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Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Dolphin 3.0-305 (more-save-fixes)
  • Takes no damage
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Starts from a saved state or SRAM dtm [link no longer exists] or save file [link no longer exists]
  • Forgoes time-saving death
  • Uses hardest difficulty
  • Manipulates luck

Emulator details

  • Dual core off
  • Idle skipping off
  • Progressive scan on
  • DSP LLE recompiler (this requires you to dump files from a wii or gamecube. If you need help with this, or otherwise cannot do it, PM me, and i'll help).
It should sync on any version prior to 3.0-365

Comments

With no glitches, most of the run is pretty straight forward, but there are a few things worth mentioning:

Random encounters

There are 4 forced encounters that absolutely cannot be avoided. I use a smoke bomb for all but the last one, right before the final boss.
Other than those, there are two different ways the RNG is used to determine these. For the first, the rng is cycled constantly, and varying my movement in any way can manipulate these. In most cases this is done by holding back for 1 frame, or not pressing any direction for 1-3 frames. Despite how it looks, neither of these methods slow me down at all. Sometimes it is necessary to do other things, such as jumping or crouching though, which costs between 1 to 4 frames.
Other times however, encounters are locked in, as soon as the area is entered. Manipulating these can only be done prior to entering the area, and can be done in much the same way as before.
Unfortunately, there are often fights that cannot be avoided without wasting more time than it would take to simply fight them. And some times there are areas where although i can manipulate which enemies appear, and where, i cannot get past them entirely. Dealing with these situations was easily the hardest part of the entire run. There were many times where i made mistakes, but when i tried to go back and fix them, it ended up being slower, because i was then unable to avoid encounters that i had previously.

Taking damage

What? My max hp is 1 for the entire run. Well, turns out that doesn't matter. By holding A while in the air, right after taking damage, i can instantly recover any damage taken, so long as my weapon does not break.

Dynamic difficulty

Bosses have 2 HP bars. One main bar that decreases with each hit, and a secondary one that decreases when the first is depleted. The first has a set hp, based on level. The second however, decreases by different amounts, based on how fast you are killing it. This is why i stand around doing nothing for several seconds against a few bosses.

Dying to save time

There were two encounters i fought, that would have been faster to die to, then simply run past without a further fight. I chose not to do so, because it looked terrible, and the time saved was only around 0-3 seconds each.

Stage by stage comments

Act one

Nothing happens. I hold right to get to the boss, then mash A to kill it.

Act two

A short detour was necessary to do some quick shopping. The fight with the flying eyes was intentionally manipulated in to reach level 3, so i could equip a stronger blade for the boss. Otherwise, again, not much to talk about here. Note that neither fire nor poison does any damage in shigurui, which is how i jump into the fire without taking damage during the boss.

Act three

Huge ass detour here, to get to the shrine in Suruga. This saves quite a bit of time in the next act, by warping to it, rather than the previous shrine.
The boss can only be damaged while his blade is broken, otherwise he simply blocks all attacks. Because of this, i keep him in the air as long as possible, to prevent him from switching to a new one.

Act four

I ended up not needing the first bronze mirror i picked up, which cost me ~120 frames.

Act five

Here's an interesting fight. I repeatedly die, but don't actually die, and despite the limit of 2 jumps before landing, i jump around a dozen times at one point without touching the ground for nearly 30 seconds. Certain attacks, such as 3 aerial dashes, or the upward slash attack will, for some reason, allow you to jump again.

Act six

This boss...
I honestly expected it to take to take longer than the entire rest of the game combined. Instead, it was the fastest. While in it's stomach i deal about 5-6x more damage than normal, and of course he doesn't do any attacks that prevent me from hitting him. So obviously i had to manipulate him into eating me twice. Fortunately, i didn't have to manipulate it; he just did it, without me doing anything other than mashing A. Unfortunately he won't eat you during the final hp bar, so my initial attempt spent more on that last bar than the rest of the fight. When i went back to try to save a few seconds, i managed to save 2000 frames, by getting him to stand around doing nothing.
This is probably the most boring boss, since most of the time, he doesn't even attack at all, but it is easily the best fight, considering how much worse it would have been with even a little worse luck.

Act seven

'dat combo.

Final act

Nothing to say here: Enjoy.

Other comments

Possible improvements

Much of the run is spent traveling, which is mostly not possible to improve. The most significant improvement here would probably be using air dashes to jump higher without landing, as i did in act 7. This can only be done in limited places (while in a battle), but could probably save around 5 seconds throughout the run.
Bosses can obviously always be optimized better. Though it's easy to fight perfectly, it's difficult to get the bosses to stop attacking in ways that slow your damage down.
Random encounters are not always optimized very well. Because these have multiple enemies all spread out, it's extremely difficult to do these perfectly. Most fights could probably be improved by around a second or so.
And finally, the only real significant improvement would be by better luck manipulation. If someone were to find a way to avoid all but the few forced encounters, it would probably save somewhere around 5 minutes. I did my best to avoid all encounters that i could, but there are still quite a few of them. And even when using a smoke bomb, they still take up quite a bit of time. Although i know some of the encounters i had were possible to avoid, and i suspect most, if not all were, i have no idea if actually avoiding them all would be possible, let alone practical.

Thanks

A huge thanks to Nitsuja. When i first started on my first play through of shura, i averaged one desync every 5000 frames or so, and there was no read only, so the only way to check for desyncs was to play it back from the start - at 20-25 fps. By the time i started my actual run, read only was fixed, and i never once got a single desync, throughout the entire run. Without his fixes to dolphin, i still wouldn't have even started my run yet.


Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1114)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
c-square wrote:
I do want to know, why the start from a save state?
AFAIK, It does not start from save state, it starts from SRAM, and that is to access the highest difficulty.
Joined: 1/9/2012
Posts: 25
Well, if it does drop down to 0hp for a few frames, but then the HP is recovered, then the 'takes no damage' should be replaced by 'takes damage to save time', but the fact you can heal when you have 0HP may be a bug, so I would also add that fact in. As for my vote... well, I think this is a good run. May be a bit boring at times, but the way the player deals with the bosses is enough to get me to vote YES.
Editor, Skilled player (1537)
Joined: 7/9/2010
Posts: 1319
The bossfights were awesome, but just running forward was a bit unentertaining. I wish there were more jump'n run passages and more enemys, which can be killed by pass trought. Meh Vote.
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RachelB
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Player (130)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
Sometimes you would enter an area, leave it immediately, and then reenter it. Was that for encounter manipulation?
Indeed.
Samthe3rd wrote:
I vote yes. Please look into Odin Sphere, rog.
A ps2 game?
Former player
Joined: 2/19/2007
Posts: 424
Location: UK
Though I am not familiar with the game, this looks well played, and encounters seem to have been well manipulated too. I vote yes. Is this our first Wii submission, by the way? And is the tasability of this game an exception, or is Dolphin good enough to tas many games now? On an entirely unrelated note, this game is really beautiful, and looks like it might be fun to play too. But I won't let that affect my vote - I would have voted yes even if the game had looked boring.
RachelB
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Player (130)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
amaurea wrote:
Though I am not familiar with the game, this looks well played, and encounters seem to have been well manipulated too. I vote yes. Is this our first Wii submission, by the way? And is the tasability of this game an exception, or is Dolphin good enough to tas many games now?
It is the third wii sibmision, for the second game. Gamecube controller recording seems to sync perfectly now, after Nitsuja made some fixes 2 weeks ago. I played through this entire game without a single desync, and others are reporting the same thing. Unfortunately, wiimote recording has only been available for a few weeks (thanks again to Nitsuja), so naturally it's not working so well right now. However gamecube games, and wii games that can be played with a gc controller all seem to be tasable now. Do note that the save state fix that fixed the desync problem is not yet available in the main branch, but you can get it from the dolphin thread.
Joined: 12/27/2006
Posts: 49
Well, all the running was rather uninteresting, but then I can't exactly vote no on this while voting yes on the Megaman Battle Network 2 run so I'll give this a mild yes vote.
Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 31
TASeditor wrote:
"Takes no damage" and "Takes damage to save time" in the same TAS?
Since when has logic been a barrier in TASs? Following the combo-counter, you'd think this was a play-through of Dodonpachi.
NitroGenesis
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Editor, Experienced player (556)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
Voting no. Way too much running bored me alot.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
There is a lot of running, but that's a good thing with graphics like these ;). There was luck manipuation involved while running, planning involved for items and fights, and cool over-the-top bossfights. Voting yes.
ALAKTORN
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Former player
Joined: 10/19/2009
Posts: 2527
Location: Italy
I’m watching Act 2 and… it seems like you slightly slow down when you land from a jump, so wouldn’t it be faster to land on the exact loading spot for the next area instead of before it? why is that not possible? or does it actually not slow you down? so far it’s kind of boring, doesn’t look like a good game to TAS but I’ve never played it so I can’t appreciate it as much edit: in the 2nd boss fight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmpvI5kBN4&feature=bf_next&list=PL8A3E2E6F74E3E286&lf=plpp_video at 6:50, is it slower to stay on its right side (and I guess attacking less) so that you’re closer to him after he does the attack? I think you’d attack less but you’d start re-attacking earlier…
Joined: 4/1/2010
Posts: 96
Easy "yes" vote. Even if it's just a lot of running, the bits in between and the lush artwork make up for the difference. Now I want to play/buy/whatever this game.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Baxter wrote:
There is a lot of running, but that's a good thing with graphics like these ;).
Agreed. This game has amazing graphics. I found myself wanting you to run more just to make the beautiful backgrounds scroll by. I hadn't heard of this game before you started TASing it, but having watched the run in full, I'd say it deserves to be published on this site. I also liked how the act 6 boss kept foolishly eating you so you would do more damage to him. Yes vote!
Joined: 6/20/2008
Posts: 150
The Final Fantasy TASes have a lot of boring running too. Anyway, you had to go and submit this when I was working up the capital to get a Wii and this game! The schedule has been moved forward, it seems, so I've been watching this in fragments as I play. So far I'm pretty impressed with how few times you had to break Act 3 boss's weapon; I got the impression that after a while he just got sick of being combo'd and stopped being hittable until he could hit the ground and draw anew. That shows me, I guess! I like the run, the parts that I've seen. I'd vote Yes except that, well, haven't seen the whole thing. I guess 37.5% of a yes vote, accounting for how much I've watched.
RachelB
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Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
ALAKTORN wrote:
I’m watching Act 2 and… it seems like you slightly slow down when you land from a jump, so wouldn’t it be faster to land on the exact loading spot for the next area instead of before it? why is that not possible? or does it actually not slow you down?
Indeed, landing costs 4 frames, however there is an invisible wall to the upper right of each loading point, so it's not possible. so far it’s kind of boring, doesn’t look like a good game to TAS but I’ve never played it so I can’t appreciate it as much
edit: in the 2nd boss fight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmpvI5kBN4&feature=bf_next&list=PL8A3E2E6F74E3E286&lf=plpp_video at 6:50, is it slower to stay on its right side (and I guess attacking less) so that you’re closer to him after he does the attack? I think you’d attack less but you’d start re-attacking earlier…
Nope, if i was on his right, i would have been hit by his attack, and either died, or wasted time blocking and getting knocked away.
Anyway, you had to go and submit this when I was working up the capital to get a Wii and this game!
I'd strongly recommend playing it in dolphin if possible. The wii really doesn't do it justice, in 480p.
ALAKTORN
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Former player
Joined: 10/19/2009
Posts: 2527
Location: Italy
rog wrote:
edit: in the 2nd boss fight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmpvI5kBN4&feature=bf_next&list=PL8A3E2E6F74E3E286&lf=plpp_video at 6:50, is it slower to stay on its right side (and I guess attacking less) so that you’re closer to him after he does the attack? I think you’d attack less but you’d start re-attacking earlier…
Nope, if i was on his right, i would have been hit by his attack, and either died, or wasted time blocking and getting knocked away.
you could’ve jumped up to avoid his attack, that’s why I said attacking less (since you need time to avoid) but you’d start re-attacking earlier (since you’re closer to his stopping position)
RachelB
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ALAKTORN wrote:
you could’ve jumped up to avoid his attack, that’s why I said attacking less (since you need time to avoid) but you’d start re-attacking earlier (since you’re closer to his stopping position)
That would have been even slower than just getting hit, because of the lost attack. It definitely would not have been worthwhile.
Joined: 6/20/2008
Posts: 150
rog wrote:
I'd strongly recommend playing it in dolphin if possible. The wii really doesn't do it justice, in 480p.
Alas! My computer would do it far less justice, I'm afraid. Anyway, I just finished Momohime's initial part, some 40 minutes ago. Now that I've also seen the run, I'd like to affirm my Yes vote. The Act 7 and 8 bosses were pretty exceptional; I'm impressed with how well things came together for the final boss in particular. This game and this run are pretty and show off very well, and I think that's pretty much what this site is all about. Still, I think it might be interesting to see runs of this that go through and get the proper blade for the alternate path. More opportunities to show off, possibly; or maybe just a long string of leveling? Hm! Maybe not so good after all!
Joined: 6/26/2011
Posts: 167
Priam wrote:
Still, I think it might be interesting to see runs of this that go through and get the proper blade for the alternate path. More opportunities to show off, possibly; or maybe just a long string of leveling? Hm! Maybe not so good after all!
Post-game stuff for the alternate endings are not so interesting, on a TAS perspective. The only post-game section that would be interesting to TAS would be Total Pandemonium, and even that would just simply be a stand-alone video, and not a full run. As actual Masamune runs go, a separate Kisuke run would be all that is needed for TAS completion.
First a movie gets submitted, and ends up accepted despite breaking rules other runs have been rejected for. And when I vote less than spectacularly on this movie, I become the victim of harassment and threats. Yay, favoritism.
Joined: 2/7/2009
Posts: 52
Location: 127.0.0.1
oh god. this game is amazing. i had so much fun with it. i love how you played through it as well. so good. the boss battles so so good. the running doesnt bother me considering i had to do much much more on my own 100% run, so it's a walk in the park for me. it also lets me take in the scenery once again, and this time in greater detail. i can also point out a bunch of little nuances and details in the run that make me smile. there is no way i'm letting this not pass. yes vote
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Easy yes vote. This game took me at least 8 hours (just for Momohime) and to see it done in 75 minutes in incredible. Yeah, it's a lot of running, but some random encounters are fought, and fought well. And of course the boss fights are amazing! If this run is rejected for having too much walking around then no AAA game from the last or current gen has any chance of being accepted. Games have gotten longer and more repetitive in the last 10 years. This is what every genre is going to look like. If you don't enjoy watching 55 minutes of pretty backgrounds and 20 minutes of optimized ninja fighting then stick to the SNES and DS where the games are shorter. I remember playing this game and thinking to myself "this is going to make a great TAS someday." This site has published movies of RPGs over 3 hours in length which are also nothing but walking around and managing random encounters. This is much shorter (bonus) and prettier.
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RachelB
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Looks like much more significant improvements than i thought are possible, so i'm redoing this. So far, in act 1 alone i've saved 2050 frames, of which 382 were from better random encounters, 19 from more optimized luck manipulation, 1045 from skipping an extra fight, 536 frames on the boss, and the remaining 68 from other misc optimizations. In act two (i've yet to fight the boss here, but have done all the rest of it), when accounting for saved smoke bombs, and other changes, i should be somewhere around 4000-5000 frames ahead.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
That's great news! Congrats on saving those frames, and I wish you luck with the rest of the improvements.