Joined: 6/9/2005
Posts: 171
Location: Southern California
Woo! Hang Low looks really good now! :) Great job so far!! I was cracking up at how quick you're tearing through these. I like the way you wave the cursor around frantically and trace backgrounds during downtimes--sort of reminds me of the playarounds between rounds of Bubble Bobble, or during the Sonic TASes after you cross the goal line. Keep it up!
I thought you said Boggle for a second... Anyone want to try to make a TAS of Boggle? :)
Anyways, I really enjoyed this, I think this is a great TAS, and I can't wait to see it done.
At the fourth level, Impale Sticky, couldn't you throw up all goos you needed from the start instead of trailing some of them from the bottom to the top? Or is this approach faster?
"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."
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I like this so far. My only criticism is that you have the opportunity to use the black cursor to spell out letters in the same way that Adelikat does in the NES Gradius run, since it looks like the cursor leaves enough of a black trail to spell out letters when moving it very fast. Whenever you have these kind of opportunities to write messages to the audience, it can only enhance the entertainment value.
In Hang Low, why not throw the goo-balls /before/ you build to the pipe? Or is it impossible to keep them in the air long enough to build to the pipe before they land?
Also, the first level is really really fast; it seems on simple levels like that, pure building speed is going to beat any fancy strategies. And Ivy Towers is a really really hilarious and great way to solve it; I can already tell that green goo breaks levels in a TAS even more than it breaks regular gameplay :) It's a pity the camera can't scroll to the actual action fast enough to see what happened, although I know the game well enough to figure it out.
At the fourth level, Impale Sticky, couldn't you throw up all goos you needed from the start instead of trailing some of them from the bottom to the top? Or is this approach faster?
I tried to throw all of them, but for some mysterious reason after 6 goos... It becomes a huge mess, all of them are bouncing (sometimes very high). So I would need to wait, and I can't afford that. And once I start to build, I don't have the time to throw one or two, as the bridge is already falling.
But I think I'm going to redo this level, because... Yeah, I don't like watching it, it seems ugly :l
ais523 wrote:
In Hang Low, why not throw the goo-balls /before/ you build to the pipe? Or is it impossible to keep them in the air long enough to build to the pipe before they land?
What you see here is me throwing them as hard as I can, but they seems to slow down dramatically at the black-line-goos, don't know why. I will try to move up the camera a little bit, maybe it will work then !
Comicalflop wrote:
My only criticism is that you have the opportunity to use the black cursor to spell out letters
I tried to do so in Impale Sticky (wrote STBM ), but... Damn it's hard ! I'm planning to write the name of the devs of this game later though, but I have to admit that right now that the entertainment value at the beginning of each level isn't... great :p I'll try to improve it !
Thanks for all the feedback ! :D
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I think your best time to write messages to the audience is at the end of each level, when the pipe thingie fills up with goo. You have like what, 5-10 seconds of waiting? Use it wisely.
And yes I can attest to how difficult writing messages can be, but trust me it's worth it.
ais523 wrote:
In Hang Low, why not throw the goo-balls /before/ you build to the pipe? Or is it impossible to keep them in the air long enough to build to the pipe before they land?
What you see here is me throwing them as hard as I can, but they seems to slow down dramatically at the black-line-goos, don't know why. I will try to move up the camera a little bit, maybe it will work then !
Wow, don't know why I misunderstood which level you were talking about. But the answer still the same, I tried but I didn't manage keep them long enough in air. And throwing one or two before wouldn't change anything. I'll try again, just to be sure though.
Very entertaining! The levels are destroyed so quickly, I wonder if in the end the gameplay:cutscene ratio will be even smaller than Ocarina Of Time :P
I tried to throw all of them, but for some mysterious reason after 6 goos... It becomes a huge mess, all of them are bouncing (sometimes very high). So I would need to wait, and I can't afford that. And once I start to build, I don't have the time to throw one or two, as the bridge is already falling.
That's throwing them all in the same direction towards the same point? It doesn't make any difference if you threw them more upwards so you'll manage to build the construction and catch them before they fall down? Or is there perhaps a "roof" so you can't throw them high up either?
Edit: Oh, ais523 already asked this. How unobservant of me...
"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 didn't knew the Wii-mote recording was that good.
There was an update recently that seems to have fixed a number of issues. Testing as been pretty limited, but it's working quite well for me in nsmbw, with almost no desyncs.
For Hang Low :
- I tried the OCD method with TAS precision (example : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJUl8-RxdIg ), but I can't manage to get enough goo (always miss one, after 2 hours of tries... The only time I got enough goos, they bounced so high I had to wait 5 seconds for them to go down... which is too much).
- I can't throw the goos and THEN build the tower. The higher those goos go, the faster they are, and building the tower to the pipe is slow. Plus, waiting for the goos to wake up is really long (4-5 frames per 3 goos), I tried to push the bottom of the structure to wake more goos at the same time, but then building the tower is even slower... :(
So yeah, that's pretty much 2 hours of testing here :) If you don't understand something because of my horrible english, please ask !
I don't think your english is horrible. In fact, it's very good.
Anyway, it's still pretty amazing how fast you destroy these levels, so keep at it! You're doing great, and I'd love to see more!
Ok, I have a little problem here... I have 9 goos flying (I threw them), and each time I reload the savestate (which is just after I threw the 9th goo), they land in different places !
So either :
1- The savestate changes the value of their velocity (somehow, a possible problem with the emulator, but I don't think this is the reason)
2- The cursor actually affects the gravity in the game (I made some test, and... I can't really conclude anything :( Sometimes it seems coherant, and sometimes no). In this case, throwing many goos while making sure they land on the right spot is going to be... harder than I though :p
... Or Impale Sticky is a very buggy level. Anyway, I saved 16 frames by using a completely different strategy (way more entertening actually). But damn, I let the game play at full speed I got 26 goos in the pipe, I use a savestate and suddenly I only got 25 ... Meh :p
The cursor actually affects the gravity in the game
You could just test that by not moving the mouse and reloading the savestate several times.
Or Impale Sticky is a very buggy level.
I don't think it could be the level bugging up. If the emulator was running the game right, it should be the exact same every time you load the savestate.
You could just test that by not moving the mouse and reloading the savestate several times.
That's the test I made, and yes it didn't change, that's why I though the cursor was the reason, but... I don't know, I tried to influence the landing on Hang Low, and I couldn't. This is why I can't conclude anything ! Maybe it's the camera...
Bah, I will just continue I guess.
EDIT : Just discovered something... When you get enough goo in the pipe, TRY TO GO UP as fast as you can, the "continue" button will fell way more fast. I just saved 20 frames on Ivy Tower with that :p
I can't see what would be random here, the velocity ? The gravity ? Aren't they supposed to be constant ? (i mean, not random) ?
But yeah, I think you're right. But I can make it optimized without manipulating that, because I need to throw other goos while one goo is in the air.so I can't really concentrate on the position of the cursor at this moment... Unless the rng change dependent of the pixel :p Is there any ram watch on Dolphin anyway ?
I redid my run from the beginning to Chain (where I stopped in my WIP2), and I saved more than one second (83 frames) using different (and nicer) strategies.
I've never played the game, so i can't say, but all of those things could potentially be random. Video game physics don't always make sense.
You can use cheat engine. There's info about it in the dolphin forum.
I feel like to make a fully optimized run, we'll need to figure out all the weird kinks in a game. I'm sure if it's the cursor (which would make sense) then I think you could save at least a few frames in the levels. I think we should figure out this whole thing if it were feasible.
I feel like to make a fully optimized run, we'll need to figure out all the weird kinks in a game. I'm sure if it's the cursor (which would make sense) then I think you could save at least a few frames in the levels. I think we should figure out this whole thing if it were feasible.
Well, I can't. :( But what would save many seconds would be a hack to see the whole level. Not being able to throw goos with extreme speed or anything, just being able to pause the game and look everywhere, Because on levels like Tower Of Goo, throwing goos blindly without being able AT ALL to see where they went and how to correct the shot is... ugh.
Anyway, chapter one done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjfzVyzMOM
Comments are welcome !
As you can see, around a second can be saved if I can shot with more accuracy on Tower Of Goo and Fistys Bog (Actually, I don't really know if you can be more accurate... There's actually now way to know it ! :( ). So yeah, definitely not the final version of this TAS, but it's just to get some idea of strategy.
PS : Yes, audio desync and stuff, the video has some lag when I dump it, and when it gets long (like 6 minutes), there is 1-2 second of desync, then 3, and then this.
PS2 : I hate timebugs.
PS3 : I'm going to post less WIP, the first ones were just to be sure I was doing it right, but I don't think that it makes much sense to post 3 WIP by chapter :p
