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This is the DOS version of Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame. In this sequel, evil Jaffar returns as your doppelganger to steal the princess from you and accuse you of being the impostor. You have 75 minutes (IGT) to fight your way back to the palace to defeat him and save the princess. In this TAS, we use a combination of newly discovered skips and bot-based exploration to find the fastest way to finish the game.
This movie obsoletes the previous one ( Forum/Topics/22762 ) by 24s

Game objectives

Comments

In this movie, GMP, Challenger and me (eien86) build upon years of routing from the speedrunning community (martin_petrvalsky, Samabam, Creditor, GMP, among others) to solve PoP2 as fast as possible. The notable contribtutions from this work are:
  • Challenger's discovery of the new game-breaking wall skip trick and contributions to the current routing.
  • The use of bot-based optimization, using the Genesis version as proxy (see: Forum/Topics/22772)
  • A re-routing to harvest potions from the spider room (Level 14) instead of the potions in Level 3 and 4
For in detail discussion of this run, see GMP's original work (Forum/Topics/22762), which contains new applications of the wall-skip trick and where the most of the current route was optimized.

Other comments

This is the end of a process that started a few months ago with the development of Jaffar2 ( https://github.com/SergioMartin86/jaffar2 ), the continuation of the bot that we used to solve PoP1. In the middle of creating the Genesis version of this TAS, GMP and Challenger found new tricks and strategies that the bot alone could have never found. This movie was made much more faster (and fun!) from this collaboration.

Files:

HDD, 16 tracks, 63 sectors, 16 sides.
NameMD5 HashSize (B)
/BIRD.DATf1b96f5882f697647afe84f4f33f8c4a32151
/CAVERNS.DATc9af41ef358d593a00732a6f1d797076183196
/CONFIG.DAT082cfffdd5502ef4214c4eb47983aca532
/DESERT.DAT7795b9ad4c3b20dd93e5e4def93a162f104211
/DIGISND.DAT6e84b43eb28068f6aeae39a586cc2f88669947
/FINAL.DAT3c39cf12c722692a63db19dbc8bed025401987
/FLAME.DATe632701500ce6142f1cfd4f48b5be7b13126
/FRAGSND.DAT73777d652277512aab0696eed747e5711416
/GUARD.DAT23cb6b033ff67236cbaaee54165f44af27299
/HEAD.DAT055d464ee4fe8efc714f314d7c01833920084
/IBMSND.DAT7d7e242cd326064a6e5aba5f151a795e33261
/JINNEE.DAT7a05436cf5249eec184d092213d01f613568
/KID.DATdac526e59ec18cb1eebb0dda6d78f17179395
/MIDISND.DAT2d3f03861be8da72b2847602cd1ad924397377
/NIS.DAT100466e19b56067fa0fb97ff86b9e9df1083911
/NIS3VC.DAT017897dd13be11ca63e4a590787826fb136051
/NISDIGI.DAT48ab6c7e846bd40c57e7292f74fa501c1118400
/NISIBM.DATb45e005e677af8475d0000232141bb0512749
/NISMIDI.DAT3c18cbe26222da1d071315bb9a2e191c192411
/PRESETS.DEF86358ab0ab40d52353fa7b07e9d42a5d2049
/PRINCE.DAT9264767b75539d55b2e93c93e6691503389760
/PRINCE.EXE7bcdb72c92dc661eea0297bf0794d3e4290415
/PRINCE.ICO0d476778f54ef1e8044df43d24dfa727766
/PRINCE.OPT13cae8e658e0ca4f75c56b1fc424e1504
/ROOFTOPS.DATa340119c34a591287a19427531ae4f7d147494
/RUINS.DATe448822afd5d374807c1d22c51fb248c273461
/SEQUENCE.DAT209e68d914626fe58115db6c1cef040f11998
/SETUP.CFG68c64d0d7343173690994d2a03af22bd1825
/SETUP.DATfd72f7f3fc4cf7bba9d60b5be504eadc32
/SETUP.EXEcaaf9244838030bbec1274523f2a39ec76161
/SKELETON.DAT211d8c4c2fe018cc1d1c2c71b085c82313744
/TANDYSND.DATec32a75c2cf55ad1bfe3bb60f1229a35279060
/TEMPLE.DAT7e87b470058b67574d10c670229a3df1116801
/TRANS.DATb11d855671c2601c642dcadabee06eb5485552
slamo: Good work on this one, obviously it's very well optimized thanks to the botting. My only concern was using the "Initial Release" version. It's inconclusive whether this was officially released or if it's some kind of leaked early release version, since documentation and disk image libraries for DOS games are not even close to complete. I can't prove anything either way, so I'll allow it for now.
The prototype Genesis version was submitted at around the same time, and the tricks and routing are different enough that these should be able to coexist.
Accepting.
fsvgm777: Processing.

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Posted: 8/16/2021 11:38 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7190: eien86, GMP & Challenger's DOS Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame in 14:26.65
Posted: 8/16/2021 12:30 PM
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Radiant
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Still yes vote, just like the previous thread.
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Posted: 8/16/2021 1:11 PM
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Challenger
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Wow I didn't expect to see an improvement to this game so soon. Really great work and dedication! Thanks for adding me as a co-author. Although I never TASed a DOS game, finding that wall glitch and new strategies were much more rewarding for me. As I said before, this game is now a breakthrough, and more fun to watch.
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Posted: 8/22/2021 4:26 PM
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Justin_Z
Joined: 12/29/2014
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I'm curious why PC Speaker audio is on for this—is it actually a benefit time-wise instead of having say Soundblaster sound?
Posted: 8/23/2021 3:48 AM
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GMP
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Justin Z wrote:
I'm curious why PC Speaker audio is on for this—is it actually a benefit time-wise instead of having say Soundblaster sound?
Time-wise there is no real benefit for either, because we skip the end level jingle anyways, but in JPC-RR soundblaster/adlib and tend to cause jittering in the final encode and also various other emulation issues, speaking from our experience with PoP1. Since this game is more memory intensive as well, we didn't want to take any kind of risk and hence went with pc speaker.
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Posted: 9/25/2021 8:14 AM
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eien86
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GMP wrote:
Justin Z wrote:
I'm curious why PC Speaker audio is on for this—is it actually a benefit time-wise instead of having say Soundblaster sound?
Time-wise there is no real benefit for either, because we skip the end level jingle anyways, but in JPC-RR soundblaster/adlib and tend to cause jittering in the final encode and also various other emulation issues, speaking from our experience with PoP1. Since this game is more memory intensive as well, we didn't want to take any kind of risk and hence went with pc speaker.
It's even worse. Using SB + JPCRR crashes the game when you hit a guard, no matter how you configure it :(
Posted: 10/2/2021 11:05 AM
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fsvgm777
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I have a SNDDRVRS directory that's absent from the HDD image. Any reason why it's not present? Additionally, I have a MIDI.DRV and a DIGI.DRV that's also absent from the image.
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Posted: 10/2/2021 11:37 AM
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eien86
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fsvgm777 wrote:
I have a SNDDRVRS directory that's absent from the HDD image. Any reason why it's not present? Additionally, I have a MIDI.DRV and a DIGI.DRV that's also absent from the image.
Yes, SNDDRVRS contained additional drivers provided by Broderbund for that era's sound cards. Since we use only PC-Speaker, we have no use for this additional folder. MIDI and DIGI.DRV are the specific drivers for Sound Blaster and MIDI music copied from the drivers folder by the game's setup. Again, since we use PC Speaker, these files are also not needed. Hope that answers your question!
Posted: 10/2/2021 12:16 PM
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GMP
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eien86 wrote:
fsvgm777 wrote:
I have a SNDDRVRS directory that's absent from the HDD image. Any reason why it's not present? Additionally, I have a MIDI.DRV and a DIGI.DRV that's also absent from the image.
Yes, SNDDRVRS contained additional drivers provided by Broderbund for that era's sound cards. Since we use only PC-Speaker, we have no use for this additional folder. MIDI and DIGI.DRV are the specific drivers for Sound Blaster and MIDI music copied from the drivers folder by the game's setup. Again, since we use PC Speaker, these files are also not needed. Hope that answers your question!
Yes that is correct, I deliberately removed those files as they are not needed to run the game, I followed the advice given at http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/JPC.html
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Posted: 10/2/2021 12:41 PM
(Edited: 11/3/2023 11:48 AM)
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fsvgm777
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Aight, I suppose that's fine. I have another question, though: Is this an emulation bug or a bug in the game?
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Posted: 10/2/2021 1:09 PM
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GMP
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fsvgm777 wrote:
Aight, I suppose that's fine. I have another question, though: Is this an emulation bug or a bug in the game?
It seems to be a game bug, it happens in RTA runs as well which are done in DOSBox using soundblaster.
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Posted: 10/2/2021 1:12 PM
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fsvgm777
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I see, so I suppose this is a bug specific to the version of the game used, then.
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Posted: 10/2/2021 1:15 PM
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GMP
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fsvgm777 wrote:
I see, so I suppose this is a bug specific to the version of the game used, then.
Yeah, either that or the way we deal with the final level maybe.
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Posted: 10/3/2021 12:31 PM
Post subject: Movie published
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TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4531] DOS Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame by eien86, GMP & Challenger in 14:26.65
Posted: 10/4/2021 9:00 AM
Post subject: Re: #7190: eien86, GMP & Challenger's DOS Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame in 14:26.65
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Radiant
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"After having defeated the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar, the brave Prince claimed just one reward" Sorry to be nitpicky, but it was the brave youth that claimed that reward. He only became a prince because he married that princess. That's right, in the first Prince Of Persia game you don't actually become the prince until you beat the game.
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Posted: 10/5/2021 3:31 AM
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Nice catch!