Tyrian is an arcade style shoot-em-up game where you control a single pilot and shoot your way through each level to survive, upgrading your weapons, armour, shield and ship in between with the "score" you get during the levels. It's now a freeware game and has been ported to several operating systems and to both 32 and 64 bit for windows.
Since when I saw Patashu's comment about the OpenTyrian version of Tyrian working in Hourglass, I tried to TAS the first level of the game to see how well it fares. As I have Windows 7, I used the 64 bit version as well as r81 of Hourglass.
Made a simple encode on my performance here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUhH8mZVxn8IxuJ4EIJkQpBA&feature=player_detailpage&v=NzQmc9m3ZeM
As is noticed right at the beginning, I unlocked the Lord Of The Game difficulty, which is the hardest one available in this game. In short, this makes all enemies a lot tougher, those who shoot projectiles shoot them more frequently and the projectiles themselves travel at a much higher speed. Also you get four times the score you'd normally get. The harder difficulties are unlocked by pressing a code for each difficulty.
Yes, I know I lack some finess in the beginning of the run as I'm new to tasing in general and isn't interested enough to try to do it flawlessly.
The game behaves pretty nicely as long as I disable Mutithreading and Wait Sync, or else an error message randomly pops up a while in the run and stops the recording, and the sound is a bit funky when I play, so I muted it to not be in the way.
This might've been a good TAS partly similar to Gradius, had it not been for the random parts in the game. I'm talking about the small triangular ships, armour refill ships and other things who doesn't have any direct path to follow. Every time I replay my input file, they appear at different areas, thus making it more than likely to desync the game. Unless there's some settings I should change which prevents this.
My imputs for anyone who wants to check it out.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2dgava3pmn8b5zt
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Nice. I loved Tyrian, so it would be cool to see a TAS.
I think you should go for max % destroyed. For this, you obviously need a lot of firepower. In the first level, the first enemy holds a power-up, but it only leaves it if it is destroyed after it has turned around at the bottom of the screen. I am not sure, but I have a vague memory that it is possible to restart the level and get this upgrade again.
I think you can also focus your firepower forward by switching the mode of your rear weapon. The default key for this is Enter.
Nice. I loved Tyrian, so it would be cool to see a TAS.
I think you should go for max % destroyed. For this, you obviously need a lot of firepower. In the first level, the first enemy holds a power-up, but it only leaves it if it is destroyed after it has turned around at the bottom of the screen. I am not sure, but I have a vague memory that it is possible to restart the level and get this upgrade again.
I think you can also focus your firepower forward by switching the mode of your rear weapon. The default key for this is Enter.
Just looked it up and you do get a rear weapon power up from the enemy you mentioned, and I didn't know you could switch modes on your rear weapon. You learn new things every day. :)
And yes, max % destroyed would probably be the goal of this game, but unless I can find a way to avoid having the armour refill ships appearing anywhere on top of the screen I won't be able to unleash the full destructive potential of this run, as well as some enemies will bump into me from a different direction than what they did first.
If I can get those refills, I can throw out two nuclear bombs at will against at the cost of one armour, making my life a lot easier by killing the enemies even easier.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I've always wanted to do a playaround two-player arcade run with mouse input for Player 2 and keyboard input for Player 1. Too bad JPC-RR doesn't run Tyrian and that Hourglass doesn't support mouse input.
I don't like max% destroyed as a goal; the game has a ton of weapons to show off and in Arcade modes, you can already get Zica Laser and Constant Laser on a secret level accessible from the first level.
The official v2.1 data files have several boring glitches; most notably, the Charge Beam bug that can be used to gain orbiting balls of destruction much like the ones you get on that one Asteroid level, except that they destroy almost everything instantly. The data files provided on the OpenTyrian site don't feature this glitch.
Also, the very highest difficulties can't be accessed without using a predetermined/modified save; see OpenTyrian source for details.
I don't have anything to add at this point except to compliment you on a nice sample run and to say I'll at least be watching this topic very closely. If I find the time and effort, I'd also like to contribute to the run somehow.
It's been too long since I've played this game. Is Lord of the Game mode part of Arcade or Story mode? In particular, does it have bonus levels and/or purchasable upgrades? That might affect long-term strategy.
Also, the very highest difficulties can't be accessed without using a predetermined/modified save; see OpenTyrian source for details.
I don't think that's true. For arcade mode, you can get to the highest difficulty by typing ENGAGE on the title screen. For story mode, you can get the highest difficulty just by pressing certain keys on the difficulty select screen. There's three difficulties. Press shift+G to add the fourth, shift+] to add the fifth, then L+O+R+D to add the sixth.
I think story mode would be more interesting to TAS than arcade mode, because you can do route planning and buy lots of different upgrades. Note that while the game is mostly an autoscroller, it does halt scrolling at certain points until all enemies are defeated (and not just bosses either), so defeating the game as fast as possible is a plausible goal.
Also, I love this game and would really like to see it TASed.
I don't like max% destroyed as a goal; the game has a ton of weapons to show off and in Arcade modes, you can already get Zica Laser and Constant Laser on a secret level accessible from the first level.
The official v2.1 data files have several boring glitches; most notably, the Charge Beam bug that can be used to gain orbiting balls of destruction much like the ones you get on that one Asteroid level, except that they destroy almost everything instantly. The data files provided on the OpenTyrian site don't feature this glitch.
Also, the very highest difficulties can't be accessed without using a predetermined/modified save; see OpenTyrian source for details.
True. A playaround in arcade mode could be more interesting than seeing someone using the same weapon over and over in every level, though that's open to debate. By the way, which of the three secret levels do you get the two lasers in? I haven't played enough Arcade mode to find it myself.
Which difficulty are you talking about? Is there one that's even harder than Lord Of The Game? I can easily access this difficulty from a new game with no saves in beforehand. Could you please link the page where it's mentioned?
Also Bobo, the Lord Of The Game is just a difficulty setting to make everything even harder, and as far as I know you don't get any bonus levels or purchasable upgrades. BUT you get four times the score you'd normally get, including from the coins and gems (and food and ale) you find, so you'll be able to upgrade even more after each level.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Which difficulty are you talking about? Is there one that's even harder than Lord Of The Game? I can easily access this difficulty from a new game with no saves in beforehand. Could you please link the page where it's mentioned?
Radiant wrote:
I don't think that's true.
turska wrote:
see OpenTyrian source for details.
Language: C
// increases game difficulty based on player's total score / total of players' scores
void adjust_difficulty( void )
{
const float score_multiplier[10] =
{
0, // Wimp (doesn't exist)
0.4f, // Easy
0.8f, // Normal
1.3f, // Hard
1.6f, // Impossible
2, // Insanity
2, // Suicide
3, // Maniacal
3, // Zinglon
3, // Nortaneous
};
assert(initialDifficulty > 0 && initialDifficulty < 10);
const ulong score = twoPlayerMode ? (player[0].cash + player[1].cash) : JE_totalScore(&player[0]),
adjusted_score = roundf(score * score_multiplier[initialDifficulty]);
uint new_difficulty = 0;
if (twoPlayerMode)
{
if (adjusted_score < 10000)
new_difficulty = 1; // Easy
else if (adjusted_score < 20000)
new_difficulty = 2; // Normal
else if (adjusted_score < 50000)
new_difficulty = 3; // Hard
else if (adjusted_score < 80000)
new_difficulty = 4; // Impossible
else if (adjusted_score < 125000)
new_difficulty = 5; // Insanity
else if (adjusted_score < 200000)
new_difficulty = 6; // Suicide
else if (adjusted_score < 400000)
new_difficulty = 7; // Maniacal
else if (adjusted_score < 600000)
new_difficulty = 8; // Zinglon
else
new_difficulty = 9; // Nortaneous
}
else
{
if (adjusted_score < 40000)
new_difficulty = 1; // Easy
else if (adjusted_score < 70000)
new_difficulty = 2; // Normal
else if (adjusted_score < 150000)
new_difficulty = 3; // Hard
else if (adjusted_score < 300000)
new_difficulty = 4; // Impossible
else if (adjusted_score < 600000)
new_difficulty = 5; // Insanity
else if (adjusted_score < 1000000)
new_difficulty = 6; // Suicide
else if (adjusted_score < 2000000)
new_difficulty = 7; // Maniacal
else if (adjusted_score < 3000000)
new_difficulty = 8; // Zinglon
else
new_difficulty = 9; // Nortaneous
}
difficultyLevel = MAX((unsigned)difficultyLevel, new_difficulty);
}
Language: C
case 0: /* New game */
if (select_gameplay() && select_episode() && select_difficulty())
{
gameLoaded = true;
initialDifficulty = difficultyLevel;
if (onePlayerAction)
{
player[0].cash = 0;
player[0].items.ship = 8;
}
else if (twoPlayerMode)
{
for (uint i = 0; i < COUNTOF(player); ++i)
player[i].cash = 0;
player[0].items.ship = 11;
difficultyLevel++;
inputDevice[0] = 1;
inputDevice[1] = 2;
}
else if (richMode)
{
player[0].cash = 1000000;
}
else
{
ulong initial_cash[] = { 10000, 15000, 20000, 30000 };
assert(episodeNum >= 1 && episodeNum <= 4);
player[0].cash = initial_cash[episodeNum-1];
}
}
fadeIn = true;
break;
Language: C
bool select_difficulty( void )
{
JE_loadPic(VGAScreen, 2, false);
JE_dString(VGAScreen, JE_fontCenter(difficulty_name[0], FONT_SHAPES), 20, difficulty_name[0], FONT_SHAPES);
difficultyLevel = 2;
int difficulty_max = 3;
bool fade_in = true;
for (; ; )
{
for (int i = 1; i <= difficulty_max; i++)
{
JE_outTextAdjust(VGAScreen, JE_fontCenter(difficulty_name[i], SMALL_FONT_SHAPES), i * 24 + 30, difficulty_name[i], 15, -4 + (i == difficultyLevel ? 2 : 0), SMALL_FONT_SHAPES, true);
}
JE_showVGA();
if (fade_in)
{
fade_palette(colors, 10, 0, 255);
fade_in = false;
}
JE_word temp = 0;
JE_textMenuWait(&temp, false);
if (SDL_GetModState() & KMOD_SHIFT)
{
if ((difficulty_max < 4 && keysactive[SDLK_g]) ||
(difficulty_max == 4 && keysactive[SDLK_RIGHTBRACKET]))
{
difficulty_max++;
}
} else if (difficulty_max == 5 && keysactive[SDLK_l] && keysactive[SDLK_o] && keysactive[SDLK_r] && keysactive[SDLK_d]) {
difficulty_max++;
}
if (newkey)
{
switch (lastkey_sym)
{
case SDLK_UP:
difficultyLevel--;
if (difficultyLevel < 1)
{
difficultyLevel = difficulty_max;
}
JE_playSampleNum(S_CURSOR);
break;
case SDLK_DOWN:
difficultyLevel++;
if (difficultyLevel > difficulty_max)
{
difficultyLevel = 1;
}
JE_playSampleNum(S_CURSOR);
break;
case SDLK_RETURN:
JE_playSampleNum(S_SELECT);
/* fading handled elsewhere
fade_black(10); */
if (difficultyLevel == 6)
{
difficultyLevel = 8;
} else if (difficultyLevel == 5) {
difficultyLevel = 6;
}
return true;
case SDLK_ESCAPE:
JE_playSampleNum(S_SPRING);
/* fading handled elsewhere
fade_black(10); */
return false;
default:
break;
}
}
}
}
The moral of the story is that laziness always prevails.
Huh, after checking out my laptop who has a predetermined save (on the Tyrian 2000 version) and about 2.7 million in score, the enemies are indeed even tougher and I get 8 times the normal score. Though if I were to make a run where I reach the harder than hardest difficulty, I'll already have all the fanciest weapons and ship available in the game right at the beginning, and that'd make most runs even more repetitive. It'd still be easy though, since I have max firepower already (unless I sell everything I have).
I'd say the Lord Of The Game difficulty from game start is good enough since then you'll have to struggle with the enemies as well as with weapon upgrades, at least until you max them out that is.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I actually found the first video kind of dull, just because of the difficulty mode making every level dark. You only see a fraction of what's firing at you at any given time.
Yeah, that's because of the difficulty I chose, but it's only active on the first level and a few other levels afterwards. Level two has none of this darkness so you won't have to struggle to see what's happening.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I actually found the first video kind of dull, just because of the difficulty mode making every level dark. You only see a fraction of what's firing at you at any given time.
If you reduce the graphics setting to the lowest settings, the levels are no longer made dark.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Maybe you could change the graphics to Low on the first level so that there's no field of vision effect. And then turn it to Pentium later (currently it's just set to High, e.g. clouds aren't transparent).
After some experimenting I've found out that it's my operative system (Windows 7) which makes the armour refill ships appear randomly at every playback, but the Windows XP on my laptop doesn't have this problem at all, probably because of Hourglass not completely supporting Windows 7. I would've like to try TAS this game, but my laptop is sooo crappy and won't emulate the game perfectly so I can't bother trying.
If anyone else wants to have a go at this, then be my guest and try it out. I'll help out with whatever I can if you wish too.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
After some experimenting I've found out that it's my operative system (Windows 7) which makes the armour refill ships appear randomly at every playback, but the Windows XP on my laptop doesn't have this problem at all, probably because of Hourglass not completely supporting Windows 7. I would've like to try TAS this game, but my laptop is sooo crappy and won't emulate the game perfectly so I can't bother trying.
If anyone else wants to have a go at this, then be my guest and try it out. I'll help out with whatever I can if you wish too.
That's interesting. What function determines when the armour refill ships appear?
I'd have a look through the source if I wasn't about to leave the house
Ok, even though my isn't that great I think I'll try a test run and see how far I can go, but before I start I'd want to ask what sort of goals I should have for this run? Since this is an auto scroller like Gradius it'd be "hard" to aim for fastest time since the only places I could optimize it would be at bosses and areas where I have to kill every enemy on the screen to advance. I could increase the game speed from "normal" to "turbo" to make it faster though. Trying for 100% destruction on every level is impossible as certain levels have invulnerable targets which counts towards kill percentage.
I could just run through every level destroying as much as possible while not taking any damage at all, bascally having similar goals as the Gradius runs. But I'm not sure if I should include the secret areas or not then. They'll make the run longer, but they also add more to the game. And I think I'll go with the story mode first for this test run.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Finshed the first level now and it's much better than my previous sloppy run after I figured out how to use the temporary invulnerability and atom bombs more effectively. It isn't perfect yet as there's places where I could've done a little different to get another kill or so, but this will do for the test run. I also changed the game speed from Normal to Turbo cutting the time by 30% (increasing the FPS from 35 to 50). It's harder to see what's happening, although it's faster... I can change it back to Normal for the next level if you think it'd be better.
A few things I've been using in this run:
-Invulnerability, given temporary after moving the ship down, up, down, then up while shooting, draining all your current shield. How long it lasts depends on how much shield you have at the moment, almost three seconds for my current shield.
-Two Atom Bombs, launched after moving the ship right, down, left, then up while shooting, draining two points of armour. You can't kill yourself by doing this.
These two abilities are ship specific and (apart from the invulnerability) won't be found on any other ship you can buy. Depending on how good abilities the other ships have, I might stay with this ship for the entire run. I will be changing weapons though but I'm not sure which one is the best to choose, so any advice is appreciated.
Encode here http://youtu.be/e9w67bixcX0
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
Tyrian really needs mouse input for TASing. You simply can't make the ship dance gracefully without it.
Additionally, for a run like this, I'd consider using Super Tyrian. It's the most superhuman single-player mode in the game and the twiddles ought to be vicious under TAS conditions. Arcade is also a possibility - smoothly changing weapons mid-level and playing around is more interesting than blazing through Full Game with a cookie cutter setup.
I really liked this last run, thumbs up :)
Although I have a question. What are going to be your goals? There are several paths you can take & considering you grabbed an orb to warp to a secret level, I would assume that you'll take the longest route. Is that right?
An advice I can give you is that in levels where you can get an upgrade (or more), sometimes is beneficial to change the type of weapon just to upgrade it to a higher level & then change it back later winning some money for other purposes. Just be sure that the store sells the weapon or you'll get stuck with an inferior one...
Lots of neat touches in there, like how you dealt with the bosses.
I can't figure out what the goal is, though. Is the goal to maximize destruction %? If so, shouldn't you be using more twiddles, etc?
Tyrian really needs mouse input for TASing. You simply can't make the ship dance gracefully without it.
Additionally, for a run like this, I'd consider using Super Tyrian. It's the most superhuman single-player mode in the game and the twiddles ought to be vicious under TAS conditions. Arcade is also a possibility - smoothly changing weapons mid-level and playing around is more interesting than blazing through Full Game with a cookie cutter setup.
I agree completely about the mouse imput, but I won't be able to use the mouse any time soon so I'll do the best I can with keyboard imputs instead. I also agree about the Arcade mode, but right now it would be a pain to try and have both movement imputs, main weapon imput, rear weapon imput and frame advance "imput" at the same time (my laptop just isn't good enough to handle all those key presses at once. >.<)
Super Tyrian mode would be awesome to TAS perfectly, but right now I think I'll stick with story mode as a first try (also I haven't figured out every twiddle you can use yet).
Ah yes, my goals. The main goals I've been thinking of is to try and get as high destruction percentage as possible, though I've been trading it away a little to get higher score instead. There are places where I could kill enemies which nets me 8 score each and add more to the percentage compared to fewer enemies which nets me 100 score each. And yes, I realize now afterwards that I could've used more twiddles to increase the destruction %, but I think I'll settle with what % I have for this test run.
No damage taken whatsoever is another goal and that is easier to follow.
I think I might also add finding all data discs in every level, given it's possible to aquire them that is. At first I've been thinking of finding every secret level you can find to add more to the game (like a 100% run perhaps), but I can switch over to skip them all instead to save a lot of time. I could always shoot the enemy which has the secret level orb, but avoid taking it instead just as a teaser. It won't be hard to change the run to skip the orb and move on to Asteroids instead. Do you think that'd be a more interesting run?
And thanks for the advice samurai goroh, I'll see which levels I can make use of weapon upgrade exploit.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
After thinking about it, I've decided to skip the secret area and attempt to finish the game as fast as possible while ranking as high score and destruction % as possible, so I modified my last level just to avoid the orb and continue with Asteroid1 instead, I made a rough timing of the two levels and found out Asteroid1 is the faster one.
I am unsure whether my choice of weapons is the prime or if one extra upgrade/downgrade of a weapon would be the most beneficial, so I try to go by experience what might be strongest combo.
Struggling with destroying the asteroids in between the enemies on this level and when the "fork ships" appear I used a few atom bombs too many, leaving me with less to fight the enemies when the screen locks. Could've saved a second or so there and have a little less score instead. Apart from that I think I did pretty well. Comments and thoughts are appreciated. :)
An interesting thing about the boss on the first level actually is if I kill it too fast, I'll end up having to fight it "again." What I mean is since not the whole sprite of the boss is on the screen when it dies, the rest of the sprite comes afterwards and you'll have to fight it too. The other part doesn't have any weapons though so I'm in no danger, except losing time from killing it again.
Got an encode here, but can't load it right now. Not sure if it's Youtube or my uploading that's acting up. If it hasn't resolved until tomorrow I'll reupload it again which is working now. http://youtu.be/TORz5WHYK6Y
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
I watched already the 3 levels & can't wait to see this game getting TASed :D
If you don't have all the information, this page has quite some good information regarding the game:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/guide.html
BTW, you can escape from extra levels by getting yourself killed, though that would be against a goal you have in mind. Just mentioning in case you want to buy something that only appears on secret levels & don't want to finish it...
It was from that page I found out how to use the ship's special twiddles actually, and I'm checking it frequently for other things too.
And that bonus level too... according from the routes you can choose from, while avoiding all secret levels, I could encounter four Bonus levels in total. I'm not sure how long each bonus level is, but skipping those might save several minutes from the run compared to keeping the no damage goal. I'm leaning towards taking the deaths to save all the time I can.
Though, do anyone think a few/several minutes of speed/entertainment tradeoff in junction with the no damage goal would be more appealing than going "solely" for fastest time?
I just discovered something on the Savara level. The enemy which drops the front weapon upgrade can occacionally drop special weapons too. So far with testing I've found out it can drop the Repulsor, Attractor, Flare, Ziglon's Soul, Pearl Wind and the Ice Beam. Of all those I think Ziglon's Soul might be the best one as it can damage all ships and buildings (except large ships it seems, maybe large buildings too) in a straight line as well as having a fast recharge. The Pearl Wind could also be good as I can activate it every other frame because of its instant recharge. It'll increase my damage output, but it's hard to "aim" it unless I'm attacking something large, so I feel I'd have more use for Ziglon's Soul than Pearl Wind. The Flare, while it does a lot of damage and explodes across the screen, has such a long recharge it'd be hard to make practical use of it.
With this in mind I think I'll have to redo Savara and see if Ziglon's Soul will benefit me more than the front weapon upgrade.
Encode to my current Savara level by the way: http://youtu.be/0p0gaZgnOtE
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential.
Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
