Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
I jumped over them in earlier versions. I didn't in the most recent version. Maybe that will help you decide what to do :-)
I played around with FCEU today to see if I wanted to give it another go. After spending nearly 45 minutes on the first screen it crashed and I lost all of my progress. If that's what I have to look forward to then I gotta say no thanks.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
That's what I was saying. Rain Flush saves a little bit of time against Bright Man but I think you'll make it up in Toad Man's stage. I never actually timed it. I just never did it cause I didn't want to.
I'll think about it but don't get your hopes up.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
I played with it a little bit, never had any luck. Maybe somebody else can figure out if its possible.
>00:26 - You did a wonderful thing, namely that you could actually slide under those scorpions :)
I did it the one time just cause I wanted to. But its hard to tell when you stop sliding or even if this is faster at all. Frame counter on FCEU would make this easier.
>01:05 - I was thinking if its even useful to stand a bit further on those flying robots in order to reach to the next on faster?
Maybe. Maybe even not sliding also.
>02:49 - I got the feeling that you might have grabbed the ladder some frames to soon right?
Yes.
>03:38 - I'll bet that you've already tried to see if works to simply walk through that big robot. And a suggestion here would be that you here choosed Pharaoh armor to get quicker through him. I know you end with just one shot left of Pharaoh but there might be a solution to that below here :)
I don't understand what you mean here.
>03:17 - Notice how you charge your Pharaoh armor, thus your armors health decreases, which might not be necessary due the forthcoming lag at this stage and seeing no need to hit those enemies.
I did it to prevent lag, yes, but ended up causing some in the process. Frame counter again will help determine which is faster.
>03:28 - If you paus here, can you see the thing Im seeing, namely that you might are 1-2 frames off to the left? You should be able to be 1-2 frames at right here.
Yeah, I know. I do this a lot.
>03:51 - Is it necessary to hit these enemies? Are you hitting them to avoid lag?
No and no. Just thought it looked better than running through.
>05:25 - Don't charge, because my theory is that you would only create more lag, either shoot a fast Pharaoh shot or simply avoid hitting him.
Same as above. Laggy either way.
>05:44 - Excellent done all the way through those rocks!
One of the toughest parts of the entire movie.
>07:50 - Release yourself from the ladder, jump at the near edge, and continue climbing. Agreed?
Yes.
>09:37 - I think you should be able to slide on your Balloon right? If so, then by doing a quick slide and a jump could reslut in avoiding getting hit here.
Have to take the hit to get past it. But I just threw that in cause I thought it was kinda cool. Using regular weapon all the way through this level is the fastest way.
>11:26 - I just realized that you can actually skip your regular armor and use your Balloon here.. You must agree with me that you can use Balloon 2/3 of this stage and by using Ballon, I just know you might save seconds doing it.
I don't think so. You'll get two screens of usage out of it because screens 3 and 4 you're not going to be able to get past with balloon selected unless you take hits. You need to kill some of those enemies.
>12:04 try avoid hitting unnecessary enemies (besides from the obvious falling rocks),
Just killed them cause I could. Don't think it's faster or slower either way.
>12:49 - Great boss battle besides from only 2 questions, 1: why did you took a hit at 12:49?
Laziness. I'll admit it ;-) Drill Man is the worst thing in the game to do cause it is such a pain to keep him from diving into the ground and to continuously hit him with that stupid Dive Missile. I didn't want to redo it.
>2: At: 12:53, do you agree with me that due to you are facing away from him, you are losing some frames until your shot reaches him? If you'd simply facing him, I believe that your shot would actually hit him faster.
Dive Missile is such a pain to use. Sometimes you can be facing what you want to shoot and it will ignore it and go on a 5 second detour. It that situation that was the fastest way to hit him.
>Toad Man Level<
Well well, nothing improvable here ^_^
Heh, actually there is, but I didn't do it for my own reasons. It meant removing one of my favorite parts :-) I'll give you a hint, do Toad Man last.
>16:10 - I would you to at this stage begin to press upwards so you can reduce some frames and to be able to jump higher on the ladder.
16:44 - Got the impression that you might have been some frames after to push upwards.
I didn't do it cause going up slightly slows forward movement. Might be slower, might be faster. Frame counter will help.
>16:59 - Would sliding be faster to reach to the next floor thingy and to the next etc? I think it might be the case.
I don't know.
>19:06 - Im most certain that using Balloon here, instead of using Rush Jet would be faster as you can pretty much easily use it further, right?
20:22 - Here I have a big and sweet idea to you :) Lets say you'll use Balloon instead of Rush Jet already here. Couple of frames would probably be saved here and further.
That was something else I wanted to do; not get any refills unless they were absolutely necessary. That just screams efficiency :-) But if you're going for absolute speed then, yes, using Balloon a lot more would be best.
>20:28 - Useful using Balloon here and I know that enemy above might hit but cant you with the tightest and accuracy use Balloon on the left side aswell to avoid getting hit from him?
You can't avoid that hit.
20:36 - Here comes my big idea.. How about using Balloon at this stage and while sliding on your own Balloons (if its possible sliding on your own Balloons, if not my idea still should work) you can reach to the nearest armor refill (and as you already know, each time you use Balloon only 1 armor health is used), take it and continue with your high speed making Balloons, most probably you don't need to take the second armor refill if you'd used Balloon and Im quite positive you would have made it to the ladder with Balloons.
It's a long way to go. I don't know if it will work or not. Read above for why I didn't give it a try. Also, Balloon takes 2 energy not 1, so you'll have to get both refills.
>21:45 but maybe, just maybe you can actually do it if its possible here to NOT jump that high and possibly doing a extremely quick jump afterwards to hit him again. Sounds pretty far-fetched, I know.
I don't think so. I hit him at the earliest point every time.
>23:18 - Balloon kopernical ^_^ You'd with Balloon gain a very high height and grabbing the ladder on near topp of the screen. While you'd picked Balloon, you could have used it at: 23:23 right? Here you can reach the topp of the ladder with Balloons.
Have to wait for the screen to completely scroll before it lets you continue up, so it's not much faster. And when you factor in the weapon switch it's actually slower.
>23:42 - That refill was surely not necessary was it? As it slows you and your overall time down.
It's necessary if you want to use Ring on all the bosses that are weak to it. Ring takes one energy to use, you start with 28. I use 7 on Cossack 1 boss, 7 on Wily 2 boss, 7 on Dust Man and 10 on the first form of Wily. That leaves you 3 short. You could try using another weapon to finish off one of them, but you still have to do something about those spiky robots in the non scrolling screen. You can't jump over them and regular weapon doesn't hurt them.
>24:45 - Here I felt you hesistated, why?
I'm charging up up a large Pharoah. It's slightly faster than shooting 3 more small ones.
25:22 - Wonder if you'd jump here you would go down faster?
Maybe.
>27:27 - Now I wonder it would be efficient using Balloon at this stage until 27:51? As i think it would be hard using Balloon during the water stage.
Probably not. Using Balloons with the Metools active on the screen would be really laggy.
>28:12 - Balloon would be better as you would get much better height to reach the topp left nearest ladder.
28:17 - Same thing here.
Yes. Again, I didn't want to refill Balloon.
>28:20 - Didn't you grab the ladder a bit to soon?
Probably
>28:52 - Why didn't you shoot again? He did not blink at this stage.
It'll bounce off. You can only get 4 hits on him the first time he opens.
>30:26 - Can you jump from here? Since when I paused at this stage, I could se that you were for a split second moving (i.e walking) forward which should enable you to jump on the ladder.
I was never able to do it.
>31:56 - Faster if you jumped to get down faster?
Probably
Seems that way. At least that's the only way I had luck doing it.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
You can if you're using the Mega Buster but not if you're using Rain Flush. Besides, I think it's cool getting hit as soon as he does it so it doesn't freeze me.
I'm going to have to watch it first cause in a lot of places I'm not sure what you're referring too.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
I didn't mean that I thought your suggestions or the way you gave them was condescending. It was pretty much just your last statement.
Is it really necessary to point this out when the same thing could be said about probably 99% of the videos on this site? How many times did people think SMB was perfect only to find out later that it could be improved. And that is only a 5 minute video. This is 6 1/2 times as long.
And that smiley at the end just seems to say "look how easy this is going to be to beat." You just have to follow my suggestions, when there's much more to it than that.
But I'm probably just overreacting. For that I apologize. And if I sounded abrupt in my replies I wasn't trying to. I was tired and I wanted to answer as simply as I could.
As many times as I watched this movie and played it, I probably have 75% of it memorized. For the stuff I commented on I didn't need to see it.
I just tried it and it won't work. 1. You can't shoot Shadow downward and 2. they just go through the bubbles anyway. Good idea, though.
I'm pretty sure I tried that so it probably won't work.
I switched to Top Spin which is all but useless against any enemies. And there is an enemy I have to get past on the very next screen.
Yeah, you're right there. I misremembered that.
This is second Wily right? If so I think I only refilled just a couple bars and waiting for Rush and jumping on him would surely be longer than that. But you're right, someone could try it.
Seeing as the exit is on the left side I'm guessing it would be faster to do the left side then the right so you don't have to backtrack. But you're right, I just repeated what Sleepz did without even thinking about it.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
Marine might help. But sliding is still faster and that might cancel out the lag. Something to try, though.
With Rush Jet there is no way that first screen will be faster. Jet will lag the hell out of it.
You're not the first person to think of this route :-) At first I immediately discounted it but I think it's worth a try. You're going to lose time on Top, Shadow and Snake and gain a little on Gemini and Magnet. I believe that you're going to lose more but maybe someone can prove me wrong.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
Don't have the video, just going by memory. Might be remembering some stuff wrong. Bisqwit commented on some of them already. Also want to add that some of this stuff was addressed in my submission so maybe you should have checked that first.
>01:05 - I'll bet if you really slide very fast here, you can probably skip hitting this flying bug.
Yes.
>01:40 - Maybe if you used Rush Jump (or whatever that dog's name is ^_^) ) while going up on the ladder, you could perhaps avoided getting hit by that big machine and saving time.
I don't see how Rush is going to help you miss that thing. Besides, the hit knocks me the way i want to go so I think it is probably a bit faster.
>01:53 - I got the impression that you hesitated for a bit here, could you have also improved your battle if you stood a bit closer to him? I was thinking of your fights against ProtoMan, similar to that, that was excellent (against ProtoMan), you stood as close as you could so try that method with Gemini Man.
ProtoMan doesn't have that invulnerability (at least not easily noticeable) so there's no reason not to get as close to him as possible. But against the other bosses, hitting them as soon as they're vulnerable again is all that matters.
>06:54 - Excellent fight but could've you stood maybe 1-2 frames closer to ProtoMan? 'Cause I can see a tiny gap between your armor and him :)
Timewise, it doesn't really matter how close you are to him. There's a limit on how fast you can kill him.
>10:09 - Your battle against Hard Man seems very good except for one thing, that hit shouldn't be necessary and should be avoided - saving 2-3 frames.
Hasn't this been discussed before? When Hard Man does that ground pound attack it freezes Mega Man's movement for several seconds. Taking the hit is noticeably faster.
>This level seems very well executed but with a few minor questions. Could you have sticked with one strong armor instead of changing your armor?
Seeing as I run out of Magnet I either have to get a refill or change weapons. I decided to change weapons.
>And your battle against TopMan was great I suppose. I assume that you intentionally got hit by him to prevent him from doing something... Now as he moves to the left, could you have saved a couple of frames if you shot a bit earlier your Hard Knuckle?
I hit him as soon as he becomes vulnerable again. Any earlier and it would have just bounced off of him.
>12:59 - I think there is a tiny gap between you and Protoman that you can fix. A 1-2 frames could be minimized here.
Again, you only can kill him so fast.
>* Shadow Man fight excellent but should've avoided that one hit from him (if its possible)
Not if you want to hit him twice with one spin.
>14:29 - Could you have used Rush Jump here and the above ladder to almost avoid climing on them? And also using Rush Jump here at 14:42, also if you decided to use Rush Jump at 14:29, there are many places to use him, for instance at 14:47 and maybe 14:50 - to be able to jump at the second spot, using Rush Jump at 14:56 would be very efficient and would probably save a near second here, 15:00 use Rush Jump also here. So you see, there are many places to save time and frames by using Rush Jump.
I don't remember how big any of those ladders are but are you factoring in the time it takes to call Rush down? And the weapon switch? But it could be faster.
>At: 16:28 - This is another "middle" time saver I've thought of. If you would use already here Magnet Beam, you would most probably avoid lag, save time and frames, right? :)
You'd have to get several weapon refills if you want to do that entire screen with Magnet, but it might be faster.
>17:03 - Now here I was thinking of a tiny shortcut. Is there no armor where you can shoot the direction you want? Ah yes, Shadow Man's armor hehe. In this case, right where you land so you don't have to go around these bubbles :) Here you can save a few seconds yes!!!!
I'm not sure where exactly you mean here, but I don't see how Shadow would be faster to destroy the bubbles. You can only have one on the screen at a time versus 3 of Needle.
>19:48 - Until Boss battle - Now here is alot of lag, maybe unnecessary hits etc.. My question here is: Maybe you could've saved SECONDS here if you for instance either moved Rush Jet dynamically or simply jumping dynamically instead of shooting them, thus creating lag.
Needle Man Rush Jet section? You guys are underestimating how much lag is cause by 1. jumping on rush jet and 2. by the enemies themselves. If you don't kill them they will cause a LOT of lag, much more than you see in the video as it is.
On another note, I tried jumping on Rush and skipping one of the energy refills. It was 2 seconds slower. Maybe someone can do a better job of it than I did but jumping on Rush isn't going to be a huge time saver like a lot of you seem to think it is.
>22:23 - Certainly no need to take that health refill :) Skipping that would probably save between 0,5-1 second.
How do you suggest I skip it? Can't jump over it.
>22:38 - Now since you didn't use Magnet Beam afterwards you don't need to take those armor refills, Skipping those would probably save near 0,5 second, due to minor lag when getting them.
If this is the part I'm thinking of then yes I did use Magnet afterwards. So it's either take the refills or switch weapons. Timewise probably about the same.
>23:00 - Was these taking hits necessary? (probably, if probably not you could've saved seconds here).
Seeing as you have to be right next to him to hit him with Top Spin you're probably going to lose time if you try to avoid the hits.
>24:38 - Now since you've picked Magnet Beam as your current armor, you should use it to your advantage and shoot those big rocks, timesaver here.
I use the last of the energy to destroy the last one. If you want to destroy the rest of them you're going to have to get a weapon refill which might not save any time at all.
>27:38 - Avoid getting that armor refill, avoiding it would save a few frames and 0,x seconds.
Not sure which one you mean, but if I grabbed it then it was faster than not grabbing it.
>30:11 - Wouldn't be smarter to simply doing all the right bosses and then heading towards the left bosses? It seems a waste of time to first doing topp right boss and then heading for topp left boss.
There's probably a better way to do that, but not the way you're suggesting.
>P.S: So Vatchern, you still think his time is perfect and unbeatable? ^_^
I know my movie is far from perfect but you don't have to be so condescending about it, especially when a lot of your ideas probably aren't even viable.
I'm the one who took the time and effort to improve the movie in the first place, not just write down some suggestions.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
That jumping on the Super Arrow is going to be a very big timesaver. I can already think of 4 or 5 places where it will really come in handy.
Wonder why I never thought to try it :-/
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
Yeah, I'd like to see someone else give a go at them, too, since I never really had the patience to go for absolute perfection.
I don't know about that. I was able to take quite a bit of time off MM3 by switching to the 60 fps patch and I'm sure the same would happen by switching to FCEU's frame advance.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
You're right. Wonder why I didn't even try that.
I believe it's possible to slide over every gap of that size. Some of them were easy; my actions prior to that spot put me in the exact place I needed to be. Others would take a bit of effort to get into the right spot. That is one thing that can be improved here.
No, nothing special. Most of them I was just lucky enough to be in the right spot. There is very small room for error (just a few pixels) so I wouldn't try on this trick for a real run.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
Yeah, I watched it and enjoyed it. Very nicely done. Much better than I could ever hope to do :-)
I noticed you were able to do that with little slowdown. Maybe it's because of the speed difference betwee the two versions but if you don't kill any enemies and continuously jump it causes a lot of slowdown, so much so that is actually faster to get the refills.
Do you remember where this was? Somebody else mentioned that once and never did say. Maybe there was a reason I didn't do it, or maybe it was something I just missed.
Thanks. Sleepz is really the one who came up with most of it. I just improved it a little bit.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
I gave it a quick try and the best I could get was 3 hits on him with a single bomb while it takes 7 to kill him on easy and 14 on hard. If this is even possible at all (which I'm doubting) it's certainly not going to work on hard.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
Heh, guess I should try things out before I run my mouth :-)
Seems things changed between 2 and 3 cause that would have been possible in any of the later ones.
Forget what I said.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Former player
Joined: 3/24/2004
Posts: 132
Location: Indiana
I'm not even going to vote for this or say how great it is because it's status is hardly in question. But I did want to point that there were a few places where, while taking hits, they could have turned around to get knocked forward instead of backward. It's a little bit faster and IMO it takes away a little bit of the ugliness of getting hit.
I was impressed by how much faster than the 26:15 video it is. There isn't anything really different between the two; it just goes to show how much things can add up. Methinks any one of my videos can be beaten by a decent amount in the same manner.