible to shoot inside the enemies and keep very rapid firing speed (like in 1st level). It didn't come to my mind that even the backward coming scatters could have stayed inside and the time it did, it was already too late and I should have redone most of the levels. Around frame 70670 there is so much stuff in the screen that cpu forgets to draw things in the narrow section and the outcome could be seen for a short time. In the tunnel part, walls aren't what they seem to be, especially in the inclinated parts, that's the reason why the ship flies sometimes so far from the walls.
If I would redo the run, I'd choose the weapons completely differently:
- 1st level: Vulcan because it's game's 3rd most ineffective weapon and the boss has little hp
- 2nd level: Laser because more powerful weapons are needed in the later levels
- 3rd level: Photon because the boss has 3 phases and each of them has pretty much energy, between the phases it's possible to load weapons.
- 4th level: S.Laser because the boss stays much of its time in the right corner of the screen and therefore it's possible to keep screentime of the shots minimum (and therefore shoot more).
- 5th level: Grenade because of ice
- 6th level: Explode because of bosses
Hope you liked my first tas, it was more or less a learning process but I think the result looks kinda nice :)
Mukki: I think that you should redo. This was a pretty nice shmup; there are many opportunities for playing with enemies and it has decent music and visuals. I agree with sgrunt in that this is a good run that lacks polish. Shmup TASes are notoriously difficult to make; not squeezing out the maximum entertainment, taking hits or missing shots may seem trivial, but when the run is a shmup you can drive a train through these kinds of errors. If we are to publish 20+ minutes of autoscrolling the entertainment value and polish must be as high as possible. As pointed out in the thread there is room for improvement here. You were also honest in respect of your weapon choice and the ways in which it could be improved, thank you for this. Your estimate was 30 seconds, which is rather large for an improvement of this nature in a shmup (mostly shmup improvements come from reduced lag, or new glitches, perhaps you can find further improvements like this?) and so the weapon improvements should definitely be included. I think a run of this game can be published, and this seems like a good test for such a run, I hope that you decide to improve this. Rejecting...
