Posts for JoeDamillio

Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/7/2014
Posts: 4
scrimpeh wrote:
...I do want to point out it's an interesting idea to pick up the invincibility potion. Considering how badly the game lags in this area, it might actually save time even in a TAS.
I only pick it up in Low%, and in Any% if I mess up jumping down the stairs before the spike pillars. In RTA, if you can jump on top on the 1st spike platform in the 1st room, you can do different strategies and be able to manage your HP so you can do lagless strategy without grabbing the potion. Idk if this would help for a TAS at all.
- I think the best option is to turn around when there's three to four bats on the screen, whip diagonally backwords and resume holding right the moment you begin whipping. You will lose a couple of frames from turning around, but it should make up for the lag frames you save from the bats. Just be warned, if your whip misses, you're probably going to lag-town. That's all I can help you with. I hope it's useful to you. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about what happens in Stage 6 or 8 with the invincibility potion. I haven't seen these things occur yet.
I'll take a look into that, thanks. And yeah, you just end up losing more time if you mess up :p. I'll post a video of the Stage 6 issue at somepoint. Edit: I've gotten the complete zip at least 5 times now on emulator. I've been trying to work in-depth with this glitch today, and so far, I'm in one situation: I need to know what causes Simon to rise up & die, as opposed to rising & zipping. Maybe his x-position on the screen? I'm not sure. If I can figure this out, then i can work on getting the correct height to zip across. Edit2: RTA strategy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeRuZvnNARY Video is spliced bc I paused before making my last savestate by accident. Next is putting together my video of the trial&errors yesterday.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/7/2014
Posts: 4
I'll edit this post at the end of the day and fill in any further improvements etc. Thank you for the snes9x files. I think 1.51 works with 1.53 so I should be fine. Otherwise I'll download the other. Edit: 1.43 gives me "File is wrong version" when opening in snes9x 1.43, and 1.53 is an invalid link Edit 2: WTF, I ZIPPED! Unfortunately this wasn't in my favor, and it happened super early (after the 3rd jump when you're at the top). First time I've gotten the 3rd jump. I couldn't react immediately because I wasn't expected to start zipping already, so I just zipped left and died. Hopefully I can do this again and try to input Left and see what happens. Like I said the zip happened early so idk if anything will even work. Edit 3: No success, but I've had some pretty interesing results. No input display since I'm trying on console, but I'll upload a video of the interesting attempts tomorrow. Edit 4: I believe I did it, but my input at the end was incorrect so I died at the wall spikes. I came up with a visual cue of when to start doing the jumps. I figured this would help eliminate at least one off-screen jump, and it's a lot easier for me to jump onto the vertical platform and jump immediately again, since I waited for it to rise a bit before doing the jumps. I'll upload this success seperately, along with the same result I did with gamesaver in slow motion. So that means I did this twice, once in RTA technically since the 1st success was in slowmo. Twitch link for now http://www.twitch.tv/joedamillio/c/5089069 Compared to your video, I started hold Right too late at the end. I also didn't press the jump button at all like you do. I don't know if that matters or not. Kind of looks like my height might be a little off too, not sure.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/7/2014
Posts: 4
I'm able to make 4 jumps (starting from where your screen capture is) maybe 40% of the time. I'm currently stuck at the jump after that. I can't time that jump correctly and I always hit the ceiling. Really all I can see to make this possible in RTA is mashing the rest of the jumps, or somehow developing a visual cue for every single jump. You'd know this for sure, but it seems like it's a 2 or 3 frame window to jump and avoid screen scrolling. Your screen capture helps a lot. I thought you had to include the jump onto that ledge Simon is standing on. That should make the first two or three jumps pretty easy. Sadly I don't have much/any knowledge of TASing and never used Bizhawk until yesterday, so maybe a snes9x movie will help better. I'll keep on trying. If this becomes possible in RTA, I'll be lowering my final goal to sub32. Though this goal is another 7 seconds less than sub32:15 w/o this new zip, I'm going to be so close to sub32 that I need to just do it. Edit: You know what, while I'm here in a TAS forum, I'm just going to make a (what I assume will be continuous >_>) laundry list of things I just don't understand about this game. Things I can't figure out just from continuous playing, or even switching to emulator and experimenting with the lack of experience I have. Feel free to check any of it out, or ignore it all, doesn't matter lol. This will help me remember all of these issues as well: - Medusa's hitbox (For Low% p. much) - Hitbox of the 2nd Vipers attack (the purple flames) - The hitboxes of the Vipers. Now, I've seen a picture of the hitboxes. What I don't understand is why attacks sometimes will hit the Vipers, and sometimes it won't. Like they're invincible. It seems rather fixed, because I've been developing a strategy for Low% in which I know what attacks will damage them, and which will not. - In 4-1 first room, after the first set of stairs Simon has to walk down, there is a sword skeleton that rushes you. Sometimes he stops at the end of the ledge and swings his sword. But he can also immediately jump at you, thus this is an automatic reset unless you don't mind losing 5 seconds. In Low%, if I stand just correctly so the skele spawns just out of the right side of the screen, he'll jump 95% of the time. I thought Simon's position could have to do with the skele's actions, but rarely he will stop at the edge and attack. Obviously this doesn't matter for low%, but it's a really, really stupid run-ender in any% and I just can't figure it out. - How to avoid lag in the rotating room (4-2). I'm fine with this in RTA, I just haven't looked into what exactly causes lag in this room. I've noticed the ole stand-there-limp-whipping at the Medusa heads seems to cause lag. This issue is just out of curiosity. - I can always discuss issues with the zip seperately, as this will probably always have a hanging issue. - Stage 6-1, at the end of the first room, there are two axe armors. The first one I try to get rid of before the axe he throws shows up on-screen. I've noticed when this axe shows up on-screen, the axe the 2nd axe armor throws will go right through him, resulting in it hitting me on my way up the stairs. Luckily I am hit on the stairs so I'm not sent backward onto the ground. Less than 5 instances have I seen the above statement be false (1st axe shows on-screen, 2nd one is still caught by 2nd armor). So I can't be sure what causes that 2nd axe to go through the armor. I've never seen an instance where I don't see the 1st axe appear, and the 2nd axe going through the armor + hitting me. - Stage 7 boss. I have no idea what's up with Grakul regenerating health at his last few bars of HP, but this is a serious problem in both Low% and Any%. My strategy for Any% seems to get this result more often than I'd like. - Stage 8 first room. We have to do certain actions depending on if we can jump onto the very first spike platform, or if we have to walk under it. Since this is 100% consistent in RTA, it's not a problem. But I still have no undertstanding why it's the first spike platform that determines getting the rest of the spike platforms in that room in our favor. See this - Last room in Stage 8. There's two acid drops before the RNG bridge. Sometimes if I grab the invincibility potion and continue, I get dboosted by the 1st acid drop. Thus, I can't boost of the 2nd one like I'm supposed to, since I'm still invincible. No idea why this can happen, my jump isn't mistimed or anything. - Stage 9. Not executing the animation of the gold platforms disintegrating. This animation causes a lot of lag. I assume you have to do frame perfect jumps to avoid the animation. - Stage A. Best way of avoiding lag in the 2nd room. I feel like this room may, in the long future, be one of the biggest improvements in RTA due to the severe lag we can't figure out how to reduce and still be fast (if possible). - Stage B. Finding the best strategy to avoid lag during the walk on the bridge.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 9/7/2014
Posts: 4
Hey Scrimpeh. That new 4-4 zip is sick haha. I will download Bizhawk and your input file and see if there's anything I can do for RTA. I'm sure the other players will do the same, as this is quite a big timesaver. Though I think if those 3 last ledge jumps have to be perfect, then it's not going to be possible to incorporate into RTA. Otherwise I'm confident we can make it part of the run. Thank you for all your findings, and all the time you guys have put into this game.