This will become really complicated to plan if I try to avoid the bonus plok...
You got 67 shells when hitting the lift at Blind Leap, I already got 105 106, but I gained 401 416 frames only counting the time won there.
You had exactly 199 shells when getting the amulet. I don't think I can avoid 39 shells at the other locations. So I think I will just take the Bonus Plok.
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Those hills are absolutely cruel to optimize... Changing the starting position by 2 pixels (press left or right for one frame) can easily let you gain or lose ~40 frames. Fastest strategy I found so far is to watch 7e0812 ("in air flag") carefully: hold down whenever this value is 0, hold right+down whenever this value is 1... It may be better to release right a little earlier to land sooner, which may result in a higher acceleration. You will have the fastest possible speed if you have as much time as possible on ground and then press right+down+B.
This video will show what I mean by "It's really cruel to optimize those hill slides". I intentionally edited the video file to play 4 times as slow as usual, otherwise you would need to use slowdown to watch it...
You can see well that my newer version (marked yellow) is not always in front of the older one, but finishes sooner, because I got a higher "acceleration" value.
WIP5
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Yeah, when I saw you slide down the first hill, I realized that I really should've done more research/experimentation prior to attempting a TAS... I didn't even consider sliding down hills as an option. Its clear to me that this run will be so significantly faster than the current one that it almost seems pointless to compare the two.
I wasn't keeping a tally because I honestly thought you had warped past many of the ones I had to pick up. I figured your count would be lower, but if you're at +39, I'm sure you're correct in assuming the extra amount of time it will take to avoid a bonus plok would not be worth it.
I did set out to avoid shells from the beginning, with the obvious priority being speed. If avoiding shells wasted frames, then I would simply get them, however I was fortunate enough to wind up VERY near the amulet when the count was getting too high, and as a result only needed to go back a level or two to find an obvious point where the tradeoff would not be too much of an impact.
With an extra 39 to deal with, in addition to any others that could potentially be grabbed as a result of sliding... yeah, I agree, that amount of planning would be complicated, and could possibly even wind up a fruitless effort.
If the sliding acceleration works anything like it does when he's limbless, I know what you mean. In Gohome Cavern, at the end of the slides you'll see that I actually accelerate in a short burst after having already decelerated down to ~normal speed. I'd be curious to know if the same "acceleration" variable you're referring to produces that effect as well.
Yay, I found a bug in this game which gives me quite a big shortcut...
WIP6 , 12530 rerecords, saved 220 frames up to Plok's house when comparing to WIP2
As long as you're sliding, it doesn't make any difference how many limbs you have at the moment... Biggest problem with sliding is to avoid getting into the air too early, as sliding gives a huge speed boost... When you slide, you will accelerate, when you jump, the extra speed decreases, but very slow. This means that even one extra frame of sliding may easily gain you a 10 frames advantage.
As you can see in WIP6, sliding even works with the unicycle.
The previous movie ended too early.... If you press A at frame 125000 (approximately... or later) after playing your movie file, you get this final screenshot.
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Here are all WIPs, Lua scripts, and memory watches I created till now ; here is WIP10 and WIP10 on Youtube
I'm currently at the Bobbin Bros in Legacy Island (not finished). If it is improvable, it's less than three seconds: one of the bosses can be hit 40 frames faster, there are 90 "wasted" frames where one of the enemies could be hit in total, and there are 6 frames after the last hit until the level gets finished...
I managed to find out their invulnerability timer, x, and y position. (see plok-boss.lua) Their movement is also very predictable: they always jump at the same time after landing, and jump to wherever you are. Bad thing is that they are ALWAYS too high in the air to be hit when the timer runs out without taking damage for that, and health is quite limited...
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I hate it to optimize boss fights... I'm sure there are lots of people who could do them better than me.
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Nice work! Especially with figuring out how to maximize the results when sliding... and really cool shortcut at Zig Zag! You are destroying my run and I love it.
About the previous movie ending early... I don't know the rules on it anymore, but I remember a HUGE debate on the matter in regards to SMB1... If I recall, as long as the movie ends at a point where any additional input cannot affect the outcome of the game, its acceptable... Am I right?
Bosses in this game are a bitch... I had a sneaking suspicion you'd get hung up on some of them. =/ I have no idea if my playing was ideal or if you're way ahead, or whatever... but feel free to hex my boss fights in, if it will help. (lol, probably not though, judging by how much you're improving on my run).
Don't give up!
... I got the boss done faster, it is now better than your version (by 16 frames only).
But there is a problem:
I found some more warps: shell games are warps too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhPuYyox4zUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRNLmbJG5Q
Especially you can warp from Venge Thicket to Dreamy Cove (no level skipped, but still saves 1000 frames)
and from Sponge Rock to Log Trails (one level skipped, saves another 1000 frames). Problem is that they will make the run less entertaining.
But it would be absolutely artifical to give a rule "only uses non-shellgame-warps".
So what's better? Take ALL the warps, or take non-shellgame-warps, or don't use any warps at all?
Id say go with all warps since there are only 2 warps you mention that will save time so its not a lot that will be skipped out on.
Also, I notice in your WIPs that you seem to enter levels later than in kooz's run. Any reason for this?
Other than that, great job so far partyboy1a! I look foward to the finished run.
I notice in your WIPs that you seem to enter levels later than in kooz's run. Any reason for this?
The old run was done with 1.43, this one is done with 1.51. There seems to be no ingame lag, but the loading times seem to be different between the two versions... But I will need to investigate that more on detail...
As far as I tested till now, it only matters if you pressed start, not when you did it (as long as it wasn't pressed much too late), meaning a small part of each animation will be played every time, afterwards the game checks if Start was pressed at any time before the "animation can be skipped now" event... But who knows, it might be different if it is pressed exactly once on exactly the right frame (somewhat similar as the "select units early" trick in the current "sacred stone" run).
---------------
Fun fact: You can't use the (E) version of the game with 1.51... Just try to playback any movie file...
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kooz wrote:
About the previous movie ending early... I don't know the rules on it anymore, but I remember a HUGE debate on the matter in regards to SMB1... If I recall, as long as the movie ends at a point where any additional input cannot affect the outcome of the game, its acceptable... Am I right?
No, the rule is actually "as long as no additional input is _necessary_". For example, after a movie stops input, you could still pause most of the games. The Tiny Toons movie even stops before the boss is beaten.
Here we would really need additional input. just one button after ~10000 frames without doing anything, but that's more than nothing... I think I will submit the "too short" movie, and also give a link to the longer version, and leave the decision to the judges.
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Shell warps... haha, I'm learning new things about this game every day.
partyboy1a wrote:
So what's better? Take ALL the warps, or take non-shellgame-warps, or don't use any warps at all?
Don't use any warps at all! Entertainment-wise this would be an awesome run in my opinion...
Realistically though, I agree with Sonnikkustar - you should definitely use any/all warps that can get you to the end of the game as fast as possible.
Yay, I could save another 63 65 frames in the earlier levels... but now one of the most difficult sections fails to sync. and it synced.
WIP13 has a really good slide in Sponge Rocks (~frame 18200)
WIP16 ( this partial encode shows the improved section. )
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Those sequences between the levels are quite strange... Pressing Start all the time gives the same result as pressing it every 10 frames (no matter when you begin), but there might be a delay if you press it every 5 frames, or if you insert other buttons.
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Just in case you're wondering about the numberings for the WIPs: I start a new WIP each time I got a difficult segment done, or when I try to modify something in the middle. This way I can't lose my progress if I load a wrong savestate, or if the modification fails. And I'm just too lazy to use different numberings for my local WIP files and the "public" ones (for example on Youtube).
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Here is WIP18,
and on youtube
Woah, Thats awesome. I thought kooz's run was great already as it is, but this is just...incredible!
I suposse you'll move on with the rest of the game now. :)
By the way... do you think "no warps used / no damage taken" is a good goal? And what about an additional restriction "no present missed" (or "get every present at least once")?
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I found another minor timesaver If you jump with A, you can start the sawblade anytime in-air with the following sequence [ d is either < or > (left or right) ]
hold down (dA) until you want to start the sawblade, then
(<>LA)(dR)(dL)(dR)
continue with (dL)(dR) to make plok more fiercy.
This costs no time to do if you run left, and 2 frames if you run right.
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
It's looking fantastic. I can't think of anything else to say about the run so far, except "great work!"
As far as the possibility of a "no warps" run, obviously I have expressed my interest in such a run. Though I don't really see much of a point in the "no damage" or "get every present at least once" goals... Entertainment-wise, I can't see them being that much of a contribution, and I can see the resulting TAS being down-voted due to what would be perceived by the community as "pointless" goals... (though I can understand where you're coming from) I'd say the present acquiring idea would best be left for a longplay, where the idea is as close to 100% exploration of the game as possible. If you watch the aforementioned vid, you'll see the author actually purposefully fails bonus levels in an effort to show the viewers everything in the game. I would watch it, but I doubt such a run would be accepted here.
I am quite excited that you seem to be taking the idea of a warpless run seriously. =)
As nearly every source has some misleading information about warps, here is a summary about all the warps of this game:
Levels
Level number & Level name & Bonus Type & Warp Destination
Cotton Island
1-1 & Beach & Race against time & 1-6
1-2 & Bridge
1-3 & Columns & Race against time & 1-7
1-4 & Log Falls & Shell game & 1-5
1-5 & Ricketry Bridge & Race against time & 1-8
1-6 & Crazy Cradles
1-7 & Blind Leap & Race against time & 2-3
1-8 & Bobbin Bros
Acryllic
2-1 & Garlen Beach & Shell game & 2-2
2-2 & Sleepy Dale
2-3 & Ploks House
Legacy Island
3-1 & Mace Cove
3-2 & Fool's Gap
3-3 & Zig Zag
3-4 & Sponge Rocks & Shell Game & 3-6
3-5 & Swifty Peaks
3-6 & Log Falls
3-7 & Crouch Hill
3-8 & Bobbin Bros
Acryllic
4-1 & Plok Town & Bonus Room & (no warp)
4-2 & The Penkinos
4-3 & Venge Thicket & Shell game & 4-4
4-4 & Dreamy Cove & Race against time & 4-6
4-5 & Creepy Forest
4-6 & Womack Spider
4-7 & Creepy Crag
4-8 & Gohome Cavern
4-9 & Crashing Rocks & Race against time & 5-3
4-10 & Rockyfella
Fleapit
5-1 & Cycling Clever
5-2 & Road Hogging
5-3 & High Flying
5-4 & Easy Riding
5-5 & In a spin!
5-6 & Real Rumblings
5-7 & Silent Running
5-8 & The Flea Queen
*****************
* Warp overview *
*****************
/- RACE AGAINST TIME ------------\
| |
/---------------------- RACE AGAINST TIME --\ | /SHELL GAME\
| | | | | |
1-1........1-2........1-3........1-4........1-5........1-6........1-7........1-8........2-1........2-2........2-3........3-1
| | | | | |
| \SHELL GAME/ | | |
| | | |
\------------- RACE AGAINST TIME ----------------------/ \------ RACE AGAINST TIME ------------------/
3-1........3-2........3-3........3-4........3-5........3-6........3-7........3-8........4-1........4-2........4-3
. | | .
. \---- SHELL GAME -----/ .
. .
\.................................... easy mode path .................................../
/SHELL GAME\
| |
4-3........4-4........4-5........4-6........4-7........4-8........4-9........4-10........5-1........5-2........5-3
| | | |
\- RACE AGAINST TIME -/ \-------------- RACE AGAINST TIME -----------/
5-3........5-4........5-5........5-6........5-7........5-8........END
(TODO: easy mode ends earlier)
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I could gain 38 frames in Plok Town, and copying the old boss fight worked... I don't see anything I could improve about it. The shell game in Venge Thicket is approximately 2100 frames faster than completing the level on the normal way.
I was able to shorten the race in Dreamy Cove by at least 1.8 seconds... no more waiting for those stupid rotating platforms.
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I'm sure that it wouldn't be acceptable to publish a warped run and a warpless run here if there is no additional restriction on the warpless run. The warped run plays 20 stages out of a total of 37 stages exactly as it would be done in a warpless run.
There are only 11 levels completely missing in the warped run. (And the remaining 6 stages are those where I use a warp.)
The "no damage" restriction would enforce different strategies on those two runs, which would especially make the bosses look very different.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also could verify that you can skip parts of the last levels. WIP25 on youtube , and the input file
I should have waited with the update until the race and Womack Spider was done...
Both could be optimized pretty well. Just watch this one... Although this is for sure not as optimized as it could be, it's several seconds faster than in the published movie.
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Nice ASCII chart!
Also, neat graphics glitch in Plok Town, I've never seen that. Is that a side-effect of the mid-air sawblade activation you discovered?
I'm both surprised and pleased that the Penkinos battle was as optimized as possible! I was specifically thinking of that fight when I mentioned how difficult the bosses are.
Haha... I was completely thrown for a loop when you started skipping fleas and limbs in Venge Thicket.
Dreamy Cove race was AWESOME. It almost looks like you never had to slow down.
I'm sure that it wouldn't be acceptable to publish a warped run and a warpless run here if there is no additional restriction on the warpless run. The warped run plays 20 stages out of a total of 37 stages exactly as it would be done in a warpless run.
There are only 11 levels completely missing in the warped run. (And the remaining 6 stages are those where I use a warp.)
The "no damage" restriction would enforce different strategies on those two runs, which would especially make the bosses look very different.
I am phoning in my "YES" vote for this proposed run in advance. =) Warpless + no-damage is the ideal run for entertainment in my opinion. Those were the primary goals in my very first submission (deservedly rejected, but not specifically for those reasons).
There are enough obstacles to present some interesting challenges to a no-damage goal, as well as the additional gameplay mechanics (and of course, levels) that aren't present when warps are used.
As I mentioned before, I'm really interested in how the strategy will work out in the early Akrillic levels where the amulet is not available to insta-kill fleas. Specifically Garlen Beach, where a zig-zag sort of route is required - I believe this will be the most challenging level to optimize. Manipulating the egg bounce/flea jump direction, in order to efficiently manage several at once (while they are also each in different stages in their "life-cycle")... it will be very interesting to see.
I also could verify that you can skip parts of the last levels.
Wow, nice find. It looks similar to the glitch I found to pass through spikes in Silent Running, but I don't see you taking damage... Is that just a small opening in the barrier (level design oversight), or did you discover some sort of maneuver to glitch through there? Side note: those on-screen variables are cool.
On WIP30 @ youtube:
2 frames gained before the warp.
1.8s ingame time gained in the race (no more forced waiting!)
~4s gained at the boss fight, although it's not fully optimized.
Wow... the more I watch your WIPs, the more I feel lucky to have even had my run published in the first place... haha... 2 frames at Dreamy Cove don't seem like much, but comparing to my run, I see you managed to avoid hitting the left edge of the platform on your way into the water. I imagine you did that by delaying pressing D... why the hell didn't I think of that... *facepalm* It's not only faster, but it looks cleaner too.
Bah! I can't believe my Womack fight was so poorly optimized! I'm sure all that time didn't just come from sliding down that hill either. From what I can tell, the strategy is the same (pre-fire a limb and use high jump to elevate it). I'm curious to know how you improved it so much, with apparently even further improvement to be had.
[1] neat graphics glitch in Plok Town, I've never seen that. Is that a side-effect of the mid-air sawblade activation you discovered?
[2] I'm both surprised and pleased that the Penkinos battle was as optimized as possible! I was specifically thinking of that fight when I mentioned how difficult the bosses are.
[3]
I also could verify that you can skip parts of the last levels.
Wow, nice find. It looks similar to the glitch I found to pass through spikes in Silent Running, but I don't see you taking damage... Is that just a small opening in the barrier (level design oversight), or did you discover some sort of maneuver to glitch through there?
[4] Bah! I can't believe my Womack fight was so poorly optimized! I'm sure all that time didn't just come from sliding down that hill either. From what I can tell, the strategy is the same (pre-fire a limb and use high jump to elevate it). I'm curious to know how you improved it so much, with apparently even further improvement to be had.
1) Yes, that's the effect of pressing left+right... If you do that while walking, you will go to the left, but it will show the "standing still" animation.
2) Well... I couldn't concentrate on so many enemies at once, and your solution seems very good. I'll test if you can die at this stage after killing the boss without having to fight again... This can be done on any flea level without fighting the fleas a second time, but there is absolutely no place in the entire game where this could save time.
3) I think that one is a level design oversight. And it wasn't me who discovered that, but someone posted that it is possible in one of the messages to your publication.
4) 2 seconds come from the slide. I could do the 2nd hit a lot earlier than you... You haven't seen that you can take damage from the spider while it is going upwards.
Here you can get a nice Lua script.
It effectively allows you to do hex-editing "in realtime", and it shows many important memory addresses. You are required to have tablehanding.lua in the same folder.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Yay, 8 more frames saved till Bobbin Bros... Those slopes are just so insanely hard to optimize. And I found a new strategy which is at least as fast as the previous one for this boss.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Yay, yet another shortcut of 10 seconds
It's time to continue this project...
I found a completely new strategy for the first boss. It just needs a little fine-tuning.
TODO:
- I haven't tried to improve the Penkino fight. I was unable to concentrate on so many bosses at once... And: At this boss, I think it's possible to die after defeating it. Who knows, this might have some strange side-effects...
- Some parts of Venge Thicket are slower than in the old movie.
- Still many more levels to go...
Speaking of Venge Thicket, I found a minor skip by accident that allows you to skip the three rising pillars at the very right end of the stage. I don't know if doing this would be faster than doing the clam shell warp, but it's worth looking into.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDOCUeUIp6c
Thanks Mecha Richter! I wouldn't have got this idea myself...
It might even save time if it isn't used to complete the level on the normal way, because this avoids waiting for the pillars going downwards first...
Your shortcut saves about 32 seconds (about 2000 frames). Taking the warp saves about 40 seconds compared to kooz's run, but it MIGHT be possible to optimize this one by a few seconds.
If I find out that "shortcut + warp" is the fastest, I might use both. However, I think might be better to skip the shell warp instead. Watching the shell warps is definitely less interesting than watching the rest of this level.
What do you think? Should I still use the shell warp if it saves only 8 seconds or less?
I'm glad it helped! It's really useful because there's no fleas in the areas you skip with it so you don't have to backtrack at all.
I personally would go with the shell warp though since it's faster. As cool as the skip is, it's not hard to do at all and it's slower.
I'd say if there was ever a run that uses no warps, then the skip would definitely help.
Another thing, like you said, it would save time so you can go up and around all the pillars. I believe it's possible to do it sooner at a different spot, but I'm not sure where. I'll mess around with it some more.
Yay, your shortcut idea saved about 8 seconds!
Here is a Youtube encode for the new route.
For some reason (hopefully only because of one extra shell I collected), I got 10 extra loading frames right before the warp race when I tried to resync the rest, changing the pattern of the rotating platform, which would force me to wait again...
