Hello everyone. I'm new around these parts. I've been watching the TAS youtube for quite awhile and have been thoroughly entertained. I love this community and I really would like to help it grow if my skills can be of any service. I've got a bit programming experience, but mostly on the web side not actual programs.
Now that N64 emulation is becoming more extended I think it's about time I share some of my favorite games from early childhood with the community :) I've been reading through forums and tutorials. I've got a decent understanding of how to use bizhawk, but nothing super crazy. My eventual goal is to TAS all of the army men games for the N64. I think I'm going to have to do something less in depth to start but I'll eventually get better.
I'll leave this section for progress:
Test TAS: Air combat is quite easy, so I may use this as my TAS learning playground.
Army Men: Air Combat: Noticed this game is remarkably simple. The controls are move, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, and shoot. I may enforce a boulder kills only rule just to make the routing a bit harder.
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes: No noticeable improvements yet (glitches/skips)
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2: No noticeable improvements yet (glitches/skips)
If you have any protips I'd love to hear them :)
Thanks,
Rawrz
Edit 8/26/2014: Updated progress though mostly uneventful
Here's the #1 tip: Be iterative. Don't set out to make the absolute maximum hyper optimized TAS on your first pass through the game. Make a test-run where you don't try to be perfect but just fast/no obvious mistakes, do glitchhunting and routing/strat finding, try to improve the testrun, etc etc until you have a nice final product.
(#2 tip is: Share WIPs and lasoo someone into proofchecking them and butting heads with you for routing/optimization ideas, because a second head can see what the first misses)
Army Men is a lot of open levels with objectives throughout them, so It'll be pretty time consuming to check the timing between which order is faster, but I'm up for it.
The second game uses a lot of portals as the warp to the next level. They're usually only able to be entered after objectives are completed, but if they could be glitched into entire levels could be skipped.
I planned on TASing one (if not all) of these games some time back, but never really got around to anything lol. I think SH2 would be a more interesting TAS, mainly because I like the level layouts of the game. Air Combat would also be very interesting. As far as SH, I couldn't find that many time-saving glitches, so a run of this game may be a bit linear if you can't find any either. I can vaguely remember testing random clips, such as:
-Skipping the bridge cut-scene in the 1st level (don't remember if this worked)
-Trying to perform an optimized jump to the Blue Spy in the Bathroom (no luck)
-Clearing the water in the Forest level to go Out of Bounds (no luck)
I posted these in hopes that you might be able to successfully perform these clips. Also, I never tested if strafing was faster than just running. Either way, it would look entertaining!
I still have plans to run these games even though they may be a bit cut and dry except for movement. The movement is quite wonky to get used to. I've learned that these games are not lenient at all about out of bounds..The second you're out you're dead. Cutscene skips might be possible by moving out of the objective zone, but generally they're pretty large zones. I'm going to keep testing around. Don't know if I'm going to release a wip soon or not. It's pretty generic what I've got so far
I'm glad there's interest in these games :) I'd like to have at least a teaser video out by the end of the week. I've spent the most time in Searge's heroes 2 as it's my personal favorite and the concept of small person big world is neat too. Also; Ripz strafing isn't really a thing in these games because the one stick controls both walking and the camera at a fixed point behind you. Sorry I didn't answer that part before :P
Yeah I get that, but I was mainly asking whether or not it's actually faster than just running. Strafing in some, if not all points, could be a hit or miss though. As far as how entertaining you aim for the run to be: make a teaser, like you said, and go from there. I'm interested to see progression of either of the Sarge's Heroes and/or Air Combat.
I mean strafing isn't even possible in the game XD if you press left or right the camera rotates around you instead. Forward and backward are the only movement.
Edit: I'm a derp. Disregard x.x
Pressing C-Right + Left/Right on the joystick allows you to strafe in both Sarge's Heroes 1 & 2. Someone even posted a glitch a few years back exploiting strafing (It was a weird moonwalk-like movement). I can't seem to find it, but I doubt it was would useful, being that it's sooo much slower than normal strafing/running. Regardless, it might be entertaining to use in parts of the run when you might need to kill some time.
Sorry I'm really tired and recalled the definition of the word wrong. D: Can give it a shot, but it probably won't do much except entertain. Don't really think there are time locked objectives it'd just be when waiting on the ai to come to a location. He can only roll to the right of himself though. Hmmm.
So pressing c right makes him drop to the ground. Left or right on the stick while holding c right then makes him roll whichever way. Pretty slow because you have to finish your roll animation before you can aim yourself in a different direction. What c left does is snap the camera back.
I literally have it front of me right now...But sure go ahead.
Okay...
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 1:Control Stick - run, crawl (while laying down), roll left or right (while holding strafe button)
A Button - kneel (from prone), stand (from kneel), jump, climb (when close to ledge), pull lever
B Button - change weapons
R Button - aim gun, zoom sniper rifle scope
Z Button - fire weapon, throw grenades and fire mortar
L Button - toggle battle map modes
Top C-Button - toggle camera view
Right C-Button - strafe
Left C-Button - dive down from standing position; dive roll from running position
Bottom C-Button - sudden drop, kneel, lay down
As For Sarge's Heroes 2:D-Pad Up - toggle between two camera angles, reset camera rotation to default
D-Pad Left - rotate camera left
D-Pad Right - rotate camera right
Control Stick - run, crawl, roll left or right
Control Stick + Z Button - aim air strike
Top C Button - 180 degree turn
Right C Button - lay down
Bottom C Button - kneel, lay down
Left C Button - change weapon
B Button - jump, stand up from kneel, kneel from prone, climb
A Button - fire, throw grenade, fire mortar
Z Button - strafe
L Button - toggle radar
R Button - aim gun
R Button + Top C Button - zoom in sniper rifle
R Button + Bottom C Button - zoom out sniper rifle
(via - www.allgame.com)
Regardless of the button layout change from the 1st game to the 2nd, all the basic controls in the 2nd game are based off the 1st (obviously stated above). You can still strafe, drop, roll, etc. I'm not arguing that you're wrong; I'm just trying to help you understand that strafing might be a faster method of travel.
Alright that actually makes more sense now. I was on the second game not understanding what you were talking about at all. Aren't many buttons on the n64 controller, so I wasn't understanding what I was missing.
Yeah I've got plans to sit down and work it out after some sleep. SH2 right now just trying not to take damage from the aimbotting ai is the issue :P that's just going to take a lot of rerecords though so no big deal.
