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This was previously discussed in the thread when I was intending to work on the 100% TAS initially.
Saturn's definition was that you needed all of everything, which was definitively shot down by several people here.
I also brought up the All Bosses categorical definition, which was also decided to not be included in said definition for 100%.
What I had started on as my 100% definition for this specific game was as follows:
- All Alchemy/Call Bead spells
- All Weapons/Armor
- All Charms/Trinkets/Market Items*
- Beat game as fast as possible
* Tinker's turn-in items are not counted because if played naturally they'd all be gone from the player's inventory anyways.
There is not a single skippable boss that gives the player anything of note that is not otherwise attainable elsewhere, which is why I chose to specifically exclude all bosses when routing the TAS initially. It's also why 100% RTA doesn't include them, on top of the fact you're adding addition time/frames for literally no reason other than fan favors, at which point you may as well be doing an All Bosses TAS.
Just my 2 cents, whatever that's worth.
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Minor update on the project progress:
Megaweezl and I were discussing routing nonsense today and figured out some places to save some time, so I need to redo Tower 2 at the minimum. That being said, I'm incredibly unhappy with my Tower 1 boss, and anyone that's seen it should know why. It isn't terrible or anything, but it's far from optimal. So I may spend a week or two of my free time getting one that is much more tolerable and up to my own standards. The other option is to forget about it and just keep going from Tower 2 so this actually gets done faster. I'll run it by the people helping out with the project and see what they have to say about it.
Another thing that's been pulling time away from this is me building up the gdoc information for when I do submission notes and whatnot later in the future. It's revealed a few things that needed clarification as well, so that's a plus. Once I'm done compiling said information dump, things will progress much quick and much smoother than previously. Also, and Samsara will probably enjoy hearing this, in doing the frame comparisons for certain actions/sequences, I've figured out where I was losing those 1 frame instances during basic movement areas and more specifically, how to better avoid them in the future. :)
All that being said, there's still a handful of questions/concerns unanswered, but they will fall into place over time.
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This thread is derailing fairly quickly.
Just answer this Saturn, so everyone can go back to whatever it was they were working on. Are you going to release the input file? Yes or no.
Don't bother posting why or why not, just say yes or no. That'll pretty much tell us all everything we want to know, and anyone who wishes to say more regarding it could easily take it to PM's.
As far as the TAS itself goes, I'm currently not as focused on it as I'd like to be. This can mostly be attributed to Shadow Warrior 2 and Dragon Quest: Builders coming out this week, both of which I'm heavily interested in. So progress will be slightly slow for a little bit until I'm done with one of those two games. Exception being when/if someone points out errors, because I genuinely enjoy looking into those and learning how to fix them and/or explain why they're there in the first place.
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As far as I understand it, this is what affects RNG:
1) Idling X frames (i don't know the exact amount) so Ark does his little idle animation, which triggers the RNG because it's a sprite being altered in some manner.
2) Enemies performing any action, be it attacking, moving, etc...
3) NPC movement, pretty self-explanatory here.
The things I know do NOT influence the RNG, at least not that I've seen using the scripts thus far:
1) Changing your direction*
2) Jumping/Attacking**
3) Waiting w/o idle animation being triggered (IE; delaying frames w/o any other method of manipulating RNG present)
*The only way this "works" is if it somehow changes the method in which an enemy approaches you, so it kind of affects RNG, but it's second-hand rather than a direct influence. I've used this once so far.
**If the attacking animation triggers a different reaction than non-attacking input while around/approaching/bypassing an enemy, the enemy may do something different according to whatever it's AI tells it to. I haven't seen this first-hand yet, but I imagine it could lead to some kind of influence over the RNG.
May have left out some things, sorry if I did. I'm kind of running on ~4 hours of sleep at the moment.
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Perhaps it's tied to the screen transitions, as Lemon's video would suggest? Or am I misinterpreting what you're saying?
Also, thank you for the tip about testing RNG that way instead of the method I was using, that's quite a bit quicker than the way I was going about it. Will start up V2 of my TAS soon as I wake up a bit more with the info from this thread. Goal will be to beat or match V1 everywhere, but mostly to attempt to get a more tolerable boss fight since that's been eating away at me ever since I moved on from it the first time.
EDIT 1:
So I've been toying with just general manipulation of various things.
1) My point of manipulation prior to Tower 1 is actually the room before the pot throwing nonsense. Beyond this point, there is no other manipulation point until the Tower 1 blue huballs I'd be trying to manipulate (meaning they don't count). Jumping into the menu box or whatever it's called doesn't alter the value(s) either for our RNG.
2) I don't think manipulating the blue huball to move left is going to make much of a difference in the long term outside of just RNG rerolling/alteration. This is because I will be at a lower vertical position than it currently is, which means i'd end up wasting a frame to re-acquire that distance, even if I killed both blue huballs on the same positional value. So I think this point of manipulation is busted and I will be moving on to the next possible location to adjust at.
3) Not really a note of significant worth/value, but putting this here mostly so i'll see it again in case I forget later on. I probably should just do some straight-line testing to see just how much each action actually costs frame-wise sometime and post that data on here. This could possibly lead to explaining some frame loss in certain areas, though I'm pretty sure I already did this and just didn't write it down because... well i don't really know why i wouldn't write it down. :/
Anyways, back to working on it.
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Thanks for this, it actually highlights what I was concerned with in Tower 1 (the -15). I'm pretty sure I know where I can fix this at. Boss aside, I feel that I can still shave some time off with some knowledge I have now that I didn't before. It'll be some time before the next update though I think, just because the fastest place to change RNG pre-T1 is NPC movement in Crysta, so I'll have to work around that. Plan is to get a better manipulation on the huball movements in the beginning, which could save maybe 2-4 frames depending on things. This, in tandem with other manipulation improvements, could result in some changes to the boss AI, which might lead towards a faster time there.
Another part of the equation is that Terranigma has some pretty inconsistent load times, something I wasn't aware of initially. There's a console vs Snes9x 1.51 video by lemon (will provide the link below this) which raises some concerns, especially when the Crysta >> Tower 1 section (last comparison in the video) comes around. I don't think this should be viewed as an excuse though, or something to disregard the data you've provided, but it is something I'll have to keep in mind since the majority of people would agree that bizhawk is more accurate than snes9x 1.43, though by how much exactly is up for debate completely. I suppose I could test this myself, but I honestly would view this as a crutch and until I'm confident that my time in Tower 1 cannot be improved at all, will not be looking into it.
Lemon's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5tUSL7L0E
Like I've stated before, if anyone (and I do mean anyone) points out a possible improvement, I will look into it as much as I possibly can.
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I did miss it, thank you for pointing it out. DL'ing now.
And regarding the copy+paste comment, fuck you. You're pathing in Secret of Evermore was outright abysmal. There was no real testing involved, because character swapping is not faster than movement with the spear or diagonal inputs throughout multiple different areas. The same can be said of your Terranigma TAS video linked previously in this thread. Samsara alone has provided numerous places in which we beat your pathing by pure optimization alone, and this isn't even including the fact that you likely haven't reached out to anyone to look into properly tested routing for various parts of the game. It shows in your work, and it's sad because this game has a great community around it that is incredibly helpful to people learning things about it... And you just ignore this asset that could significantly improve your project. I get that working alone on something can test your "skill" and knowledge of something, or that it's nice to say "I did this, it is mine, all by myself!" I get it, it makes sense, but it's also very selfish, idiotic, and embarrassing at the same time because just having a few people look over a project segment can lead to multiple frame improvements, a better overall resulting movie, and honestly it just feels good to know very different people consider it to be better than anything else out there up to that point.
To reiterate, if you think that I want your input file just to copy and paste segments of it, you're a fucking idiot. Have a good one.
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Couldn't care less. My only interest here is figuring out ways to improve the TAS. If I happen to "feed a troll" or two along the way, then I genuinely don't give a flying fuck. At least I'm not calling them out on it and just fanning the fire, as that serves literally no purpose. I don't think we'll see an input file and I'm okay with that, but I still want my reasons for why I want one up there in case someone else later on comes around and needs some sort of "incentive/reason" to post their own input file.
On that note, I'm out of Tower 2 finally, hopefully I'll know how good I did after people review it some and suggest changes (though lately everyone has been super busy). Starting in on Tower 3, playing around with the bridge mechanics currently. Should make some solid progress on it either this morning or later tonight if I'm not dead tired from work today.
Updated nonsense:
.tasproj: https://goo.gl/eIgh7P
.bk2: https://goo.gl/p5UL5f
Discord group: https://discord.gg/KDhsRYj
If anyone wants to take a look at the pathing/movement/whatever, there you go. I will check on any suggestions that aren't "do better on the 4 red huball fight" because that's not possible on our RNG seed for that area. The 2 blue huball kill(s) in Tower 2 along the top are 2 frames slower than an optimal situation, yet getting an RNG seed which allows for a double kill is 10, 22, and 24 frames slower. Other than those 2 things, any suggestions on improving/fixing anything is more than welcome and greatly appreciated, even if it doesn't lead to anything.
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Saturn wrote:
Everything is clearly noticeable in the videos provided, and the inputs are obvious.
This is quite simply not the case. It wasn't the case in Secret of Evermore either, though thankfully that game was rapidly improving at the time so any real issues were resolved in the process due to rerouting and better optimizations along the way by multiple different people.
The problem with Terranigma is that the game is kind of already at that heavily optimized point, and is likely not to see any major breaking occur anytime in the very near future even though it would be heavily welcomed. So with this information stated, I'll leave my own personal reasons I'd love to see an input file:
Reason 1:
Optimizations. These are the bread and butter of TAS'ing, they are what takes a mediocre TAS to an amazing one once you remove all the fancy tricks. These are my personal interest in TAS'ing, as evident in the Secret of Evermore Any% TAS I did. You should know very well just how much movement/pathing optimization goes into that kind of game, and Terranigma is within those same sort of game styles. That being said, I am not nearly as familiar with Terranigma as I am with a game that I rerouted, ran, and developed research/guides for. Having input files to look at significantly improves my overall performance when it comes to TAS'ing this game, and it shows in the progression we've had thus far with it. Without Samsara's movement optimizations and critique of my own pathing, I'd be behind my current frame count by about 80-90 frames. The reason yours would be nice is because it's completed, it's something tangible that I can say "On this map, I'm 5 frames behind, what does he does that I don't and how can I learn to fix this in the future maps." Once that's done, I can further compare and challenge myself based upon your pathing and other decisions.
Reason 2:
A video on youtube is not the same quality as the recording/input file/bk2/whatever that is considered a "source" file. Because of this, we're limited to youtube's controls for movie playback (which are shit, and everyone knows that) when trying to do research on various aspects of the game. Case in point, back in the day, I had to ask on here (in this very thread even) what the hell was happening with the Elder jump in the beginning because trying to figure it out from the video w/o inputs was next to impossible at the time. Had someone not come along and mentioned the specific inputs for it, I'd have continued to brute force them until something came of it. That's inefficient, silly, and unnecessary. It's also just one example out of probably hundreds, all of which could be very easily answered with some kind of source file. I upload mine all the time, happily, because if someone can do it better, I want to see how so I can replicate and hopefully improve the process even further.
Reason 3:
The inputs are not obvious. They may be obvious when running in straight lines, diagonally, or basic things like that, but that doesn't overly matter. The stuff that matters like Elder jump (to recycle the example earlier) is next to impossible to decipher with just some random video on youtube that doesn't explain anything and just says "Hey guys! This is a thing! Yay!" This doesn't do anything for anyone in the future who wants to improve the current times/TAS on any site, all it does is frustrate them because the person ahead of them didn't have the foresight to properly document anything and/or provide a file of some sort that could explain things for them. This is basic stuff in the real world, if something is important to the future, you document it and you keep that shit around for a good long while.
Reason 4:
It would be nice to be able to credit the person who provided a significant amount of pathing/movement through many of the areas that was already optimized and well-tested. I cannot do this without some kind of tangible data to go along with it because I'm having to guess and speculate constantly at every turn, jump, RNG scenario, and multiple other situations in every area repeatedly. Then I upload my files, have Vaan, Samsara, and anyone else interested check them out for me. They provide feedback, I change things to address their concerns, and we leave with a pretty damn amazing map/area. Most of this could be cut out if we already had a file to compare against/adjust/mess around with/etc... because it removes the initial step and immediately goes into the review and optimize steps. This would drastically reduce the amount of time a GOOD TAS takes to create. It's why things like the SM64 TAS are so insane and amazing to watch, multiple people pour effort into it and the results show through very clearly.
I honestly could go on and on about it with more and more reasons, but there's not really a need for that. If you don't wish to upload an input file or whatever, that's fine and I understand your decision. But saying that things are clearly noticeable and obvious is just outright wrong. There are things which are noticeable/obvious, but they usually aren't anything of significance.
And I don't mean for this to be a degrading or asshole-ish post, these are simply the reasons and ways I would use an input file if I had one, nothing more. That's all I'm going to say on the matter as well because I'd rather put my focus towards something more productive.
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I'll check out the lua script as soon as I get the chance to (probably later this afternoon) and appreciate the help a ton. :)
As far as useful things for the OoB's, I'm only at the end of Tower 2, and thankfully have had Samsara, Vaan, and Lemon's help to optimize/plan out most things throughout the process. So we're making steady (though slow) progress for now. I do have a job and other projects, so this will be a long(er) project of mine compared to most, but hopefully not as long as Secret of Evermore (2.5 years).
That being said, the RNG in this game is so poorly designed it actually hurts me to think about it in many cases. It's still "good" from a RTA perspective, but for TAS'ing, you can run into significant problems that are literally impossible to correct without backtracking an immense amount, which can daisy chain into itself. This happens when the boss/enemies are few in number, but important for progress/techniques.
Also, if anyone is ever interested in keeping up with and/or helping optimize/further the TAS, the links to the .tasproj and .bk2 are in my discord's topic for the channel, which you can find here: https://discord.gg/KDhsRYj
I do my best to keep those 2 links updated after any real progress is made. I also don't mind going back to re-optimize movement where possible, so if someone notices anything, please say so. I want this TAS to be what everyone wants it to be, amazing and worth watching.
:)
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https://goo.gl/eIgh7P
So that's the current .tasproj file I've been working on for this game. It's been kind of kept off of here for a while because I wasn't sure if I would really get into it or not like I did with Secret of Evermore forever ago. That being said, thanks to the people in my discord channel for Terranigma's TAS I've been going at it pretty regularly throughout the past month or so.
Currently we're in Tower 2, but there are some very obvious differences between what we're working on what Saturn's provided in his TAS. His is most definitely a more smooth looking movie during specific situations. The most notable so far has been the Tower 1 fight at the end with the 4 red huballs in which he attack 5 times and gets a god-like RNG set to work with. I spent an absurd amount of time trying to replicate this, going so far as adjusting the optimized routes we came up with through Tower 1 to alter the RNG set we got to work with. Every single time I did this (all the way back to having 10+ frames lost to adjustments) I would end up with 1 damage short of an enemy that could not be manipulated into a favorable location, both of which shut that scenario down hard.
Another smaller example is in Tower 2, where I double slicer the 2 blue huballs. This was faster than the adjustments i'd have to make prior to that room (or during it) to enable a single slicer attack like in Saturn's TAS.
Given these things, I don't think Saturn's TAS is necessarily "better" or "worse" currently, because it's very hard to judge from my level of understanding of the game itself (I've never played the game before, just watched speedruns of it), but it's something to keep in mind if you look at the project thus far. I highly encourage anyone to play with the project file itself and see if they can get something quicker in Tower 1 or where-ever. I WILL go back and change it.
All that being said, I'm super happy with the movement in the TAS so far. It feels optimized, good, and fluid (though i'm sure some can be shaved off in Tower 2 with a bit more refinement/2nd pair of eyes looking at it). I think the general route through everything is more or less going to be the same as Saturn's is, because it's kind of pointless to detour away from that route unless we find something broken somewhere.
Info for people who might be interested in joining our discussions/helping optimize things:
Discord channel: https://discord.gg/KDhsRYj
Project File: https://goo.gl/eIgh7P
Current RTA WR: https://www.twitch.tv/crawek/v/57425069
wzl's speedrunning guide: http://terranigma.wzl.gd/
^ might be outdated? Not really sure personally...
Saturn's TAS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imK_BtsHncQ
Lemon's tricks and stuff: https://youtu.be/yiM9NmQvH2M
Vaan's notes: http://pastebin.com/4Wb3EZXW
That's basically my info dump, most of which is already in this thread. I'm working on slowly compiling a gdoc that's on par with my Secret of Evermore one, for anyone familiar with that. It will be a while though.
Hope to hear from you guys!
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So I've been trying to learn this game (All Levels RTA) and decided I'd play around with TAS'ing it a bit as well to try and find some new routes through levels and other fun nonsense. Then I kind of got the TAS'ing itch, and now I would like to TAS the All Levels category of this game.
But my question is, would that be too arbitrary for submission?
On one hand, it's still technically Any%, and the skip levels feature of the shop is definitely quicker. There's no doubt about that, but it does remove a section of the game. So on the other hand, we showcase the entirety of the game instead of skipping certain parts of it.
Either way, I plan to look into and probably end up TAS'ing this game. It's a ton of fun to work on and mess with. Magus' TAS was a pretty nice inspiration as well, and a great resource to reference.
Any input is appreciated, as always. Thanks!
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Thanks Assassin, I'll pass that along to the person working on it next chance I get.
Progress Update:
- Recycled Any% TAS file to get the same RNG on the introduction guardbot fight as well as all of Southern Forest
- Figured out how to properly implement Fire Eyes' Cutscene skip
- Currently working on getting flowers taken care of in Eastern Forest
- They're not cooperating...
I'm still very worried about how the route will look post-Thraxx. It's incapable of being tested without abusing TAS capabilities to get there in the first place, at least with any sort of accurate representation. The core problem lies in the Mammoth Graveyard fight with the Viper Commander. We need X Hardballs (amount unknown, unfortunately, due to massive fluctuations in damage output RNG) and Y Call Beads, which we should get from Fire Eyes. This leads us to the following questions/problems:
a) How many do we need of each?
Realistically, there's no telling. I may have to do this part over quite a few times unless I get lucky.
b) Do we pick up extra Call Beads in various places?
Initially, I'm not going to, because I want to know the absolute bare minimums and picking any of them up wastes ~20-30 frames. Adds up after 1 or 2 when they may not even be needed.
c) Money and 100% equipment requirements?
Yeah, it's a pain to route, and there's no telling.
d) Crystals?
The current theory is to knock one of the enemies post-Thraxx down towards a container which has crystals and then use an ingredient pickup glitch to grab the drop amount out of the container, similar to the method in Any% for the 99 Call Beads in Pyramids. That being said, this is mostly due to money constraints, so finding a better money solution means we can just buy crystals instead of this option. However, nothing I've come up with personally yields any positive results, and nobody within the community seems to have any other ideas.
So yeah, I don't know when the next update about this will be, but I'm definitely working on it every day for at least a couple hours. Also trying to learn the 100% Illusion of Gaia route so I can get that TAS going as well as learning Prehistorik Man (All Levels) for running and possibly TAS'ing also. Busy busy...
Progress Update #2:
- Both Eastern Forest flower manipulations are done and optimized to the get the best outcome for the RNG seed I have on that map. I thought about going back and changing it, but considering the delayed amount is only 1 frame of manipulation, it's going to break even if I went back and changed the seed by delaying a single frame before leaving the village. So this is about as good as it gets so far. :)
- Quicksand area + Jaguar Ring Cave went great, the guy's manipulation cost 0 frames and I got both quicksand positions perfect so no losses there either.
- The 4 Crystal container introduces a new thing to TAS'ing this game, which is grabbing things with the dog and transferring that "event" to the boy. So as opposed to Any%'s TAS, where I waited for the boy to reach the end of the area, I now just swap to the boy while the dog is "attacking" the 4 Crystal container, then swap back really fast to keep going.
- All that combined, and this TAS is off to an awesome start. I still have no idea what's going to happen post-Thraxx though. Will continue updating this post until I do see what the outcome is after things with Thraxx and my current route idea.
Progress Update #3:
- W.I.P. Video: https://youtu.be/aPmeNMzEL04
- Really happy with how things are turning out so far. Blows Any% out of the water for the most part in terms of even further optimizations/manipulations.
- Speaking of Any%, it's more or less completely outdated now. If anyone's looking to start a somewhat large project and is also interested in this game, let me know so we can start up a co-op on Any% to get it up to a much better state.
- Not sure when I'll continue working on this, I'm juggling a bunch of projects at the moment but now that Thraxx is out of the way, the real fun can begin.
~~~~This project is currently on hold because I ran out of interest~~~~
If you'd like to pick up where I left off, I am more than happy to help you do so. You can contact me on twitch.tv/theangrypanda1 , SDA forums (Theangrypanda) , or on here/various discords/twitch chats. My interest ran out because certain people tend to overstep their respective boundaries when questioning things and after explaining things repeatedly over the past 3 years regarding these things, I'm just simply too tired of it to care anymore. Sorry guys. :(
<3 Panda
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Thanks Ars for the response. I'd have responded a bit earlier, but my motherboard and processor decided to more or less completely die on me. So yeah, been dealing with that.
Either way, I can't wait to get going on 100%, Act 1 is going to be absolutely ridiculous. We actually can't even route past Mammoth Graveyard because there's just not enough tested information. So yeah, gonna be a good time.
I'll be working on Illusion of Gaia 100% as well alongside SoE's 100%. The core focus (currently) is SoE, though, but that'll probably change throughout the process.
We're also possible getting a hitbox viewer, so that's neat too. :D
Anywho, probably going to start it all up post-AGDQ.
[assuming everything works good on windows 10? I didn't really have an option this time when (re)building everything]
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Okay, well since nobody else has replied, I'm comfortable with routing and working on the RTA variant of the definition.
In fact, I've already started jotting things down alongside LovableLambchop (one of the runners for the game) and we've gotten it pretty optimized up to pre-Vipers in Act 1. Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but most of our route is theory that I haven't been able to thoroughly test yet to even see if it's possible.
That being said, here's what we got so far (for people who are kind of familiar with the game):
http://pastebin.com/EnN3uu7Y
TY Samsara for the reply, btw.
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Okay, so I've been planning/routing SoE 100% for ~month and plan on hitting it and Illusion of Gaia 100% pretty hard next year from the get-go. But I have a slight problem.
My personal preference and the RTA definition of 100% is not the same as the current definition on the site. There's obviously arguments for each side, but I wanted to get feedback here before starting the moving because it obviously will have repercussions within said movie depending on the ultimate decision.
Here's a quote from the submission text Saturn provided for his 100% (which I would view as Max% or just a collection quest).
while collecting at least 1 of every possible item, geting all formulas and beating all possible sidequests and bosses. It also shows every secret you can find.
The definition of 100% for RTA (and what I routed for, since I routed RTA with LovableLambhop and LemonsX) is as follows:
- Collect all Alchemy/Call Bead spells
- Collect all Weapons/Armor
- Collect all Charms/Trinkets/Market Items (excluding things like Tinker's turn-in items, since they aren't permanent)
So as it's probably obvious by now, that doesn't include 1 of every item and definitely doesn't include all bosses.
Some justifications for the RTA/my definition, for the curious:
- All bosses are left out because there's no way to track it and ultimately they're just a waste of effort/time and in my opinion, do not add much value since they more or less get one-shot anyways.
- 1 of every item seems somewhat pointless to me and sounds more like a Max% type thing. I'm not sure if my logic here makes sense or not, but if this is considered a requirement due to being technically tracked through the menu, that's okay and I can route this in. More than happy to compromise here if that's what everyone agrees upon.
So given those two things, I would happily accept having to route in the 1 of every item, but I do feel that all bosses should be eliminated from the category definition since they a) aren't tracked and b) serve no real purpose outside of the bosses we still manage to kill.
There's also concern over the boss Coleoptera, which is the "guardian" of Tinker's Wheel item. If the people here think that item is worth shoving in the collection process even though under normal circumstances it would otherwise be long-forgotten (it isn't gotten in RTA runs of this game for this reason), I can accept this as well. But I would opt to leave it out otherwise, under the premise that it's normally not there anyways assuming you progress normally.
I may take a while to respond to things in the following weeks, but I will at least make an attempt to check things every other day on here to discuss this concern and answer any questions if there are some.
Reference Material:
- 100% route ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e-G2YKefBxLH5TSkcUezpcM69LJqi1qnTgzDxod4igY/edit#gid=1629734002&vpid=A2 )
- Current 100% RTA record ( http://www.twitch.tv/crawek/c/2836718 )
- Saturn's 100% TAS ( http://tasvideos.org/396M.html )
- Submission Note for said TAS ( http://tasvideos.org/783S.html )
As always, thanks for anything said in advance and can't wait to get started on my projects next year. [/url]
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ars4326 wrote:
I'm honestly a bit more partial to the 100% (probably because I played this one a lot, back in the day, and strove to collect all of those red jewels). But as Derakon stated, either category is eligible for publication to the Vault (and Moons, based on majority positive voting/feedback).
Panda, I also wanted to go ahead and give a quick TASing tip that I noticed during your SoE run: In the very beginning, I noticed that you had the start key held down in order to get through the intro and title screen. If you instead though, through trial and error hit the start key on the first possible frame that will get through those screens, you'll very likely save time (since that singular input will register quicker than having the key held down, throughout).
Looking forward to your runs :)
I'm going to end up doing both anyways, so I'll just do them side-by-side and the votes can decide. It's really not that much more work for this game since I have a fairly decent grasp of how the RNG works and stuff like that. The exception being if something broken is found and suddenly alters how close the two categories are.
As for the SoE thing, I actually double-checked and ended up having the same frame advance the scene with or without holding Start down. This is something I've noticed though in other areas of that TAS, and have taken note of it and added it to the ever-growing list of things I check out before progressing past that point. Thank you for pointing it out though, much appreciated.
edit1: This is unfortunately delayed for now, having some issues with my computer at the moment. I'm really enjoying TAS'ing this game though, so hopefully I can get back to it asap.
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I'm pretty much in agreement with what you've said.
I've been talking with a few people on skype/steam about this "issue" as well, and I think I've just come to the conclusion that I'll just do them both side-by-side since they're really not that different. That way, both get knocked out, and IF anything awesome happens that does differentiate the two, we end up having our 2 categories. And if nothing ends up differentiating them, then we'll have both categories in the vault with updated strategies, routes, and whatnot.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this particular game not taking too terribly long to TAS, but who knows what will come up.
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So just curious, out of the people that would be interested in seeing this game have a TAS that's a little more up to date with various things.
Any% or 100%?
I started working on Any%, and haven't really made it too far mostly because I'm not sure Any% is different enough to merit having it's own category on the site. I would really appreciate some feedback on this from the people who want to see it get done. I'd rather start over and go the 100% route now instead of halfway through.
Project is "delayed" until I figure out what the majority response is.
Also, if it does merit separate categories, I already intended on doing both, but doubling my workload just delays future projects.
Thank you in advance.
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Not sure, if I had to guess, the game sets the area to "completed Aegis fight" after getting the staff of life and there's just an oversight in the area's tileset on that specific "chunk" or something to that degree.
I kind of want to go mess with it now. No idea how I never noticed that in all this time, lol.
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Yeah, it takes forever for the boy to handle all the fights solo. It's actually impossible in some cases because we use Wings for invincibility at the final fight(s), so if an enemy (usually Dark Toaster) decides to chill at the bottom of the arena, the boy will never reach it and it essentially becomes a softlock under the assumption you're not going to produce further inputs.
It's fun to watch though, at higher speeds of course (like +200%). We did that a couple times throughout the fights at various positions on the map for fun when I streamed this stuff regularly.
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100% is definitely on the list of my projects: https://goo.gl/hfkavi
I look forward to finding some optimizations on the route I made forever ago in there. I'm sure there's some great ones. I don't think it'll be as good of a watch as Any%, but it won't be terrible or anything. :)
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I finished it with 1.6.1, should I change it to be 1.4.1 in the submission notes? Wasn't sure which was needed/asked for.
Thanks for all the feedback guys! I'm glad people like it.