Well, I noticed there wasn't a thread for this yet, so I decided to make one, mostly as a planning session or to drum up interest. I just got done watching THPS 3 by emu, which was made before the days of PS TASing. Now that it's available, I think we should attack one of these games on the system. I tested it out and it works just fine.
My ideas for goals are:
1. Regular levels: fastest time to 100% goals and cash. If it's not possible to do this in one run (which I hope it is) an alternate goal would be maximum cash in a single run.
2. Highest score that doesn't conflict with goal 1
For contests, of course get first place. To prevent the player from just finding a half pipe or circular rail and staying for the entire time, I have a couple of collection goals in mind.
Heat 1: collect all the cash
Heat 2: hit all the gaps
For both: as fast as possible and highest score within that time.
Since they are aiming for different things, they will be approached differently and lead to two runs where you actually get to see the contest level.
Thoughts?
Ideally, the best goal would be a 100% speedrun including cash and gaps. I doubt that such a goal is possible only in one run in certain stages, but this is TASing, you never know... I recommend you to test it. I would love to see a TAS of this game.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
I'm interested in working on this. There actually was already a thread named along the lines of "THPS" in the n64 forum. A TAS of the THPS games shouldn't be fastest time but more like a playaround (still reasonably fast, though).
I haven't got anything done yet. Also, if I were to TAS this game, I would do it on mupen (I heard the psx emulator isn't overly desync-prone, I'm not familiar with it, it's complicated to set up and there isn't much of a difference between the N64 and PSX port).
Also, if I were to TAS this game, I would aim for all goals & all the cash.
A TAS of the THPS games shouldn't be fastest time but more like a playaround (still reasonably fast, though).
I disagree. At least in this particular case. If you go for pure 100% (including cash and gaps), the TAS would look like a playaround while still being a speedrun.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
I agree with Zeupar. Considering the level layouts, a 100% run would already show of many, many great tricks and surprises and due to the gaps there will be plenty of diversity. I actually think a playaround would be less entertaining, due to the player not having any goals to work towards.
If you go for pure speed, you will need to rely on speed tricks like jumping out of manuals repeatedly and jumping on rails. I would prefer to show off special tricks and avoid using said speed tricks. That's what I meant by "more like a playaround".
I'd vote for a 100% run as fast as possible.
I love this game, though I only played it on PC.
What about the graphics between the N64 and the PSX?
I think that ports for N64 are generally bad isn't it?
Quite scaled down and messy looking.
apparently, there's other larger differences as well. Goals and levels are changed around, for example. I'm not certain it's true because I only owned the PS version, but graphics are definitely better on PS.
The reason why I don't include all gaps in the regular levels is there's no immediate acknowledgement that you hit them all, unlike goals and cash. The reason I include them in the bonus level is to differentiate the two heats. If going for all goals and gaps leads to the player having to go through the same level twice, I'd rather drop the gaps. (If getting all goals requires repeating levels, I'd rather just have one run each level as well.)
I wouldn't mind running the game on the PS port, but I'm not familiar with the emulator at all. It seems complicated to set up and there may be more issues to it.
100% (all gaps, goals, cash) sounds interesting, but it's definitely making the TAS way more hard to create. So I could use some help if I actually decide to work on a run in that category. It would also help to find out the differences between the n64 and ps version, concerning gaps or goals (?), levels, and also TAS tricks.
Here are 2 messages Spider-Waffle sent me:
Jumping out of a manual gains you speed, you also gain speed every time you land a grind.
Having special gives you 2 or 3, I can't remember which, extra stats too all attributes, but extra ollie too so you won't be able to do manuals and grinds as fast, not sure which is faster, having special I would guess but tactifully you might not want to get it sometimes if possible so you can fit in 2 manuals instead of 1.
I found when TASing THPS1 that when doing a hard turn (back+left/right) and changing to hard turn the other way that you change direction faster if you do a regular turn for one frame before switching.
Other than that just find the best routes. I recommend playing different routes if your good at the game to figure which are faster, but if it's close and/or your not that good at the game you might to need to TAS them all to test, of course with these games is virtually impossible to TAS it perfect due to 10^100000000 amount slight angle variation combination possible; like turning 180s can be done with so many different slight angle variations
Minimize air time whenever possible unless you gains you something, like speed because you get to land on down slope. So like when going up a quarter pipe to get an item try and do it without jumping tapping back right before go so you just barely get the item, the extra speed you get on landing isn't worth the extra time in the air.
There's some good shortcuts you can do with wallrides (wrs). I could almost 900 off a regular wr on console you so get some serious height off them. And wr into corner or from a slope into the wall you can get almost twice as high.
You can press and hold jump at the right time to land from high falls I think the higher it is the better your timing has to be.
Another trick I forgot to mention is leaning, if you hold down while in the air your skater leans his board forward and up so you can get a little more height and distance if your reaching for a rail/ledge/goal.
Also you might want to use the create a skater option to get one with max speed at the start.
Some of that information can be useful. But I disagree to run this game at pure speed since I think it would turn out very boring, even in the 100% category. I'm refering to the first THPS3 TAS by emu that wasn't received well since it was a pure speedrun rather than a playaround. By playaround I mean, as I mentioned, a run that is much like a pure speedrun but also shows off some special tricks and interesting gaps or tricks/combos.
Also, I'm not sure about the "create a skater" option... I'm leaning towards not using it and just selecting Tony Hawk as the skater since he has good stats (low ollie and moderate speed, I think).
It works just fine with the TAS specific plugins, so there's no need to fiddle around with that.
The playstation has another advantage in that there's no joystick, so it will be slightly less complex.
I just checked. They don't seem to be that different. Also, I wasn't able to find any maps readily available online, though it seems the strategy guide has them.
The playstation has another advantage in that there's no joystick, so it will be slightly less complex.
Wouldn't this also mean that movement in the Playstation version would be much less precise? You'd go from being able to choose from hundreds of possible directions to only having eight.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Not sure. As far as I know, Tony Hawk games have steering and braking and that's it (also direction buttons for tricks). I tried using dual analogue. It didn't change gameplay significantly, but it made it more annoying because you didn't have the immediate response of the direction buttons.
The reason why I don't include all gaps in the regular levels is there's no immediate acknowledgement that you hit them all, unlike goals and cash. The reason I include them in the bonus level is to differentiate the two heats.
That shouldn't be an inconvenience so long as they help making the TAS more entertaining. Having clear goals is always a good thing.
MUGG wrote:
100% (all gaps, goals, cash) sounds interesting, but it's definitely making the TAS way more hard to create. So I could use some help if I actually decide to work on a run in that category.
I could dust my brother's old PlayStation 2 and help you with that if you go for it.
But I disagree to run this game at pure speed since I think it would turn out very boring, even in the 100% category. I'm refering to the first THPS3 TAS by emu that wasn't well received since it was a pure speedrun rather than a playaround.
That run wasn't well received because it was an any% TAS. In this case, a 100% TAS (including cash and gaps) would be very different.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
Here is a regular speedrun by neskamikaze, which was posted on SDA today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so5zns80lX8
I think this could be used as a sample video to base the TAS on.
I haven't TASed anything recently and I'm not sure if I'm going to run this game. If anyone wants to give this a try, please go ahead. But please notify me if someone works on a TAS.
I've been fooling around with THPS2 for the past couple of days. Like I wrote in the submission for the N64 run I found some glitch that ejected or zipped me down from a roof.
Today when I played a bit more I was able to jump through a ceiling and land on the roof by using wall ride from the ground. This could show useful in coming up with shortcuts. The level it happened in was Venice Beach. When you go down the stairs in front of where you start, then take a right turn following the rail on your right hand side. You will come up to a building where it says "Oren". This is where I was able to jump through. Not a big achievement maybe. But never the less something to add to a possible list of glitches to abuse in the future. :)
Edit:
Nice little video of someone who makes all the goals (no cash) in one run in Venice Beach.
Link to video
Edit 2:
Some more videos of 100% goals and cash. I thought it might be great for route planning for a 100% run.
Hangar (100% + cash)
Link to video
School 100% (no cash)
Link to video
Ny City 100% (no cash)
Link to video
I did a RTS of new york 100% and cash many years back, it's not too hard.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
Rad Rat pointed out a trick where you gain speed when jumping out of manuals in his video.
It seems I pointed it out in the past.
The current TAS (on N64) doesn't seem to do it. Not sure if it works on N64.
Rad Rat pointed out a trick where you gain speed when jumping out of manuals in his video.
It seems I pointed it out in the past.
The current TAS (on N64) doesn't seem to do it. Not sure if it works on N64.
This is pretty standard practice in rta and is utilized in the new tas that's in the works. Not sure when I'll finish it since thug1 100% is taking a while.
Only thing I still need to figure out is a setup for Nahocs Hangar route/heli strat with Rodney and outside of that the run is through NYC
