And I would like to stress once again that my original post wasn't a serious criticism of any of the game's aspects, and was more of a sarcastic remark aimed at pirate_sephiroth's nitpicking.
You did mention that I was deliberately ignoring the fact that your remark was sarcastic. This is a technique I learned quite some time ago. Far from ignoring the sarcasm out of hand, such a response is itself a higher order of sarcasm.
I intended no offense if you took any.
Thanks, Captain.
You may as well want to check what "transylvania" means and how "castlevania" as a word doesn't make a bit of sense.
The etymology of the name Castlevania for the series isn't that hard to figure out.
Remember, the Japanese name for the original Castlevania is Akumajou Dracula, which translates approximately to Demon Castle Dracula.
This is not very impressive sounding in English, however. Since it's based on the Dracula myth, however, and everyone knows Dracula comes from Transylvania...
You get: Castle Dracula + Transylvania --> Castlevania. A name which evokes obvious connections to both the Dracula myth and the obvious importance of the castle itself to the game.
Or perhaps I'm deliberately overanalyzing this.
It's been strongly suggested that this game uses the the same basic engine as Front Mission 2: Gun Hazard. Having played both, I'm inclined to agree that there is a strong similarity of 'feel' in the way the mechs control, although the engines are different enough in minor ways that I don't think that any glitches found in one game would necessarily correspond to the other.
However, for the most part, it's worth saying that if you can do a good run on Metal Warriors, the next step is to do a run on Gun Hazard, which is a longer, more detailed and involved game.
The WIP looks good so far, although it's unfortunately brief. I'll reserve further judgement until a WIP of the completed first level is posted.
Voted yes. I don't generally vote on a lot of runs, but in my opinion RCR is a game that is fun to play. The original speedrun captured this essence very well. I have kept up with the later speedruns, and they do not do as good a job as the original.
BUT
This is because they are being judged based on the original, whereas the original is judged based on merit. If the newer speedrun had been released with no prior speedrun to compare it against, I feel that it would have gathered more acclaim. I personally can state unequivocally that I would have enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed the original speedrun. However, because it was NOT the original speedrun, it is judged in relation to the original speedrun.
What are the runs that gather the most attention and interest? They tend to be in two categories: Original runs, or runs that are innovative and creative. A run that saves 30 or 300 frames through minor movement optimization or minor new tricks is technically interesting, but does not have the same kind of visceral excitement.
The existing published run succeeds in improving on the previous and is technically superior. In contrast, THIS run provides a visceral excitement that viewing the existing published run does not.
THAT is why I voted yes.
The movie didn't seem all that optimized. I noticed at least one boss where you ended the level with 'burning power' left over - could you not have initiated it earlier and used it to save a few frames?
Also, frankly speaking if you're taking damage to save time the only reason you should end a level at greater than minimum life is because it was not possible to save any time by taking more damage.
If it doesn't take time out of your way to pick up extra hearts, pick them up and use them freely. You even have a method of burning large numbers of hearts if need be - the full heal costs 20 hearts, after all.
It's a good opener run, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of frames could be saved through better run planning and optimization.
I don't know if you're aware of this, but it is possible to switch between the dagger and a secondary weapon without going through the menu (MODE+X, if I remember - some combination of MODE and another button). Unfortunately, I'm unsure of the actual value of this since you have to go to the menu in the first place in order to select the item, but it seems that in places where you use bombs and your dagger (like in the test run) it might be faster to do it outside the menu.
Guardian Legend isn't really a game where you can do a 0% - you can get the minimum items but it is impractical - and if you're going to do an any%, you might as well collect the items that help you complete the game faster, especially (if, in the case of hp score upgrades) if they don't take time away from other things.
I'm gonna agree with shallow - take damage whenever avoiding it would cause you to lose frames. Alternatively, killing the enemy ahead of time looks better than taking damage, particularily if you kill it at the last possible frame or precisely ahead of time.
Back to optimom - the fireball is the preferred weapon against him in realtime play because a, it's powerful, b, it's not fixed like the beam, and c, it destroys his spaghetti strands. I think tomorrow I'll do some tests and see if it's possible to do the battle faster with different strategies.
Just finished watching both your runs - significant improvements visible as far as optimizations and such in the newer one, but I have some questions about the old run (cause it gets further) - specifically, why did you use the fireball against Optimom (I think that's what the spaghetti monster is called) rather than the lvl 2 saber? Wouldn't it be faster to follow him up close and use the saber, rather than avoid damage with the fireball?
Alternately, you could be shooting him from closer and get a higher rate of fire and more fireballs into him in a shorter period of time.
Also, in the intro stage, I know it's possible to earn a score power-up - I've done it on the console - but is that due to a longer boss fight? Possibly it's because on the console I would kill the slow-moving spinning discs rather than the meteors.
Does having a wider shot due to increased chips also increase the damage output of your main gun?
I've beaten the game a number of times but I'm not sure of the answers here.
My own two cents here, cause I'm interested in seeing this run go forth:
During the labyrinth sections, avoiding damage is easy - it's therefore not particularily interesting to take no damage and you should take damage whenever doing so would take time.
The corridor sections (the shooters for the uninformed) are often very challenging, and nigh-impossible to avoid being damaged in during some sections, so there would be some amount of entertainment gained because during the majority of the corridor, it's nothing but a fixed shooter until the boss arrives.
However, during boss fights you can save time noticably by taking damage, and therefore my suggestion is that you take damage whenever doing so would save time.
With tool-assisted runs, speed is the main focus, and secondary entertainments (such as avoiding damage) should really only be considered when you do not sacrifice speed in exchange for a nebulous secondary goal - especially if you're not consistant about it.
If you're going to take damage, then take advantage of every opportunity to save time where damage would save time. If you're going to avoid damage, avoid it completely - half-measures don't have quite the same impact.
With that said, avoiding damage in the corridor sections is certainly more entertaining than simply taking damage and restoring your life for the boss battle - since there is no time difference, you should avoid damage then. But in other cases, you shouldn't. The difference will be pronounced and, dare I say it, elegantly clear in the final product.
Voted Yes.
I get the very strong feeling that none of the 'No' votes are from anyone who has actually played the game. I would find it quite remarkable that anyone who has played (and enjoyed) the game would vote 'No' here, just because this is an amazingly fast run through on what is a remarkably long game.
This type of voter bias on games people have played vs not played is not new to the site; the speedruns of Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Final Fantasy VI are dramatically longer with extensive boring parts that consist of travel and dialogue and combats that are uninteresting (or simply ran from, if not repetetive leveling up or the occasionally interesting boss fight). These speedruns are much less interesting to watch and are much more lengthy - RPG speedruns are this way in general - yet they were accepted onto the site, and a good portion of that is due to the popularity of these games.
The (rejected) speedrun at SDA clocked in at about an hour and a half. This TAS is a mere third of that time. It demonstrates excellent luck manipulation, wins battles extremely rapidly and precisely, and blows through the game in a manner that would be impossible for a non-TAS. Going long distances completely unarmed is suicidal. Each ship is unique and has its own strategy for fighting with as well as fighting against; not all ships are created equal either.
Any battle against a Kohr-Ah or Kzer-Za Ur-Quan is costly in terms of crew, not to mention the difficulty of assaulting the Sa-Matra (which is always costly in ships, and time-consuming), but this run makes the fights look deceptively easy, with a variety of match-ups against the two Ur-Quan races and then Sa-Matra going down, not without a fight, but without even a whimper.
I have played this game, so the speedrun is highly interesting and entertaining to me. I vote yes. It is well done, well executed, demonstrates great knowledge of the game and precise luck manuevering and luck manipulation. Those who do not find the run entertaining to watch should reconsider and examine the entertainment value of the other RPG TASes and question whether this run is really any less entertaining to an unititated observer.
Edit: I forgot to mention that i have made this try without re-recording, slowdown or abusing of saves and other stuff .... all is made as if it was done on a real megadrive !
Then you appear to have missed the purpose of this site. Perhaps you should try it on a real megadrive, and submit it to speeddemosarchive.com.
Search around some of the video sites - I've found a complete runthrough of Dragon's Lair 1, and it's possible that someone's done one for the other games.
Since there is not a tool-assisted emulator for laserdisk games, however, you're on the wrong forum. Try asking around SDA (speeddemosarchive.com), although (friendly warning) you're likely to irritate people by requesting speedruns.
Definitely improvable. This could be brought below the four hour mark. Minor optimizations add up.
Something I noticed because it's a glaring loss of time is the battle with Ifrit and Shiva - if you use the esper Ramuh (by equipping it on a character, and then going to the magic menu and pressing up IIRC) the battle ends immediately, rather than requiring you to defeat both Ifrit and Shiva. I'm paused at that section right now; I'll do a final vote after I watch the rest of the movie.
I made this a few months ago when there was some mini contest to score as much as possible in the first autoscrolling level (up to the boss):
http://acmlm.cjb.net:2/emu/nes/fceu/fcs/guardianlegendscore.fcm
It looked good, but that's really just a start since it doesn't even get to the actual dungeon part ...
Acmlm, please do a 100% run for this game, I think a lot of people would love to see it. I had to erase the SDA run because of the awful encoded H.264 quality (no offense Nate) and I dont want to download the 2gig high quality run. But Mr Votava did an excellent job, no doubt.
I downloaded both the regular H.264 run and the 2 gig HQ H.264 run. The encoding seems to be as well done as possible - the run was captured from VHS, and at the higher quality it's very apparent that the poor visual quality is because of how it was recorded, not because of the encoding.
For some less off-topic conversation, I'm not entirely certain a 100% run will be particularily entertaining to anyone except the people who have played the game before. I predict that improvements to speedrunning this game will come from improved combat techniques, and better route planning. The only glitch I ever came across playing this game on the console is the ability to walk through certain walls, which may save a bit of travel time (not the screen border walls, but other obstructions - moving up+right or down+left can pass you through vertical walls sometimes).
I'm reasonably certain that the saber weapons are the highest damage output/second in the game, but I could be mistaken. There may be some benefits to using autofire with the sabers; I can't remember testing this. The
The game may have some room for luck manipulation with enemy drops in the autoscroll levels, but since the things that can drop consist of blue chips, red chips, hearts, full health, and enemy erasers, the actual value of manipulating drops may be someone dubious - unless, of course, the purpose is to go through a corridor spamming the enemy eraser.
Since it is in a couple occasions possible (through the use of shops, etc.) to acquire additional weapon upgrades beyond the 'max' power (which has no effect), a decision needs to be made on what a '100%' run means. Certainly, all of the optional corridors need to be beaten, and every weapon should be collected and upgraded to the maximum, but should redundant powerups be acquired, and should the pause trick be used to buy out every shop? Since enemy erasers are a consumable, is it necessary to pick up every EE in the Labyrinth?
You say you put effort into the movie. Other people (namely, but not limited to, me) say your efforts are sloppy. You say you're giving up and trying to run a different game.
Are you seeing the pattern here? You need to improve your current submission, not discard it. THAT is where the 'lack of effort' comes in. You have this mentality of 'good enough' that quite frankly is detrimental to producing quality TASes.
Diman wrote:
I thought almost every submission that obsolete a
movie here was going to be published. (Maybe not if its only one or two
seconds) but I still think 5 seconds is enough.
We've had movies that improve upon existing TASes by about 1/4 of a second get accepted. Why is yours being so poorly recieved? It's not because it doesn't improve upon the previous Princess run, or that a Princess-run doesn't belong on the site.
It's because yruns are NOT judged solely on the basis of whether they improves upon a specific run. In this case, it's also being compared to the other SMB2 runs on the site, and it is judged wanting.
Voted no. I don't necessarily agree that the princess-only run should be removed, but this run is extremely lackluster in comparison to the newer runs. Watching this run approached being painful.
It doesn't matter if your run is faster than the existing movie - the fact of the matter is that it obviously could be significantly improved beyond what you've done, and that's why I'm rejecting it. Put in the effort or don't submit the movie.
I'm not certain you are understanding the purpose of the site. Anyways, there's no reason to do a 'no rings' run in sonic just like there's no reason to do a 'no coins' run in mario.
If there were some functional reason why avoiding rings would matter (as opposed to avoiding hits), then yes, I could see it, but there isn't, so I don't.
I don't know why, but this run is constantly desynching towards the very beginning, no matter which version of the ROM I use - after the whip powerup is collected, a group of three enemies arrives, the player attempts to jump over them and lands in the middle taking a hit, and it's all downhill from them.
I've tried several different versions of the rom (PRG1, KC), and even though the checksum matches, the desynchs still occur.
Yes, I meant the silver pistol. I didn't even know there was a regular pistol. Since you're going to have to go down to the Arena for the Giant Bat and Balore's souls as well the Erinyes and Lubicants (although you can get those elsewhere), it's not THAT far out of your way to pick it up. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that it'll be more or less useless for your purposes as it can't be rapid fired in TAS style to my knowledge.
The positron rifle makes the game ridiculously easy, and the Valmanway has low strength but is the fastest attacking weapon in the game - only a pale shadow of Symphony of the Night's Crissaegrim, though.
Using Boss Rush items wouldn't really be feasible anyhow.
If you make it in hard mode, I INSIST that you pick up and use the pistol.
Why?
Because it's justification for playing Hard instead of Normal. The gun doesn't show up in Normal mode.
I'm leery about the 100% run, however, just based on how LONG it will be.