Posts for Mr_K

Posted: 12/18/2020 8:25 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
This is my favorite Double Dragon game and a very entertaining TAS. Fantastic enemy grouping, luck manipulation, and use of environment hazards. My only question is was there a reason why you didn't use the 1P Double Dragon mode where you control two characters?
Posted: 5/9/2020 11:14 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
So I'll try and address each of the points: Time Save The current published run uses snes 9x 1.43 and with such poor lag emulation there was no problem keeping both players alive all the time. You cannot use the same strats on console/bsnes without losing major amounts of time. In the autoscroller in stage 3 alone it's over 15 seconds slower keeping both players alive. Keeping two players alive all the time is great but watching the game lag horribly for over a minute in that autoscroller as well as other places can be absolutely painful to watch. The real time speedrun of two players for this game also kills off player 2 to save time. Skill In Contra games, the screen stops scrolling forward if one player gets too far behind. Being able to eliminate player 2 in stage 1 without slowing the screen down was actually extremely challenging and took a ton of planning. It's much easier to just go forward and shoot. From an entertainment perspective, making player 2 a poor unfortunate sidekick is actually kind of fun, but that's subjective. Continues/Resources The game doesn't consider it a 'game over' until both players lose all of their lives. If a player has two weapons, the player still gets to keep one of them after losing all lives. A continue is a limited resource that isn't used until both players lose all of their lives. Stealing the other player's lives without using up continues is an intended mechanic and it's used in most Contra games. Speaking of Contra games, this isn't the only TAS to use the live stealing mechanic. The two player Contra and Super C TAS also use live stealing.
Posted: 9/21/2019 12:24 AM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
Hey Soig, great work! I submitted a run but canceled it some time ago. I am not so good at making tool assisted speedruns, but I know this game really well. If you take a look at the strategies I used in my submission, you'll see several improvements. What would be really great is if you could work with us on improving the run further. I gave up improving the run because manipulating the crush damage is too hard. With your help I think we can do a lot better though. Would you like to contribute?
Posted: 9/3/2018 11:36 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
In case anyone is curious, I've decided to collaborate with EZGames on this submission. I'm hopeful we'll have a more polished final product.
Posted: 9/3/2018 8:42 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
I wasn't initially going to have each character use spread, but I found it made the stage 3 midboss fight significantly faster so I actually backtracked even though it made things a bit slower in the previous stage. I'd recommend that you try and complete this fight and see if you are able to maintain your lead.
Posted: 2/14/2015 3:00 AM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
I've been meaning to drop by a lot sooner. This game is a lot more difficult to optimize than it looks. Lag management is choosing where and how to lose time. From the sprite delay glitch to new double dashes and an incredible one hit kill bomb on the stage 4 boss, this TAS has plenty of new stuff over the 2P run I did with PJ. It's hard to express how happy I am to see the true entertainment potential and chaos this game has to offer. Definite yes vote.
Posted: 1/17/2014 9:03 AM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
I got the trick on stream tonight doing RTA attempts by accident! I've included a link to download the Raw AVI of the file since you might want to go frame by frame when reviewing what I did. https://citrix.sharefile.com/d/sc023486f54047bfb Here's a YouTube Encode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlKJ77AQ_I
Posted: 1/13/2014 2:10 AM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
Hi. I did that run. To clarify, the strategy came from a YouTube comment, but I haven't documented it anywhere else. I'll probably go for an RTA of this game before the end of the week. The glitch in the sewer level works by extending the character's collision detection to go through the wall. You do have to move over a few pixels to the right at the start of the level to be able to get trigger the exit. It can be done with either the horn or the guns, but the horn comes out faster. There is one more notable improvement that can be made to the TAS. I have, by accident, skipped the surprise animation at the beginning of the stage 2 boss. I might have done it by using the hammer in a certain way around the trigger point for losing control, but I don't recall precisely if that's what it was. I don't have it recorded, but I could probably duplicate it eventually. When you get it, the fight proceeds as normal, you just skip the cartoon shock animation at the beginning of the boss fight. I might be able to find a few more improvements to the current TAS if I look over it a bit more carefully. Also, Pasky made a Lua script for me. He was sworn to secrecy, but now that the cat's out of the bag here it is: http://pastebin.com/xLdPy2Ey
Posted: 11/3/2013 7:46 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
Hey great run Xipo! That was a nice find on the pause trick to avoid getting crushed. Since you avoided getting crushed, that means that it's possible to collect F and keep it through the boss. I'm not sure if I'm doing the pause glitch in a way that's perfectly optimized, but after collecting F I was able to optimize the last part of stage 8 and improve the movie by 7 frames. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3677753/Xipo-SuperC-1P_updated.fm2
Posted: 6/29/2013 11:57 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
Hey thanks for the feedback. I totally didn't think about the heart countdown. Rocky's health would've been at one heart had it not been for the unfortunate tea pickup which I couldn't avoid. Thanks for catching that. A few double dashes before the boss fight starts will take care of that. For this particular run I am definitely going for speed. I feel like most of the entertainment value will be to show off how broken the double dash mechanic is and how broken the bombs are. Killing enemies with frame perfect precision is something that I'll be including in stage 2's autoscroller. For stage 1 I was able to do a little bit of that in the bridge. I couldn't do that with the skeletons because they take 6 hits to kill and have 4 frames of invincibility after each hit. The first part of stage 1 just lags so badly that it's not an ideal candidate. The card/leaf with no upgrades is also just a really slow way of taking out enemies. The fastest way to deal with lag is utlimately to just double dash out of the areas that cause it.
Posted: 6/29/2013 10:31 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
I've uploaded the WIP. I normally do RTA's so this isn't quite the best, but here's a temporary encode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3fjwTduiL8
Posted: 6/29/2013 6:36 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
So I haven't posted in a while, but I'm still working on this. I've completed stage 1 so far and if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear it. In stage 1 you can start to see the double dash in action. The pause before the next double dash is intentional. It is done to manipulate a skeleton in the bridge area near the sage to disappear. This instantly allows me to trigger the sage and setup the next double dash. I also showcase what I call the zombie hover where when a player only has 1 heart left you can keep sliding over and over again. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3677753/Pocky%20%26%20Rocky%20(USA).bkm Done on BizHawk 1.4.0 With the boss, I didn't think that it was possible, but Rocky's bomb was able to do 2000 damage leaving the boss with only 48 health.
Posted: 1/26/2013 8:58 PM
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Mr_K
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (94)
Joined: 10/2/2009
Posts: 13
The time has come to make this happen. I'm posting what I have here about the mechanics of this game. PJ and I did a speedrun of this at AGDQ and we later got a 21:59 in real time. We can apply some of our strategies here to TASing and hopefully produce something that's optimized and entertaining. Note: RAM Addresses are in the format that SNES9x uses. BizHawk of course will be used for the actual TAS. Difficulty Differences: The main differences between easy and normal are the bomb count. Each character starts with one bomb on normal and no bombs on hard. Certain enemy attacks inflict more damage on hard and some minor enemies (but not bosses) have more health on hard. The difficulty differences are very minor and the ending is the same. I'm on the fence considering the normal difficulty for the TAS as opposed to Hard. Character Differences As far as I can tell both characters have the same movement and slide speed. The differences between characters involve their charged up B attacks and Bomb attacks. Charged up B Pocky: Pocky will spin rapidly and this can be used to continue moving forward while blocking many enemy attacks. If a shot hits at the right angle, this attack can be interrupted. Rocky: Rocky will turn into a statue (think Mario 3) and will be completely invulnerable. The statue slightly damages enemies, but the animation is too long to be used effectively in a speedrun. It can be used for entertainment in several places, particularly stage 4's auto scroller Bombs Pocky: Pocky's bomb starts as a small cloud and then splits off in 4 directions rapidly. Rocky: Rocky's bomb starts as a slightly large cloud and then envelops most of the screen. It can be used to deal much more damage. Sliding - Sliding is much faster than walking. Normally, you can slide every 51 frames. Your character ends the slide and gets up before the game allows for another slide. If you take damage midslide it cancels the standing up animation and it allows you to slide again. Double Dash - When Pocky and Rocky dash into each other, they both start sliding around the screen and bounce off walls. During this time they are invulnerable to all damage except for things that would crush them (like the barrels and spiked balls in stage 5). Firing Weapons ----------------- Shot Canceling - The rate at which characters fire is tied into the animation where they move their arms back and forth. Your character fires as the arm moves forward. The shot is released just before the arm reaches head level and your character does a follow through motion with the arm. By pressing forward in the direction that the character is facing on certain frames you can cancel the follow through animation and fire more frequently. This can be manipulated to get a character to shoot at up to double speed. Shot limit - There is a shot limit of 6 shots on the screen at once. Upgrades ---------- Blue powerups give you a spread shot while red power ups give you a fire shot. Pocky's Weapon's health 7E00E7 Rocky's Weapon Health 7E00E9 When you collect a power up the value will be: 2 at first powerup 6 at second power up 10 Third Power Up Value is subtracted by 1 when you take damage, though falling off of things subtracts more 0 No weapon 1-3 First level weapon 4-7 Second Level Weapon 8-10 Third level weapon 0 Basic Weapon 1-3 First Level Weapon 4-7 Second Level Weapon 8-10 Third Level Weapon Damage --------- 16 - Card/Leaf/Fire Shot - Note: Your A/Y button attacks all do the same damage. The spread shots and upgraded fire all do the same damage as regular shots 4 - Magic Wand/Tail Wag 32 - Sending objects/ attacks back at enemies - Wagging certain projectiles and even enemies will do 64 damage to things that they hit. 64 - Respawning animation - If your character loses a life and respawns 64 damage is instantly dealt to everything on screen. You also get this if you fall off a cliff and come back 200 - Bomb Damage per frame - Bombs deal 200 damage for every frame that an enemy is vulnerable and within the range of the bomb. In practice, I've been able to get Side notes on Spread/Fire Spread: Due to the invlunerability window, a volley of spread only damages a single enemy once Fire: Level two and level three fire shots split off when they hit enemies. The splitoff does 16 damage to anything it hits. Fully upgraded fire will splitoff and continue along until it hits enemies. Against enemies that have larger hitboxes, the fire split off can damage the same enemy allowing two hits per shot. This mechanic makes it easy to optimize damage against large enemies. Fire should be used carefully because the splitoff makes shots take longer to exit the screen (interfering with the shot limit) and the splitoff also gives fire a greater tendency to lag. The split is useful for damaging enemies otherwise out of reach and can be used very effectively against the stage 2 bamboo mid boss. Invulnerability Period - Enemies with health can only be damaged once every 4 frames. This mechanic seriously hampers the effectiveness of upgraded weapons and makes two player damage a lot less useful. Lag Management ------------------- Lag management will be critical for TASing because this game can lag a lot as more enemies and shots are on the screen. When possible to do efficiently, it can be faster to stop and kill enemies. Other sections may be better to double dash or slide through. I'll have more on this as I continue TASing, I'm sure. Item drops ------------ There are presents throughout stages. Some have fixed drops, some have random drops. For random drops, they tend to change on what I believe is every other frame. Barrier: Barriers will provide protection for two hits. They are used up quickly if you make physical contact with something. They can also be useful because when taking damage they negate knockback. Sage Patterns ------------ This is perhaps the most important thing to optimize. Bombs are game breaking and so it's critical to get as many as possible. With the exception of stage 5, every stage has a bomb in a present, getting more bombs greatly speeds up boss fights. At the beginning of every level a cut scene is played. Pressing start advances the cutscene. While I don't fully understand the game's RNG, pressing start on a particular time during this cut scene will determine what sage you get for the next stage. The address below and its value will determine if you've manipulated the sage correctly. The Mandalin lady drops a bomb and a "dog" which can provide invulnerability that is useful for stage 5, but relatively useless for most of the other stages. The other bomb sages drop barriers. Sage Address 7E1050 (P) Indicates the Sage will drop power ups (B) Indicates the Sage will drop a bomb Knight 00 (P) Fisherman 01 (P) Mandalin Lady 02 (B) Old Man with Fan 03 (P) Old Man with Cane 04 (B) Reclining Man 05 (B) Man with hat and mushroom 06 (P) Kitty 07 (Not used in rotation) =================== Enemy Boss Health =================== First Boss 7E1F18 Value 2048 Cyclops 7E1898 Value 1024 Bamboo Mid Boss 7E1D18 Value 1792 Second Cyclops 7E1C18 Value 1024 Raft bomb thrower 7E1818 Value 2048 Second Boss 7E1F18 Value 1280 128 per cycle ============== Stage Three First Phase Boss fight 7E1F18 Value 1280 Genie Fight 7e1818 Value 1536 Second Phase Boss Fight 7E1F18 Value 1664 Stage 4 Cloud 7E1818 Value 384 Boss 7E1F18 Value 2048 Stage 5 Boss 7E0FAE 7E1F18 Value 32767 - begins second phase at 322239 (I don't fully understand the mechanic here) Second phase 1536 ====================== Stage 6 Armor Boss 7E1F18 Value 2560 Black Mantle 7E1F18 Value 4096 Note: Normally Black Mantle is only vulnerable after one statue is destroyed. He may be damaged for approximately a second at the very beginning of the fight. Left Statue 7E1F38 Value 640 Right Statue 7E1F58 Value 640