Yeah, I don't mind card use per se, especially since all of the really broken cards aren't available until the late game and IIRC require significant detours to get. There's some interesting effects available without detours that might be worth hauling out (even just the flaming whip for boss fights, for example) that could give some variety to the fights.
I wouldn't mind a Fighter or Shooter run though.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The highlight of Shooter mode is probably the guided knives. IIRC, subweapons under Shooter mode deal more damage to enemies than easily available card combos do. I would expect a Shooter run to be interesting.
Actually, this TAS was posted in 2010: Post #241123
But it features some interesting glitches. I wonder if a reverse boss order is possible with all the range of glitches available, and if it would make an enjoyable TAS?
I want to make a movie with new categories. But I have some questions now.
What does glitchless refer to? Certainly DSS glitch and warps belong to glitch. However, is it a glitch as well to use specific magics to reduce Nathen's falling speed and let him climb the high place where he cannot arrive in a normal way like what zggzdydp did in his 100% rate movie? And how about entering the Arena by freezed enemies?
As far as I am concerned, the main reason why the published movies look a bit boring is the skeleton form(DSS glitch)instead of other glitches. On the contrary, warps are really interesting. Without skeleton form, Nathen could not beat bosses instantly and he has to gain exp and some useful equipments before a serious fight. So I think "No skeleton form" is also an appropriate category.
I cannot make a decision. Hope others' suggestions.
Standing on frozen enemies isn't a glitch; there's at least one place in the game that's explicitly built around you using that technique to climb a vertical shaft. If the level designers failed to take that into account for the Arena's area, then that's their problem.
Could you explain the slow-falling trick? I'm not familiar with that one.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
As a matter of fact, magics cannot reduce Nathen's falling speed. But when he uses them, he will fly up and stop in the air for a while, which means his falling speed will be affected by acceleration of gravity less. I mentioned that zggzdydp used this trick in his 100％ rate movie. You can watch that movie to know more.
Joined: 2/11/2015
Posts: 41
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
so uh I'm about to head to bed but figured I'd share some things here from what was going on yesterday/today. There was a new glitch discovered by halgorithm that makes things a lot faster. There's way too much to explain now but tl;dr: the weapon/familar you can charge up are broken in combination. We don't really know why it occurs still which was what I was originally going to test. Both Simply and I had the idea to do rough draft any% magician TAS with this to see what sort of time was possible with it. They finished theirs cause I started messing around but I managed to find another application to break the game even further.
Simply's TAS:
Link to video
and then my short clip with the new application. This part really only saves time in a theoretical longer category. I think this may still be faster on an any% run since it would cut out the extra pauses to get the skeleton (that's still faster on the first Dracula due to the long charge time):
Link to video
I'd link my TAS movie file up to that point but I think I set it up wrong in bizhawk + it was on an older version so it just desyncs immediately and doesn't load saveRAM :/ Feel free to ask any questions and I can try to answer them to the best of my ability or maybe the discoveries will continue on discord. I'm sure some people there can help as well https://discord.gg/Aw26kwA.
Thanks for reading
so uh I'm about to head to bed but figured I'd share some things here from what was going on yesterday/today. There was a new glitch discovered by halgorithm that makes things a lot faster. There's way too much to explain now but tl;dr: the weapon/familar you can charge up are broken in combination. We don't really know why it occurs still which was what I was originally going to test. Both Simply and I had the idea to do rough draft any% magician TAS with this to see what sort of time was possible with it. They finished theirs cause I started messing around but I managed to find another application to break the game even further.
Nice job! I managed to do this myself, but failed to get a 9999 damage. This is what I did:
Use charge whip after floated in the air using skeleton form. It seems also work with breakable platforms and frozen enemies.
After fallen onto the ground, switch to the familar and charge.
Did I miss anything? The damage seems to be so random.
Sadly I cannot use discord :(
Joined: 2/11/2015
Posts: 41
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
KSeptuple wrote:
bonecrusher1022 wrote:
so uh I'm about to head to bed but figured I'd share some things here from what was going on yesterday/today. There was a new glitch discovered by halgorithm that makes things a lot faster. There's way too much to explain now but tl;dr: the weapon/familar you can charge up are broken in combination. We don't really know why it occurs still which was what I was originally going to test. Both Simply and I had the idea to do rough draft any% magician TAS with this to see what sort of time was possible with it. They finished theirs cause I started messing around but I managed to find another application to break the game even further.
Nice job! I managed to do this myself, but failed to get a 9999 damage. This is what I did:
Use charge whip after floated in the air using skeleton form. It seems also work with breakable platforms and frozen enemies.
After fallen onto the ground, switch to the familar and charge.
Did I miss anything? The damage seems to be so random.
Sadly I cannot use discord :(
Yeah it was with a breakable platform it was initially found with I believe. And frozen enemies is how people perform it for any% runs in real time.
Sadly we never figured out exactly how the damage is determined. That's the major roadblock at the moment because it acts differently on the Japanese version compared to US as well. I had no luck trying to reverse engineer anything. I'd love to give making some full runs a try since this would likely save a bunch of time in any sort of category. I also don't know how to do the first zip quickly like the current submission does so I wouldn't want to submit something without that, or knowing how the glitch works at all. Though I'd gladly help someone else out if they were interested. Just let me know :)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2821
Location: Northern California
I've always wanted to look into improving the non zip glitch movie, and this honestly feels like a pretty good motivator to start that. It'd be great if more information about the glitch was posted here, though, instead of seemingly being localized to Discord.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 2/11/2015
Posts: 41
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
That's my bad. I had been up nearly 24 hours when I first posted and then never updated any further so I apologize for that. As stated before, not much is known about the full screen 9999 hitbox still sadly. Some things that effect it are how long you charged the imp and what type of whip you did (standing, jumping, crouching). Normally I know TASVideos doesn't factor in the language difference for improvements but it seems a lot more varied there so it's not known for sure if that could potentially do things any faster. I doubt it would be that big of a difference though so it'd probably be the best to continue using the US version.
You can set it up anywhere as long as you have cards. You can do so as mentioned before with the falling platforms, a frozen enemy, or by doing a Bone Float. After that you activate the Quick Draw (Mars + Griffin) and hold B for a second. If the green circles stay around Nathan and you can move around, then it's good. Next you switch to the Imp (Saturn + Black Dog) and charge it by holding B. Lastly you let go of B and whip again. This is the part that is a bit random/finnicky right now. A lot of the time it'll do 1 damage, or sometimes normal whip damage but after about 5 seconds or so is where it was starting to 9999 in my testing. If you want to make the hitbox permanent, you have to do a jump whip instead and leave the screen the same frame it were to hit everything. Then once it's activated, you turn off your cards and whip. Hold B on this until the whip starts spinning and it will make the sword charge animation loop and never finish. You will have to repeat this any time you whip or else the animation will finish and you'll lose the effect. Once the glitch is activated, the strength of it is set at that point. So any equipment, all the level ups, ect that happen afterwards are completely irrelevant. It's also worth noting that if you get hit, you lose the glitch as well. This only matters for the Ghosts that can spawn on top of you. Hopefully I didn't forget anything. Feel free to let me know if you need any help!
That's my bad. I had been up nearly 24 hours when I first posted and then never updated any further so I apologize for that. As stated before, not much is known about the full screen 9999 hitbox still sadly. Some things that effect it are how long you charged the imp and what type of whip you did (standing, jumping, crouching). Normally I know TASVideos doesn't factor in the language difference for improvements but it seems a lot more varied there so it's not known for sure if that could potentially do things any faster. I doubt it would be that big of a difference though so it'd probably be the best to continue using the US version.
You can set it up anywhere as long as you have cards. You can do so as mentioned before with the falling platforms, a frozen enemy, or by doing a Bone Float. After that you activate the Quick Draw (Mars + Griffin) and hold B for a second. If the green circles stay around Nathan and you can move around, then it's good. Next you switch to the Imp (Saturn + Black Dog) and charge it by holding B. Lastly you let go of B and whip again. This is the part that is a bit random/finnicky right now. A lot of the time it'll do 1 damage, or sometimes normal whip damage but after about 5 seconds or so is where it was starting to 9999 in my testing. If you want to make the hitbox permanent, you have to do a jump whip instead and leave the screen the same frame it were to hit everything. Then once it's activated, you turn off your cards and whip. Hold B on this until the whip starts spinning and it will make the sword charge animation loop and never finish. You will have to repeat this any time you whip or else the animation will finish and you'll lose the effect. Once the glitch is activated, the strength of it is set at that point. So any equipment, all the level ups, ect that happen afterwards are completely irrelevant. It's also worth noting that if you get hit, you lose the glitch as well. This only matters for the Ghosts that can spawn on top of you. Hopefully I didn't forget anything. Feel free to let me know if you need any help!
Thank you. I and my friends will also do some research on it. It would be pretty useful if we figured out how on earth the 9999 damage is done. Maybe it is related to wild pointers? Anyway, thank you for your detailed information, it does help!
