It all started innocently enough with a funny
idea in the forum. One thing lead to another and here it is.
This SMV will successfully play and beat both Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 in a reasonably fast manner. The rerecord count is probably slightly inflated because the emulator loved to desync on me.
Both games:
- Does NOT aim for fastest time. Given the choice between showing off a bug and doing something as quickly as possible, I'll show the bug.
- Finish both games at the same time. I succeed to within a 1 frame margin of error.
- No death
- Does NOT manipulate luck. Consider the Storm Eagle battles to be textbook examples of why anyone should use luck manipulation during a TAS.
X1:
- Only takes necessary damage during the battle with Chill Penguin in order to make him attack the nearest wall rather than me.
- Collects all capsule upgrades except the hadoken. Collects whatever heart tanks and sub tanks I feel are appropriate.
X2:
- 100% run, mostly inspired by Blechy's run. Also gets Zero's parts.
- Zero/Shouruken bug executed. Severe sigma taunting results.
- Takes damage to save time, or where it otherwise would adversely affect X1.
Use Snes9x 1.43 FINAL for playback.
Making this movie wasn't as hard as I thought. Some source editting to snes9x to accept "joystick" input from a non-joystick source was the key to making the movie. The other issue was adding Frame Advance, Save State, Load State, and Next/Prev State to joypad buttons and analog sticks.
Using tee to split the real joypad input into two emulators, the rest fell into place. To guarantee emulator sync, the movie had to be constructed entirely using Frame Advance with a low CPU load (or snes9x running at SCHED_ISO priority).
As a final note, if you want to see both games side-by-side, I'm making an MKV available for bittorrent download. This is NOT to be considered the published movie - the quality is significantly lower, but still viewable.
Clicky!
My SMV cleaner ate the last frame from the SMV. As a result, X1 will end playback with the last dialog box stuck on-screen. My bad.
Bisqwit: Replaced submission file with the updated one.
This extends the movie's length by 1 frame, but will still
read as 41:41. Let this be a lesson to
DeHackEd.
Here's a short list of tricks I used to abuse the games
- There are times when the game will ignore certain buttons. Pressing Dash in the air without a usable midair dash will be ignored. Most motion will be ignored when firing the double X-Buster. Wall climbing ignores some frames as X kicks against the wall.
- If one game lags, it ignores some input frames (usually 1)
- When you slide down a wall, you face in the opposite direction of the button you hold to cling to the wall. If you release all directional buttons at this time, you will fall down with your back to the wall. This can be used to get X facing in oppositie directions.
- X1 can switch weapons using L and R during some cutscenes, but X2 can only switch when you have full control of X.
- You can't switch weapons if there are outstanding shots on screen. This includes some hit sprites and explosions.
There is a new bug list in the forum thread for this submission on the second page.
