Advance 2
This game offers a lot of potential when it comes to speed. Using air dash and boost mode effectivly can allow the player to go faster then the camera can keep up with!
I'm extremly bad when it comes to the emulating scene. However, I am extremly good at this game, and I know many shortcuts and techniques I can share with whoever's up for this. I'd love to see a run for this. I know the request system doesn't exactly work here, but still, I think a run on this game would be extremly impressive, if perfected.
Advance 1 would be nice too, but it's a bit slower. I recently made a speedrun of it at SDA, so you could just use that for reference, and perfect the techniques. Airdash matters alot in this game, and if used correctly, can make sonic go EXTREMLY fast. What better way to achieve this perfection then through the art of emulation?
So, is there anyone by chance that has been thinking about a run to do, or even considered this as a possible run? Like I said, I can help out with just about anything for route planning for these runs, so most of the work is already done for you!
Edit: Oh, and I would say advance 3, but I don't think it'd be as great as these two for speedrunning. There are a few nifty tricks in there, but it's hard enough just to chose one combo for 20 levels.
Does anyone know if there are any videos online somewhere of (record level times in) Sonic Advance 2? (They're not at the Sonic Center...) I think they would help whoever makes a TAS of it to have them for reference, more than the overall time numbers would. And besides that, I'm curious to see (about) how fast this game can really go.
Those videos on the TSC would be MY videos.
I have them all saved on my PC, but they should be getting back up on the site sooner or later.
So I can just send them out to whoever would be doing this run
(They're not quite all yours, right?) Anyway, I knew that, in fact that's why I asked in this topic you made - it seemed that if anyone would know about them, you would. I wasn't sure if it was an oversight on my part that I couldn't access them, or if nobody noticed they weren't up, or something like that. Apparently that wasn't the case, so... never mind, it can wait. (EDIT: Some of them are up now, finally.)
Oh, someone actually did something!
Nice times there btw, I knew faster could be done! I'll be sure to check this out when I get a chance.
Keep up the good work though!
Actually, I'm having some trouble with the route planning, since I have nothing for reference besides videos of suboptimal paths through the level, and have to fully optimize lots of different possible paths to be able to compare them and choose one. So, just about any information on routes, or level maps, would be helpful. Right now I'm trying to decide where it's best to activate the boost in Hot Crater 1.
Also, I could make an AVI of the first zone if you want, but I haven't done that since it'd be better if you're able to watch it in the emulator.
I just watched your run and I must say it's looking very impressive. You definetly use the airdash to its fullest potential
route planning is tricky, I agree. Leaf Forest 1 looks fine. For leaf forest 2, one thing that always bothered me was the very ending. In my video, I took the top route, but I achieved a faster record by navigating quickly through the bottom route. I see you also go above the giant loop near the end rather then around it. I've considered that in the past, but it just seemed slower...
For bosses, the best theoretical time you can get is 5:50. You'reonly a few centiseconds off! Anyway you can knock it down a bit? Either way, it's definetly a most impressive fight. Just keep in mind that 5:50 is theoretically possible.
As for Hot Crater, my current 44 vid is crap. I achieved 40 seconds using the same route (for the most part) but getting boost mode a bit earlier
At the very beginning, there's a boost plate ontop of a loop (right under that rail sonic glides down using his hand). I used that instead of the speed shoes. Right above the speedshoes are a set of rails that sonic can grind. Take this path and navigate your way quickly. You'll soon rejoin with the normal path, and then just take that.
The only way the speedshoes help is by making sonic clear jumps faster and farther. It only affects his speed in the air really.
Also, near the end of the level is a big jump followed by a series of loops and one final rail that you grind/airdash off of to the finish line. If you notice, however, there is a turtle floating somewhere above one of the loops that you might be able to hit and soar over all the other loops. It's definetly an intended path since on top of the very last loop in the level lies a ramp. The thing is I don't know if it's faster or not, but I've never been able to test it out efficiently. Try it out, I dunno
sorry for my wording. I'm kind of in a rush right now, and I'm just not very good at explaining things. If you need me to rephrase something, just let me know
Either way, the run is shaping up to look very very good. Keep up the good work!
I don't believe 5:50 is possible for the boss. At the start of the battle, a timer counts up to 128 (one per frame), at which point the boss can be damaged. After each hit, a timer counts down from 30 (one per frame) before the next hit can happen. The boss takes 8 hits to kill, which means a minimum of 128 + 30*7 frames. That makes 338 frames, 338/60 = 5.633 seconds, which is basically the time I got (0:05:62), +/- 1 frame and rounding. I don't see how it could be done fully 8 frames faster than that minimum amount of time. I was already inside the boss for the entire battle... Where did you get 5:50 from, btw?
NintenDan wrote:
I see you also go above the giant loop near the end rather then around it. I've considered that in the past, but it just seemed slower...
I tried both ways, and going in that loop was always at least a second slower. But I'll try taking a lower route earlier... you're talking about where I go straight up around 0:19:00 in that level, right?
EDIT: You were right about the lower route being faster, I found something I forgot to do before when I was testing it, and got the time for act 2 down to 0:26:97.
EDIT 2: Got 0:33:52 on Hot Crater 1, mostly following your advice with some minor route changes
Holy crap, 33 seconds on Hot Crater act 1?
This I must see!
Maybe I can somehow attempt to follow your route, get my time down a bit lower.
As for the boss, I'm not entirely sure. The way we timed it, you could basically land 8 hits and get 5:50 supposing you got the first hit as soon as possible, though now that I think about it, I'm not 100% how exactly we timed it. You'll probably have to talk to SadisticMystic about that if you want an answer.
If that's as close as you can get, then that's fine. It might be something with just that boss. I know that for Boss 3 (egg totem) I've gotten my time down to 5:57 (I think, definetly sub 5:60) and for Boss 4 (Aero Egg) I've managed a 5:50.
Ok, so now you're going to have to deal with Hot Crater Act 2? That was never really my act...in fact, I forgot the route I take! Recently, due to my lack of competition and not really caring anymore, my sonic advance 2 championship has been taken from me (though seeing your times really inspires me to pick this game up again). Either way, the new champ has been sincere enough to provide a few new videos, including one for Hot Crater 2. Do the best you can with it, as I really don't know or remember jack about the level. I can't even view the video for some reason...I guess my computer just hates putfile
http://media.putfile.com/HC2---Sonic---4673
Hope that works or helps in some way...
My eyes have melted.
This will clearly be the best speedrun ever upon completion.
Holy crap, 33 seconds on Hot Crater act 1?
This I must see!
I updated the movie file at that link above (this), and will try to do so whenever I post an update.
About the boss: It could be something specific to that boss, or it could be an emulator inaccuracy (losing 1 frame every hit). I guess we'll see on the later bosses.
NintenDan wrote:
Ok, so now you're going to have to deal with Hot Crater Act 2? ... Either way, the new champ has been sincere enough to provide a few new videos, including one for Hot Crater 2. Do the best you can with it, as I really don't know or remember jack about the level. I can't even view the video for some reason...I guess my computer just hates putfile
Thanks, and it works for me. (Although I can't find any way to download it as a file, which is a bit annoying. EDIT: never mind, found a way to download it... I think there must be a faster route than this, though.)
Update: Got 0:36:10 on Hot Crater 2 (with a fairly different route, although I'm not 100% certain it's the best one) and 0:06:92 on the second boss (I think I just barely got every hit in on the first possible frame despite the invulnerability period between hits being so short, except maybe in-between the 2 forms). Next up is the music zone. EDIT: Got 0:36:37 on music plant 1, but I had to go through one of those tuba tubes and go backward a bit, so I'm still trying to find a better route.
Update: Got 0:43:02 on music plant 2, and 0:05:50 on the totem boss. Now onto ice paradise.
At this point I'm not completely certain about hot crater 2, music plant 1, or music plant 2 (because these had slow or backward-moving sections, which I think there could be some path around that I didn't find). Copypasting levels seems to work pretty well for this game, though, so I should be able to redo them later if improvements are found without having to redo everything afterward.
Seriously badass nitsuja. When you finish this one I'm sure it'll be star worthy :P
How exactly did you manage to hurt the hot crater boss cannon thingy without actually being a ball? the second or third hit you just kinda bumped it and it took damage, which surprised me.
Update: Got 0:44:07 on Ice Paradise 1, 0:34:90 on Ice Paradise 2, 0:05:50 on Aero Egg, 0:41:23 on Sky Canyon 1, and redid Leaf Forest 1 to be 0.7 seconds faster (0:26:48).
Atma wrote:
How exactly did you manage to hurt the hot crater boss cannon thingy without actually being a ball? the second or third hit you just kinda bumped it and it took damage, which surprised me.
Sonic starts to uncurl from a ball when the game thinks he's going to hit the ground soon, but it's purely graphical.
I just loved the way you made it look like you were doing act 2 then suicided by bouncing :P
NintenDan: do you have any sort of video's or such from sonic advance 1? I've watched the SDA run, but i can't tell if all paths taken are the best route.
SA1 is annoying too, the air dash doesn't seem as freely usable as it does in 2 (where it takes 4 frames or such to execute every time), but turboing right one frame and a the next gives some insane speed if left on a straigh long enough, you move so fast the level doesn't have time to render and thus you die xD
Wow that's incredible... this run is... incredible... that's the true spirit of the sonic games i guess... as Atma wrote it shall really be star worthy...
by the way how did you find the shortest route in each act ???
Update: Got 0:39:80 in Sky Canyon 2, 0:07:32 beating the Egg Saucer, and 0:59:32 in Techno Base 1. Egg Saucer was much harder to optimize than any previous bosses - I couldn't hit it whenever it's vulnerable, since it's often in positions that are out of reach or impossible to hit without dying (Sonic ended up being about a pixel away from death for much of the battle). Techno Base 1 was even more of a pain to find a route through than the Sky Canyon levels, as it's such a long and sprawling level, but it still ended up being under 1 minute and it's the longest regular level in the game judging by the record times at the Sonic Center.
BTW, a note to anyone watching this run: make sure to set the Frame Skip to 0 in VBA, or the scrolling will be very choppy compared to what it should be (normally it doesn't matter so much, but when the screen scrolls this fast there is a big difference between 30 FPS and 60 FPS).
Xaphan wrote:
by the way how did you find the shortest route in each act ???
Well, I go until there's a path split, then test to see if the paths converge soon (within a few seconds) - if so I try them both to choose the fastest one right away, but if they don't converge soon then I pick one and make a note to try the other one later. When I finish the level I go back and try all the other paths I noted, and keep the one that reaches the goal the soonest. I don't try paths that don't seem promising (beyond checking them once without optimizing), so I'm not sure if I've really found the shortest routes. Hopefully NintenDan will be able to take another look at this; he might know of some shortcuts I missed (and I haven't been able to find any videos for most of the levels).
Atma wrote:
but turboing right one frame and a the next [in Sonic Advance 1] gives some insane speed if left on a straigh long enough
Hmm, this could make for an unexpectedly fast SA1 run, since all you need is some level ground to go almost arbitrarily fast (and teleport through things). Something weird happens if you hit a spring while doing this, but I can't tell if it could help or if it always ends up killing you.
Sorry
I've been extremly busy lately and haven't had time to really check up on the progress of this run, but I must say you are literally kicking the living shit out of this game, no doubt. I'm even surprised how low you really got some of those times to go!
I'll try and find some time to watch all the new runs you've done and most certainly comment on, althoughI can tell you right now I never really took Techno Base 1 seriously, nor did anyone else at TSC it would seem.
NintenDan: do you have any sort of video's or such from sonic advance 1? I've watched the SDA run, but i can't tell if all paths taken are the best route.
Well, for the most part, since it's a speedrun,I have to take the fastest route for each level. There were a few times were I made exceptions though because it was a single segment run. For example, in Ice mountain 1, you can get a much faster beginning then I do in the speedrun. Also at the very end, you can spindash jump over that final gap underwater. It seems to be faster then just letting the springs take you, but it's hard to time, and risky to only cut 1 second off a jump that could lead to instant death!
http://www.soniccenter.org/videos/sonic_advance
Apparently, it says some of those videos aren't up, so I'll have to give em to Rolken to upload I suppose. I do know some of them can use a little improvement (like the Ice Mountain 1 vid) but when perfection is required...well...that's where you guys come in!
Anyway, I better wrap this post up. I'll be sure to try and stop by more often. And keep up the good work nitsuja. You are raping this game in ways I could never dream of!
Update: Got 0:34:60 in Techno Base 2, and 0:06:48 on the Egg-Go-Round.
EDIT: Finished Egg Utopia 1 with a time of 0:52:48.
Disappointingly, I found another route in Techno Base 2 that lets Sonic maintain a speed so fast that even his speed trails are way offscreen for quite a while (had to play mostly by audio cues), but that way ended up being slower because it was lower than the goal with no fast way to get up there. Oh well. An interesting thing that happened though is that I ended with exactly 99 rings, the last few of which were collected AFTER crossing the goal.
Also, I'll try to redo that boss before moving on, since it seems like it should be possible to beat it about 2 seconds faster somehow. EDIT: Got it to 0:06:48 by only picking up 1 ring and making use of the sliding kick attack which I thought was completely useless until now. I'll probably leave it at that.
NintenDan wrote:
Apparently, it says some of those videos aren't up, so I'll have to give em to Rolken to upload I suppose.
About 80% of the videos are down, both for Sonic Advance 1 and Sonic Advance 2 (not just the ones that say "Not Found", in case you didn't know).
Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 247
Location: New Hampshire
Latest WIP desyncs in Egg Utopia 2 after about 30 or so seconds for me. The open movie dialogue says I have the correct ROM. :/
PS. When this movie gets published it should come with an epilepsy warning, because holy hell is this movie fast. You're a monster, nitsuja :)
