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Super Star Wars is a Star Wars game for SNES that fairly loosly follows the events of episode IV.

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.3
  • Genre: platform
  • Aims for fastest time.
  • Takes dammage to save time.

Stage by stage comments

Level 1: Dune Sea

Manipulated the boss to stay surfaced.

Level 2: First Land Speeder Level

None

Level 3: Outside Sandcrawler

Spent some time waiting around for platforms.

Level 4: Inside Sandcrawler

You can actually stand in the lava while walking left against a wall, but it isn't really useful.

Level 5: Land of the Sand People

None

Level 6: Land of the Banthas

There is a cool Giant Womp Rat, and it is one of two bosses worth using the light saber on.

Level 7: Second Lander Speeder Level

None

Level 8: Mos Eisley

None

Level 9: Cantina Fight

A bit more of an arcade type level, you need to kill to progress. The boss here is the other one worth using the light saber on.

Level 10: Escape From Mos Eisley

None

Level 11: Death Star Hanger Bay

None

Level 12: Rescue of the Princess

None

Level 13: Tractor Beam Core

Tons of platforms that aren't well synchronized, a lot of time wasted waiting for platforms.

Level 14: The Death Star

None

Other comments:

Because I was using TAStudio the rerecord count is 0.

Potential improvements:

  • Manipulating enemy drops to get blaster improvements sooner could save time.
  • If platforms could be manipulated into better positions that would save a bunch of wait time.

Acknowledgements:

I'd like to thank the following for the helpful resources.

Truncated: I'll take this one.
Truncated: Or not... I'm leaving this open until I can get the emulator working. Other judges, feel free to grab it iff you can play it back.

feos: The research before making this run seems to be done very poorly. Since 2007 there exists a WIP that is 532 frame faster in Level 1 + Boss. And that WIP was not even optimized to maximum. Since 2009 there exists a real-time run that uses quite some tricks that prove this TAS's sub-optimality. The main thing is skipping the Level 4 Boss (saves ~13 seconds) by scrolling the camera up, which does not let him spawn. Also, standing right before the mini-boss of that level, one can kill him a second faster than in this TAS. This does not come from the difficulty difference, since that only adds 1-2 HP to bosses. The game speed isn't different in a European version, used by that RTS.
I also can't agree with the difficulty chosen here, because it does not affect the gameplay, it only increases the player's damage. That means you can do much more damage boosts in an Easy run, not losing actual gameplay. Rejecting the run, and hoping more effort is put in a TAS of such a complicated game, ideally several people would work on it, due to heavy luck manipulation required.


Tompa
Any
Editor, Expert player (2215)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1942
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
Level: There are several parts where it can be improved. Such as not jumping to grab the weapon upgrade in the first level and to cancel the slide by shooting the enemy rather than jumping over it (Something that could have been done in most levels, also a good way to cancel the slide to make a jump afterwards). Boss looked a bit improveable as well. With better health management you could take some rock hits while keep shooting for example. Level 2: Not too with the manipulation. It's very hard to get it good. I'm certain it could still be improved though. Level 3: Seems a bit slow, but platforms are very annoying, crazy lag on this level even though most can't be reduced. Level 4: Main complain here is that you can skip the boss by scrolling up the camera with R when going down the platform at the end. Level 6, couldn't the detonators be used to take down the Banthas or the boss quicker? I though you would use the detonator you recieved at the end boss, but apparently not, so I suppose it was slower? Level 7: This manipulation wasn't too great really :/. Level 8: Ah, you started to cancel slides to shoot enemies now, nice :). Detonators should be useful here to kill enemies on the screen to reduce lag. Though it might cause more lag to use it, I don't know. Level 9: I can't remember how the spawns work for these enemies. Are they always the same or can they be manipulated? Was a pretty nice looking level overall at least. Level 11: Heh, I liked having the small robot push you forward :D. Shouldn't that be doable the first times too? Level 12: Possibly some camera management to spawn the elevators early/later? Not sure if they work like that however... I liked the damage boost being pushed forward in midair. Level 13: Another possible use for the camera to help out with the elevators. As this level is very slow having to wait for them :(. Also, sorry for not mentioning any of these things earlier... I have been unable to watch Bizhawk movie and I completely forgot to say anything about it in the topic. When this submission showed up I just remembered about it.
Joined: 12/2/2012
Posts: 6
Finally someone has made a TAS of this. Haven't had time to watch it all yet but Tompa covered a lot of what I noticed could be improved. In level 1 you can slide right through the worm creatures if you shoot the base of them right as they emerge.
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
This seems rather unoptimized, even when taking into consideration the game's clunky controls, so I found myself voting no :(
Active player (406)
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708
That Sarlacc boss fight in level 1 really does not look optimized.
Active player (406)
Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708
I'm voting no due to poor optimization, but there are a lot of parts that are well done. I think if you redid this and cleaned up a few parts, this would be a yes.
Experienced player (877)
Joined: 11/15/2010
Posts: 267
Tompa, thanks for your tips. I think I improved interrupting the slide in the middle of the run, so there probably are some places early on where it isn't the best. It is a bit difficult to say with the random nature of some things though. I thought I needed to jump to get the weapon upgrade in the first level, but it is possible that I don't if i interrupt the slide in the right place. Thanks for the tip on level 4, I did try L and R on a few things, but maybe not as much as I could have. There may be some places where I can take advantage of the thermal detonator, but it does have a bit of lag, and it is also only available for at limited time. This would be even more helpful if I could manipulate some drops close enough to boss fights. I didn't really put much effort into manipulating the drops. For level 11, I'm not sure how much more can be done to get the small robots to push you along. I won't count it out, but for the most part you're probably better off just sliding along. I did try using L/R to manipulated the platforms, but it didn't seem to work. I may not have tried the manipulation far enough ahead, and I didn't check the RAM addresses to be sure. It may be possible. I know the Sarlacc fight looks pretty sub-optimal, but I'm not sure there's a lot I can do. Movement in the quicksand is pretty slow, so jumping is really the only option. I need to move closer and further away to prevent the Sarlacc from retreating into the ground. Also the blaster isn't very powerful. I can't guarantee this fight is optimized, but I'm quite sure it doesn't "look" optimized.
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
I dimly recall that some enemies can drop blaster powerups -- at least, I think I remember grinding on womp rats to get high-powered blasters. Maybe it was extra lives though. It might be worth seeing if their drops can be manipulated, or if it's one of those "every 20th monster drops something special" kinds of things. If you could reach Plasma during the first level I imagine that would speed things up a lot.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 12/2/2012
Posts: 6
random Enemies don't drop blaster power ups. Once you kill a certain amount of womp rats In one area a blaster and two hearts appear though.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
Nicos wrote:
adelikat wrote:
Guys, if you are copying 1.3 into the same folder as 1.2 that's why things are crashing. We moved around the dlls. Try a fresh folder.
I tried directly with 1.3 before trying 1.2 The prereqs didn't help was it for XP or 7, same crash. As i'm on a 3g connection, i lost my morning downloading the whole thing :)
Restart your computer.
Tompa wrote:
Disallowed for future runs because of incorrect emulation (Despite versions like 1.52 emulates better than BizHawk).
To anyone who reads this, this is flat out misinformation. BizHawk, like lsnes, uses the bsnes emulator as its SNES core. bsnes is light years ahead of any snes9x version in terms of accuracy. ---- Edit by FractalFusion: Merged two posts.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Tompa
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Editor, Expert player (2215)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1942
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I heard differently from the comparision topic at least... I guess it might differ depending on the game then? My bad if so, sorry.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
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Heisanevilgenius wrote:
That Sarlacc boss fight in level 1 really does not look optimized.
"Does not look optimized" and "is not optimized" are two completely different things. I wouldn't pass judgment before knowing if it is indeed suboptimal.
Joined: 5/12/2010
Posts: 38
Warp wrote:
Heisanevilgenius wrote:
That Sarlacc boss fight in level 1 really does not look optimized.
"Does not look optimized" and "is not optimized" are two completely different things. I wouldn't pass judgment before knowing if it is indeed suboptimal.
It looks pretty optimized to me. I tried a TAS of the first level a few years ago and it went a little like that. He's forcing the sarlacc to stay up so he can keep shooting. There probably is a better way of doing it, but I'm not sure it would gain anything. The elevator-based levels really killed the pace of this. That's just the way the game is made so I can't really dock points for that. Still, it was mostly enjoyable from start to finish so I'm voting yes.
Post subject: Re: #3779: link_7777's SNES Super Star Wars in 22:00.41
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 1
link_7777 wrote:
Manipulating enemy drops to get blaster improvements sooner could save time.
I don't think that's true. From the faq you linked (and my own experience corroborates this) regarding the blaster power up:
This power up is never dropped randomly, only found or dropped from specific enemies that will always drop it upon being defeated.
Tompa
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Editor, Expert player (2215)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1942
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I did a little comparision to my old WIP of the first level (Posted here) And up to the boss I seem to be around 3-4 seconds ahead of this run (Not counting the time it took for you to switch to Jedi mode). I would guess 1-2 seconds of that is less lag, haven't played this run in Bizhawk for an accurate comparision. But my WIP still shows several faster strategies for the level. As for the boss skip in level 4, it would save around 13 seconds probably.
Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
I found this pretty entertaining, but I'm not sure what to vote if there are large optimizations the author missed. You have a yes vote from me, but I'll wait until this gets sorted out.
TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... *burp*!