I'm still doing SM1. Decided to restart and improve a part where A and B inputs would be dropped. About halfway through the level.
Doing these levels takes a lot longer with all the tricks I know >_<. Anyways, as soon as SM1 is done, I'll upload the .dsm and upload the video to YT.
Nearly finished with SM1. I should have it finished by tuesday. I'm taking today and tomorrow off to play OOT 3DS.
Plans for the rest of June:
I need to throughly research route changes in SM2. In my previous WIP, I didn't know all the different tricks and glitches that I know now. I'm going to be looking for railing to abuse, and there aren't any ziplines in the rest of the game iirc (Tropical Resort gimmick, like Jello is the gimmick for Sweet Mountain, etc etc).
I'm going to copy + paste the captain jelly fight from my old WIP.
Then that'll put me into the month of July. That's the plan for now.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1213309895/Sonic%20Colors%20Test.dsm
Sorry it's been almost a week, I was planning on uploading this later on last Saturday but I've been slacking off this week haha (Been playing DNF).
So from my understanding of how this zipline glitch works, the first time it takes the difference of your x-velocity when boosting backwards and adds the difference from it and your x-velocity the next frame, then frame after that it makes that value into speed.
Hrm, I'm not sure why it desynced like that. I'm back on track for TASing and I wanna see if it desyncs when I upload my .dsm with SM1. I'll have that uploaded on Monday sometime (gonna be good about this now or else it'll take me until December to finish at this rate LOL).
Went back and altered a part with the boost wisp capsule that has saved an extra frame.
In the meantime tonight, I'm going to download that .dsm I uploaded and see if it syncs <_<
Change of route in SM1, so I had to start over from about 10 seconds in. Instead of grabbing the burst wisp behind the jellybelly dispenser, I instead decided to just grab it regularly after the gumball rocket. I haven't finished optimizing the gumball rocket portion, so I'm not sure of the frame difference yet. So far it seems to be faster since it's actually on the way, rather than requiring backtracking (costed 96 frames). Then skipping the gumball rocket is definitely faster, and I haven't calculated the difference yet. Instead, I'm doing this backwards and finishing the new route change, then I'll find the difference.
I took the gumball rocket route last time as it was completely required. Saved 5 frames in comparison to the last time due to slope slide boosting, better manuvering and airdashing for one frame before mid-air boosting.
Probably won't post any updates until SM1 is done. If this route is faster, I'll have to finish about half the level. If not, then it'll be complete.
So apparently this guy on youtube found a glitch that makes burst (that's the flame wisp) last forever.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na2AmoPbm4w
It seems really fish though. For one thing, the video cuts from being normal Sonic with the timer at 5+ minutes, then it goes to the glitch with infinite burst at 4'40 something. So I'm inclined to believe that this is just a AR code being used. In the off chance that it's not, then I made a comment to see what he can suggest he did to cause it.
In the chance that this is real, it wouldn't be used at all besides the cyan wisp. With every other wisp, they're used to access a route and anything leftover is really wanted (Especially true with Void and Burst, void is waaay too slow).
There also a glitch involving the laser I've seen a video of that completely clips though the whole level. When I get to AP, I'll figure out how to perform it and hopefully it will interact with the capsule to end the level. That's a ways away though :P
SM1 - 50"60
Going to try and optimize one last part by boosting one frame later, giving me enough verticle height to make use of a full backwards airdash. At best, it'll end up saving a frame. It didn't. It was faster, but wasn't enough to save anything. I tried a little bit of manual bruteforcing to squeeze out some extra x-velo and reach it quicker, but it just wouldn't happen.
I'll edit the rest in once I'm finished in a half-hour or so. Then I'll update with dsm and youtube link later tonight or tomorrow. I'll definitely be saving my comments until tomorrow as there is a lot that I changed in running this level again. Biggest improvement is skipping the first burst section and take an alternate route leading to the same place. I also learned a lot about how burst works thanks to the lua script as I could read values last time in December for some reason (only happens on SM and AP).
The first hot-air balloon encountered is definitely the fastest way to go. In my first WIP and even this one prior to changing where the Burst capsule is attained (was going to grab the one behind jellybean waterfall), I would skip the balloon with an exactly placed stomp. However the hitstun wasted close to 20 frames when coupled with a lot of lag from numerous sources being generated from the hit (rings, blinking, stomp effect, boost effect). So not only was it slower, but there ended up being dropped inputs as well. So instead I took the balloon until I could manage to get under the ceiling where the spikes end, and then stomped. This saved 28 frames (42 ms).
Originally in this second WIP, the only reason I skipped the first burst section was that there is over a second wasted in the popcorn machine (can't be helped). That route is still the best route in real time, but this is a TAS! 119 frames (I went and optimized that section just to be on the safe side) are saved due to rail boosting and slope boosting from loops, higher x-velo cap and reaching 61440 y-velo faster.
So the only other burst section left in is optimized by making use of hitting the bomb-balloons. This was a huge pain the last time around, but the lua script indirectly made it much easier. I got really lucky using the first bomb to hit 61440 y-velo very quickly. The coordinates just happened to be right to hit it perfectly. The second one was a little tricker and I had to manipulate the explosion glitch just right in order to get an optimal boost with no time wasted setting it up.
The last big improvements came from making use of rail boosting that I didn't know during the first WIP. This makes it faster after the first balloon section to actually go backwards after the slope and rail boost than it is to just jump over the trick-rings.
The ending section before the jellys, I decided to make it a little more entertaining by not landing at all in that section. Hitting any kind of capsule (wisp or non) restores the ability to boost. So after using boost in midair once already, the capsule is hit to restore it and proceed not to land until stomping the jelly.. It's not any faster or slower, just purely for entertainment.
Everything else has either been mention or is just tiny optimizations adding up.
Edit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOgZblxlHREhttp://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/478156125/Sonic%20Colors%20Test.dsm
Looks great again.
Mind explaining bit about how that 'burst' wisp works? Never played this 'Sonic Rush,' so I do not know how it works, at a frame by frame level, or otherwise. (Especially considering it is a DS version only wisp.)
Whomever designed the SM2's bomb and wall placement did a great job at preventing someone from skipping the burst wisp. Last WIP, I tried for a whole day to skip it, and today I've wasted 4 hours. It's impossible to build enough x-velo to completely skip the balloon, so you have to manage your way between the wall and the bomb (which is nearly impossible). You have to have enough y-velo to reach 1394 y-cord (lua value), but anything that reaches 1394 y-cord hits the bottom of the wall in the process. Colours is pretty generous with bumping you up to a platform, so you can be almost 2 off of a value and still make it.
I've managed to crack 1396, but hitting a high 1395 (like 1395.895) would be needed be brought up to the platform. I've tried every combination and coordinate I can think of to try and make it, but it's just impossible :(
I don't suppose there can be some kind of Lua script that can be used to suppress the boost sound, is there? If only because that gets really annoying.
I've had a lot of personal problems, that I won't waste space divulging about here, over the past month. So there hasn't been any progress on this. About half of SM2 has been done, but I haven't worked on it since mid-july. Which sounds like it spells out death for this WIP, but I promise it's not. I was only doing bits and pieces from February through May, but I still picked it back up and worked on it once Summer started.
At the very least, I'll be doing bits and pieces until Winter vacation starts. I really want to have this submitted before the end of the year. More than likely it'll be done start of next year. I can understand why Rush and Rush Adventure have no completed runs. The amount of optimizations takes such a long time since almost any given section requires a lot of math to calculate averages and differences. Then that section just becomes the group of an overall bigger equation. Sometimes going faster in one section is slower in another, etc.
Anywho, I'll start working on this some more in the next week or so. I wish Cruizer would stop by again so I could pick his brain for some of the boss fights xD.
Sometimes going faster in one section is slower in another, etc.
Which factors cause this? I assume wisp powers are one of them, but I would like to know if there are other. Could you list the acts where you have had trouble because of this? I think this would be something interesting to include in the submission text. I have been playing this game recently so I look forward to this TAS. Best of luck.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
Joined: 10/11/2009
Posts: 52
Location: Sydney, Australia
VanillaCoke wrote:
Anywho, I'll start working on this some more in the next week or so. I wish Cruizer would stop by again so I could pick his brain for some of the boss fights xD.
Ask and ye shall recieve!
Sorry, I've been caught up between no internet access, my university courses and trying to figure out the level creation of this series :P. I've seen what you've done so far, and it's just incredible.
I haven't played this game in quite a number of months, but am picking it up again recently, so bare with me if i forget how to do certain boss fights :P
What i do remember immediately is Drillinator, if you can't deal all the necassary damage in two sets of him slamming his drill to the ground, you're going to have to use the drill wisp (obtained by boosting into his appendages) and hit the power orb things underwater (after dealing 1 homing attack and 2 boost attacks on the first strike). If this is the case, your time will be barely better than the human best (which as far as i know is 16.87).
I'll look back into boss manipulations and stuff for you, It's just been a while so it'll be some time before i can.
So I've been TASing this for the past week and I've gotta say that it's been awhile haha. Just learning the ropes again, then I'm going to start over on SM2. I'm going to try a route change and see how it fairs.
I said it on YT, but glad to see you're back Cruizer xD. I probably won't pick your brain for anything until I get back to SC. I don't plan on redo-ing Jelly, just cutting what I had before and pasting it in.
Edit
Zeupar wrote:
Which factors cause this? I assume wisp powers are one of them, but I would like to know if there are other. Could you list the acts where you have had trouble because of this? I think this would be something interesting to include in the submission text. I have been playing this game recently so I look forward to this TAS. Best of luck.
Well it's not anything crazy like with Excitebike's TAS. The biggest example I can give is Tropical Resort 2, where I perform the zipline glitch to gain a huge amount of speed. There is too much x-velo and speed during that whole bit and it took a long time to figure out a way to get through there without losing a lot of time.
But then I ran into another problem with the final product for TR2 in which I couldn't force the wall to not load as I went through that section too fast, and started the loading earlier (from my understanding. I used to be able to go through that section normally and force the wall to not load, although it's TAS only). I ended up finding a work-around by jumping the frame before launching off the ramp and was able to make it work. It's slower due to that one extra frame of decay is compounded up over the course of that section.
Example (not from run): 1024, 1024, 1024, 1016, 1008, 1000 would be the x-velo on four frames, getting lower each frame. Starting the decay earlier in say frame 2, would be 1024, 1024, 1016, 1008, 1000, 992. The numbers explain themselves.
Another example is skipping the balloon in TR1 (although this is to a much lesser degree). It's faster at first to just skip the first balloon, but doing anything after that is slower due to waiting for the x-velo and y-velo to drop down so you can proceed downward. Down + A and hitting the spikes is faster than the first method, but the best option is just taking the balloon down for a few frames, then jumping out.
Joined: 10/11/2009
Posts: 52
Location: Sydney, Australia
VanillaCoke wrote:
I said it on YT, but glad to see you're back Cruizer xD. I probably won't pick your brain for anything until I get back to SC. I don't plan on redo-ing Jelly, just cutting what I had before and pasting it in.
Just on the topic of Jelly 1, what sort of time are you getting? Because i figured out how to get under 16 seconds just recently, although the how isn't that detalic. All i know, is that you need to take 3/4 of health off him in your first burst attack, and I don't know the specifics of actually dealing it, I just have blind luck do it for me |3
Anyway, I'll get back in the boss strats to help you out later on, I'm still a bit rusty, but i can pick it up once my memory starts to load :P
I said it on YT, but glad to see you're back Cruizer xD. I probably won't pick your brain for anything until I get back to SC. I don't plan on redo-ing Jelly, just cutting what I had before and pasting it in.
Just on the topic of Jelly 1, what sort of time are you getting? Because i figured out how to get under 16 seconds just recently, although the how isn't that detalic. All i know, is that you need to take 3/4 of health off him in your first burst attack, and I don't know the specifics of actually dealing it, I just have blind luck do it for me |3
Anyway, I'll get back in the boss strats to help you out later on, I'm still a bit rusty, but i can pick it up once my memory starts to load :P
iirc, my old wip had jelly beaten sub 13. Haven't watched it in a long time and too tired to go look at the earlier posts xD.
I've been distracted from working on this, so don't worry about being rusty lol. I have just found the wonderful program that is PCSX2 0.9.8 a few weeks ago haha.
quick edit: I'm mainly concerned with boss fights where I can't stomp it out to death... which is most of them xD. That's where I'll definitely need some help.
Joined: 10/11/2009
Posts: 52
Location: Sydney, Australia
VanillaCoke wrote:
iirc, my old wip had jelly beaten sub 13. Haven't watched it in a long time and too tired to go look at the earlier posts xD.
quick edit: I'm mainly concerned with boss fights where I can't stomp it out to death... which is most of them xD. That's where I'll definitely need some help.
Oh you're stomping it to death. Right, okay. Anyway, the bosses i think you'll end up looking at will be the ones for are Starlight Carnival and Asteroid Coaster. Sadly, they're the ones i haven't looked that much into, as they seem to be hard to repeat the fast strats again.
Also i want to just comment on this:
VanillaCoke wrote:
So apparently this guy on youtube found a glitch that makes burst (that's the flame wisp) last forever.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na2AmoPbm4w
It seems really fish though. For one thing, the video cuts from being normal Sonic with the timer at 5+ minutes, then it goes to the glitch with infinite burst at 4'40 something. So I'm inclined to believe that this is just a AR code being used. In the off chance that it's not, then I made a comment to see what he can suggest he did to cause it.
In the chance that this is real, it wouldn't be used at all besides the cyan wisp. With every other wisp, they're used to access a route and anything leftover is really wanted (Especially true with Void and Burst, void is waaay too slow).
There also a glitch involving the laser I've seen a video of that completely clips though the whole level. When I get to AP, I'll figure out how to perform it and hopefully it will interact with the capsule to end the level. That's a ways away though :P
It's obviously some AR code. Not only does it skip in time, he doesn't tell us what he did. It's some kid doing it for kicks on youtube. Also what about clipping through the entire level? Do you have a link i could view it at? Because i doubt that it's possible in the first place.
Nope, the account that it was on was suspended for multiple third party claims lol. I remember what it involved, so when I get to that point I'll mess around with it.
Basically it was using that laser "launcher" object at a certain point. The result was being ejected while still in the docked animation, clipping through everything and not losing power (which makes sense, since power isn't consumed in that dock). Iunno if I can reproduce it or not, I haven't tried.
Redoing the last quarter of Sweet Mountain 1. I overlooked a section from my 2010 WIP that was actually faster, back when I didn't have values (couldn't find them back then... not sure why), than what I have now.
Bursting with Red Burst (fire wisp) is similar to another game's mechanic, smash brothers. You cannot charge up another burst, until Sonic is moving downward (which is similar to smash in that you can't grab a ledge until moving downward). My old WIP hit the ceiling, which turned out to be faster because of this reason. It's much more fluid and should save at least 10 frames (would be 30+, but it is initially 20 frames slower... Going slower, is faster :D)
I'll have the exact figures later once it's done. I won't be uploading the new version to Youtube since it won't be a very noticeable difference. Hopefully this change will permit "some" copying + pasting of the rest of the level.... *crosses fingers*. I believe that I'll have to manually do the whole bit up until stomping to the right of the spikes with sonic sans burst. Hopefully the coordinates should be close enough at that point (due to being ejected from the spikes slightly) that they'll either be identical, or "good enough".
EDIT
I actually found one other part (the others were done correctly.. not sure what I was thinking during the time for the last two parts) that used the extra bursting glitch when it shouldn't have been used. So this should end up being at least half a second faster in the end.
I'll be working on this more than I have been, but not a whole bunch. I'm in dire need of some glasses. My eyes have gotten bad enough that it's hard to focus on any screen for long periods of time due to squinting. I'll most likely set a frame goal for each day. Probably 600 or so. That takes about 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on the section.
EDIT 2
All in all, three changes have been made that leads to the burst lasting all the way until the balloon. I figured that I would try and make use of the extra wisp time by taking the higher path. Unfortunately, there is not enough time left to make it all the way up (about 1/3rd). Burst will not revert to normal Sonic if a fully charge burst is used before time runs out, until after the fully charged burst is over.
Instead of wasting time optimizing getting a burst wisp, I just edited the value. In my test that was unoptimized, it takes over 150 frames, but I doubt it would close to sub 100. The whole red burst section is extremely optimized as far as my capabilities will allow, so there is no way to reach that section with an extra <100 frames of Burst (300 frames are allocated when first transforming). So it would require resetting that counter by getting yet another Wisp Capsule, which makes the whole upper route out of the question.
I'll tally up the savings once it's finished either tonight or tomorrow.
EDIT 3
Saved around 40 frames from the exact spot where I'm at. Unfortunately, the psuedo-lag is present for a frame, so I'll have to redo the rest of the level :/. The coordinates were exactly the same, which really got my hopes up lol. It's a little bit different than the previous attempt I have uploaded, but as I said, I won't bother uploading it to YouTube (I will upload the .dsm however).
I'm not sure how I'll deal with the psuedo-lag frame, hopefully it won't cost me more than a frame or two. I'm leaving it for tomorrow xD.
Final Time - 50"11 (29 frames faster).
I'm really happy with the whole burst section. I already was before, but now it actually looks really smooth through-out the whole section.
EDIT
Two frames faster than my old WIP (due to pre-burst section) in Sweet Mountain 2. I tried to surpass what I did last with bouncing on the bomb-ballons during the burst section. I found it nearly impossible to even match it. This is because the setup is slow, no matter what way it's performed.
1) go to the right of the balloon, then travel upward and fall onto the top right of it (done in the old WIP). T
2) The other option (which is done in this WIP) is to travel up immediately, which is to the left of the balloon. The move right and fall on it.
Both of them have their own pro's and con's. Option 1 is initially slower, but makes up for it by being able to exclude some the height. Option 2 gets immediately at it, but enough height has to be achieved in order to maneuver to the sweetspot on the top right.
So far, I've matched the results identically with both. It's pretty rare that two things are perfectly equal. I'm leaning towards the first option being the better of the two.
If I can't get a better result in either option, I'll just leave the second option in (looks better imo).
So in the end, I'm going to have to restart SM2 again. I need about two more frames.
While the regular sonic section is two frames faster in this WIP, everything else is wrong. The coordinates where Burst is attained, activated, speed value are completely wrong. I'm going to have to figure out what value speed needs to be to get right of the balloon in 12 frames (Too high, go too far. Too low, I'll hit the thing after going upward).
I never got around to answering you Paused (Suuuuuper Sorry!) Here's the run-down of how it does work.
You can use Burst's explosion the frame after transforming. So 1: X, 2: B/A/Y.
There are three levels of explosion. These levels differ by how many frames a button is held (B/A/Y/X). The frames required for each stage are at:
Press X at Frame 1000:
Frames 1001-1010: would be Stage 1
Frames 1011-1030 would be Stage 2
Frames 1031 and onward would be Stage 3.
Stages 1-2 will trigger the next frame after the button is released. There's an exploit in Stage 3 that allow Stage 1 & 2 to be used during it's down time (Takes 15 frames for the Stage 3 Explosion to trigger). Using a button aside from the one just used for Stage 3, the frame afterward any button can be pressed/held and activate a Stage 1 (or 2... Although it's certainly not worth charging up a stage 2). This Stage 1 explosion has no decay on it at all.
A Stage 3 Explosion also delays reverting back to Sonic by 31 frames if used on the very last frame of Burst.
Charging makes you fall slower, which is useful. X-Velocity takes longer to build in the air than on the ground, so it's not wise to charge while airborne without having a reason for it.
Burst has exclusive interactions with certain objects. In this run, you'll see it in Sweet Mountain 2. The Hot Air Balloon will rise upward with Red Burst, but sinks with Sonic. There is also a Ferris Wheel kinda object on Tropical Resort. That won't be used in this run (it might in a 100% run, if one were ever made)
Transforming into burst takes whatever your speed value (not x-velo), and changes that into your current x-velo. So if transforming while in mid-air at a dead stop (x-velo is 0), but speed was 61440, then it would change x-velo into 61440 the next frame from X being pressed.
It's unique to Burst as I know that Cyan Laser, Drill and Orange Rocket don't behave this way. There may be a similar exploit with Void to a lesser extent (it has a "cap"... hard to explain off the top of my head).
Sorry for being extremely late Paused! :(
Update 2
Found a place to use a trick I learned during my first run to save a lot of time here in SM2 (25~ frames faster than my old WIP). In total, I'm 50 frames faster after 14 seconds into the level.
The trick is getting the speed value below 3072*16, which allows using boost to immediately go in the opposite direction while traveling down a wall. Rather than slow down normally, it's much better to boost in the opposite direction while running to slow down. There is an 8 frame cooldown for boost, so that has to be accounted for when using boost as an accelerated method of decay.
I haven't thoroughly tested the US version since DeSmuME updated to 0.9.7, so I decided to give it a whirl today.
There's definitely not the big pseudo-lag difference there used to be between the US and Euro versions. It's more like a trade-off. The US version still has more lag to it by a few frames (Although the WIP syncs perfectly until TR2). The beginning has one less lag frame in the US rather than the Euro. Then the US version lags for three more frames. They even out at around frame 8800 on both runs, then the US version finally gains one more (US 4, Euro 3).
I've had to edit the dsm seven times so far, but it seems like I might actually be able to convert over to the US version now. If everything stays smooth with syncing, then I'll only stick with Euro if times are worse in total with the US.
