Subsino's 2000 title Penguin Brothers (ペンギン ブラザーズ) is an adorable arcade platformer starring two penguins who's objective is to run a key into the goal after defeating all of the enemies on screen.
Game objectives
Emulator used: FBA-RR v0.0.7
Fastest completion
Single-player in a multiplayer game
Stage Comments
Map : Selecting different stages in different orders leads to different results.
1-1 : Quickly spinning to kill the only enemy on screen.
1-2 : Abusing the way objects clip to kill enemies extremely quickly.
1-3 : A rush to get the clear-all. Killing enemies individually isn't nearly as fast.
1-4 : Penguins like powerups, and using the ring shot to kill enemies is quite fast.
1-5 : Generic boss fight, easy peasy.
2-1 : The enemies I don't kill rapidly clone when hit. However, the one I did attack instantly kills all clones.
2-2 : Just good movement.
2-3 : Picking up a barrel, which kills enemies, is rather nice.
2-4 : AI manipulation to keep them in place.
2-5 : This boss is rather predictable when hit, so just place bombs on his landing spots.
3-1 : Using the clipping glitch by using the extra height gained from a bomb toss in order to get better positioning, allowing faster kills.
3-3 : Explosive barrels work in a similar fashion to regular barrels, except they explode when broken.
3-5 : Using a fling glitch, extra speed is gained when the platform is scaled.
3-6 : This boss is simply horrible. While it likely could have gone better, I'm unsure of how to manipulate this stage well.
4-1 : Barrels to kill everything, spawning a fish and giving myself a 1-Up in the process.
4-2 : Clipping out, I ignore all the walls and instantly move to the enemies.
4-3 : A neat little portal stage. It works very well with clipping through the map.
4-5 : Although they eat bombs, they can't stop barrels. They always chase bombs, so it's easy to manipulate the AI.
4-6 : This boss fight is actually rather fast if you have the green power-up. Alas, I didn't incorporate one into the route yet, so a bit of time was lost.
5-2 : Odd glitch using the enemies feet to clip.
5-3 : While bombs can extend jumps, it has little use excluding this stage.
5-7 : Hitting the boss while he hovers over the lava causes him to fall into the lava, taking an extreme amount of damage in little time.
6-2 : Time could likely be saved with better movement. Jumping into the pit would likely save a second.
6-4 : An impressive series of head-bounces lead the way to ideal movement.
6-6 : This is the worst stage in the game, although it doesn't look it! Any mistake leads to death.
7-1 : Quite a pushover, having virtually no health and not moving from his platform.
7-2 : Damage the body to make the head fall off, and kill the head. The body doesn't seem to have an actual form of health.
7-3 : A slow, tedious boss which would normally shoot a large amount of enemies onto the screen. Unfortunately for him, he falls right into your bombs.
Glitches
Clipping glitch : On any half-sized platform, such as barrels, you can often clip into objects by using objects to push you inside of them, or, on certain surfaces, by simply jumping through the map. This can also be done with other objects, and once done with a non-player object, it completely ignores walls until it comes into contact with something that can actually hold it.
L+R / U+D oddities : L+R gives you a run to the left and a jump to the right. This can save a frame in certain situations where turning around would otherwise cost said frame. U+D allows sliding on spinning platforms where you cannot crouch.
feos: This submission generated quite some interest directed to the game, but for now it is not as optimized as it can be. I encourage Remzi to co-operate with Odongdong and make a really tight TAS. Co-authorship would not only help to optimize the run, it will also help Remzi to improve as a TASer. Rejecting and hoping to see a deep improvement.
Hey.... I was actually fanatic of this game in my childhood and kept thinking of watching this game TASed some day!(even had a plan to do this if no one submits it) I'm glad someone remembered this game.
I'll be back when I finish watching this.
Okay, I'm here. I knew about that clipping glitch, but never thought it spawns various gimmicks like yours speedrun. I like it.
Now I have some questions to ask.
1. For me, FBA emulates this game very badly. Although most of gameplay remains uninjured, lots of programmatic glitch occured while watching. There are ugly sound effects which tortured me all the time, music's pace is often faster than it used to be, and some of blackouts during cutscenes are missing. If you can emulate this game well and know about this error, please notify me how to deal with it.
2. I'm not sure whether the world order you've took is the fastest route. Would you tell me about it more?
3. Why didn't you do it with 2 player?
1. The sound issues seem fairly emulator-specific. GGPO-FBA, my personal emulator of choice, doesn't seem to suffer from the issues that FBA-RR does.
2. Honestly couldn't find any other replacements which improve it, although I'll go back at a later date and check through every possible world order again to see if there's any of the new tricks and whatnot which might change the speeds.
3. I run this game RTA, so I made this to set goals for myself and learn some new tricks. I may eventually create a 2-Player TAS, but I vastly prefer 1-Player, so it was my first goal.
Still no other comment? Hmm, I think this deserves more interests.
You used FBA-RR anyway... So you've known this glitch, but just push forward nonetheless?
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
The game doesn't look too simple, but the rerecord count is insanely low. However no one posted improvement suggestions, and without that we can't reject the run that is thought to be suboptimal.
Remzi, how deep testing and movement optimization you put into this run? I guess most of the strats were known after your experience with this game, but nevertheless.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Actually I do have something to post, I found a shortcut in very first level(world 1-1).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fpewqeyq7dgac51/PenBrosTAS%201-1%20test.fbm?m
Check out this movie I've just fixed. I used new strategy to boost penguin's speed, which led me to goal 20 frames faster. I think it's possible to optimize at least 5 frames more if I redo the whole level.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Would you say it can be done in many levels?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
So, this is really the case, this TAS got very poor testing. I'd like the author to post so far, because now it's going to be rejected unless he makes an improvement right away and we replace the file.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I strongly encourage the author to work on possible improvements, since this game has the potential to make for a good TAS. Voting 'meh' at this time. A more optimized version would definitely get a 'yes'.
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Probably the co-authorship will help both things: improving the movie and gaining the TAS skill by the author.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
This game is very complicated system about stages, which makes trying to TAS the game so hard. The constituent stages of each world varies depending on which order the player entered a world by. That's why I ask him about world order. The game features six world, so theorically there are 6!=720 cases by which the game is played.
But, in fact, the game actually doesn't have totally new stages by order. I assume the game has at most 12 stages by world, and picks some of them to make a combination of each world. So the number of actual stages I presume is no more than 72. That's still many, but not impossible to test all.
Besides, to go through all these order, you just have to play 6 times like this:
1-2-3-4-5-6
6-1-2-3-4-5
5-6-1-2-3-4
4-5-6-1-2-3
3-4-5-6-1-2
2-3-4-5-6-1
I've been interested in TASing this game, so Remzi, I may help you work on this if you want.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Remzi can also cancel this submission before starting serious improvement work.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Oh wait, feos, does this game perform properly on FBA-RR for you? As I said at first, the emulator shows lots of crashes whenever I played it. You know, the rule indicates that a movie of the game which is not emulated well is unacceptable. All efforts are meaningless before solving this problem.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11469
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I run it on VBA 002 successfully I think.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Okay, I'm quite certain the emulator(FBA-RR) doesn't have perfect compatibility with this game. I'll post the encode in near future and refer what's the odd thing, though I'm not sure who's gonna fix it.