Welcome to my first TASing attempt. This was my first N64 game so I thought I would run it. The goal was to get from the start of adventure mode to the end of Wizpig II as fast as possible. Banjo seemed to be the fastest character so he was used.
Aims for fastest time
Abuses programming errors
Tricks
Sliding - R sliding makes you go faster but not fast enough to be able to snake.
Zippers - Zippers give you a speed boost. Releasing A over a zipper results in a better boost accompanied by a green as opposed to purple flame.
A tapping - The A button can be pressed repeatedly rather than held to gain speed. This trick is exploited in every cart track and to a lesser extent in the hover and plane tracks. The tap rate differs between the vehicles, though.
Hovercraft snaking - Holding R and alternating between left and right is faster than travelling in a straight line.
Barrel rolling - Used in the plane tracks to gain speed. Releasing A increases this effect.
Boost jump - After a zipper, if you manage to get airborne, the speed boost continues until you land. This effect is displayed in Jungle Falls towards the end of the lap.
Wall boosting - I jump off some walls to change direction or because it was better to do so.
Other Comments
In the Fire Mountain challenge, the eggs can only be stolen a few seconds after they are dropped hence my rolling to kill time.
The boss race in Dino Domain can supposedly be won by staying at the starting point you will mysteriously win. A few people claimed this but I have no idea how to replicate it.
The credits can be skipped with a console reset but that is not yet possible with this emulator. Skipping the credits would have brought the time below two hours.
The trophy races are essentially the same as the other races so I displayed the minimap the whole time to give it some replay value. The exception is Boulder Canyon where the speedometer was too important to be hidden.
There are a few times in this run where a weapon is deployed behind my vehicle. Even though you cannot see it, these weapons always hit the person in first place helping me to lap the CPUs in some races.
The A button is only pressed once during the first Windmill Plains race.
I wasn’t able to use hex editing at all during this run. I changed the minimap/speedometer once during a race but a desync managed to find its way in three tracks later.
Thanks to...
Yasutaka Mitani - I watched his videos to get some strategies.
The members of the forum who me gave encouragement, ideas and various comments.
adelikat: Accepting for publication due to overwhelming viewer response. Even most of the no voters approved of the game choice and voted against it due to claims of improvements. No claim of such improvements were confirmed by any type of testing. Therefore, I was unable to weigh them into my decision.
I've been trying for the last week to get this working properly. I've checked that I have the correct version of all of the plugins and Mupen64 - the emulator says I have the correct version of the ROM. All that happens is shortly after the game gives control to Banjo, he proceeds to drive around like an idiot in the courtyard.
What am I missing?
I've been trying for the last week to get this working properly. I've checked that I have the correct version of all of the plugins and Mupen64 - the emulator says I have the correct version of the ROM. All that happens is shortly after the game gives control to Banjo, he proceeds to drive around like an idiot in the courtyard.
What am I missing?
You have to use the TAS input plugin. Look for it around here somewhere.
I've been trying for the last week to get this working properly. I've checked that I have the correct version of all of the plugins and Mupen64 - the emulator says I have the correct version of the ROM. All that happens is shortly after the game gives control to Banjo, he proceeds to drive around like an idiot in the courtyard.
What am I missing?
You have to use the TAS input plugin. Look for it around here somewhere.
It works fine for me even though I do not have the TAS input plugin selected when I play the movie. My suggestion would be to download a fresh copy of Mupen from this site so that you are guaranteed to have the all the plugin settings reset to their defaults. Then try to play the movie with the newly downloaded Mupen. (This is assuming that the settings for all copies of Mupen on a computer are independent of one another, which I think is the case since I used this suggestion myself to solve desync problems with the Banjo-Kazooie WIP)
Edit: Forgot to mention...I watched this run and I found it fairly entertaining. The speed in which the races were completed exceeded my expectations (even for a TAS). My main complaint was having to watch each race again in the trophy challenge, but there wasn't anything that could be done about that. Anyway, I am voting yes for this.
i knew this would be accepted
you doubters pshhhhh
so im curious if the author or someone else will be improving this or is it too much work
and what are the estimates for how much time can be saved, say, 6-8 minutes maybe?
so im curious if the author or someone else will be improving this or is it too much work
and what are the estimates for how much time can be saved, say, 6-8 minutes maybe?
I might do another run if there was a way to start with TT because he is much faster and makes a more entertaining run.
I think that 4-5 minutes would be saved if banjo was used once more unless some new strats were found.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[946] N64 Diddy Kong Racing by xenos in 2:03:02.08
Unoptimized, repetitive, boring and the game just plain feels slow. Sorry, but even though it was published, I can't get behind this run.
Hm, you must have watched Lamborghini 64 instead of the DKR TAS then...
Not optimized but still entertaining to watch for me. Some other published runs are optimized but not entertaining which I dislike more.
I've watched so many runs of games I struggled through in my past, and this is no exception. This is however the first time I got mad at how the challenges of the game were obliterated. Greenwood's Village Silver Coin Challenge took me forever to do, and then I watched this and wanted to cry.
(That was all a compliment.)
I think I will abstain from voting. I dont know all that much about the game but the tracks seemed well played. I found myself only watching them once though. Seeing 20 tracks 3 times each with 3 laps ech time was too much for me. Anyway congrats on the longest N64 run!
This signature is much better than its previous version.
You're just not thinking fourth dimensionally :P
Besides, future historians will interpret the vote as an approval rating of the run, in complement to the movie rating.
This signature is much better than its previous version.
That bear sure can drive! Was fun to watch... until I saw the same tracks two more times each.
It's already been said that this run is pretty un-optimized... just like to add a few things I noticed while watching.
-Close to every zipper you hit while in hover or plane, you grind to a complete (albeit brief) halt before going through, try to align yourself properly before going through to avoid this.
-The joystick in Mupen can be controlled beyond (pressed all the way) or (not pressed). Watching the input, I never saw anything other than 99> or 99< for the joystick. While it's obviously faster to steer this way, you probably aren't lined up properly after a lot of turns.
-Lots of bumping into things that did visibly slow you down which probably could've been avoided
-Inconsistency in laps in races which weren't silver coin challenges
-28K rerecords for a 2+ hour N64 TAS is to me a clear indicator that while, sure, lots of time was spent on this, a lot of testing of alternate ways to do things wasn't done, and a lot of trickier maneuvers may not have had enough time spent on them to find the fastest, or cleanest solution.
-Lots of opportunity to be funny/violent was wasted. All those times you lapped the other guys with rockets in your inventory... you didn't punish them for their crappy AI driving skills. For shame.
All that said, I did enjoy watching the run, but there seems to be a shitpile of room for improvement.
Joined: 11/11/2006
Posts: 1235
Location: United Kingdom
Since the current image for the published run is blurry and low quality, I've made an updated image of the same frame.
Old image:
New image:
The newer image is slightly larger (the more vibrant colours and crisper edges did this), but I feel the increase in quality is worth it.
<adelikat> I am annoyed at my irc statements ending up in forums & sigs
Although somewhat small differences, I completely agree. The picture looks beautiful [tear] and the increased quality is what did it... I <3 crisp lines
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Diddy Kong Racing was completed in 50 minutes and a few seconds this weekend during SGDQ! Surely someone can beat that with a TAS ! This is so old! Someone has to update this to reflect today's discoveries of the game!
Diddy Kong Racing was completed in 50 minutes and a few seconds this weekend during SGDQ! Surely someone can beat that with a TAS ! This is so old! Someone has to update this to reflect today's discoveries of the game!
Um
http://tasvideos.org/3831S.html
The skip (and times) in the SGDQ record are only possible on a NG+ file for multiple reasons.
Hoping for someone to do this. BUT not so true about the NG+ thing personally.
The TASes (any% and 100%) should be NG+, as in "use TT". But not for that 5 minute run, isn't that essentially just a glitched way to copy a finished file?
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.
New image:
The newer image is slightly larger (the more vibrant colours and crisper edges did this), but I feel the increase in quality is worth it.
