Reaching those barrels would waste so much time. I would have to watch the merchant cutscene and his inventory, it would take at least 10 seconds to get to the barrels, plus another 10 seconds back. The barrel at the front of the house always has a red herb (I think). I talked to another speedrunner and he said I could manipulate the enemies to blow themselves up with their own dynamite; that is probably the most beneficial scenario. I only need another 2-3 thousand ptas, which two enemies will easily drop that amount.
What do you need the money for by the way? Is it only to get the rocket launcher? Or maybe so you can get other useful weapons?
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I need 3-4 rocket launchers, the TMP, and the Striker Shotgun. I need somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000ptas.
NEW WIP! :D
Link to video
Criticism is appreciated...I'm sure I missed something.
Nicely done avoiding all those enemies, and i especially like the invulnerability abuse where the enemies kill themselves with the dynamite.
But I wonder, is it slower to go through the gap in the wall instead of the door after you exit the house? Also is there nothing useful to be found in the two barrels right before the second emblem?
And over in 1-3 in the cave, you can shoot the lantern in order to shoot the treasures in the ceiling. Is it possible to use a grenade (which you probably can get from the dynamite enemies) to blow them down instead? You'll earn a nice 14000 ptas from the Headdress and two spinels in there alone, not counting the crate in the same area as well.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
EDIT: Why did you capture the TAS at like 20 fps? (desync?)
My video should be 30fps. Dolphin records at 60fps for some reason, when RE4 is only 30fps. I use a video editor to slow down the video from 60 to 30, halving the speed, but keeping all visible frames intact.
Tseralith wrote:
But I wonder, is it slower to go through the gap in the wall instead of the door after you exit the house?
I don't know which gap you are referring to.
Tseralith wrote:
Also is there nothing useful to be found in the two barrels right before the second emblem?
I'm sure I could manipulate something useful there, but it would be a waste of time. The optimal route would be to pretty much skip all enemies and pickups.
Tseralith wrote:
And over in 1-3 in the cave, you can shoot the lantern in order to shoot the treasures in the ceiling. Is it possible to use a grenade (which you probably can get from the dynamite enemies) to blow them down instead? You'll earn a nice 14000 ptas from the Headdress and two spinels in there alone, not counting the crate in the same area as well.
The left-side spinel is a 'little' out of the way. Also the treasures can't be removed from the ceiling unless the lantern is destroyed first, thus with the method you proposed I would have to use two hand grenades, to destroy the lantern then remove the treasures. I plan on equipping handgun there to get the headdress and 1 spinel. In the church area are two bird nest to shoot down (since I already have handgun equipped) to get a hand grenade and incendiary grenade. I will keep handgun equipped to navigate the swamp area (after the boulder) cause I need to shoot a trip wire. There is also a tree right before Del Lago to collect a 10,000ptas treasure.
I know, double post. Whoops.
New WIP. I am at a standstill here. I need a 19,800 pesetas drop for the optimal route, so I can buy a rocket launcher and the TMP (with the stock) right now. This will save a merchant transaction, and maybe cause fewer money pickups in the future. Since I have never ever EVER even seen that drop, I have no way to know where or how to get one. I was lucky enough to get a 9,900 drop early on. I could possibly wait until the castle (when the TMP is needed) and buy it then.
Link to video
Why not just kill 2 enemies for 9900 drops each? You have the pistol equipped now, the time lost is a headshot + waiting for the pick-up.
The problem with that is the probability of that happening. I have seen 3 9900ptas drops since I started playing RE4 (two of them from TASing). The odds of me getting not 1, but 2 9900 drops in the same area is near zero. And even if I could manipulate it, the time spend manipulating drops might be a few seconds. I want to prevent unnecessary merchant transactions, but a 2nd transaction will only add 7 seconds for a run at least 1.5 hours long. Plus if I buy the TMP in the castle, I can buy a 2nd Rocket Launcher then also.
Vykan12 wrote:
Remember there's that forced cabin fight, which is a potential goldmine for money in manipulated drops.
Idk how I will even handle the cabin fight...the normal way is to let enemies cluster together and throw a grenade to kill many at a time. The fight ends when a certain number are killed. I could just crit headshot every enemy, thus avoiding time to collect grenades, but with me killing enemies outside the cabin I won't be able to pick up items. For money though, I currently have 300ptas. I will get the ring with pearls (10,000), amber ring (10,000), 15,000 from the first gigante, and 30,000 from Chief Mendez.
With current Dolphin iterations, I have to watch about 30 minutes of video to continue TASing. This is to check for desyncs (which I have had only 1). I can load state and continue recording but it won't continue playing a dtm file. This is fine for areas where I don't have to manipulate enemy drops, but later on this will be a big issue. I don't see me going into chapter 2 until read-only mode for Dolphin works better. Also, surprised no one has criticized me for using the JAP version.
Don't you get a "free" 5000 from the enemy who sprouts the first parasite out of its head too? Right after the large croc. Also is it a too big detour (if it even is that) to get the Antique Pipe (10,000) from the birds nest in the area before the croc too? About the second merchant transaction you talked about, you mean it would add 7 seconds if you bought the TMP and Rocket Launcher in the castle instead of where you otherwise would've gotten the R-Launcher?
And I see you've already discussed between the JAP/PAL versions earlier, so I trust you've chosen the right one. I don't mind it either anyway as I've already played the game and am more interested in watching the game getting beaten in the fastest way possible than watching the text in the game.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I could get that 5000ptas from the first parasite, but it may be faster to just avoid him all together. The antique pipe is out of the way, at least a 15 second ordeal. And I am saying 7 seconds added only if I do unnecessary merchant interactions. The minimum # of transactions would be equivalent to how many RLs I need to buy for bosses. I may need to buy a RL before chief mendez if I don't collect incendiary grenades, so I could buy the TMP then.
Let me do a money count here to see what I need: ring w/ pearls (10,000), amber ring (10,000), 15,000 from the first gigante, 30,000 from Chief Mendez. A RL for Mendez would cancel out (cost of RL=30,000) thus with remaining treasures I will have 35,000 right before the castle. The merchant after Leon fires the cannon in the castle can be used to buy a RL for the Garrador(the wolverine clone thing) and the TMPw/stock(14,000), thus I need 9,000 more before the merchant. I may need the semi-auto rifle (35,000) for the MachineGun Zealot to avoid a chase scene, but since I got 15,000 from the Garrador, I need 20,000. The only other place for disc 1 I can think of to buy a RL is for Salazar's right hand man, which is quite a ways into the game...btw, does Dolphin support the ability to continue TASing from switching disks? And anything I'm missing in the money route?
The loot after the cabin fight doesn't disappear as soon the chapter finishes IIRC, it'll still linger outside for the duration of its normal despawn timer. So that means even if you're planning on killing the ganados outside by headshotting them, you can still get the cash afterwards (or maybe just the last wave, depending on how long the fight lasts).
Let's see... right after you find Ashley and exit the church, you can shoot the cart to blow up some people for money, if that probably won't waste too much time that is. And right before the castle, you have to (or not?) kill the guy driving the truck towards you, earning 5500 from him if you have time to wait about 2 seconds for it. And then there's the drops from the enemies he drives over too. If you manage to manipulate these well, you'll probably earn more time+money from them instead actually.
Not sure if it'll help so much in this run, but this forum topic has someone mentioning he got a 19,800 drop from a Zealot in Chapter 4-1, and then once again in the same area when he tried to replicate it (after many attempts that is). This was achieved on the PS2 version so I have no idea if it'll still work, but I'll put it here for you to look at it.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Good call! I wasn't planning on collecting money from the guy in the truck because by the time the money spawns you can walk past it for about 3 seconds, but now that you talk about the other enemies there (I think 4) I could manipulate some nice cash or grenades. I bet I can get 10,000 here!
But before that, the issue I'm having with is Chief Mendez. I need to begin collecting incendiary grenades now or else I can't even kill him. I need either 5 incendiary grenades, or 4 incendiary and a RL. 4 incendiaries get rid of his first form, then a 5th can be used to blow up the gas tank and finish the fight, and saving 30,000ptas. The 4+RL strategy causes an extra merchant transaction, uses money, and an extra pause for equipping RL. I can get 1 incendiary from the church area, 1 in the swamp on a bench, and 1 in the Chief Mendez fight. I might be able to get the incendiary in the cabin fight, but that would mean going upstairs (which I can grab a hand grenade then too). I could get a 2nd grenade in the swamp cause I have to blow up a trip wire (which kills an enemy).
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
My video should be 30fps. Dolphin records at 60fps for some reason, when RE4 is only 30fps. I use a video editor to slow down the video from 60 to 30, halving the speed, but keeping all visible frames intact.
Not that it matters too much as I'm sure the final encode will be correct if/when this is published, but I also noticed what AjAX was referring to...
Your videos are 30fps (29.970 to be exact), but content-wise they are only 15fps (so, half of what the game actually displays). Stepping through frame-by-frame, you'll see each frame is duplicated.
Again, not really that big of a deal for WIPs, but I thought I'd point it out. Unfortunately I do not know enough about Dolphin or how it exports video, but I'm sure someone here knows how you can fix this. My guess would be the program you're using to decimate from 60 to 30 is not working as intended. If I'm not mistaken though, H/X264 codecs will automatically take redundant frames into account and not superficially increase filesize if you were simply to encode the original 60fps output anyway...
BTW the TAS is looking awesome so far.
I use a program called "Pinnacle Studio 14." The file that Dolphin creates is 60fps (59.94), and I slow it down to 50% speed (which results in a 30fps video). Idk about the double frames thing, since the videos seems smooth to me. I can try virtualdub or something for encoding though. The reason I do this is because Dolphin outputs video files at double the speed they are suppose to be. And appreciate the complement on my progress. :)
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
VirtualDub will work perfectly for this. All you need to do is go to Video > Frame Rate (Ctrl+R) and in the "Frame rate conversion" section, choose "Process every other frame (decimate by 2)"
This will properly decimate the video and you should have true 30fps output. =)
The loot after the cabin fight doesn't disappear as soon the chapter finishes IIRC, it'll still linger outside for the duration of its normal despawn timer. So that means even if you're planning on killing the ganados outside by headshotting them, you can still get the cash afterwards (or maybe just the last wave, depending on how long the fight lasts).
Items dropped (inside the house the very least) do remain after the fight is over for the duration until they normally dissapear, so you should easily be able to get a few grenades/money and ammo if you require it. You could even skip the grenade at the second floor if you manage to get three of them outside.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
No progress at all. I may finish chapter 1-3 in the next 2 weeks, but that is probably all of RE4 I will do until read-only mode improves with newer revisions.
I'd be working on it if I could. It is also frustrating that we don't have a read-only mode that works correctly for Dolphin yet. I have to watch about 30 minutes of 7fps video before I can continue with actual TASing. Besides, with newer revisions, there is always a chance for desyncs to occur with files created with older revisions (currently using r7695). If anybody wants to give it a shot, here is my .dtm file up until my latest WIP: http://www.2shared.com/file/4WAu5UoU/chapter1-32_-_Copy.html Edit, modify, do whatever you want, and see if anyone can make some progress or even improvements.
I won't be able to do any WIPs until mid December, if that. College sucks.
EDIT: I will pick this back up, at least until the end of chapter 1. I want to TAS the Del Lago fight so bad! I am now running Dolphin 3.0-204.7, which is able to sync my run up. I haven't tested if this version has read-only mode working yet or not.
