Posts for StrangenessDSS

Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
hero of the day wrote:
I do the ground pound for the melon, knocking the shy guys out of the tree is just a bonus. I also eat 2 of them. Getting that egg later on would slow me down a tiny bit.
You eat two? *checks* My mistake. If you didn't need them, you could've done a close-to-the-ground pound to get only the melon, which is what I was suggesting.
Thanks for mentioning this, I had no idea it was slower.
Admittedly, this is one thing you won't see in my run, since I kept forgetting to test it until after I was done. ^_^;;
Could you elaborate on this, I didn't think it would matter since all the shy guys will automatically turn into your favorite fruit upon a ground pound while in super yoshi mode.
They do! But, on Shy Guy Limbo, I pick up six of the same fruit in a row to get a second heart fruit... and only five of those fruit come from shy guys. If your lucky fruit isn't grapes, it won't work. Depending on how fast you can run, you may not need the extra heart fruit, but I thought I should warn you now.
Your run blew me away the first time I watched it. It had so many unexpected things such as the shy guy massacre on page 3. If you have any cool ideas for this run please let me know.
Glad you liked it. ^_^ I'm afraid I'm all out of cool ideas... the best way to improve my run would be to not make so many little mistakes, but that's not a factor in a tool-assisted run. All the major stuff in my run went as I planned, and there weren't any secret tricks I avoided for being too hard. Hmm. On Cloud Cruising, there are a few ways to do the first room... the normal path, the path I took (off the top of the screen), and running along the ground until you can bounce to the clouds from a flying enemy. I tried to calculate how fast each would be if played perfectly... but I can't remember what I decided upon. I chose to go above because I figured it would be the most unexpected, and it made the first part simple. The disadvantage was that I couldn't leave a snake flying in a good position to show up in the middle of the flying shy guys, forcing me to use my initial strategy of "jump and flutter and hope I don't die". And, yeah, don't make mistakes. My finished run was the first try where I'd finished working out the route and nothing major went wrong, and it shows. In my defense, I was kinda getting tired of the excessive sickly cuteness, even with the disturbing elements such as Yoshis invading an isolated hut and robbing and killing the inhabitants. And it's tiresome waiting through all the cutscenes. From what I hear, you could skip them, if you could record a reset.
Not exactly sure what moonwalking is, but if you explain it to me I will try to do it when it doesn't cost too much time.
Moonwalking is walking backwards when it looks like you should be moving forwards. I just mean ordinary moonwalking. Isn't moonwalking ordinary? Just press the moonwalk button, located on the side* of the controller, and watch Yoshi moonwalk! ... Oh, fine, I'll tell you the secret... face the wrong way when you walk off the edge of the screen. The only place I've done it is on the last page transition of Jungle Hut, coming out of the egg right on the edge of the screen while facing left. It was accidental, and requires more precision than can be done reliably on a console, but that shouldn't be a problem for you. *meaning the inside, which is why nobody knows about it, not even the emulator authors.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
As I said in my comments for the SDA run, I didn't test every possible route extensively, but I do believe the one I used is the fastest. It works out well... all the X-1 levels I used are fast, and the X-2 or X-3 levels are both significantly faster than the others on that page and come after a level where it's easy to get the required amount of hearts. Was it really necessary to knock the shyguys out of the tree? You only eat one, and you run past an egg not far after. You run on slopes. Unless my testing is wrong, you shouldn't run on slopes. Did you have to stomp twice for the last three fruit? It looked like you could get all three in one stomp if you went a bit further. You may have problems on Shy Guy Limbo, since you picked a different favorite fruit. Good job copying my run so far, but I do hope you can come up with something a little more interesting by the end of the game. P.S. Extra style points for moonwalking. Please do it somewhere, even if it costs you a couple frames.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
nitsuja wrote:
For some reason, Mischief Makers requests input multiple times per frame, so they all get stored in the movie even though the game seems to ignore most of them.
This reminds me of something you mentioned earlier... that 13 frames was a bit less than half a second. Is the game running at 30fps on the emulator? It ought to be 60fps...
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
IMPblackbelt wrote:
Edit Edit: After some research and testing, I found it. (Found it on Gamefaqs, of all places) You have to grab his punches and toss him into a wall to do massive damage. If you toss him with one of each punch he does, then you'll kill him in 2 shots. (Sorry guys, no one-shotting Tarus. D:)
And I'm sorry if you think you've discovered anything, but this (as well as everything else about this game on Gamefaqs) is well known. You can't even get the S-rank without doing so. The WIP doesn't look bad. Maybe you'll hate me for saying this, but I'm glad the boost grabbing works so well... it'll leave more fun stuff exclusively in the domain of us speedrunners. I don't hate tool-assisted runs, but I do find them kinda boring in comparison. I liked how you were able to use momentum from those springs to get through some areas real fast. There are a couple things I'll have to see if I can duplicate in real time. Against Marzen 64, did you try letting a bomb guy get out? I seem to kill him faster with one of those guys helping than just by throwing enemies at him as soon as they appear. You're only one frame faster than me on the 200M dash. ^_^
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
I've had to play Ball dozens of times to get a good (11+) amount of white balls to appear, so I don't think it's the age affecting the randomizer so much as bad luck trying to get it to do what you want. Did you try varying the order of events to see if your luck changed, or entering the level at a different time, etc?
Spoony_Bard wrote:
You may not need a modified controller to do it in real time, but it would also be downright impossible to manage in real time to the extent you pull it off in your movie.
The same could be said for just about every TAS, you know.
IMPblackbelt wrote:
The guy simply said he ran up, grabbed the guy, tossed him down, and got an S rank. 3 seconds, or thereabouts. If I can, I'll get more info on it ASAP, but please try testing and stuff. ;-;
I doubt a OHKO on Tarus is possible, at least not the way you described it. It would be quite simple to replicate, as there's nothing there except Tarus and ground, but throwing him down doesn't even damage him. Sorry, but "a friend of a random person on the internet" isn't a good enough source for me. ...especially since you said he also got a gold gem from it, and you get the gold gem from throwing him against the wall, not from beating him without getting hit. I suppose it could be possible to get him into a certain spot right at the corner of the wall and the ground where he takes extra damage from buggy collision handling or something, but that's not "ran up, grabbed him, tossed him, got an S-rank".
nitsuja wrote:
I actually dislike how it makes everything so easy. Before, I was able to bypass most of the same obstacles anyway in trickier ways (to get slightly-slower times). Now there's not as much use for grabbing an enemy to act as a mid-air shield since I can just fly higher to dodge the attack, or grabbing a bomb to use the explosion knockback to get over a wall, since I can just fly over the wall, etc.
I can't get the boost grab to work very well in realtime. I can do one or two to get a bit of extra distance, which will be helpful, but I slow down real fast after that. And I don't gain height as fast as the extended slide jump (though I can go on for longer). I'll watch your WIP and practice it some more, but I doubt it'll replace every other trick the way it seems to be doing for you. P.S. Nitsuja: You're more than welcome to do an unassisted speedrun if you think this is too easy. ~_^
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
Crossposting from SDA...
...amazing secret "boost grab" move...
I do have an idea. You know that flying move I use in the Jump video, where I cancel upwards boosts into grabs so I can boost again sooner? I think it's a combination of that boost canceling and the extended slide jump technique... I noticed that canceling your boosts into grabs seems to stop them from disrupting your slide jump momentum so much. You still get full boost momentum from a cancelled boost. In the normal extended slide jump, I can get two boosts during the sweet spot on the ascent. If you could do that without slowing down, maybe you could keep on going indefinitely. I've only done a few minutes of testing on a console, so I could be wrong. But if you want to try to figure it out, there's my speculation. And I haven't actually asked either of them about it, which may be the easiest way to figure it out, if you can find them. I wanted to see if I could figure it out myself... just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
Those times are actually a bit out of date. There was a lot of competition over the last couple months, which was also plagued with forum problems... when the new times were finally added to the list, the forum went down again and lost all the new posts. Some of the new times trashed these old records. I'll tell you when I get them gathered up again. I believe picking up the gold gem on the major bosses costs a second, while the in-game timer is still running. But I haven't ever tested it... since you can only get each gold gem once, it's not an issue for console time attacks. As I mentioned before, the largest difference between in-game time and real-time will be on The Day Of, mostly in the long jump event. For the best in-game time, you'll want to max it at 999, at a cost of 5-10 seconds real-time. For the fastest real time, you'll want to get either 0 or 1, which translates to losing ~16.7 seconds of in-game time. I predict that the part which will be fastest compared to playing normally will be the Mathfun event on The Day Of... knowing what questions will be asked ahead of time will give you a large advantage, and is quite impossible on a console without time travel.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
I must congratulate you - you beat the console record for 1-1 by one frame. I didn't expect you to do so well this soon. Your other levels are still slower, though, and you do some very silly things. But I'm not going to say what - I can't just give you all the answers. It's too much fun watching people try to figure this game out. Unfortunately, these demos are real annoying to watch. My computer is old, so the emulator slows down to around 25fps whenever anything is happening. And I can't just skip to the parts I want to see. By the way, will you be aiming for in-game time or real time? Parts of The Day Of will be done differently depending on which you choose. In-game time would make for a more interesting video.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
How accurate is the N64 emulator? The game frequently slows down a tiny bit - not enough to notice, but enough to affect the times - and the in-game timer runs in realtime even during slowdown. If the emulator isn't perfectly accurate in regards to how much the game slows down, you'll end up with different times. Many of my levels are close to perfect already, like Spacecow mentions. You won't be able to improve Simian Acres (well, unless you can get that bounce-off-the-tree-to-skid-across-the-swamp-without-slowing-down trick I thought of to actually work, or figure out the mystery trick that "saves time on all levels" which the fellow at Twin Galaxies claimed to have, or find some weird physics trick that can only be done on an emulator... you get the idea). But most levels aren't perfect, and I didn't even try very hard on a lot of the later levels. Just off the top of my head... Mars can be improved by a lot. If you can figure out the mechanics of the weird sideways flight, it may be possible to break all the spheres in a single jump. Even without that, you can get three in a jump pretty easily. I expect you to get much better times on Moon and Venus, too. I didn't use the Z-trick... Brandon did a couple levels with it, but there are more places that it could be useful on, such as the last building on Outland Farm... though it may turn out that it's never faster that just using whatever vehicle you have perfectly. I also didn't use any of the lesser-known glitches. For instance, on Outland Farm, you can clip through the underside of the bridge at the start if you hit it just right. There are others, too! Look around! On the second main level with the Ramdozer (forgot the name), if you go over the bump at the start and hit the fence just right, you'll do a super-high bounce. It may be useful to preserve momentum for destroying the second building... but even if it's not, it looks cool, and I don't think it wastes any time. Anyway. Even though I find tool-assisted runs pretty boring to watch, I am curious as to what you could do with this game. So I hope someone makes one.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
I read the readme and the entire forum thread, and I'm already doing everything mentioned in them.
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11
Don't depend on that S-rank guide too heavily. It's old, and there are a lot of tricks that aren't in there. This is my record for the first level, done on a real N64. I know people who have faster times than this, but they don't have videos. (I couldn't watch your demo, by the way. The rerecording Mupen64 crashes when I try to open a rom, but the normal version of Mupen64 works fine.)