Submission Text Full Submission Page
This is a Super play of Super Smash Bros. Melee, completing All Star mode using Fox, and aims for entertainment value only.
So, because it's based on entertainment, what I try to do is impress, show unlikely things to happen, perform 200% damage in a single combo (or the opposite, only attack the character once to kill it [or not even once?]). Of course, I don't take a single damage during the entire run.
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The encoder will probably need to contact me. There are MANY chances the replay file will desynch for many reasons, one being the dumping of frames. Yes, dumping frames of the replay file makes it desynch.
  • Dolphin revision used: r7323. (I started this project before v3.0 was released, and to be honest, r7323 works better with Melee).
  • Uses a memory card with 100% unlocked on it, in order to unlock All-Star Mode. Memory card files are available on GameFaqs.com
General Configurations:
-Enable Dual Core (speedup)
-Enable Idle Skipping (speedup)
-Skip GC BIOS / checked to JIT Recompiler (Recommended)
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Glitches and / or advanced techniques used in the video:
Super Smash Bros. Melee has a lot of advanced techniques. If you’re an advanced player who dedicated some time on the game, you are already aware of them. However, if you are NOT ease with the game, maybe you will ask how the hell I can be so fast. Deeper information is available in a single video called the Advanced How to Play, made by myself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n4s5yB7ZkE
But ... Here is a more brief explanation of the techniques:
-L-cancelling. When you do an aerial attack in the air and land, you usually have a delay before to move again. However, if you press L before to land, the delay will be much shorter than usual.
-Wavedashing. It consists of air dodging close to the ground in order to slide on it. You can do it after pressing the jump button, so that you don’t jump in the air, rather slide on the ground. The technique is used to travel in an odd fashion on the ground.
-Edge cancelling. It’s Used to cancel the delay before to move again, after a wavedash of an L-cancel.
-Directional Influence. When you get hit, you can influence the direction you are sent simply by pressing a direction. But since I don’t get hit once, I’m talking about the computers here, because they do DI a lot, and they’re doing it in a way no human can really imitate. Computers actually DI upward all the time. So much that against Fox, Falco and Roy, they DI upward enough that I can shine-combo them, which would normally not be possible. But there is a bad side of their weird DI. Because of it, it becomes “hard” to combo them, they can escape easily after my attacks. Therefore, there is a lot of DI and luck manipulation in the video.
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Here's a brief summary of all the battles:
Battle 1: VS Pichu. Already on the first level appears the lightest character in the game, with a good recovery. It means that I had to kill him without having to edgeguard him, but I had very, very few options for the combo because of how light is Pichu. Therefore, I decided to do a Dair combo, with addition to up B combo until higher %, so that I can combo Pichu to the second platform using a simple Jab, then proceed to kill him.
Battle 2: VS Ness. The technical beginning was reproduced from Dark’s Perfect Dark combo video, for being impressive. Yes, he’s impressive enough to be reproduced in an actual TAS video according to me, and it’s a sort of “homage” to him. After doing so, I proceeded to shine-combo Ness, with the help of the car at some point. This match is the only one long enough to actually use an item. They only appear after +15 seconds, which is very often too long for TASed Fox. However, I manipulated the item to be a bunny hood, and proceeded to perform the farthest combo in history... from the middle of the map to its extreme up-left corner.
Battle 3: VS Samus. I think I completely redid this battle 4 or 5 times. With various people’s opinions, I could manage to get this match more entertaining. My main problem was the map’s design that doesn’t really fit to Fox’s movements, mixed with a lightweight / hard-to-combo character. But in the end, I’m satisfied with it. I was surprised the shine-upair combo worked, thanks to the opponent’s awfully upward DI.
Battle 4: VS Mewtwo. This character probably was the worst to combo, using shines. Actually, I could shine him only once with success, so I went for a 0-death combo, using only one shine. Also, because of the character’s recovery abilities that are one of the best in the game, I had to kill him after the combo, without having to edgeguard, which is what I did.
Battle 5: VS DK and Yoshi. At the beginning with the walljumps, Fox seems like he used more than a single mid-air jump, but he didn’t. What happened is, after grabbing the ledge, I released it and walljumped. Then walljumped again, THEN used my only mid-air jump to come back and grab the ledge again. Ever heard of Phantom Hits? Well you’ll see plenty of them in this battle. Phantom hits occur when an attack hits in an exact distance from the opponent... and this distance has a really, really thin window, meaning that I need a perfect distance in for it to happen. Actually, as of August 2011, I’m the only SSBM TASer who can perform Phantom hits at will. It’s really hard right now, especially for the reason that we are not working with any plugins, such as knowing character’s position, which would help a lot. Anyway, I managed to perform a good couple of Phantom hits, but it seemed harder and harder with time.. I don’t know. I heard Yoshi was known for being the god of happiness, how ironic that he commits suicide here.
Battle 6: VS Fox and Pikachu. I restarted the battle twice, and redid Pikachu 3 times, again, for entertainment value. Thanks to Brasterd who became an expert in Fox vs Fox with tool-assistance, I’ve been able to 0-death combo Fox with shine-combos. Also thanks to Mugg who kept telling me to restart for more entertainment!
Battle 7: VS Jigglypuff and Ganondorf. Jigglypuff is the least combo-able character in the game period. I was lucky she appeared to be very close to the ceiling at the beginning of the match! Ganondorf is a whole another story. He’s very easy to get combo’d, so I went for a 200% combo, with the help of a wall. I went for a flashy ending, using an upsmash to kill Ganondorf to the left.
Battle 8: VS Marth and Bowser. Marth and Bowser are quite easy to combo, but the level is quite bad. It is small and the platforms are low, which prevents me from doing flashy ground-to-platform combos like you’ve seen in previous matches. I went for a shiny edgeguard. Fox was shining at every 8 frames, using edge cancels, for a surprising 7,5 attacks every second. This is the fastest known possible way to attack in the game.
Battle 9: VS Falco, Luigi and Zelda. Because Falco is heavyweight, Zelda is mid-weight and Luigi is lightweight, I had to take them apart. Falco react the same as fox when shined, so I went for a 0-death combo. I used the Down throw glitch on Luigi, and he didn’t complain about it apparently... He didn’t try hard to come back on the stage. All was left is Zelda in the cave of invincibility, so I also 0-death combo’d her. And yes, the last hit was a combo.
Battle 10: VS Mario, Peach and Captain Falcon. Against 3 characters in such a small stage, I decided to go for shines only, and low% kills to the left instead of the right. When TASing this, I realised Fox could combo Captain Falcon with shines sending him to the right, then to the left, and so on. Captain Falcon takes so long to recover that it’s an actual combo. Beside that, nothing much to say on this match, it was quick and painless for everyone.
Battle 11: VS Dr. Mario, Roy and Link. I wanted to start with a double walljump on the left side of Final Destination, also manipulated Doc to come and try to hit me out of the field of battle, what he did. After the kill, I tried different things on Link... and he must be the easiest character to get combo’d by Fox, because he really would get hit by anything. Roy apparently reacts the same as Fox and Falco, so I took advantage of it. Because I didn’t edgeguard much during the video, I went for a double edgeguard on them. Hope you enjoyed.
Battle 12: VS Kirby, Ice Climbers and Young Link. Here I tried to walljump in a very unsafe place, and well, it worked! I let you the surprise of how the battle goes. Hint: I heavily manipulated the computer.
Battle 13: VS Game and Watch. For the last fight I went for a fight as fast as possible. I manipulated the GWs to get together, and then kill them all with shines.
I ended the movie at the first possible frame, as requested by the rules of TASvideos.org.
Conclusion. Conclusion? Well, Dolphin is not the best emulator to date. I had a lot of problems doing this video, but I finally managed to finish it. And to be honest, I’m very glad of the result. Special thanks to Mugg1991, he’s the one who took the time to explain me how to get Dolphin, and begin with TASes. I owe all my TASing experience to him. Big thanks to Dark and Brasterd for your inspiring videos. My work would have been much less good without you. Also, thanks to all my subscribers on Youtube. You are the reason why I keep on doing videos. Without anyone to enjoy my work, I would never work on TASing =).
Also, Thanks for watching.

adelikat: Claimed for judging.


Former player
Joined: 8/31/2009
Posts: 236
Wow, you're the guy that made those advanced play videos all those years ago. As one of many players that learned from them, thanks! :D I can't wait to see this!
Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 393
Location: Sweden
So, how did the 2 people that voted yes watch it?
"No love for the game gear"
Joined: 7/31/2005
Posts: 128
Location: Virginia
Wow, this is a surprise. Looking forward to seeing this one, whenever it's ready.
Working on a mod of an old favorite in my spare time. PM for updates!
GabCM
He/Him
Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
Wockes wrote:
So, how did the 2 people that voted yes watch it?
Simple. They haven't. They probably just voted Yes because it's the first GC submission and/or it's Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I am downloading the 1.1 ISO right now. If I can get this game to Sync, I will put up the SHA1 for verification.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 2/20/2010
Posts: 209
Location: I'm in space
Mister Epic wrote:
Wockes wrote:
So, how did the 2 people that voted yes watch it?
Simple. They haven't. They probably just voted Yes because it's the first GC submission and/or it's Super Smash Bros. Melee.
And I think it's disturbing that some people are voting no or meh. I'd really love to know what the rationale is there.
Oh, play it cool. Play it cool. Here come the space cops.
Joined: 7/22/2009
Posts: 128
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
I need an encoder to contact me on IRC, or msn, anything. I'll do the encoding myself, I don't mind it. I just need someone I can follow step-by-step. As expected, dolphin is very unstable. Maybe the configurations helped my own dolphin to sync better, but didn't help the others. Therefore, next time I'll try the recommended configurations. Either way, I have dumped my own run already. The total size of the uncompressed videos is 21GB and they're in .AVI format.
Taming Dolphin, one frame at a time
Editor, Expert player (2374)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3940
Location: Germany
Read-only mode is broken in Dolphin, at least up till r7500. Which means the run has to sync from beginning to end. @ Different ROMS: You can right-click on the game in the game list in the Dolphin window, properties, and one of the tabs will tell you "Game ID" which reveals what version of the game you have. Apparently "GALE01" was used. Lag shouldn't affect audio dumping at all. Never heard of this problem before. All I know is that, at least in older revisions, frames that take very long (when the game loads a new section, level, screen) will only last the normal duration of ~0.016 seconds while the audio will take much longer than that. So it will cause audio-desyncs - I used to use Avisynth to sync the audio, I had to re-sync it every now and then throughout the video.
The settings "Skip Idle Frames" shaves seconds off the run, as does skipping the gamecube bios.
Gamecube BIOS is the intro sequence, right? The same thing that plays when you start up [insert any console/handheld]? Why is that relevant? The settings that were checked in addition to the normal recommended settings are Dual Core and Idle Skipping. What does Idle Skipping do? Regardless of whether it is checked or not, the run syncs very far (up till Yoshi's Story or Depths of Brinstar), so no frames were shaved away at all.
Also, I do give up on Dolphin encoding at least for now. Add some MD5 checksum checking of the Rom file, and save settings per movie that could affect the dumping and playback. It's got potential, it's just not quite there yet.
Checksums and saving the settings are good ideas. Also I think memory card files should be saved in the DTM.
Patryk1023
He/Him
Joined: 3/1/2011
Posts: 288
Location: Inside out house.
Oh hell, when's an encode?
<Nach> scrimpy is fretty with her sunglasses on I'm here. never visible.
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I can't get this to sync beyond the start of Battle 7. Nothing I do works.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 7/22/2009
Posts: 128
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
hegyak wrote:
I can't get this to sync beyond the start of Battle 7. Nothing I do works.
It's a very good start. Do you go on IRC?
Taming Dolphin, one frame at a time
Editor
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I can in about 7 hours or so. I would assume you want help getting that far? Edit: Dolphin R7323 x64 with configs for this TAS http://www.multiupload.com/7GCSBC8WME With this, I get to battle 7 and 75% speed in battles. As promised, SHA1 for the ISO I am using: 5ecab83cd72c0ff515d750280f92713f19fa46f1
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Joined: 7/22/2009
Posts: 128
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
The submission finally has a video to see! It's not the best quality, but it's just fine. Enjoy.
Taming Dolphin, one frame at a time
Post subject: Re: Undumpable due to massive amounts of random desynchs...
Joined: 9/3/2011
Posts: 3
Velitha wrote:
The problem is it seems to desync on the stage right before it (on the transistion, unless it's intended that Fox "moonwalks" into the portal).
That is intentional, as the moonwalk is indeed a real technique in Melee. The current video that Wak just uploaded is good, except the sound of 5 Mr. Game & Watches getting shined at once makes my ears cry.
Joined: 11/22/2009
Posts: 7
Amazing work Wak!!
I will edit this later :D
Player (210)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
This is a very well executed run, for sure. :) Will this movie play back with any 100% memory card file or just the particular one posted on gamefaqs? If the answer is that it will only play back with that particular file, I'm not sure that a start from a gamefaqs sram state is reliable enough to publish here since we have no verification that the state itself wasn't hacked and that the game is in a legal natural state of randomness at the start. If it can be confirmed that this will play with any 100% memory card file, my vote is yes.
Joined: 7/22/2009
Posts: 128
Location: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
Kirkq wrote:
This is a very well executed run, for sure. :) Will this movie play back with any 100% memory card file or just the particular one posted on gamefaqs? If the answer is that it will only play back with that particular file, I'm not sure that a start from a gamefaqs sram state is reliable enough to publish here since we have no verification that the state itself wasn't hacked and that the game is in a legal natural state of randomness at the start. If it can be confirmed that this will play with any 100% memory card file, my vote is yes.
<Wak017> did it work better with my memory card, or it worked just the same with any other mem. card? <mugg> the same
Taming Dolphin, one frame at a time
Active player (427)
Joined: 9/21/2009
Posts: 1047
Location: California
I think runs that aren't based on speed need to be VERY, VERY entertaining, and this just wasn't for me. Voting no for now.
Joined: 2/27/2010
Posts: 11
Location: Canada
Yes vote, though I think the published version should shoot everything during the credits.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3578)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Was this movie entertaining? Yes Did it look tool-assisted? Most definitely I voted yes. However, publication will still demand that somebody (anybody!) other than the other be able to sync this movie file. I appreciate those who are putting a lot of time into that. Also thank you Wak017 for this rad submission.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Editor, Experienced player (571)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
This is so great. I don't have a favorite because I liked every battle! Yes vote!! Though, when this is published, will it be put in the GameCube category or Hacks/Demos/Other (because it starts from SRAM/memcard file)?
Post subject: CREDITS NOT DESTROYED
Joined: 2/20/2010
Posts: 209
Location: I'm in space
YOU DIDN'T SHOOT THE CREDITS!!!!!!!!! Watching this was like experiencing a really awesome concert, except at the very end, when everyone is expecting the band to close with something amazing, they just walk off stage, and everyone is like, wtf? That's it? They're not gonna play Hey Jude??!!? ARRRRGH!!!! Sorry, but despite its awesomeness, I just can't vote yes with the credits left intact.
Oh, play it cool. Play it cool. Here come the space cops.
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 757
I seem to recall the credits can be zoomed through a lot quicker then that... and the fact that none of the names were shot? I'm holding off voting until at least that can be explained as it honestly will affect my decision. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin Just another random gamer ---- <OmnipotentEntity> How do you people get bored in the span of 10 seconds? Worst ADD ever.
GabCM
He/Him
Joined: 5/5/2009
Posts: 901
Location: QC, Canada
Yes. Just Yes.
Joined: 6/16/2011
Posts: 48
Obvious yes vote. The TAS was very well executed and every second of it was quite entertaining. A great TAS of a hugely popular game makes for an excellent first Gamecube game submission (and hopefully, publication).