Posts for Vaan666

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Link to video Here is also a video showing off the progress I made but never published which is obsolete now. Technically it goes a bit further but I loaded the wrong file. But there isn't anything significant missing so this will do.
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£e Nécroyeur wrote:
Vaan666 wrote:
So saying that, rip me.
Hang in there! At the very least, your prior experience will be of benefit as you redo it.
I will. I will probably keep the inputs for the beginning though up until where Coal Mine starts and move on from there. At least that is the plan for now. Maybe it will change once I get to actually work on this again. Other than that, the new route saves well over 1h now. Can't wait to actually get to those parts in the TAS and see how they work out!
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It has been a while since I last posted here. I am not dead and I still want to finish this project one day but real life keeps me busy. Anyway, the reason I post here today is that a user by the name of Cadit found a brand new trick in the game yesterday that breaks the 2nd half of the game wide open. Link to video What happened in the video is simply that the magic bean you get around the halfway point of a speedrun has collision and exist for exactly 2 frames on the ground which means you can stand on it and jump off of it. This completely breaks the game and so far cuts off over 40 minutes from the run after just several hours of research with more potential skips to come. What does this mean for the TAS I work on? Actually not much at all. The TAS is at the boss of Nirudes Lair which is the dungeon you go to after getting the magic bean. Since you want to postpone doing that dungeon in an optimal route including the double jump though I only "lost" a couple minutes worth of the TAS. At the very least I can keep the inputs for the rooms that have no RNG to them and just paste those into the TAS once it reaches those rooms. Edit: It was confirmed that we can skip Coal Mine now too with an old skip I found that was previously not usable in the game but due to the double jump now works. This means that essentially if I want to include this into the TAS I would need to redo pretty much all of it as Coal Mine is the 2nd dungeon in the game. As this skip saves roughly 10 minutes I will have to do it though. So saying that, rip me.
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Looks good to me!
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You can but you would need to stay on the worm much longer in order to gain the needed height. Basically the worm acts like a spring. By jumping off of it immediately you can ascend much quicker.
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Thanks for the positive feedback from all of you! Makes me wish I had actually cared enough and submitted this back when I made it. :D
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Yeah, that is pretty much what I said. The gameplay to cutscene ratio is pretty much even for this game. If only they decided to focus more on the actual levels and making the bosses non autoscrollers this could have been a much better watch.
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From what I remember I pretty much only used the dive kick when I was air bound and didn't have much forward momentum at which it was faster to dive kick into slide to build up some. If you mean the upwards flip out of a slide with the "Moonsault Kick" then that option was pretty much only used in very rare occasions late into the TAS to save a couple frames as otherwise it is a very slow technique. I actually used the Japanese TAS as a reference whenever I finished a level to see if they did something that I was not aware off which was actually the case in 4-2 where hitting the snail exchanged the initial dialogue with another one that was shorter and thus allowed me to leave the level earlier.
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Link to video Another dungeon down! I think I talked about most of the important things in the video even though there was barely enough time to give justice to everything that happened in it. For now I will try to improve the boss until I am satisfied with it and then move on to the next dungeon.
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Link to video After pretty much 2 years I finally made some progress! I decided to start the TAS over again for various reasons. In the end I ended up saving about 26 seconds over my previous WIP even though I had to do 2 reroutes that each wasted about 500 and 700 frames. Most of the timesave comes from applying newly found strats, techniques and skips to this WIP. One specifically that saved about 15 seconds alone! I also managed to get another dungeon done that hasn't been seen before. That dungeon was part of the reason why it took me so long to get this done. I am still not satisfied with the outcome but I can't justify working on it more than I did. Comparing what I got to theoretical perfect RNG for that dungeon I probably lost about 5 seconds total. Saying that I don't even know if it is possible to get that theoretical perfect outcome. I did the best I could and want to move on now to eventually finish this TAS.
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I can see your points and agree. The game is very basic and straight forward if focused on speed. That was also a reason besides me really liking it why I decided to make this TAS, as kind of a laid back project while taking a break from my main one.
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Yo thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
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I completely forgot about this thread here. Well anyway i finished the TAS. Link to video Movie File: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/51371380468117142 A commentated version with more insight on strats I used will follow soonish. Overall I'm pretty happy that I was able to make this TAS sub 30 minutes. Commentary: Link to video
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Link to video Link to video Being able to dedicate a lot of time into this again I was able to get another dungeon done. This time there is a difference of 22 frames between both routes for this dungeon. The early Firewand route was able to save 21 frames in the 2nd room of Reptile Lair by simply getting better RNG with the reptiles movement and saved another frame on the boss also due to better RNG. Other than that there is nothing really worth mentioning again. Last two dungeons have been rather straight forward. Not sure yet if I will continue at this rate with the next dungeon but who knows maybe I will keep pushing for as long as I can now.
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Link to video Link to video New progress has been made and this time its two videos showing off two different routes side by side as I already mentioned in my previous post. There is nothing really to say about this WIP other than it was rather laid back to make except for the rooms with ice physics. The difference so far between both routes is 7016 due to the detour for getting Firewand in one of them and hasn't changed throughout this dungeon at all. It may change due to different RNG seeds in upcoming dungeons though.
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Link to video It's a really short clip only, maybe I should have done a proper video for it at some point but essentially what's happening there is the bomb gives you a boost for only a couple pixels which is enough to get up there. To note is the boost is horizontally in that case, you don't gain any extra height from it. Standing on one of several pixels on that bridge provides your jump the extra height needed to get up there but without the bomb it's just barely not possible to make this jump. I'm not 100% sure on the numbers anymore but I think the bomb gives like 4~ pixels of extra distance if done correctly.
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Thanks for the kind words but I think I have to put this on hold for a while. Not really feeling like working on this on top of probably not having the time in the near future but I definitely don't drop this. As for the progress for this from now on: I will copy my entire folder for this project and once I pick this up again TAS 2 different routes side by side since I'm not sure which one is faster and the difference will probably be <20 seconds. The 2 different routes will be getting Fire Wand right after Coastal Cave and the other route will get it at the point you're supposed to get it. Since getting it earlier wastes a bit of time due to an inferior overworld route but gains time back in Magyscar and Meia's Dream the routes will be pretty much the same except for a handful of rooms and 2 overworld sections. So instead of having double the work I can simply copy paste inputs for the most part and see where I need to adjust things for RNG. The routes will merge together at the screen before entering Murgg Woods which takes ~1:50h in the speedrun.
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Link to video There is honestly not a lot to talk about in this WIP. Maybe to note is that swimming is a pain and slow so trying to maximize the amount of walking before jumping into water is ideal. Also the boss of this dungeon acts very weird in that once you hit him its predetermined how many times he raises his "fake" hand before he becomes vulnerable again. This means that I was very limited with how much I could manipulate his next phase since the earth book animation is quite long. I still was able to manipulate perfect RNG but had to sacrifice roughly 40 frames compared to a perfect outcome by default. Those 40 frames were saved easily though as each extra attack he does is between 100 and possibly up to 1000+ frames long if he decides to skip a cycle and start over again.
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Link to video Finally some new progress! Got this dungeon down at last. There are a couple things I need to point out about this WIP though. I discovered 3 new things regarding loading in this game. The first would be that certain sound effects can lead to longer loading times between rooms when they play right as you enter a loading zone leading up to almost a full second of time loss each time depending on when the sound effect plays. This can lead to some weird looking movement towards the end of a room since for example turning while dashing also counts towards that and thus I may want to trigger that sound earlier by interrupting the dash and then continuing in either the same direction or a different direction towards the loading zone. It can also be abused though to manipulate RNG without losing any time if after going through a room optimally a forced sound effect plays by lets say enemies for example to do some suboptimal movement to change RNG. This works since spending 1 additional frame inside the room cuts the loading by 1 frame until it's at the base length. The second thing is that having spells equipped while going through a loading zone also leads to a longer loading by 21 frames on the couple I tested this at so it may be worth in the future to unequip spells earlier than necessary to shorten loading. The last thing would be that doing any kind of menuing within a room also increases the loading to the next room. So considering these freshly found things there are a couple spots where I could apply them in previous areas to save a couple frames here and there. This also explains the inconsistent loading times I got when comparing my first attempt at TAS'ing this to my second attempt. With this also being the first major dungeon where RNG with enemy movement comes into place and being generally much bigger and longer than anything prior it took me quite longer to get this done but I'm hopefully going to keep on working on this now and finish more dungeons. Another thing I was worried about which paid off quite big though in the end was skipping buying the magic potion and using bombs for the "mummy squad" at the end of this dungeon. I didn't quite time it but if I were to guess it saved roughly 10~ seconds. Last thing I want to point out is that ruadath pointed out that I am apparently using a suboptimal bios and have 2 controllers as well as 2 memory cards plugged in which all lead to a 400~ frames longer loading when the game starts. Since this is the only loading that got affected by it though I decided against redoing everything again since it was right after I redid everything from scratch already. Also something found by ruadath was that there is a single frame where I could have skipped the intro cutscene earlier by roughly another 30~ frames. The latter although doesn't bother me too much since it essentially is pre starting the "run". Still this needs to be pointed out and taken into account of potential improvement that could be done. Another thing I found which was known before but unknown why it occurred is that apparently if you equip a spell and immediately go through a loading zone the loading becomes much longer: Link to video
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Link to video Due to various reasons I decided to redo the entire TAS from scratch and ended up saving 2330 frames (39.296~ seconds) up to this point thanks to mostly new strats and understanding the games mechanics better. Here is a little table showing off the improvements I made in detail: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iF9eoYztRpMLObvPfw01CQmHlZYQPZ9uwT5FvaVUoiQ/edit#gid=0 It's been over a year but I hope I can finally continue with some new progress.
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Bizhawk just has all the issues emulating this game properly apparently. When I first started this project I noticed that whenever a textbox is on screen the window would automatically become like 4 times the size of what it was previously and would become small again after that textbox is cleared. I could easily ignore that when making a TAS. Now in the 4th dungeon when you go through the first teleport though the loading wont trigger until several seconds later and even then the loading itself will take several seconds longer than usual too. I've played through the game several times manually on Bizhawk just to see that it happens every single time, so I decided to just put this TAS on hold for now. Don't feel like dedicating time to it when stuff like that happens and can potentially happen again further into the game. Will upload my current progress though I made with the TAS. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/43665985766904067
Post subject: Crystal Beans From Dungeon Explorer
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I've been looking into this game the last couple days and figured out some interesting things as to how the game behaves or handles things so far. The game only accepts inputs for movement every 4 frames. The first frame you gain control entering a new room is seemingly random but (so far) is within 11-15 frames after the lag frames, might have something to do with how much it has to load when fading in a screen. Attacking with your ranged attack will make the character stop moving when done on a frame where it accepts an input for movement but won't interrupt it when done on either of the 3 other frames, so there is no penalty for attacking except eventually creating lag. It is pretty common for the game to lag enough to increase the number of frames it takes to accept another input of movement, however killing enemies and monster spawner generally leads to avoiding that lag. When I reached the boss of dungeon #2 I ran into an issue though. From running this game in RTA I know that he has 2 different patterns that he can give you: - He moves very slowly towards you - He rushes towards you Since you can only have 2 projectiles at the same time on screen having him rush towards you is the preferred pattern as it will make you hit him faster and thus increase the rate of your shooting earlier. The issue I had was him giving me the slow pattern. So I decided to just try to change the RNG by killing more enemies, getting hit, and all kinds of stuff that doesn't waste any frames in previous rooms. Nothing changed his pattern. So after that I decided to just wait outside of his room for different amounts of frames and just kill enemies in the meanwhile but nothing I did over the course of several hundreds of frames changed his pattern (I didn't check every single frame but rather every 20th). Finally after exactly 440 frames he gave me the preferred pattern and he would keep giving me that pattern throughout the next 120 frames entering his room. Trying to figure out if I can find an Address that potentially shows RNG on my own with RAM Search I stumbled upon 000422. When it's value reached 25 on the first frame of the fade-in of the boss room it would give me the preferred pattern and it would last until a couple frames before the boss starts moving before changing the value to 26 would take over to the slow pattern again. I am still not entirely convinced if that Address is actually RNG but at least it seems to be accurate for that boss. The value itself is pretty weird. Regardless of what I do it only advances every 256th frame. There are a couple restrictions to it though as following: -Lag frames generally don't count towards the 256 frames -When a screen fades out the first lag frame counts towards the 256 frames -When entering an area from the overworld there is a single frame between the lag frames when loading where the first lag frame after that also counts towards the 256 frames -When a screen fades in the 2nd non lag frame will be the first to count towards the 256 frames - For the 2 boss rooms I've tested this so far it was 18 frames on the first and 4 frames on the second boss additionally after the lag frames that didn't count towards the 256 frames So as I said the issue is that I arrive at the boss room when the value is still 23 and I'd need to wait 440 frames (which is probably longer than the fight itself even with the slow pattern) for it to be at 25 when entering the boss room on the fade-in. Since I'm not entirely convinced that this Address actually represents RNG for this game I might try to look further into it before moving on but eventually someone from here can help me out. I'd rather not continue with the slow pattern but if I can't get anything to work I might have to. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/43467098245451509 If you remove the Up input on frame 8560 and replace it with an Up input on frame 9000-9120 you will get the preferred pattern.
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So this one was just found: https://clips.twitch.tv/PleasantCrackyAnteaterGOWSkull Apparently if you kill an enemy and their gold bag drops onto the spot the trees are at they will just disappear. If you're not familiar with this game, you're not supposed to be able to get rid of those trees until much later into the game. My thinking was that maybe you can make other objects disappear using this. He performed it originally on the Steam version of the game but since this is literally an Emulator I don't see why this shouldn't work in the Sega version of the game. The current RTA WR holder Sagaz_14 just found this using the tree removal glitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/174274070 For some reason if you didn't pick up the Magic Sword this glitch will turn the gold drop from the enemy into an item drop that is guaranteed to be the Magic Sword. Another new glitch that was just found by Sagaz_14: https://clips.twitch.tv/KindKawaiiElephantMoreCowbell Not sure what is going on but apparently the ghost moved Nigel into the ground while he was dead making him go off screen. Not sure if this is easily replicable or even useful but its something!
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Omnigamer wrote:
As far as I know, this is SNES-hardware dependent for specific 1CHIP full-size models. I have a model of SNES that shows the same effects. In this case it's just graphical anomalies, but I'm wondering if it could have any subtle effects in this or other games as well.
In the game called Secret of Evermore there is a possible skip called Verminator skip which lets you skip the boss Verminator which is known to only work on specific SNES models such as the Super Famicom, SNES Mini or a 1-Chip SNES. It is being assumed that it is related to the sound chip that makes this skip either crash or not. And even for Emulators it's known to only work on specific ones and even for them it's random if it will work or not. So I can't really help out with your issues this game has but I can in fact confirm that such strange things happen in other games as well.
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Just a quick little update to the progress of this TAS: Since the last video I posted I haven't been working at all on this. I don't really feel like working on this right now as it is quite time consuming and the fun I had when TASing this is gone as well. Hopefully in the near future I will pick this up again and start with improving the last bit of my most recent WIP namely the Boss fight as I think there is some room for improvement left (mostly due to me just wanting to show the progress done in the dungeon and not so much the boss). Other than that there are a couple new strats that have been found in coal mine that would roughly save <3 seconds in total that I decided to not go back for as it would mean that I had to redo 2 1/2 dungeons.