Submission Text Full Submission Page
(Nico Nico movies has Japanese description in greater detail.)
Emulator used: Dolphin 3.0-378 (more-save-fixes)

Game objectives

Scenario "A New Journey" ending. Takes no damage Only uses necessary parts. Runs away from all battles when possible.

Emulator details

  • Dual core off
  • Idle skipping off
  • Progressive scan on
  • DSP LLE recompiler

Comments

I aim for the "A New Journey" ending. In battle, I try various things to defeat the enemy. Obtaining parts takes long, and the tempo is bad, so it is only done once.

Explanation of parts

  • GUN
The first basic gun has so-so firepower. But I change for the vertical gun obtained much later, since it is better. Its firepower falls behind that of the basic gun, but its homing and DOWN (decrease enemy's endurance meter) power is higher, so the number of times firing is less.
  • BODY
RAY01 has better attack in general, and has very efficient strength. In the "A New Journey" scenario, other BODY parts cannot be used.
  • BOMB
Standard Bomb has high power. It is suitable for doing lots of damage. I could not think of any other suitable parts.
  • POD
Standard Pod is similar to the bomb, easy to use.
  • LEGS
Standard Leg was a little inefficient. When able to, it is better to switch to Phaser Leg.

General Tricks and Glitches

Countdown control: The cube's number can be manipulated to an extent. By mashing A or B, or possibly holding them, the counting speed can be manipulated. To decide the first number, by pressing start button in battle setup, it is decided when the battle starts.
Boss transition: When start is pressed in battle, by the timing of the cancel, the enemy's behavior is transformed in a big way.
Double hit bug: In some cases, at least 2 kinds of attack can hit at the same time. It is possible, while avoiding decrease of damage (depending on combo), the value at which the endurance meter decreases is unusual. Originally, it is possible to avoid the endurance meter becoming 0.
Bomb attack: By using the double hit bug, which is easy to do, the technique does lots of damage. In RAY01's body type, after firing bombs, if the attack is timed well, they can hit at the same time.
No-damage hit: If hit at the time it says "KO", even though damage is 0 a hit is indicated. This is often seen in this run. If damage occurs, it is not counted.

FractalFusion: Replaced the movie file with one that hopefully fixes the savestate bug. However, it is not known if it syncs yet, or what changes.
Nahoc: Judging!
FractalFusion: Some information about ISO version from Guga in this post. It is unclear what the last line means.
Name: wrg-crob.iso
CRC-32: 4df76b35
MD4: ee00f93406dfda6bd5e7e86acac04073
MD5: 6c74f607554a4d991e0a783b14d8b232
SHA-1: 5bc6196df3cee9410f07777d6bbc7593f5ad1948
The movie only syncs in the version listed in the submission text.
Nahoc: This is a tough call for me.
On one hand, I am thinking this:
"Despite the amount of efforts you put into this and votes in favor of publishing this movie, I feel the need to reject it. Being labeled as a "playaround", this TAS fails to entertain for its lenght. It is repetitive and doesn't feel like a superplay in many levels. It seems like you first went for an any%, but decided to switch your goals halfway in. You could've switched parts, used more various attacks, wandered around in a funny way while controlling the human character, played around in the credits, etc.
Don't get me wrong though; I think that this game might be a good candidate for a "playaround". Just not this particular TAS. Maybe, as mentionned in the thread, other game modes could suit a tool-assisted superplay better."
On the other hand, I am thinking this:
"People who've played the game have pointed out how godly you manipulated the AI and that you made this game look easy (but it's supposedly not!). This TAS also received a great feedback on niconico. This would also be our first GC movie to be published on the site. The 4-player battles are action-packed and mind-blowing. Gladly accepting!!"
In the end, I finally decided to reject this. It's just not enough to be a playaround. Hopefully, I can still expect an update (v2) from you, asutoro. Thanks for submitting.


Joined: 8/7/2011
Posts: 166
I loved this game and we have no GCN runs yet so yes. Two questions 1:How do the Grand Battle fights that require you to change out parts work if you run out of parts to select because you never went to the part generator (as almost done here for the most part)? 2:Got to wonder how much of the humor was added by the translators. One of my favorite bits was the third option in tutorial questions beyond "got it" and "don't got it" (such as "Haha, they called you a jerk"). Do these play out as funny as they do in English? Would love to see a follow up entertainment run for the Grand Battle, as most of its fights disallow repeating the same part set up, which would eliminate the main problem everyone has.
Joined: 2/17/2012
Posts: 10
I feel this would be a better playaround if the credits section had action.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Are everyone's questions ever going to be answered? It's been almost a month. I still don't see why this is a playaround, and if there's no reason it shouldn't aim for the fastest time, then I might have to vote No for an suboptimal route.
RachelB
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Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
CoolKirby wrote:
Are everyone's questions ever going to be answered?
Last online: 2012-04-22 07:57:28
Maybe eventually.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Should the decision be set to delayed until the author provides more information? Or does the submission have to be claimed for judging first (which still hasn't happened)? This submission really isn't getting a lot of activity for some reason.
RachelB
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Posts: 1579
I thought the plan was to just leave this unjudged forever?
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
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rog wrote:
I thought the plan was to just leave this unjudged forever?
Who planned that? Did I miss an IRC discussion? We can't just leave this in the Workbench. No one wants this to sit here as long as Seiken Densetsu 3 (though that one was actually almost ready to publish).
RachelB
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Player (132)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
Well it wasn't so much a plan, but more of a "this is what's going to happen" deal.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Oh, well it's really surprising to me that this hasn't been even claimed, and most of the members haven't even watched this run, much less commented on it. I expected there to be more activity for a nearly two-month-old GameCube submission.
RachelB
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Player (132)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
Judges don't want to deal with dolphin or windows games. And no one wants to watch an almost 2 hour tas.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4038
Didn't the Final Fantasy VIII TAS get judged and published faster than this? There should be no excuse for a submission going unclaimed for over a month and a half. And are you saying not even the people who commented watched the whole encode? I certainly did.
RachelB
She/Her
Player (132)
Joined: 12/3/2011
Posts: 1579
CoolKirby wrote:
Didn't the Final Fantasy VIII TAS get judged and published faster than this? There should be no excuse for a submission going unclaimed for over a month and a half.
That's a final fantasy. A 15 hour zelda, mario or metroid game would also be judged right away.
And are you saying not even the people who commented watched the whole encode? I certainly did.
By no one, i obviously mean most people.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
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Don't you think this needs to be claimed and judged and the author needs to respond to the questions about his own run?
Former player
Joined: 4/13/2011
Posts: 76
Location: Japan
(Excite translation is used) I'm sorry to have neglected it for a long time. I would like to write many things tomorrow. 長く放置してすみませんでした。 明日、色々書きたいと思います。
Operation related to TAS of N64/GC/Wii/PS2 emulator is often investigated.
Former player
Joined: 4/13/2011
Posts: 76
Location: Japan
依頼した英訳が完了するまで、日本語で書いておきます。
CoolKirby wrote:
I think you missed Kirkq's question, and since I was wondering about it too, I'll echo it here: Why is this a playaround instead of a speedrun? Also, the battles were the most interesting part of the run. I liked that you and your friends took no damage for the entire run. However, the battle strategies got repetitive, and I was wondering...could anything have been done to make each battle different so the run would be more entertaining?
Speedrunでは完全なパターン行動になるため、playaroundが適していると考えました。 このmovieを作るに当たって考えたのは、普通にガンやボムで攻撃しているだけでは実機とあまり差が無いと考えたため、 なるべく早く相手を倒してスムーズさを重視し、通常プレイでは使われていないテクニックのボムアタックやその場に対応した先読み攻撃を主に戦法として使っています。 パーツ取得を1回だけ行なうのはバトルがメインなのに、余分に時間を取られたくないためです。 しかし、まとめて取得しようにも溜め過ぎると長いので取得を1回だけにしました。 パーツを一つスキップするのに3秒ほどかかります。毎回取得するにしてもわざわざパーツジェネレーターに移動する手間もあるのでテンポよく進めれません。 様々なパーツを使って戦うこともできます。しかし、それらはコンボ補正というダメージが減少してしまう仕様により、 スムーズに相手を倒すことが出来なくなってしまいます。 パーツは一試合に一つ(手に入らない試合もある)しか手に入らないので、パーツを変えて戦うにしてもバリエーションが偏ってしまいます。 しかし、単純操作なこのゲームでバリエーション多く戦えることはあまり無い気がします。 コンボ補正というものがありますが、単純な例としては 100ダメージ→70ダメージ→30ダメージ という風にダメージを与えるごとに本来与えれるダメージの量が減っていきます。ダウン後のステルス状態になると補正がリセットされます。 ダブルヒットバグはこれを同じフレームに2種類の攻撃を同時に当てて、大ダメージを与えることができるテクニックです。 しかし、威力が高い攻撃じゃないとあまり効果がありません。ボムとアタックの同時当てが一番適しています。 アタックはレイ01のような無敵時間が発生し、すばやく攻撃ができなければCPUに避けられてしまいます。 このボムアタックをメインとした戦法で無ければ、実機プレイと大差が無いと思います。
Operation related to TAS of N64/GC/Wii/PS2 emulator is often investigated.
Editor, Expert player (2080)
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Below the dashed line is a rough translation of asutoro's post above. I'm sorry for the rather strange way I worded it, but, if it isn't obvious already, I know nothing about Custom Robo apart from what has been said in this thread. asutoro, please do not delete the Japanese you wrote. ---- Until an English translation is completed, Japanese will be written here. Since, in a speedrun, there is perfect pattern, I thought that "playaround" is suitable. I thought of it when I made the movie. In general, just attacking with GUN and BOMB, since I thought there was no difference from console, I considered the best way to defeat the opponent quickly. In the case of the Bomb Attack technique, which is not used in normal play, a counter-attack is used as strategy. With only obtaining one part, even if it is a main battle, it is so I do not pick up extra time. But, putting them all together, it takes too long, so I only get 1. If a part is skipped, it takes only 3 seconds. Even if I get a part every time, because of the time to move to the parts generator, the pace does not advance well. Using various parts, I can still fight. But, due to decrease of damage from combo correction, it is no longer possible to defeat the opponent smoothly. Since I only get at most one part from a match, even if i change parts and fight, the variation becomes biased. But, with simple methods in this game, I feel that I cannot fight with much variation. There is combo correction. 100 damage -> 70 damage -> 30 damage In this way, damage is given at intervals, with damage value decreasing. After having the Stealth condition after being downed, the correction is reset. For the double hit bug, 2 kinds of attacks hit at the same frame. It is a technique to do much damage. But, if there is no attack with a high power, there is not much effect. Bomb and Attack hitting at the same time is the best suited. If Attack occurs at RAY 01's invincible time, if the attack cannot be done quickly, the CPU will dodge it. If the Bomb Attack cannot be main attack method, there is not a big difference from real play.
Joined: 8/7/2011
Posts: 166
In case people didn't know, the game contains a second post-game mode "Grand Battle". It's far better suited to a "playaround" run, as the matches there force you to use different parts each round and there is less of a story structure and you will have (almost, there are some illegal parts earned the mode itself, plus if this is used as the verification, Afterburner Gun is missed for refusing to go to the Bathroom with Harry, but I don't think it is all that useful a gun, but that could differ in a TAS.) all the parts from the start.
Editor, Experienced player (570)
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Well, I don't know anything about this game, but I thought the battles were entertaining (which is what the author was aiming for) even at the cost of speed. Also, the story really picked up in the last third of the run (not that I could understand any of the text). I think that since this run starts with no save data and the NewGame+ "Grand Battle" deuxhero described can't be done without completing the game once, this run is entertaining enough to be published. It already looks like those who have played the game before really like it. Perhaps in the future, a "Grand Battle" run, potentially more suitable for a playaround, could obsolete this using this run as the verification movie. Also, I hope other people will comment and vote soon and a decision can finally be reached on this run. Yes vote!
Joined: 8/7/2011
Posts: 166
What? Go play it right now! Grand Battle is a separate story and would hardly obsolete this.
Guga
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Name: wrg-crob.iso
CRC-32: 4df76b35
   MD4: ee00f93406dfda6bd5e7e86acac04073
   MD5: 6c74f607554a4d991e0a783b14d8b232
 SHA-1: 5bc6196df3cee9410f07777d6bbc7593f5ad1948
The movie only syncs in the version listed in the submission text.
TASVideosGrue
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om, nom, nom... blech, salty!
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Nahoc, I think your judging decision was fair and you explained it well. Great job!