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Posted: 10/16/2011 8:59 PM
Post subject: Super Pitfall
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Kaylee
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I looked for an existing topic for this game, but to my surprise, I could not find one. Anyways, I have found a few timesavers in the any% run. Here is a map of the whole game: http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/2049/superpitfallcurrenttasr.png (The red line is the current route, the white lines are my ideas. Sorry if this is hard to follow, it takes a while to understand it.) The problem with TASing this game, is optimizing how you enter the wall, and move in it. It seems like the only solution would be to brute force it, and I can't really do that. So I am stuck not knowing what to do. Here is a test run up to skipping the 2nd death, that is ahead by about 5 seconds or so. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Posted: 10/16/2011 9:56 PM
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Tanooki_Teabag
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Hmmm... my copy of FCEUX isn't playing your movie at all. It isn't even opening it... I've never seen this before. Here's what the Play Movie box looks like with your movie selected: [URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/543/fceuxbug.jpg/][/URL] Weird... Anyway, I always figured there was more time to be saved in this game. It's so incredibly buggy that there must be more glitches to exploit.
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Posted: 10/17/2011 1:15 AM
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Brandon
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Random question: why did they have to use the word "Super" in a NES game? I keep mixing this title up with "Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure" for the SNES.
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Posted: 10/17/2011 2:26 AM
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Derakon
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"Super" isn't necessarily tied to the Super Nintendo; plenty of games had "super" in the title for the NES. See e.g. Super Dodge Ball.
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Posted: 10/17/2011 3:03 AM
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Patashu
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Derakon wrote:
"Super" isn't necessarily tied to the Super Nintendo; plenty of games had "super" in the title for the NES. See e.g. Super Dodge Ball.
Super Mario Bros :) EDIT: Super Mario World should have been named Super Super Mario Bros.
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Posted: 11/22/2011 12:46 AM
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Sonikkustar
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Hey Kyman. Any news on this? I was liking the progress that you made.
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Posted: 4/14/2015 6:54 AM
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ventuz
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I'm going try work on this game TAS, did anyone saved that route picture? Also should I do gameover game-end glitch like AGDQ2015 or play toward to end like normal?
Posted: 4/22/2015 3:28 AM
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ventuz
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So I'm finally recovering from computer issue (damn, HDD died) I'm not really sure what should I do, make run with Game Over glitch or without, or both. They both are somewhat different route. I'm thinking of doing it without game over, because it's uninteresting to see character die over and over to "Game Over" then start game straight to "You won the game" screen. But Game over method is faster. Please cast vote http://strawpoll.me/4179627 * GO! *thanks Spikestuff
Posted: 4/22/2015 9:57 AM
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jlun2
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Well, my thoughts is that given how the existing movie has over 27 votes with an average of 5.9, chances are, an improvement won't exactly propel this game to a higher tier, so might as well go all out speed based. :P
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 4/22/2015 6:46 PM
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Samsara
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I think both runs would exist side-by-side, so if there are improvements to the published run and a new glitched run then you might as well do both.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Posted: 4/22/2015 11:19 PM
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jlun2
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Is a "glitchless" even vaultable?
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 5/22/2015 4:32 PM
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Arc
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Most likely pointless for TASing purposes, but here's an exploration of the secret glitch world: Link to video
Posted: 7/2/2015 6:53 PM
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Alyosha
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As ventuz is no longer working on this one, I have taken it up and have been doing a bit of investigating into why the walking through wall glitch works, and how to make it faster. So far what I found is that the glitch appears to be a bit of poor programming combined with a bit of lucky interrupt timing. Here is the code where everything goes wrong: $FEA4:85 D5 STA $00D5 = #$94 A:06 X:02 Y:05 S:EC P:nvUBdIZC . . . $C298:40 RTI A:01 X:00 Y:3D S:7A P:nvUBdIzC . . . $FD6D:A5 D5 LDA $00D5 = #$06 A:3D X:00 Y:3D S:7D P:nvUbdIzc $FD6F:60 RTS (from $FDD3) --------------------------- A:06 X:00 Y:3D S:7D P:nvUbdIzc $EAE9:C9 72 CMP #$72 A:06 X:00 Y:3D S:7F P:nvUbdIzc $EAEB:B0 21 BCS $EB0E A:06 X:00 Y:3D S:7F P:NvUbdIzc The problem is that normally, $00D5 is $#94 and the CMP #$72 fails. However, the interrupt call set $00D5 to #$06, so it passes. From there it goes on to increase the players x position. The code seems to reuse a lot of these addresses several times per frame, so its not really surprising something like this comes up. At the moment I have no idea if manipulating this is possible at all. EDIT: at the moment, my record for getting through the first wall is roughly 750 frames. I think I can save at least 100 off of that. Actually I'll probably continue from where kyman left off. EDIT2: I don't think the second death skip will be faster. It turns out that you have to go further through the wall then initially thought using the glitch (since more wall is on the other side) The glitch also seems to happen much less frequently there.
Posted: 7/10/2015 1:43 AM
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Alyosha
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With my brute force script I'll be starting back from the first clip and just brute forcing my way through. Since there are ~4^200 ways to press A/B in the time it takes to do a wall clip, I'll just have run it for long enough that the final result is optimal enough.
Posted: 7/11/2015 3:58 PM
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Alyosha
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Death no longer saves time! With sufficient brute force I was able to skip the second death with a wall clip. Problem now is I don't know how to do the sink into the floor glitch to get the by the second stone head. Once I figure that out run should be quickly finished.
Posted: 7/12/2015 8:11 PM
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Alyosha
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if you clip one step into the wall at the waterfall at the very beginning of the game, you can press down and fall onto the platform below. Currently testing if this is faster then the first wall clip. EDIT: result: 110 frames saved! This also saves me some bullets which will save some frames later.
Posted: 7/12/2015 9:39 PM
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jlun2
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Arc wrote:
Most likely pointless for TASing purposes, but here's an exploration of the secret glitch world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owOsZg7-kDQ
Are there any triggers OoB, or all of them just a mess of tiles?
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 7/12/2015 9:57 PM
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Arc
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jlun2 wrote:
Are there any triggers OoB, or all of them just a mess of tiles?
I haven't found anything useful OoB. I believe that there other OoB areas that I have yet to explore, but I don't think they'll be useful either, unless there's a way to trigger the endgame.
Alyosha wrote:
if you clip one step into the wall at the waterfall at the very beginning of the game, you can press down and fall onto the platform below.
Nicely done. I played around with the objects that you have to collect to finish the game, but there's no major news. You need all 5 for the game to end. (Raj Diamond, Cage Key, Quickclaw, Medicine Flask, and Rhonda.) I learned that you can sequence break and get the Raj Diamond last, but it doesn't look like there's an advantage there. Here's another idea. When you do the wall clip after the balloon, keep clipping left into the wall while jumping up.
Posted: 7/12/2015 10:59 PM
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Alyosha
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^ ventuz had suggested that clip to me originally but I couldn't get it to work. Maybe now that I can just brute force attempts something will come of it. Another idea I had is to clip into the the area with the key from above (where the balloon is) using the same glitch that is used to dodge the second stone head. Not sure how viable it is, but I'll see if I can get it to work. EDIT: woah! It actually worked! This should save at least 10 more seconds.
Posted: 7/13/2015 12:32 AM
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TehBerral
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Jeez, with all of these time saves what's the estimated time of the run? It's gotta be nearing the sub-5 mark by this point.
Somewhat damaged.
Posted: 7/13/2015 1:38 AM
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Alyosha
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10 seconds was a bit too optimistic, 5 seconds for that clip. My current complete WIP is 5:45.3 I saved ~2 seconds with the new waterfall clip and optimized running skipping the spade card. 5 seconds for the new balloon clip. 7-8 seconds spade wall clip ~3 seconds if I can make the clip work while climbing the wall. So I'd say 5:25 is reasonable to aim for. New balloon clip route: Being able to get the key this way, there is nothing stopping us from getting the key first. Then we can go back up and get the Raj Diamond. then jump in the vulture near the diamond. If we can perform wall clips in the vulture cave area, we can go from the lower one up to the higher one and exit at a different vulture. This will save a lot of running around, the question is if going down to get the key then going all the way back up is worth it. First to test wall clipping in vulture area. Result: clips are not possible there, back to the drawing board. but there might still be a route with key first being faster.
Posted: 7/13/2015 7:09 PM
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Alyosha
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So I tried to clip by the elevator by riding it down a bit and jumping back up (hoping it would disappear once off screen) but instead it stayed even though another one appeared above. Out of curiosity I tried to make more and more, and I got up to at least 10. At that point other things like enemies wouldn't spawn as I rode them down, but I could still do things like shoot bullets. Possibility for some kind of stack overflow to happen I think, but who knows if the results will be useful, its also pretty slow to set up.
Posted: 7/13/2015 8:26 PM
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jlun2
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Alyosha wrote:
So I tried to clip by the elevator by riding it down a bit and jumping back up (hoping it would disappear once off screen) but instead it stayed even though another one appeared above. Out of curiosity I tried to make more and more, and I got up to at least 10. At that point other things like enemies wouldn't spawn as I rode them down, but I could still do things like shoot bullets. Possibility for some kind of stack overflow to happen I think, but who knows if the results will be useful, its also pretty slow to set up.
Since the OoB areas seems to be filled with random junk, is there a way to quickly spawn an elevator there over and over or some other sprites?
LLCoolDave wrote:
This seems to be competing for the "Worst looking TAS of 2011" Award.
Posted: 7/13/2015 9:56 PM
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Alyosha
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jlun2 wrote:
Since the OoB areas seems to be filled with random junk, is there a way to quickly spawn an elevator there over and over or some other sprites?
no idea. I might come back to this after finishing the regular run. I am 500 frames ahead of the most recent run, and am up to the wall clip past the balloon, slightly better then I expected. EDIT: 700 frames ahead to the vulture cave due to clip climbing the long wall. Brute force to the rescue.
Posted: 7/14/2015 3:07 AM
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Arc
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Alyosha wrote:
So I tried to clip by the elevator by riding it down a bit and jumping back up (hoping it would disappear once off screen)
I just found a way to make the elevator disappear by jumping back and forth. I discovered it by accident, while playing in real-time. Link to video
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