Here is a speedrun with new and unique goals. It shows many parts of each level not visible in any other type of run. We practically see everything in the game.
For those not familiar with PERFECT BONUS, here’s a brief explanation.
PERFECT BONUS: This level bonus is obtained by collecting all free-floating rings in a level, so ring TVs aren’t necessary. Losing rings by taking damage doesn’t matter. The bonus is worth 50,000 points, which is useful for high scores, but it takes a lot of time.
Goals:
Priority: Collect all the rings as fast as possible.
Don’t take any TV monitor worth 10 rings.
No deaths.
Don’t take damage or lose rings.
Show PERFECT BONUS! On each level’s score tally screen.
1 Player controls 2 Characters.
Time table:
Zone
Time
Rings Collected
Emerald Hill Zone 1
1:11::59
225
Emerald Hill Zone 2
1:29::42
226
Chemical Plant Zone 1
1:49::51
195
Chemical Plant Zone 2
2:09::24
152
Aquatic Ruin Zone 1
1:06::12
176
Aquatic Ruin Zone 2
2:01::25
217
Casino Night Zone 1
2:11::53
232
Casino Night Zone 2
Skipped
---
Hill Top Zone 1
1:07::55
146
Hill Top Zone 2
3:04::34
199
Mystic Cave Zone 1
1:16::56
183
Mystic Cave Zone 2
Skipped
---
Oil Ocean Zone 1
2:02::19
207
Oil Ocean Zone 2
Skipped
---
Metropolis Zone 1
1:41::47
218
Metropolis Zone 2
Skipped
---
Metropolis Zone 3
2:25::08
153
Sky Chase Zone
2:05::58
67
Wing Fortress Zone
2:17::05
196
Death Egg Zone
0:41::13
0
Total
28:43::35
2795
Author comments:
Start
At the beginning, I used the level-select code because there are areas where unreachable (inside solid objects, too high, etc.) rings made PERFECT BONUS impossible. I used both controllers to speed up the song selection: 19, 65, 9, 17.
Emerald Hill Zone 1
In the early levels, Tails was a big help getting rings in nearby alternate routes to avoid backtracking.
Emerald Hill Zone 2
Here the situation is similar to the previous level and we had to sacrifice tails so Sonic could power through the level. Especially when 2 nearby routes with rings diverged.
Chemical Plant Zone 1
These zones were more complex due to the various possible paths. I had a good chance to improve this zone's route with practice. Tails does again a good job with the rings left in the zone.
Chemical Plant Zone 2
There was an unfortunate desync here when I edited the movie to have the level select code. While redoing the level, even though I found some improvements, the final time was around 3 seconds slower.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 1
The hard parts here were the underwater segments, because of slower movements, so I had to really take advantage of the spindash’s acceleration. I was also able to improve some things during the do-over, like the final jump which propelled me to the end quicker.
Aquatic Ruin Zone 2
Here was the first area with an unreachable ring. It’s in the second-to-last column underwater. However, we overcame that by abusing sprite collisions with Tails off-screen, and achieved our goal successfully.
Casino Night Zone 1
This zone’s design was a tough opponent. Something strange happens here: the music tempo speeds up when I collect 2 lives while I still have the speed-shoes on. I found a quick jump in the narrow passages that saved 1.4 seconds in each one.
Casino Night Zone 2
Level skipped. My only choice was to skip due to a group of rings that are way out of reach. Apologies for not playing.
Hill Top Zone 1
This zone was very simple: it only has 1 route which is easy to run through, and it has very few rings.
Hill Top Zone 2
This was a tough one, and thanks go to FuzZerd for finding a video demonstrating a strategy for backtracking so we can take both (normally exclusive) routes. Here, Tails plays an important role, since without him, PERFECT BONUS is impossible. Near the end of the lower path, I need to jump off the elevator early for sonic to bounce high enough on the extra life TV monitor to start backtracking. The height required means we would miss 3 rings, but Tails can take care of that. To go through the locked gates, Sonic must spindash in a precise location so he passes under it while it closes. Tails can also keep them open.
Mystic Cave Zone 1
Tails collects out-of-the-way rings, sometimes sacrificing himself. Tails was a big help and I would like to give special thanks to him for his work in this zone.
Mystic Cave Zone 2
Level skipped. There are out-of-the-way rings that only Knuckles can collect. Apologies for not playing this level.
Oil Ocean Zone 1
There were groups of rings that, when collected by both characters, saved time. Also, the ability to go under the oil helped with backtracking and advancing where necessary.
Oil Ocean Zone 2
Level skipped. It’s a shame to skip this level since we found some pretty good glitches to help with the unreachable rings.
First, SkyChase found a glitch that causes antigravity and gives Super Sonic physics. It’s like a double glitch.
Second, marzojr found how to get 2 of the 6 groups of unreachable rings (each group is 3 rings). The first and the last.
We couldn’t figure out how to get to the other 4 groups, and for that reason, we had no choice but to skip this level.
Metropolis Zone 1
Since this is a zone that "loops" we can use a glitch that lets use go through some obstacles and terrain. The route-planning involved consideration of this fact so we could backtrack through points of no return.
Metropolis Zone 2
Level skipped. Also because of unreachable rings. Apologies for not playing this level.
Metropolis Zone 3
Route-planning here was a little more complex. I found a way to go through closed doors similar to the method used in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but here we need to do 3 quick spindashes with a single rev instead of 6. The screen moves back enough during the first 2 spindashes that the 3rd allows us to clip through, albeit with low speed. However, this is still much faster than waiting for the door to open normally.
Also on the last three spinning gears, we pause to waste 1 frame because there’s an frame-rule that doesn’t allow the jump to make it otherwise (the pause avoids this), so that’s why you hear a strange sound. And a little later we use the same trick as in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Any%.
And finally, the boss fight is a little slower than usual because we don’t want Sonic to take damage. The only way to break through the egg barrier that spins around Eggman is with damaged and invincible Tails.
Sky Chase Zone
These last 3 zones don’t show PERFECT BONUS when finished, but the goal is still met. Here, the only things to are get rings and destroy enemies. Initially I didn’t know there were rings hidden behind some clouds, but that problem was easily fixed.
Wing Fortress Zone
Eggman’s great flying fortress’ route was quite simple and didn’t require much planning. Just run through the fortress and pick up the rings you pass. I stop at the motors in the ship in order to advance when the path opens. Then, keep advancing in the normal route.
Death Egg Zone
Finally, the last zone. Here, the battle with Metal Sonic was easy. The hard thing to do was hitting the final boss the first 3 times. Afterwards, keep attacking with the same pattern and run away with a spindash at max speed.
Special Thanks
Thanks to marzojr for his file sonic_hud.lua and to all involved in the development of this LUA file and for finding this helpful RAM value.
Memory Address
Description
word @ FFFF40 (unsigned)
Shows the rings left to collect in a level for a PERFECT BONUS
Thanks to FuzZerd for finding the helpful Hill Top Zone 2 PERFECT BONUS strategy video. If not for that video, the level would have been skipped.
Thanks to this team: bkDJ, marzojr, FuzZerd, DDRKhat, skychase and boct1584. They supported me and motivated me to finish this project.
Thanks to bkDJ (mainly) and Hepburn (a little) for translating this submission.
Also thanks to Tails, for speeding things up on many occasions.
Suggested Screenshot
I leave it to you to choose a good image.
Nach: While this run is pretty good for what it tries to do, it has a number of flaws. It uses a cheat code. It arbitrarily avoids some items and wastes time. It doesn't complete the whole game.
TASs are supposed to look practically perfect. When many people actually notice a flaw in the play, the perfect image is shattered, those sections need to be redone.
A TAS which aims to collect all rings should go through the game and beat it collecting all rings. The other objectives don't really work in this game.
Maybe you can just redo the sections/levels which need work, and copy+paste the input into a full run. I hope you don't get discouraged, this was a very good first time run other than the aforementioned problems. But in any case, I have no choice but to reject this. I hope you will submit a better run which fixes the issues with this one in the future.
Well, how many is "too many", in your case? Personally, I didn't notice enough of people complaining about them for it to matter; and the movie still ended up with a 70%+ approval rating nevertheless.
Well, how many is "too many", in your case? Personally, I didn't notice enough of people complaining about them for it to matter; and the movie still ended up with a 70%+ approval rating nevertheless.
70%+?
I see 63% Yes votes.
Factoring in the meh votes, it is indeed 70%.
According to Bisqwit's Confidence intervals, yes.
According to the word "approval," no.
Yes means "I approve of this movie"
Meh means "I don't care one way or another."
I tend to weight Meh's vs. No's. No is a serious "I did NOT like this movie."
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
]
Also note how I never brought up adelikat whatsoever.
Not here, you didn't. ;)
... Ahem.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
That was before I checked the history of the Zanac runs on this site.
However, you can't say it doesn't seem the slightest bit odd that a video by the site owner (continues to) get by scot-free while this one gets slaughtered, hm?
Also, nice that you admitted to actually reading the 'circlejerk forum' you talked of. <3
That was before I checked the history of the Zanac runs on this site.
However, you can't say it doesn't seem the slightest bit odd that a video by the site owner (continues to) get by scot-free while this one gets slaughtered, hm?
Also, nice that you admitted to actually reading the 'circlejerk forum' you talked of. <3
Those posts were actually eaten by the forum; I quite liked them. I note that you haven't cleared up that misconception at your circlejerk. And, I don't think 'continuing in the same vein as 4 previously published runs' is 'getting by scott-free.' If people wanted the entirety of Zanac to be run, they certainly haven't said anything for 6 years. People did NOT like the cheat codes used in this run.
I went looking, out of curiosity :) I should note, we don't negotiate with terrorists, even crappy ones.
Also, Fox News has a position. You'd be perfect for it!
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
You haven't corrected the post where you called me Xkeeper either. <3
And yes, I realized the forum munched them up when they suddenly reappeared after my post.
Bisqwit was much, much more lax with what he'd allow and how much he'd bend the rules. Additionally, there have been submissions that have shown that exceptions made for one submission don't generally carry over to any future improved submissions, yes?
You haven't corrected the post where you called me Xkeeper either. <3
Good point. Need to fix this.
STJrInuyasha wrote:
Bisqwit was much, much more lax with what he'd allow and how much he'd bend the rules. Additionally, there have been submissions that have shown that exceptions made for one submission don't generally carry over to any future improved submissions, yes?
I had not judged any of these previous runs. So, out of fairness, I went back and reviewed all of the relevant threads. It appears that there were only 2 negative voices against the level skip, through the 4 threads. (Amusingly ironic, now, seeing who those two voices were.) Anyway, long story short, very few people had a problem with the original switch, and it hasn't been raised as an issue since, so I see no reason for a judge to reconsider, or ask for a longer version.
So, yes, you are correct. An exception doesn't necessitate that it will apply to all future submissions, however, I don't see anyone asking for the next submission of the game to go back to all levels. If you think you'd prefer to see all levels in the next submission, feel free to make that noticed, in the appropriate thread. However, just using it as a template to whine about this decision is pointless.
Now, lets look at this submission. I count at least 5 people saying they disliked the level skips, and many no votes. (I also disliked the skips, I found them jarring and unnecessary.) I do feel the sloppiness comments were overrated for a first time TAS, and, had I been the judge, I may have still rejected it, but only on the level skips. However, Sonic 2 is easily hexed, so inserting the full levels would be trivial. I'd like the author to just resubmit that.
And finally, another non-related whine, it is absolutely foolish and asinine to complain about people making small # of frame improvements. We never dictate what runs our users work on - it is their free time, and it would be "ruling with an iron fist" to tell them they can or can't work on a run. Additionally, it would be foolish for us to reject a submitted run because the number of frames improved is too small. We want the best runs here. Also, yeah, people get excited when SMB gets improved by 1 frame, and there are magically 20 pages. Once again, that is our user base posting of their own free will, not us telling them to post. The Truth, brought to you by DarkKobold.
EDIT: Since I don't feel like creating an account, I'll respond to the issues brought up here.
Participating in an offsite area, where everyone is basically circlejerking, and talking about what a shitty website this is, even going as far as to use the word "terrorize" (oops, I didn't get an inside joke!), is not going to leave me with a ton of respect for that person. So yes, he may be polite here, but off-site, he is working everyone into a frenzy, much like Fox News does. Obama is not a muslim-terrorist-constitution-destroying-kenyan, nor is this website even half the horrible things being said about it.
I admitted to, and corrected my mistakes. Lets see what happens on the other side.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Personally, I would think blazing through the impossible to perfect levels like in the any% TAS would be more jarring than skipping them outright, as is done here. Collecting all rings regardless of whether the bonus is obtainable might be nice, but it might seem weird to someone who's just watching the TAS at random -- "why does he get perfect on this level but not that one?" for instance.
DarkKobold wrote:
And finally, another non-related whine, it is absolutely foolish and asinine to complain about people making small # of frame improvements. We never dictate what runs our users work on - it is their free time, and it would be "ruling with an iron fist" to tell them they can or can't work on a run. Additionally, it would be foolish for us to reject a submitted run because the number of frames improved is too small. We want the best runs here. Also, yeah, people get excited when SMB gets improved by 1 frame, and there are magically 20 pages. Once again, that is our user base posting of their own free will, not us telling them to post. The Truth, brought to you by DarkKobold.
I'll be honest, I agree with you on this point. Seeing improvements -- even the tiniest ones -- to existing runs does entertain me (provided I liked the original run in the first place, of course. I'm not gonna be watching improvements to any Final Fantasy TASes any time soon =p). I was just as happy as probably the rest of the 20 page group upon seeing SMB1 actually improved by anything whatsoever.
Having said this, I do not control the minds of everyone else in the other, previously mentioned forum. Everyone else has their own opinions, and some others might not find a single frame improvement to really be noteworthy. This is perfectly fine, no?
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
STJrInuyasha wrote:
Personally, I would think blazing through the impossible to perfect levels like in the any% TAS would be more jarring than skipping them outright, as is done here. Collecting all rings regardless of whether the bonus is obtainable might be nice, but it might seem weird to someone who's just watching the TAS at random -- "why does he get perfect on this level but not that one?" for instance.
Subtitles!
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Personally, I would think blazing through the impossible to perfect levels like in the any% TAS would be more jarring than skipping them outright, as is done here. Collecting all rings regardless of whether the bonus is obtainable might be nice, but it might seem weird to someone who's just watching the TAS at random -- "why does he get perfect on this level but not that one?" for instance.
I can see this point, it is very rational. I'd think aiming for maximum ring collection in those levels (even if perfect isn't possible) would be the goal, not blazing through.
STJrInuyasha wrote:
I'll be honest, I agree with you on this point. Seeing improvements -- even the tiniest ones -- to existing runs does entertain me (provided I liked the original run in the first place, of course. I'm not gonna be watching improvements to any Final Fantasy TASes any time soon =p). I was just as happy as probably the rest of the 20 page group upon seeing SMB1 actually improved by anything whatsoever.
Having said this, I do not control the minds of everyone else in the other, previously mentioned forum. Everyone else has their own opinions, and some others might not find a single frame improvement to really be noteworthy. This is perfectly fine, no?
I agree 100%! People are free to find them not noteworthy! However, to say that this site SUCKS ASS because people do these small frame improvements is just silly. TASVideos can only do two things - provide a place for things to be submitted, and accept or reject them. Everything else is pretty much up to the users.
Additionally, I'm using my responses to you to talk to that forum, since I can tell they are watching with baited breath. (For example, that 'terrorist' comment was directed at the thread in general, not you.)
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Funny how a discussion against a run's rejection switched to e-drama FAST.
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =)
(ﾉಥ益ಥ）ﾉ
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
OmegaWatcher wrote:
Funny how a discussion against a run's rejection switched to e-drama FAST.
Don't they always?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
I think this would be another good candidate for a Moon, with the stipulation that any run aiming to obsolete it should play all the levels and collect as many rings as possible in levels where it's impossible to get the Perfect Bonus.
Not going to help your cause.
This run probably doesn't have a chance of being published, even with the new rules, because it fails to meet the goals it sets out to do.
Well, about 2/3rds of the people voted that they liked this.
I think if you were to make a version that doesn't use the debug menu to skip levels, it would end up being published. Compare it to pacifist runs: a pacifist run kills no enemies except when really necessary; it doesn't use a code to skip levels where it would have to kill someone. So by that logic, a "100% rings" run gets all the rings that it can, even if in certain levels that turns out to be 99% of them.
$.02
