Posted: 4/21/2016 6:09 AM
Post subject: The Land Before Time (Collection)
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CardsOfTheHeart
Joined: 5/15/2013
Posts: 21
Note: the word "Collection" appears on the box art and on the cartridge--nowhere to be found in the game. Hmm... As a fan of the series as a kid, I eventually found myself gravitated towards this game for how simple it was to play. I don't tend to like platformers, but I liked this one enough to actually find a cart and speedrun it about a year and a half ago. The more I played it, though, the more help I got in examining the game and the more it became clear that this was more than just a simple platformer. The final product of my adventures with this game can be found at Speed Demos Archive. I have managed to get this game a showcase at Summer Games Done Quick 2016 based on the runs I have done, but there is still quite a bit that I do not fully understand so I have decided to TAS it to see if I can find anything further. Fortunately, this game is simple enough to play around with since your movement speed while dashing is the same whether you are on the ground, jumping or bouncing off of most enemies. I have completed World 1 of 5 so far, but I don't want to go too far in case I have missed something fundamentally obvious. This is my first time trying to TAS something seriously so I expect to make plenty of mistakes. I would love some assistance with this before I get to the bosses that really make this game interesting. Let's just say that the scorposaur is the LEAST broken boss... 4/24: World 2 is now complete. Now it starts to get good. I am finding myself mimicking my existing route as a baseline. I don't know if anything else is broken and worth using. 5/22: World 3 is now done. I have been distracted by other things so this took longer than it needed to.
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.
Posted: 6/13/2016 3:09 AM
Post subject: First Completed "Draft"
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CardsOfTheHeart
Joined: 5/15/2013
Posts: 21
Bumping this because I have finally made enough progress for a complete run. Compared to my current record RTA, this playthrough is almost 20 seconds faster. Get the movie file here. There are two things I know of that still need exploring: 1. World 1 bone pits / world 2 boss thickets; they are the only two things in the entire game that have knockback when you touch them. They push you in the direction opposite of your facing and the push is quite sudden. There may be multiple opportunities to squeeze a few frames out of 1-2, 1-3 and the world 2 boss. 2. World 3 boss has at least one known improvement to it, as explored here. The idea is to maximize the death warps while still getting in the double-hits. This probably needs quite a bit of work still and I can think of a scenario where the first point of exploration will have noticeable impact on this one.
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.
Posted: 6/13/2016 7:44 PM
Post subject: Re: First Completed "Draft"
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4037
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
This looks pretty good so far. Some stages are completed quite fast, and I like the pause trick to gain height in one stage.
CardsOfTheHeart wrote:
1. World 1 bone pits / world 2 boss thickets; they are the only two things in the entire game that have knockback when you touch them. They push you in the direction opposite of your facing and the push is quite sudden. There may be multiple opportunities to squeeze a few frames out of 1-2, 1-3 and the world 2 boss.
I tested this briefly and the game only seems to check which direction you're facing when you hit the bone pits. You can turn around in midair right before hitting them and it will boost you the other direction. It looks like it stops you for several frames afterward, so I'm not sure if it will turn out faster, but it might.
Posted: 6/15/2016 3:32 AM
Post subject: Re: First Completed "Draft"
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CardsOfTheHeart
Joined: 5/15/2013
Posts: 21
CardsOfTheHeart wrote:
1. World 1 bone pits / world 2 boss thickets; they are the only two things in the entire game that have knockback when you touch them. They push you in the direction opposite of your facing and the push is quite sudden. There may be multiple opportunities to squeeze a few frames out of 1-2, 1-3 and the world 2 boss.
Some quick testing in 1-2 of the bone pits suggests that if you turn the opposite direction in midair for one frame four frames before you take damage from it, then you will shoot forward enough to get to the same point 18 frames earlier than if you didn't d-boost, though the first one I was able to test on garnered a 54-frame save. Hold on a second. D-boosting through one of the thickets in the world 2 boss saved 31 frames? There's more to this than I first perceived and I'm too sleepy at the moment to sort it all out.
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.
Posted: 6/21/2016 11:25 AM
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CardsOfTheHeart
Joined: 5/15/2013
Posts: 21
As evidenced by my new RTA record, d-boosting correctly does have a noticeable impact. I am also leaving this here to show my new Megadactyl boss strats which has another nice improvement over what I have done so far. Link to video
I have the tendency to post a few too many Kappas.