Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Since I should do something productive with my free time, I pulled out one of my favorite Genesis games of yore for my first stab at doing a time attack. Only half way through stage one at this point, which isn't much, but things are looking fairly good. Poor Dick can't shoot his guns while running, but he can shoot while jumping - video game logic is so lovely. At least it makes for much airborne tommygunning of generic henchmen, which must be a good thing.
Now, to get to the point; I was wondering if anyone here knew of any useful and/or cool glitches in the game, or other neato playing tips. Google and gamefaqs aren't giving me anything, but I figured that I should check with you knowledgable types before I start screwing up :p
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Heh. Like shooting stuff with the handgun or tommygun, throwing punches pretty much has to be done mid-jump (well, first 2-3 frames or last 2-3 frames of a jump to be precise, since you'll miss if higher). You can't kill things on the move without jumping in this game . . . looks a bit like the Rush'n'attack time-attack, actually, but with more and less-easily avoided gunfire. I have occasionally had a few frames to spare for standing shots, but they're definitely not the norm. Jumps abound!
Okay, I can't stand still.
Yes I know there is a Dick Tracy topic here, but since there is only 3 posts in it, I decided not to bump a more-than-a-year-old topic.
First of all, I'm not having holidays for a long period of time, so I won't have a lot of spare time for now, but I still wanted to ask questions to everybody.
Now second of all, this game is one I played long long ago, and it means a lot to me to complete a run of it. I would like some people to see it, so I wonder if you can call that egocentrism, playing to get famous or whatever, but I want everybody (I mean everybody) to have fun watching it no matter how it will be rated and I swear I'm going to do it as entertaing as perfect.
I just found too bad Dick Tracy had been forgotten by everybody, I didn't find any tips about it, not too many people know about that game although it was revolutionary and nobody knows it in France (The only one that wants to do it real-time is zfunk007 at sda, I congrat him because he will do it on hard mode. This game, being cool, is also hard to finish, so a real-time run is more conveinient.). The point is : All the tricks I had to get have been discoverd by myself, except for the shooting and punching while jumping.
Then my first question : If you have any tips about the game, anything, let me know. I found about jumping right while facing left, about jumping over a crouching person. I don't know anything about the game, so I'm just playing with instinct. Don't worry, my stunts are still pixel-perfect, I just use a lot of savestates twice or more for the same thing.
I didn't finish the first scene, but anyway it is useless if no one find the challenge I set for the game entertaining. I kill people at the background, but it might be too hard to understand (You don't see the guy getting hit, he just dies). I kill more people than needed, this delaying me of some frames, but I don't kill everybody, which is not really entertaining.
So my second question : Do you think I should do a 100% kill/destroy? One that has not played the game will find Tracy especially slow, so I should better aim for the real fastest time. And seeing him redundantly jumping to destroy everything on earth can be fun, as it can be boring. But I still like a 100% a little bit better.
It's okay if you can't answer for now, I'll finish quickly multiple vids of the different categories, so I could get more accurate opinions.
But if you played that game, do not hold back. I'm doing the thing slowly (around half a minute every day), but I have no reason to say I might stop it.
So?
Repost edit with major update : I finished a flawless and an entertaining one. The flawless aims for fastest time as possible with no break bonus (I don't destroy anything, no phone booth and all) whereas the entertaining is not well-made (problems with frame advance, it is 1 sec slower than a flawless one), but kills almost every enemies on screen.
The fastest is here, the older one is here (omg I even put authors comments in the old one O_o). Tell me what you noticed. Some may be what I already know, and these scenes are way not definitive, so just put your comments here.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Looks funny. The faster version looks much better, it's cleaner somehow.
100% kills in all levels would probably get repetitive.
I'd say try to change the style between levels while being as fast as possible, if that's possible.
Good luck with the bosses, their movements seem to be quite manipulatable.
Yeah, I was about to have a tendency to do every level different. And yes 100% kills could easily get boring, so I'll avoid that possibility.
The faster version was pretty hard to do, the problem being that when you don't kill enough enemies, you cannot move to the right. The worst part was about the crouching guy, for I don't know why but he shot me whatever I could have done, which does not happen in the "entertaining" version. So that's just "takes damage to save time" but meh. Despite of that, the version was made to be the cleanest, but some moves are useless, even if outnumbered compared to the older movie.
For now I'll just continue and do funnier levels. punching enemies while jumping will be harder.
There are two moments where I'll get my fun : The car chase and the boss fights.
I intend to dance the most perfect way during the car chase while still dodging every bullet (or as much as Tracy can), so I'll work a lot on it. You don't imagine what I mean by perfect dancing hehe. But I will make it for only one level so it won't be boring to watch the same thing three times.
The boss fights sure are manipulatable. I remember I had to kill Flattop using savestates, but I could never hit him accurately >.< . A single different frame and everything is changed. So I'll make the luckiest fights while fighting against them.
Re-post edit : Crap. My computer will be shut down tomorrow for my work at high school has not been good enough. I was going to release the whole stage 1 but now I'll just provide what I got.
The whole movie is here, I stop at Itchy, doing an awful mistake by getting him on the left since he walks to the right but anyway, here is the savestate to get to the boss.
The second level was a pain. I spend a lot of time in it, but still lost some frames around, so see it by that savestate and tell me what you think, I may see it a looong time after but it's still okay. Goodbye.
Repost edit 2: Okay. For now here's the story so far.
I actually got some authorizations to get on my computer every sunday, so I can get to publishing the run even slower, but at a rate at least.
Today I made the links cleaner in the first edit, so you don't have to be clicky-clicky to get to the movie and savestates.
I am oftenly getting to finish that damn Itchy fight, I will publish the last movie as soon as I defeat him. Trying to be entertaining is no fun at all >_>, I made more than 2000 rerecs so far, and I deleted by mistake the boss fight when I was about to make it. Anyway I hope that will be funny to you all viewers.
I thought that I would get first to a not-that-beautiful version, but I think I'm not going to submit two Dick Tracy movies, regarding the fact that I'm really overcome by the game at only first stage.
Here's my deal : I would like every comment about the movie so far as my future stage 1 movie, even small or bad. I'm going to redo stage 1 after that, so the mov would have absolutely no flaws. I will be doing that at every stage.
That's all. I'm counting on you, see you next sunday.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
I don't have much to say about the movie. It looked pretty good to me. I don't know the game that well, so I probably can't spot any more mistakes than you do.
Does jumping on enemies save time? You jumped on some enemies and it looked like that moved Dick to the right quite fast.
Looks well played, you don't stop for nothing... but I wonder how well suited this game is for a speedrun, because Dick walks extremely slowly, and there seems to be no way to speed it up other than jumping on the crouching guys.
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
As the guy who started that other Dick Tracy topic, I feel compelled to reply here. First - good choice, good skill and good luck! Dick Tracy is a little gem of a game, very nice to see it get properly beaten and nicer still to not have to do any work myself in order for it to happen.
I eventually did get past stage one on my run, but then I pretty much got fed up with the desyncs and other limitations (*sob*, no frame advance) of whichever version of Gens I was using at the time and gave up during the Itchy fight, which absolutely refused to stop desyncing and getting me killed.
Sadly, I can't really be of much gameplay help since so far your run so much better than what I acchieved that it's downright embarassing. I rewatched my only surviving version (which desyncs after about 1½ minutes) and I apparently never even learned how to shoot in the opposite direction of the jump, I stopped to shoot things in order for the screen to advance and so on; none of that here. You also do a better job of minimising the jumping you need to do than I did. All in all it looks very fluid and entertaining, please keep it up!
Also: yep, the later stages tend to involve more bullets flying 'round. Although it always will look a bit like Rush 'n' Attack...
Okay, I finished stage 1 and I'm pretty proud of it, but of course I can make that Itchy fight faster. I got some tricks after I killed him that may damage him faster. Abusive frame delay for luck manipulation purposes occured to make the bonus stage interesting.
Unfortunately, I cannot upload the movie on my webpage, but I'm using rapidshare for now.
I'll answer to everybody here :
Aqfaq:
It's all okay if you don't see more mistakes than I do. The point is : Do you find this interesting, do you have any questions about what I do that may need an explanation?
Does jumping on enemies save time? You jumped on some enemies and it looked like that moved Dick to the right quite fast.
In Dick Tracy, enemies bump Tracy to the left, a move that makes you lose time, so basically you can't get past an enemy, but if you do a well-timed (frame perfect) jump over a crouching guy, they bump you... to the right. That is some precious time saving, considering that Tracy is slow as hell. See next post from Truncated.
Truncated, my thoughts are exactly the same.
I'll go straight : This game is not really suited for a TAS, because yes, Tracy is extremely slow. I said I would get my fun on the car drives and boss fights, but it's going to be even more needed to make that run pretty interesting.
See that Itchy fight I made on the movie, I think I'll have to make it even funnier because it's is the only moment where I can stop walking to the right and do some entertaining moves. The car drive will be the same.
Actually a real-time speedrun can be more intersting because normally, a real-time player will have way more difficulties than a tool-assisted speedrunner. Some kind of pride, if you will.
Aqfaq wrote:
Yeah, it's not a fast game, but I enjoyed watching the movie. Hopefully the later stages have enough enemies to make more interesting.
Thanks, I'm pretty sure it will be interesting, too. I already got some ideas about finishing Stage 2-A without killing anybody in the background, I hope something good will result.
Xenophyte :
Hehe thanks for the game choice, I remember I used to play that game a lot without passing through 1-A >___<, I just found that game really cool and now nostalgy got me. So that's why I want to make a speedrun of it.
About the technical aspects, I need frame advance so much that sometimes I forget to turn the game speed in slow motion, frame advance is the key for jumping over crouching enemies and for reverse jumping. I would have given up if I had only slow-mo.
I realised recetly that reverse jumping causes a delay of around 2 frames, even though when I land while facing left I can be not slowed down whatever I can do. So I'll make a new version that will finish stage 1-A sub 1 minute.
Thanks a lot for your feedbacks. In France it's holidays now, so I'll have my time to do that TAS.
Enough talking, enjoy the run here.
Edit: Wow shortened the text.
Now I'm trying to make 1-A sub-minute, no damage, no break and as much kills as I can, but hell that will take me time. Please be patient until next update.
I'm off for some trip and I won't have access on my compy but I may be uploading 1-A in 2 weeks let's say. Good bye.
I'm definitely interested in seein' Dick Tracy do his thing. I rented this game 8 or 9 times when I was younger, and seeing it talked about brings me back. I'd probably like to see a perfected one just for nostalgia's sake, and you're doing an awesome job thus far.
Thanks a lot for the support, I need it.
About the run, I made more than the half of 1-A, and I didn't take damage from the crouching guy, for I knew what was wrong. Now I'm heading to the easier (but not easiest) part of 1-A, trying to finish it before sunday although my parents have an eye on me.
well it definetly looks entertaining. i remember playing this way back when i was too young to actually be good at it! started my own no damage speedrun yesterday then thought i'd look for a topic. it's really hard to make this entertaining and keep it fast! i'll use some of the tricks here and hopefully should get stage one completed to post!
-J.
Good to see some people working on it :) , I actually have no time because I have some important exams, but after June 24th I may be working hard on this, so we may be giving advices to each other. I wonder what it may look like, just post your movie as soon as you get to the end of 1-A please, thanks.
EDIT : I can give you any kind of advice for 1-A 1-B, so please for TAS's sake give me advices for 1-C if you play it >.<
EDIT 2 : Went serious about Itchy and realised it's a pain I didn't expect. Actually it seems that I must hit him as many times as possible when he is on screen (2 consecutive hit on screen : 267 frames, 2nd hit after he leaves and comes back : 310 frames). It also seems that I must shoot him right before he gets to some places like doors and let him go so he could get out through the door and lose his invicibility time.
Redoing the whole thing. I think I can shoot him three times instead of twice about the first time he shows himself. I'll be patient, but I'm getting closer don't worry.
REPOST EDIT/EDIT 3 : Actually, Itchy is even worse than a Zazabi. When walking to the right, the fastest thing is : I must, when walking to the right, hit him so he disappears dying out of the screen. First I must shoot everywhere w/ my machinegun so Itchy stops walking as fast as possible (not shooting makes him stop at a certain point) ; then I must shoot him at an accurate frame so, when he is hit and disappears to the right thanks to screen scrolling, he doesn't come from the right (I tested many times and hitting him at a certain frame makes him appear whether on the right, whether on the left, but after he is hit, nothing can change it).
I lost motivation, I did stop the run for a while and I don't have a lot of enthusiasm right now, so meh. RetroHolo, I can give any kind of advice for the stages X-A X-B, but I'm really tired about the boss fights, this game is hard to TAS, that's not a joke. Conclusion : For now I'm on Revenge of Shinobi, but I didn't really abandon the Dick Tracy one. I'll get back to it when I'll like it.
