This topic is for the purpose of discussing #734: nesrocks's NES Gauntlet in 13:09.00

Wow. That was pretty impressive. I think this game must hold the record for having the most enemies in it. You can 50 of them on the screen at the same time, and there's 100 levels. You fought, or just ran through hundreds of enemies. Tremendous job. Yes vote.

Yes, very impressive. Voted Yes too. PS: I read now at GameFAQs this Secret: Escape Those Pesky Stun Squares Right when you get caught on a stun square, pause the game by pressing start, and then unpause it and you will no longer be stuck. It doesn't look like, that you have done it. You sometimes stuck long in these Stun Squares. Or is this a fake Secret? Or have you done it and I have not notice this?

The whole time I watched this I thought "Wow. That's fast." Yes. Ending the game with 4 life left... x)

Escape Those Pesky Stun Squares Right when you get caught on a stun square, pause the game by pressing start, and then unpause it and you will no longer be stuck. It doesn't look like, that you have done it. You sometimes stuck long in these Stun Squares. Or is this a fake Secret? Or have you done it and I have not notice this?

It takes longer to pause and unpause then just wait. Thanks for watching and pointing that out, i forgot to mention it.

Fast-paced, well done.

I don't understand what's going on... sometimes you run trough enemies and lose life and sometimes you don't. Do you shoot them just before you run into them? The life seems to be replenished on random, I must be missing something. I liked the attackspamming on the dragon boss and the exact playing to end with minimal life. Plus the character moves blazingly fast, which is always a plus. I'm going out on a limb (because I really don't know this game well) and voting Yes.

The invulnerability i got on level (91 i guess?) lasts really long, at start of level 100 i think i still have some invulnerability left.

excellent job! In your submission you mention that you manipulate luck to get the exits in the treasure rooms to be the closest possible. In level 1 you went to two treasure room and went into a different exit both times. Shouldn't you have found the fastest exit and made sure you got it both times? either way, definate yes vote

thats because those 2 exits were similar in length, and the time required to wait in map room to get the optimized exit would result in slower final exit

I approve of this movie. The sheer speed and crazy amounts of monsters, not to mention the nostalgia, makes this an entertaining movie. This is the first time I've ever seen the (crappy) ending to this game.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [371] NES Gauntlet by nesrocks in 13:09.00

w00t!

Are people having success with the .avi? it is crashing in mplayer, with this: Error while decoding frame! [h264 @ 0x85c05e8]picture size invalid (4294966864x2048) ??% ??,?% 0 0 0% when looking at the raw file, it's full of "[= MPlayer junk data! =]" sigh... I'm all looking forward to seeing it...

http://www.aziendeassociate.it/cd.asp?dir=/ffdshow try getting the ffdshow latest version here (this is temporary location though, i'm not sure if i should be posting it like this here)

good idea, but wrong operating system... (gentoo) I usually have the latest ffdshow (within the last week, I'm checking now), especially as all the other movies play fine. It looks like there's junk data at the head of the file...

Are people having success with the .avi?

Is the download completed? Which MPlayer version are you using? I'm using MPlayer dev-CVS-050630-23:06-3.3.5-20050130 and it works.

Yah, the download is complete. Mplayer is: "MPlayer 1.0pre7-3.4.3-20050110" It's the one you get with Gentoo/testing, and normally plays everything just fine...

Mplayer is: "MPlayer 1.0pre7-3.4.3-20050110" It's the one you get with Gentoo/testing, and normally plays everything just fine...

Then I guess MPlayer-1.0pre7 doesn't handle 8x8dct macroblocks properly. Sorry, but you need to use the CVS version to watch this one (and the latest 6 movies). As for the file contents, the structure is as follows:

$ riffdump -nmovi -p gauntlet-tas-foda.avi            
0: RIFF(AVI ) (23629952 bytes)
 12: LIST(hdrl) (382 bytes)
  24: avih (56 bytes, 56 data)
  88: LIST(strl) (192 bytes)
   100: strh (56 bytes) (vids(0x73646976), h264(0x34363268), 60.10 fps, quality 0, 0x0-256x224)
   164: strf (40 bytes, 8 data) (h264(0x34363268), 256x224(24 bits))
   212: vprp (68 bytes, 68 data)
  288: LIST(strl) (106 bytes)
   300: strh (56 bytes) (auds(0x73647561), U(0x00000055))
   364: strf (30 bytes, 12 data) (Format 0x55, 0-bit 48000 Hz 1 chans (5226 B/s))
 402: LIST(INFO) (58 bytes)
  414: ISFT (45 bytes, 45 data)
 468: JUNK (3620 bytes, 3620 data)
 4096: LIST(movi) (22074600 bytes, 22074596 data)
 22078704: idx1 (1551248 bytes, 1551248 data)

mplayer's current CVS code dies (horribly) in the build on demux_rtp.cpp In fact, I've never had good luck, on several systems, getting their CVS code to build properly... Is there any reason you're using features that require using unstable code? Much better file sizes, qualty, something? I guess I'll try and kick it until it compiles later... sigh...

I don't know why, but when I watched this movie I several times had the thought "this is just like a 2D version of a QdQ run". Cool.

For those of you who can't get the AVI yet, just use the ROM / movie combo. I didn't notice much of a change when doing so (other than not being able to view fullscreen in Winamp or seeking) but still. But yeah, I'd definitely stay away from forcing people to use unstable code unless absolutely nessacary... =/

my problems stemmed from using famtasia as the emulator.. .. and then when the modded FCEU came along, i'd already gotten tired of re-re-re-re-redoing the game, and was headed to japan for a semester abroad. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=226 my initial FCEU tests also happened to come back a few frames slower in certain levels than Famtasia, which I found unacceptable (i mean, if i know i can do level X in 1000 frames, why should i settle for 1010?). although i knew exits could be influenced by which frame you entered the room on, i never experimented with it; my desire had been to make a complete run in famtasia. some notes: level 20: is it faster to go to the right and through the door than it is to shoot the wall on the left (saving a key)? level 24: you could've pressed/released start faster to save yourself a frame or two while your power counted up from 819-820. level 28: why do you go through that route? in my run, it seemed to be faster to take the first 'up' path and just run through to the exit. IIRC you don't need to hit the tile to reach the exit. level 30: i'd've used a bomb to pass the slime if it wasn't in the proper position -- you'll get more bombs later. level 37: it seemed to me that it was faster to open the door and hit the tile right away, rather than walking up and around (up towards the speed potion). properly done, it should also save you a bomb. level 38: you *CAN* go diagonally between those two chests at the end. you just have to start pressing D+R at the right frame. level 78: see level 24. ;p the paths are dissimilar in many ways 'cause i based my famtasia run around getting all the hint rooms, while you skipped them all (which proved a hypothesis that i never tested; the codes are generated at the start of the game).. the number of keys and bombs picked up (and used) is, of course, essential to the run, and for the sheer amount of difference between the paths, it's not easy to compare them.

some notes: level 20: is it faster to go to the right and through the door than it is to shoot the wall on the left (saving a key)? level 24: you could've pressed/released start faster to save yourself a frame or two while your power counted up from 819-820. level 28: why do you go through that route? in my run, it seemed to be faster to take the first 'up' path and just run through to the exit. IIRC you don't need to hit the tile to reach the exit. level 30: i'd've used a bomb to pass the slime if it wasn't in the proper position -- you'll get more bombs later. level 37: it seemed to me that it was faster to open the door and hit the tile right away, rather than walking up and around (up towards the speed potion). properly done, it should also save you a bomb. level 38: you *CAN* go diagonally between those two chests at the end. you just have to start pressing D+R at the right frame. level 78: see level 24. ;p

First of all, i couldnt watch your WIP. it didnt even press start on the title screen, i dont know why. about your comments: level 20: ? shoot wall? which wall? level 24: no i couldnt, its the same as in all screens of the game, i did it using frame advance. level 28: you're right, i just blindly followed the faq and my memory of the game. level 30: no i couldnt because i only lost 1 second there, and in no other place i can get a bomb at the price of a second (they are way more out of the way). level 37: i guess you're right about the route, but the bomb was used to kill lag and avoid the invisible wizards. level 38: if you say so, then its possible, but i havent tested one thing: if its faster to move diagonally or ortogonally (down then right). the speed differences are very high, maybe its the same. level 78: again, i used frame advance, so it couldnt have been even 1 frame faster. thanks for your comments, i'm already thinking of a second version.

There are two versions of Gauntlet out there -- the "unlicensed" Tengen black cart version, and the "Licensed" grey cart version. IIRC my Famtasia WIPs were done with the "Licensed" version. When I did a bit of testing on FCEU, I'd switched to the "Unlicensed" version for legal reasons (I own the black cart). anywho, level 10 and 20 both have a shootable wall next to the door. although i said i wasn't sure about 20, actually i think shooting the wall at 10 would be faster than picking up+using the key, whereas in 20, the key is on the route anyway, so it would take less time. (PS: Ignore the position of the character; what's important is the position of the hole in the wall. ;p) 24+78: i still think you can shave those frames off.. IIRC you can hold down start while it's fading in, and as soon as it finishes fading in, you can release and it'll start to fade out, without increasing the HP counter. it might not even save a frame, but it certainly looks more aesthetically pleasing to keep everything uniform. there might be a few other things in the middle (the invisible levels, etc), but i'd have to dig up my notes about what items are in which levels, to see what's "necessary" and what isn't.. given that i'm at work, and it's been 8+ months since i last looked at the game, i'm not in prime position to pick out improvements.