This is a any% run of a game called VVVVVV. I used version 2.0 because in the latest version (2.1) you can't commit suicide by pressing R. The ingame time of this run is 12:33 which is 45 seconds faster than the current toolless run (13:18), which also uses version 2.0.
Game objectives
Emulator used: Hourglass r81 (Multithreading and Wait Sync: Allow)
Aims for the fastest completion
Skips Gravitron
Uses death to save time
Comments
The physics of this game are strange, that's why I found it hard to optimize this. In this game you basically only have 5 keys. < and > to move the guy around. Action to flip and to talk. Enter to warp from a teleporter and R to commit suicide.
Death saved time in the tower because the screen will scroll to a specific position based on the checkpoint when you respawn. If you die and the checkpoint is at the top of the screen, it will scroll down and save time.
Glitches
Dying in the intro
I think the game gets confused if you die in the intro where you shouldn't supposed to die so it brings you back to your starting position. It skips a few scenes but the biggest save is that you can skip Gravitron because saving Violet doesn't lead you to the grey rooms.
Going through "Inversion Planes"
Inversion Planes or bounce lines can be skipped if they are near the floor. You press up then release it one frame then press up again. This is possible without tools if you try a bit :)
Other Comments
I guess this game can have different branches. There are twenty Shiny Trinkets around the game which could make a 100% run interesting. It is also possible to create a movie without dying, which wouldn't skip Gravitron for example. There is a No Death Mode which can be unlocked and you can skip cutscenes with it.
Very interesting game. Looks like one of the old DOS games, almost. I haven't played it, but I still found this really fast-paced and entertaining. Yes vote!
It's actually in many ways an homage to the Commodore 64k, including using the same standard font. I think it also imitates the palette, though the analog way in which colors were handled back then makes this an imprecise proposition at best.
It's a homage to games like Jet Set Willy and the Dizzy series in particular, with monotone coloured sprites that move on a set pattern for enemies, names for every single (non-scrolling) room that appear at the bottom of the screen and so on.
There's a reasonably clear routing error in this TAS, as far as I can tell. Isn't getting the trinket in One Way Room is faster than skipping it? (As such, this run is a low%, not an any%.)
Intentionally playing a specific version of a PC game instead of the most up to date because of a bug in that version and only that version is really dubious to me.
(derail) What would you say then about, say, playing the original NA Metroid Prime instead of the Greatest Hits version, which was modified to remove sequence breaks without fixing the bugs / oversights that originally made those breaks possible
I think the issue is that this bug was not in previous versions, and is not in future versions. Honestly, though, I can't answer you hypothetical objectively because I am a HUGE Metroid fanboy and I love any and all forms of sequence breaking.
We're not talking about Metroid Prime. We're talking about this game. And there already are rules in place for that, although bug fixes addressing such usually happens during localization, but they still create stable console releases. Stable being the key word.
This is on a platform where major bug fixes and updates like this are common instead of extremely rare, and this particular bug only existed for a single version that lasted a month.
If/when TASing full PC games from the age of downloading patches becomes common, I'd hope the rule would be "Use the stable release," not picking whatever intermediary patch has the most severe glitch in it. Maybe this is a good chance to debate it.
But it IS an stable version. It was released to the public. You could buy it. This is not some obscure build someone got it from the darkweb.
And nowadays the consoles can download patches as well. Do you need to download the latest patch of the game to TAS? (Not hypothetical; see WiiWare)
edit: oh yeah, the TAS itself.
When I saw a VVVVVV tas was released, I instantly screamed, clicked the link, started watching and sent the video to my friend. I was not disappointed. Yes vote.
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
Never played this myself, but I've seen several friends attempt this madness. While nowhere near as hard as "I Wanna Be the Guy," and being hard for different reasons, I still consider this a pretty challenging game. It's also pretty popular, from what I can tell.
Given that, and the fact that this is an interesting run, I figure this deserves a spot on the Moon tier.
Voted Yes for entertainment, naturally~
1/60 of a second is important; every frame matters.
I'm pretty sure it's fieryblizzard (or volcano on his YT channel) who has WR on any% (and 100%) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly1_kR5AJ7k
I didn't vote from yet. Yes it's entertaining, but I don't get how can you be behind the RTA WR. Last input is far behind the RTA one, but the difference is not that obvious.
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cR4p0 wrote:
I'm pretty sure it's fieryblizzard (or volcano on his YT channel) who has WR on any% (and 100%) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly1_kR5AJ7k
I didn't vote from yet. Yes it's entertaining, but I don't get how can you be behind the RTA WR. Last input is far behind the RTA one, but the difference is not that obvious.
Timer starts (in tas) on the opening of a game so think of it as HappyLee's SMB the time says 04:57.31 in TAS time, with sda timing it would be ~04:54.xx
Hope that clarifies it for you.
Edit: Look at the ingame time 13:18 (RTA WR), 12:33 (TAS) just to let you know more where the timer actually starts.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
I'm pretty sure it's fieryblizzard (or volcano on his YT channel) who has WR on any% (and 100%) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly1_kR5AJ7k
I didn't vote from yet. Yes it's entertaining, but I don't get how can you be behind the RTA WR. Last input is far behind the RTA one, but the difference is not that obvious.
Timer starts (in tas) on the opening of a game so think of it as HappyLee's SMB the time says 04:57.31 in TAS time, with sda timing it would be ~04:54.xx
Hope that clarifies it for you.
Edit: Look at the ingame time 13:18 (RTA WR), 12:33 (TAS) just to let you know more where the timer actually starts.
Yeah that's what I thought when I said that the last input were far behind (in TAS).
TASing the older version doesn't seem odd to me if it was one of commercial versions, DKC any% speedrun also used older one to use a warp glitch and no one didn't bother by it.
Anyway, VVVVVV was one of games on my 'want-to-see' list and your speedrun didn't disappoint me. Yes vote.
There's a reasonably clear routing error in this TAS, as far as I can tell. Isn't getting the trinket in One Way Room is faster than skipping it?)
It probably is faster non-TAS, but I tested it and this way was 4 frames faster than getting the trinket.
The reason the non-TAS uses the other route is because there are these floors that move backwards. If you don't jump frameperfect it is easy to lose time :)
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
There's a reasonably clear routing error in this TAS, as far as I can tell. Isn't getting the trinket in One Way Room is faster than skipping it?)
It probably is faster non-TAS, but I tested it and this way was 4 frames faster than getting the trinket.
The reason the non-TAS uses the other route is because there are these floors that move backwards. If you don't jump frameperfect it is easy to lose time :)
I was wondering about that. (Also if there's an in-game time / real-time distinction.)
This TAS looks really spectacular, even though I never played the game. Besides that, I absolutely LOVE the music. I'm going to search for the soundtrack just because of this TAS.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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This game wins the foda awards for best game ever.
Regarding game version, I'd go with whatever released version is more suitable for entertainment value. That includes language, game breaking glitches and skippable content. I'm not sure why the rule is to use the latest version, but if it is a rule it must be followed. I'd vote for this rule to be reviewed, but regardless, it isn't going to influence my vote for the run.
The run itself was very enjoyable, I loved the tricks and there was a good amount of play around. The game's physics make it look like that it could be better optimized often, but I bet you did a good job and that it is only an impression, not the reality.
yes vote
The tool less run... It must have been played in slow mode and then sped up. Nobody can pull that level of precision so consistently (so I want to believe).
Every release of a game is a different game, and each one deserves a TAS as much as any other. However, since there is little reason to host many videos of nearly identical games, a newer, much better run in the same category on a different version than the accepted one should be able to obsolete it, regardless of time difference.
That is, let's say run A in 5:00 on version 1 is accepted. Now run B in 5:03 on version 1.1 is submitted. The judges should first judge the overall quality (optimization+entertainment) of the runs. If B is found to be significantly superior, it should be accepted, and obsolete A. In most cases, B could not be found significantly superior unless the time difference is explicable by version differences.
Run C in 5:01 on version 1 should be immediately rejected for being worse than an obsoleted movie. Run D in 4:57 on version 1.1 should be immediately accepted for being and improvement on a published movie. Run E in 4:58 on version 1, however, would be a publication candidate: it's not strictly slower than any previously accepted run of the same version, and, perhaps due to newly discovered tricks on version 1, might now be the superior TAS, despite being slower than the currently accepted run. This shouldn't be thought of as "accepting a slower run", but should be thought of in the same way we might currently let a slower English-language run obsolete a Japanese language one if it is also of generally higher quality and most of the time difference comes from text boxes.
In the case of VVVVVV, it seems like 2.0 is the best suited to any%, and 2.1 is the best suited to 100%. But if someone later finds an awesome 2.1-only sequence break that still leaves the run slower than this one due to the lack of death abuse, perhaps an argument could be made that the sequence break is awesomer than the death abuse, and that, assuming the new run is well-optimized with respect to its version, it should obsolete this one.
All of this would come up basically never. Popular (& judge) opinion of the quality of a run will, in nearly every case, be strongly correlated with how fast it is. But this system would allow for those weird cases where everyone agrees that a new run on a different version is better despite being slower to get through without a huge hassle.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
The whole issue of 2.0 vs. 2.1 here is very important to the future of PC (and newer consoles) TAS I think, as brought up before. Especially this quote:
boct1584 wrote:
I think the issue is that this bug was not in previous versions, and is not in future versions.
The only two releases of a game that are obviously acceptable are the first version, and the current version.
Imagine v1.0.6 of a game introduces some crazy collision bug that lets you walk through many walls and skip large parts of many levels. This wasn't in v1.0.5, and it was fixed in v1.0.7. Does it really make sense for 1.0.6 to be the accepted version for TASing, just because it's the one that can be run the fastest? Even though it was an official patch release, it wasn't really a "stable" release. But then how would you define "stable release"?
In the case of VVVVVV, and this run, it's absolutely not an issue, for a few reasons:
1. VVVVVV 2.0 is the first version of the C++ port, so in many ways it's like a 1.0 release.
2. Being "2.0", obviously it is a stable release, not an intermediate patch
3. The version of the game you download from Steam is still 2.0, so the 2.1 linked on the distractionware forums is not even the main commercial version.
But, I think it's important to think about the rules on what version numbers of a frequently-patched game are allowed. And in the case of consoles, could you even get the in-between versions? I know on 360 you can play the version on the disc, or patch it to the current version. It's not like every version of a patched game is stored somewhere. It's different than, "This cartridge I'm holding is 1.0. This other cartridge is 1.1." Patches overwrite the old game.
I don't know. It's something to think about, because I think PC TAS has a bright future. Hopefully this isn't gibberish.
I've been longing to see a VVVVVV TAS for so long, and I'm sure that this wouldn't disappoint me. Will watch and vote immediately after I get home and this gets published.
By the way, I'm a big fan of this game, and I'd like to make an 100% (all Shiny Trinkets) run this year if no one else wants to do it. One of the things that stopped me last year is the version issue. Using suicide in 2.0 can save plenty of time in the 100% run, but I'm not sure if anyone would like to see it happens. As for me, I'm with the use of 2.0 for both any% and 100% run, and I'd like to hear from others' opinions.
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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