This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5026: hidaigai & FractalFusion's SNES Mega Man X2 "all upgrades" in 31:21.83

Claiming to obsolete: [809] SNES Mega Man X2 by FractalFusion & Graveworm in 31:42.45 Besides that, there's 290 frames at the end which is holding Start (291 including first input) and 1315 frames including that first Start which is blank input... so 1605 frames are apparently dud input or is it 290 frames? I would Spike the input to find out, but I'm tired and I don't want to wait like 10 minutes on this getting it to go through, if someone doesn't edit the input and post the fix, I'll come back and do just that. What raises my flags is "100% No Zero's Parts"... isn't the point to get Zero's parts to claim for 100%.. I'm confused by everything. Edit: Apparently those 1605 frames of what that is, is intentional. Thanks Capcom.

Spikestuff, I don't know if this game has extra stuff after the credits that would warrant extra button presses at the end. I'm sure the author can check on this though. As for 100%, the naming is strange, but it's going by the same conventions that the previous movie (by FractalFusion and Graveworm) used. The player collects every item that affects the subscreen, unlocking the Shoryuken. It's not worth it to collect Zero's parts, since it drastically changes the route and because it takes more time to fight the 3 extra miniboss fights than you save by having Zero repaired at the end of the game. Maybe you could call this "all upgrades" instead, but I think that would cause more confusion than it solves. In the discussion of Hetfield90's latest movie (the one cited in the submission here), it seems that people decided both categories were worth keeping.

To anyone else who's confused: It seems like this run's meant to be a revival of the old Shoryuken route used by the run Spike linked. MMX2 had the weird issue where 100% used to actually be the fastest known TAS route, using the Shoryuken to shave off tons of time, but Hetfield's recent TASes proved that it's just barely faster to forego using it. I'm guessing this is meant to be a new branch, rather than an improvement to Hetfield's run. I wonder why Hetfield's original run was judged as an improvement in the first place, instead of Fractal/Graveworm's run being given a 100% branch and Hetfield's published alongside as the any%? EDIT: On that note, is it worth reviving the branch over something like an improvement to [1392] SNES Mega Man X2 "Best ending, no upgrades" by FractalFusion in 33:51.62 that also collects the Zero parts?

First of all, this TAS is very optimized. According to route tests that FractalFusion and I did, it is about 15 seconds slower to obtain the shoryuken, so this run's strats and optimizations are consistent with my current any% run. Hidaigai also sent us his WIPs to check after each stage, so in terms of improvements, there are none which I am aware of. As for branches, I pushed for my v1 run to obsolete the shoryuken run to show the history of any% routes since obtaining the shoryuken was previously thought to be faster. But this was also done under the premise that FractalFusion and I were working on a true 100% run that collects both X's and Zero's parts to obsolete the current "best ending, no upgrades" run. That way all of the game's options for item acquisition(minimal X parts, all X parts, no Zero parts, all Zero parts) would still be represented in as few as two branches. After having to restart the run multiple times due to optimizations being found in the earlier stages, motivation decreased from a significant increase in difficulty to maintain the frames being saved, and progress eventually came to a standstill. I intend to pick it back up at some point, but there are two other projects I am working on at the moment so I wouldn't anticipate it being finished any time soon. In my v1 thread, Mothrayas suggested having 3 branches("any%", "all upgrades", and "best ending, no upgrades") until such a run was completed, and that the "100%" run could obsolete both the "all upgrades" and "best ending, no upgrades" runs since it alone covers the two options for item acquisition in this game which "any%" does not. In agreement with this, I think that this run should be published as a separate "all upgrades" branch so that the site is not without a shoryuken run for the time being, but under the premise that it and the "best ending, no upgrades" run can be later obsoleted by a true "100%" run to eliminate redundancies between branches.

Nice，it‘s a good improve。Yes Vote

Hi hidaigai. Nice run, and thanks for the Lua output. Did it really only take 13261 rerecords? Also, I'm sorry that I missed your e-mail from one month ago. The run looks good.

Thanks, everyone. Branch is changed to "all upgrades". >Spikestuff Last 1605 frames are not dud input. It's is necessary to close last message window. >Samsara I want to see / make a revival of "best ending, no upgrades". Actually there are some ideas to update. >Hetfield90 You said "100%" run could obsolete both the "all upgrades" and "best ending, no upgrades". I agree "all upgrades" run is obsoleted because of redundancies. But, why is "best ending, no upgrades" run? I don't think "all upgrades" run can obsolete "no upgrades" run. >FractalFusion Hi, thanks for encoding Lua. My TAS's rerecords is 13261 because my bk2 is generated by Tastudio (BizHawk-1.10.0). Tastudio seems to save rerecords. (Is my usage wrong?)

General question about this game and categories: Why are 2 categories being completely ignored? Low% (collecting nothing) and 100% (collecting everything)? I get that the niche is smaller but it just seems to me that it is just flat out ignored in conversation. Was it decided long ago that neither was worth doing?

>Hetfield90 You said "100%" run could obsolete both the "all upgrades" and "best ending, no upgrades". I agree "all upgrades" run is obsoleted because of redundancies. But, why is "best ending, no upgrades" run? I don't think "all upgrades" run can obsolete "no upgrades" run.

The SNES Mega Man X series games don't really have many options for having more than two branches without significant overlap between them, and have generally had one "any%" category and one other category that is as far of a departure from "any%" as possible. The rationale behind a "100%" run obsoleting the "best ending, no upgrades" run is because both are/were designed to be the antithesis category to "any%". Since, at the time, the "any%" run collected all of X's parts and none of Zero's, FractalFusion made a run that collected none of X's parts and all of Zero's. Now that "any%" collects neither(aside from just the buster upgrade), a more appropriate antithesis would be a run that collects everything. "Best ending, no upgrades" overlaps with "100%" in that they both collect the Zero parts, and overlaps with "any%" in that they both forgo the vast majority of X's upgrades(with only one exception in the arm parts in "any%"). The only interesting unique content in the "best ending, no upgrades" branch at that point would be the Gator elevator skip and more strike chain usage at the cost of less interesting boss fights and less varied movement tech without the buster upgrade, which I don't believe is enough to merit a separate branch.

Yes

Voting No, as the branch is kind of arbitrary. I feel like 100% should include best ending, although I guess that'd cause some serious overlap. Idk.

OK. I'll clear branch as published megaman X2 TAS has empty branch. >Hetfield90 I see. Because "any%" obsoleted "no upgrades", future "best ending" can obsolete "best ending, no upgrades".

>FractalFusion Hi, thanks for encoding Lua. My TAS's rerecords is 13261 because my bk2 is generated by Tastudio (BizHawk-1.10.0). Tastudio seems to save rerecords. (Is my usage wrong?)

I don't know if you used other additional files, but when I do a TAS of something like Mega Man X2, it takes me around 60000 rerecords. Mega Man X2 is not easy to TAS.

Well this run needs a branch name to be published since it's slower than the currently published branchless run. I think something like "all upgrades" makes the most sense since, like X3, I think it's contradictory to include "100%" in the title of a category but then have a caveat of forgoing certain items.

well I like the idea of making this a branch run the confusion to this is it really cant be called 100% run since the zero parts are included in not only the passwords for saving items but it also changes the end bosses slightly, and this cant be considered the best ending since the way that one works is no armor but zero parts, it gets down to pulling strings on what it could be called, maybe a call it a no zero run? imho I would think a true 100% would be to get everything plus zero parts which would be slower as there is cutscenes plus the 3 bosses in a true 100% run, can this truly be an any% run tho since the only thing it doesn't get is the zero parts? plus if memory serves if you get all 4 armor parts you don't get the "best ending" clip

>FractalFusion My TAS is made by re-record and hex-edit. Re-record count is 13261, and hex-edit count is not counted. (I think hex-edit count is more than re-record count in my TAS.) Only thing I can say is that real re-record count is over 13261. >Hetfield90 I'm careless. Empty branch means any% for X2 TAS. >supersonicjc My TAS is all upgrades w/o zero parts. So, It's not easy to decide branch. I search branch's text. #2452(X2):Best ending, no upgrades #3362(X3):best ending, 100% #4867(X3):100% Since I seem to be able to use "all upgrades" or "100%", I will use "all upgrades" which cause less confusion.

I don't have anything really to contribute about whether this particular branch should be publishable; I think the relevant points have already been mentioned. I just wanted to say the run is quite entertaining, showing great care with weapon use and lag reduction. Also, the movie list in Nico with the improvement details is very well done; thank you, hidaigai, for the helpful comments!

Since you need all of the upgrades and sub tanks to get the shoryuken, could this just be branched as Shoryuken or Shoryuken%? The submission text says the run is 31:24.93 and the site parser says 31:21.83. Also the table in the submission text says a savings of 20 seconds, but the first line says a savings of 18 seconds. Which of these values are correct? Yes vote.

>mklip2001 Thank you for watching my comparison movies. Another goal of making my TAS was to make comparison movie. So, I made same Shoryuken route TAS as Published TAS #1459. >DiscoRico Thank you for new idea of branch. But, I will use "all upgrades" with reference to　branch "no upgrades" of published Magaman x2 TAS #2452. This TAS's length is 113096. 31:24.93 is correct. (31:21.83 is 112910 frames.) Value of table is "approximate" value. So, approximate value of 18s is 20s.

I think you got the 31:24.93 figure by dividing the frame count by 60.0? Bsnes core runs at 60.0984755 fps so the 31:21.83 figure is more accurate. Although the time save over FractalFusion/Graveworm's run is probably closer to ~25 seconds after discounting the emulation and framerate disparities between Bsnes and Snes9x 1.43. (This comparison was between different routes so some things are different but it should still be reasonably relevant)

Thanks, Hetfield90. 60.00fps is used. This TAS : 113096f 31:24.93 (60.00 fps) 31:21.83 (about 60.05 fps) 60.05 fps is not close to 60.0984755 fps. Is there round-off error? published TAS : 114147f 31:42.45 (60.00 fps) "Movie length" of published TAS says 31:42.45, too.

Actually, 60.0984755 fps would result in a 31:21.84. I'm not sure why Bsnes says it runs at 60.0984755 fps but then says the run is a 31:21.83. I guess it must be running at framerate of the SNES console, 60.098814? I'm not sure how you're getting 60.05; there must be an error somewhere on your part.

Sorry, value I used is incorrect. 113096[f]/60.0988138974405[fps] =1881.834144[sec] =31:21.8341439 About framerate, I could find below. http://tasvideos.org/PlatformFramerates.html