This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7113: Mazzin's GB Castlevania: The Adventure in 15:48.49

you better not reject it this time...

Well, according to the judgement of the previous submission...

The first question that comes to mind is whether this version should be published alongside the CGB version, as the game is practically identical. I'm not aware of any significant game-play differences that would normally allow for side by side publications, such as different enemies, movement mechanics, weapons/power-ups, or that sort of thing. I have not seen any strong arguments why this version should also be published.

I suggest you explain why this should either be published alongside or obsolete the currently published run of this game if you don't want to be rejected again.

uhm... didn't i explain it enough in the submission text? what do you wanna hear exactly? should i break down every single trick used in the run?! i mean i can, but is that really necessary? do you need every saved frame in detail or what? (i seriously struggle to keep my calm at this point, please forgive me if anything sounds a bit harsh or whatever, i will try to stay reasonable)

Actually, yes, a proper breakdown of all the tricks used would be lovely, especially since there seem to be new ones. The more information you can provide, the easier it'll be to judge fairly. Are there more improvements over the published run? Are there version-exclusive tricks in your run that the published run can't have? On top of all that, is there an objective reason we should prefer this version of the game that isn't just "I think this version is better"? Anything you can explain will help, but I really want a breakdown between this run and the published run more than anything given what Nach said in the judgement of your previous submission.

this new trick is not figured out enough to be used consistently but it works by crouching in any place at specific frames to somehow skip over seemingly random lag frames every now and then, which saves loading time and makes the game process less slow

This game is programmed horribly, barely optimized, causing various things to use more processing time than it should, and therefore at times needs to skip input processing, or delay whatever else it's doing. My guess is that when Christopher is crouching, his sprite is smaller, and thus less work needs to be done drawing him. Any time you're not walking, I would imagine this would be the optimal position to stay in. The real question is, are you finding it faster to not crouch on certain frames where you're otherwise not moving? On some frames, depending on what the game is doing (like whether there's animation on the screen or where in the music loop it's in), there may not be any difference to Christopher's position. But if there is a difference, my initial guess would be that crouching is always going to be the one with the processing time improvement. I would love to know if you found otherwise.

this is so unfair omg... why the f#%$ do i have to prove and argue about every detail but this other guy can just do whatever he wants without explaining s#%&?! this is biased af... ok whatever... seems the good cause always has to go the longer way, sigh... you called for it, so better prepare for a whole assay about basically nothing. well, where do i start...? basically there are 3 versions of the game that can be compared to each other and those are the JP, US and EU versions of the original gameboy release of the game. im not sure about any in depth details on those but to my knowledge only the title screens and maybe the lag pattern can be/are different, but nothing significant for the run itself (to current knowledge). now listen closely! EVERY other version, no matter on which platform and appearence, is NOT COMPARABLE to any of the original versions stated above! anything other than the 3 GB versions are different games and behave differently! i have no freakin idea how this issue is still a thing but for the sake of avoiding another discussion going downhill for no reason, i will try to even explain this nonsense again for you: the konami collection on gameboy color, that includes a similar game to castlevania the adventure, loads objects and screen backgrounds in a different way than the original game. for the unknowing eye this doesn't look like too much of an issue, but there is a huge ass catch for this specific game! the thing is, castlevania the adventure is a very special game that seems to be developped in a way that purposely uses loading times aka lag frames for it's processing to asure a fluid gameplay, that is btw the reason why it is so damn slow... this is all done on purpose and it affects basically all aspects of the game's tasks, like character movement, object loading times, button checks, graphic updates on screen and even the audio. now back to the issue, let's take the konami collection on GBC as an example. that version seems to work different than the GB version and actually takes about 80% LONGER to load every screen initially, but therfore there are less loading times during the screen (or room) itself. this would not be any problem if the game itself wasn't based on this almost specific amount of lag, because by basically squeezing all loading times into the initial loading of a game section, the absence of loading time during the characters traversion through the section/screen/room the gameplay itself is sped up and does run faster obviously. while on paper this might sound like something positive for you now, in the case of this game it is definitely not. due to the speed up in the gameplay (which is not actually a speed up, only a lack of lag) the games whole behaviour changes since as i told you, every object and action and audio now loads faster and thus has a different timing (which was not intended in the original game!). it is hard to notice the gameplay differences just by watching the video, if you have no experience in this game, but if you listen closely, you will notice how the sound is heavily stretched and squeezed when you watch the konami collection. this is just the audio cue though, but the gameplay itself is also greatly affected by this lack of lag during every sceen, mainly because candles and other objects now don't have to load or update as much as in the original game and this make the whole strategy during each section different, because the actions of the player and the enemies on screen do also change up the amount of loading. so let's say in the original game the optimal way to process through a room would be to whip a candle to make it unload and then walk on... in the konami collection it might be optimal to just walk through the screen while ignoring the candle alltogether, since most of the loading was already done before the room was shown (in the added 80% of initial loading time). now you could say the total time with the added 80% in the beginning might still be shorter than the quicker loading of the original game but added gameplay time during the screen... the thing is, in the original game you can greatly reduce your lag DURING a screen but in the konami collection there is almost no way to readuce any more of the already reduced lag, which just means the gameplay itself is unable to save loading time, because the game already preloads everything in every screen initially. TL:DR so the conclusion is that the konami collection is set to a specific amount of lag (yet still very variable) per played section of a TAS speedrun, while the original game also has the option to reduce it's lag by moving in certain ways within the gameplay's possibilities. meaning: the konami collection is linear af and the original game can be optimized greatly (which adds a whole lot more of interesting gameplay to the run, just saying...) furthermore there are even some minor things in the konami collection that make the watchability worse than in the original. i already adressed the very unnatural sound speeds of the konami collection, but there is also no visual hit detection on any enemy in the game, which in my opinion makes it looks cheaper than it should. and before anyone argues with colors... guess why i used the gameboy color emulation to make this TAS... it's not as detailed but it looks way better than in just black and white. and also the boot up of the console takes less time than the regular gameboy boot up. and to close the circle on this insult of a request, how about you tell me why the konami collection even has a right to exist as a showcase on this site in the first place? i wanna hear any reason that makes it superior to the original game? your turn... (not sure if i managed to bring my points across here, as i said im still pissed from the last two times i had to deal with this shit here. plus it is so late here that it's early again, meaning i have been up all night, so maybe my reasoning isn't on point at the moment.)

Mazzin - the problem here is similar to one I encountered previously with Pokemon Yellow No Save Corruption obsoleting the entirely different game+category Pokemon Blue NSC. TASVideos doesn't attempt to serve as a recordkeeping site for every version of a game, so while I 100% agree with you that it's worth TASing and setting TAS records in this GB release separate from the GBC collection release, it's an entirely different question whether that record fits the qualifications for TASVideos publication, which would include nuances of the entertainment value of the full color engine on GBC vs potentially more developer-intended gameplay and sound on the GB release. And there's no unfair amount of scrutiny here, there was a ton of scrutiny around Arukado's TAS and discussions spawned about GB vs GBC differences.

and what was the result of those version discussions? i mean what am i even explaining here when there is already a defined conclusion on version differences?

The Castlevania Adventure in the Konami Collection has some preloading done each time a new area is loaded, instead of performing those calculations on the fly. This same technique is performed in Castlevania II and Castlevania Legends. In fact, they use this long door transition sequence to try to hide it. The better the preloading was, the better the games felt to play. I don't think it's fair to say anything specifically was intended for the timing in the original game here. The game was rushed to be released on the new Gameboy platform, and there wasn't a lot of experience developing for it yet. You can see how the mechanics were vastly improved in the second game. That they backported some of those mechanics to the rerelease of this game shows that's probably what they wanted all along, but either didn't have enough time to do it originally, or did not have the experience required to do it initially. Now when arukAdo first switched his TAS to the Konami Collection edition instead, I gave him hell for doing so, I don't know why you would think otherwise. But he convinced me that was the better version, both due to color and smoother yet otherwise identical play. This was the game as intended. As TiKevin83 explained, if you want to change back to the original game release, we need to understand why that would be better. I'm not sure the reasoning that you can abuse the individual loading sequences is a valid justification though. If you have clear examples where the Konami Collection is worse, and show how the port broke something intended in the game (as opposed to made the game easier to control due to no surprised unresponsiveness, or that some glitch is no longer present), then we'd certainly be open to accepting a TAS with the original.

Here is a comparison encode: Link to video NOTE: I made a mistake at the 4:20 marker of the video, sorry about that.

NOTE: I made a mistake at the 4:20 marker of the video, sorry about that.

Regardless, it's nice to have, thank you sir.

how dare you call this game rushed! the more time you invest in it the more you will come to appreciate how deeply the developpers cared for this great game and yes i call it great, because i obviously like it and you can probably tell from my list of publications and achievements that i also care alot for this game on my end. honestly, there is a good chance that i might have the most understanding of this game on this entire planet (aside from the developpers of course). and as far as i can tell castlevania the adventure is by no means a rushed game. everything works very well in terms of the game's intentions and error handling. at this point i might add that during the making of this submission here, when i reconsidered every strategy and evaluated theories of possible improvements, i found a lot of new evidence that there was a huge amount of thought put into making this game. maybe the next game they made was constructed differently, but for the intentions they had with the first game, they definitely delivered a solid product! if anything then the konami collection was rushed, because why would they patch out hit detection and butcher the audio which is one of the trademark aspects of the series... you better not argue with assumptions that non of us can confirm.

i was reading through samsara's post again and i'm not too sure what i can exactly respond to that. like what can i really break down that isn't obvious already? if you watch that comparison video of this other guy, you can already see what's different, at least in terms of strategies and gameplay polishment. what else can i add to that...? or to ask in a different way, what do you guys need that i didn't deliver yet?

how dare you call this game rushed!

The game came out within 6 months of the Game Boy being released. The game sometimes misses out on input being pressed. It controls horribly compared to its sequel which came out two years later. They couldn't even be bothered to flesh out a full game and instead just put in obstacle courses like the jumping section at the end of the first level.

the more time you invest in it the more you will come to appreciate how deeply the developpers cared for this great game and yes i call it great, because i obviously like it and you can probably tell from my list of publications and achievements that i also care alot for this game on my end.

I've been playing the game for over 30 years. How much more time should I invest? You can see how much I care about the game (and the series) that I even have it handy. Enjoy my blurry out of focus photos of my still in mint condition games:

yo chill out man, i didn't mean to bash on you or anything. but nice to see that people still have a physical copy of the game even after all those years. i too have a cartridge of the EU and the JP version of CVA, which is still unrelated to my playtime though. anyway, i was just trying to point out that the time and effort of the development does have little to do with this submission here. if there is still anything missing on my end, let me know about it.

What we're primarily looking for are gameplay improvements that aren't related to lag management.

If it means anything towards this, this movie beats the KC ver TAS by IGT. Looking at the comparison video, the improvements are easy to see. Also on the topic of the comparison video, at 4:39 aruk seems to despawn an eyeball while this movie does not. Is there a particular reason why it wasn't despawned?

What we're primarily looking for are gameplay improvements that aren't related to lag management.

if you are serious about that, then you are clearly missing the point of this entire game, because the main goal of any speedrun in this game is almost completely based on lag reduction. that is also why i don't really understand why anyone is still defending the KC version since there is less lag that can be reduced... (meaning he whole objective is just more limited, but whatever).

Also on the topic of the comparison video, at 4:39 aruk seems to despawn an eyeball while this movie does not. Is there a particular reason why it wasn't despawned?

and you should rather ask the other way around, why did aruk despawn that eyeball? but i can give you two possible answers: either it is faster in the KC version (which i highly doubt but you never know...) or it's just another one of numerous sections in the game that i performed way cleaner in my new run now, even in my old. (because this strategy would be a hell lot slower in the original version)

if you are serious about that, then you are clearly missing the point of this entire game, because the main goal of any speedrun in this game is almost completely based on lag reduction. that is also why i don't really understand why anyone is still defending the KC version since there is less lag that can be reduced... (meaning he whole objective is just more limited, but whatever).

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the issue here is that this game appears to have identical gameplay compared to the other version, except with significantly more lag. If there's no distinct difference(s) besides lag, it doesn't matter how much lag reduction you did as the resulting time is slower than the published TAS. As TiKevin83 explained:

TASVideos doesn't attempt to serve as a recordkeeping site for every version of a game, so while I 100% agree with you that it's worth TASing and setting TAS records in this GB release separate from the GBC collection release, it's an entirely different question whether that record fits the qualifications for TASVideos publication

or it's just another one of numerous sections in the game that i performed way cleaner in my new run now, even in my old. (because this strategy would be a hell lot slower in the original version)

How is it a cleaner run by not despawning the eyeball? Would despawning it result in a slower time?

if you are serious about that, then you are clearly missing the point of this entire game, because the main goal of any speedrun in this game is almost completely based on lag reduction. that is also why i don't really understand why anyone is still defending the KC version since there is less lag that can be reduced... (meaning he whole objective is just more limited, but whatever).

Here's a fun question: Why doesn't the version choice count as lag reduction to you? It's the active choice of an official release of the game that lags significantly less than other versions. To us, a site that caters to as many games as possible and not just this one, this is the absolute best that someone can do with lag reduction. Choosing a version that lags MORE only to go ahead and try to reduce lag as much as possible makes no sense to us, because you could have just chosen the version that lags much less to begin with. Certainly you're entitled to your opinion as to which is the preferred version, but we're also entitled to our opinions in turn. That's why it's your job to convince us. If literally anyone else had submitted this exact same run, we'd have asked the same thing of them. Hell, I could have submitted this run and I'd rightfully be asked why I think it should be published. There is absolutely no personal bias at play here except you being extremely biased against us. There's definitely no bias towards arukAdo, for the record: He submitted a run that ended up getting rejected twice over and actually left the site over it due to (wrongfully) thinking we were biased against him. If you think it's bias against you, it doesn't help that you've been nothing but belligerent, condescending, insulting, dismissive, and even threatening with your first post in this thread. If you somehow can't see the correlation between your negative behavior and the negative reaction you're getting, then I don't know what to say other than take some time to figure out what self-awareness is and come back when you've improved as a person. Worked for me at least.

and you should rather ask the other way around, why did aruk despawn that eyeball?

I mean, from my perspective, despawning that eyeball means you don't have to deal with the lag, and you don't have waste time to turn around and whip it, so I imagine there would have to be a very good reason to not do it in your run. Just saying "I did it better" is nowhere near enough.

Well done, it looks like you worked a lot and improved a lot! I'd like to ask for someone to replay this TAS on GBI, in order to investigate on possible emulation improvements. This game is very sensible to input changes and features a lot of subtle graphical quirks. That's why I asked Mazzin to use GBA mode for making this TAS.

huge thank you goes out to ThunderAxe31 who wrote a LUA-script to view RAM values while playing and who encuraged me to give this website one last chance for this submission...

You're welcome! For anyone who is interested in the Lua script, you can download it from here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/68650558383198335 By the way, don't be so dramatic about the submission with that "last chance" thing. Remember that I got many more rejections than you, and I'm fine with that! Now, I'd like to give a lot of explanations about why the rules are the way they are, but right now I only have my smartphone and it's 3:38 AM, so I'll leave it for my next post...

I'll grab a cart and have it tested on console asap

why is it so damn hard to communicate?! i know that word juggling is not my best disciplin, but is it really that bad...? come on, i even tried to warn everyone that my frustration meter is already overflowing before this discussion started. and also im just a human too, so my emotions are somewhat relevant to the words i use and maybe the train of thoughts that i have while reading or writing something. just don't be too picky about my word choices and forgive my probably agressive tone, thanks. but back to the acutal topic again, let me try to answer the posts above.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the issue here is that this game appears to have identical gameplay compared to the other version, except with significantly more lag. If there's no distinct difference(s) besides lag, it doesn't matter how much lag reduction you did as the resulting time is slower than the published TAS. As TiKevin83 explained:

how about just click on the x2 speed button on my youtube video and you will have an 8 minute run? because your oh so much better KC version basically does just that. don't you wanna showcase gameplay on this site here? anyone who watched the comparison video can clearly see that most parts are just way worse in aruk's run compared to my new (and even my old run, that's why im so triggered every time i watch this insult!) do you not care for gameplay at all? is it really only the bare emulation time? if so, then i appologise for misunderstanding this entire websites purpose and i will leave with all my drama and my wrong version choice...

How is it a cleaner run by not despawning the eyeball? Would despawning it result in a slower time?

it's not that easy... maybe at first glance it looks like a good option, but delaying the eyeball's spawn is not of too much benefit here. in this screen the first eyeball will try to spawn every 16 ticks on the global timer and to prevent it from doing so you have to pause on every 16th frame obviously. now since the screen is 256 units long and your character takes about 2-4 frames to move 1 unit, you will have to pause about 13 times to make it across the room and each pause action not only takes 2 frames to perform but also does something to the game's updating tasks that most times feel like they get delayed too, meaning you still have to wait them out at a later time. soo... 13x2 frames excluding the other delay factor it the minimum best case scenario for preventing the eyeball for the entire room. however if you just whip it and let it vanish on it's own, you only have to waste about 12-ish frames for the whip attack and some overlapping frames that display the burning and disappearing of the eyeball (i would estimate about 20 in total) and then it takes idk... a multiple of 16 until the next eyeball wants to come in, but that time is waaay enough to get past the room even nonTAS. you see killing the first enemy in every screen by conventional means is very likely always the best option with current knowledge. but this is actually one of the hardest rooms in the game, so i can't even blaim aruk too much for doing it the cheap and easy way, but that doesn't change the fact that it is way slower than my gameplay. oh and btw pausing obviously prolongs your playtime since it freezes the gameplay for at least a frame every time and due to the update check delay thing i mentioned, you could basically say it trades ingame time for real time/more lag... that is why the ingame timer gets stuck there in aruk's run which makes it look like my run would end on a lower timer in level 2 but only because aruk's timer was basically cheated in this room.

honestly, i don't care too much if you gang up on me or not, so even if there was bias here, that's not really my point in the first place. my biggest and probably only problem here is that either im soo much off from understanding this websites purpose, or the majority of people here are somehow too blind to see an obvious better showcase handed to them for free including bonus knowledge and whatever else you could ask for... so maybe it will actuall help me if you can summarize again what tasvideos.org is even about? i always assumed it was a place that gathers the best TAS of each game and puts them out for the public for entertainment? what am i missing here?