Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I have started working on a speed run of Wizards and Warriors 2. Since I am not very familiar with the tools yet, I am going to do a rough draft. I have just done the first 2 maps here: (FCM) http://lingcog.iit.edu/~scubed/hobby.xml Here is a sketch of my planned route: Area 1 (Wind) 1) Get key at beginning of mountain 2) Get egg by jumping over barrier 3) Talk to bird 4) Get Wind Bane 5) (Have some magic already) Get key from middle of cloud 6) Fight boss 7) Use area exit glitch to keep key and magic and skip animation Area 2 (Water) 1) Get bug with wind bane 2) Talk to frog 3) Get infinite magic (I don't know if this is necessary) (Skip water projectile) 4) Fight boss with wind bane (wind, water, close enough) 5) Manipulate luck to avoid flying fleeces (Usually they drain your health to 0, then it plays the death animation, then you can leave, I was very lucky here.) 6) Exit glitch Area 3 (Fire) 1) Go right to get crown with wind bane (Freeze glitch: have to not exit immediately when getting it or else the game will get confused and freeze) (Dodging volcanoes is going to be extremely annoying) 2) Give crown to dragon, enter volcano 3) Get fire projectile 4) Get key while falling to boss 5) Kill boss 6) Exit glitch Area 4 (Earth) 1) Get cup 2) Give to bear 3) Get earth scorch 4) Kill boss using long distance attack glitch (for fun) 5) Exit glitch Area 5 (Final) 1) Get key during ascent 2) Get 7-league boots 3) Trigger boss (I have not figured out how to efficiently fight this boss yet. I can try to take on all of them on top of the mountain, or I can do it the more cowardly way. For fighting fire, there is a trick that lets 1 shot hit many times. This may apply to other elementals too.) Please tell me what you think. Any feedback is appreciated. ------------- Edit: Changed link to more persistant form
Fihlvein
He/Him
Joined: 7/28/2004
Posts: 135
Location: Finland Realms
I've been waiting so long for an Iron Sword speedrun... I saw Walker Boh had this one also "under construction" or so but great to see you're going for it!
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I have completed my rough draft. Here is the FCM of playing through the game: http://lingcog.iit.edu/~scubed/hobby.xml Please give feedback. --------- Edit: Changed link to more persistant form
Former player
Joined: 5/22/2004
Posts: 462
Nice job. I saw nothing wrong with the route. Once you get everything optimized (jumping as soon as possible, no missed shots, etc.) and improve the bosses a bit (the fire boss will be a fun one to perfect), this will get an easy yes vote from me.
Fihlvein
He/Him
Joined: 7/28/2004
Posts: 135
Location: Finland Realms
I liked it! As Dan said, boss fights are usually the ones which should be done as perfect as possible since they are the parts which draws ones attention most easily. All in all it's a good basis to start optimizing. How long was the playtime on that run?
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
Yes, you are right about the boss fights. Fire will be tricky. Does anyone know a better strategy than bouncing? Also, for Earth, I use the bug, but that does waste a little time. (But it makes not getting hit very easy.) Is it better with or without it? If I am not getting hit, I would probably need to jump a little and waste some time to not take damage (but possibly not as much). It took me around 5 hours to make it yesterday. The final battle should have lots of optimizations too. For earth, I took off half of its health with the multihit on the first shot. I hope that I can get more of those... Also, does anyone know any tricks that I missed?
Former player
Joined: 6/27/2004
Posts: 550
Location: New York
Just remember that the viewer shouldn't have to care about how hard the run was to make. If you think the alternate way of fighting earth may be faster, I'd suggest trying it before going much farther.
Post subject: Shouldn't care how hard to make
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
>Just remember that the viewer shouldn't have to care about >how hard the run was to make. That is very true. I will try Earth both ways. It also occured to me that I could start running away, turn around and shoot him again, then continue running away to abuse the glitch. Hopefully that way, less time would be wasted running around. I would like to use as many glitches as possible.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 10/9/2004
Posts: 453
Location: Norway
I can't seem to download the run :|
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
Sorry about that. It seems that PSFTP got confused over a symlink. It should be fixed now.
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I have finished redoing the movie. http://lingcog.iit.edu/~scubed/hobby.xml I hope that you like it. It is over a minute faster. I have a better strategy for the fire boss. The final boss is also defeated much more quickly. The jumping is much tighter, which saved a lot of time. I timed both ways of beating the Earth boss. It costs about 50 frames to use the glitch. I attempted to submit the movie, but got this: FCM error: Movie begins from a snapshot I recorded the movie by hitting F11, then shift+F5. According to the menu, F11 is power. I turned down the frame rate so the movie should start on the first frame. Maybe I missed? How am I supposed to make the movie start on exactly the first frame? There should be an easy way to convert this to a savestate-less movie, correct? I imagine that I strip out part of the file and pad it with 0's for the frames that I missed or something like that? Could someone please point me in the right direction? -------- Edit: Changed link to more persistant form
Skilled player (1415)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Go into the File menu and select "Record Movie". One of the options is to record from reset. Be careful how you approach it, though: it's a soft reset, as "Record from Power On" isn't an option yet. Edit: 64th post!
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
Thank you for that. Does anyone have information for how to fix a movie that is already made? I suspect it will be something like: Change value at 0x???? from ?? to ?? to mark as from power on. Remove save state from 0x???? to 0x???? Pad with 2n zeroes where n is number of frames from beginning. Can someone tell me the specifics or where to find them?
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1310)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
The FCM file format specs for are at http://tasvideos.org/FCM.html It looks like fixing it might be as simple as changing a bit from 0 to 1 for "movie begins from reset". (I think that bit is ignored anyway except for submission verification -- unless it's more sophisticated and actually checks to see if the first command is a reset command, in which case a reset command might have to be inserted at the beginning of the controller data.)
Former player
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 706
Location: Elyria/Oberlin, OH
Actually, there is one other thing you need to change: Stop the movie after killing the last boss, or after whatever you need to do to reach the credits. You don't need to go all the way to putting your initials in. And the movie itself was quite fun, but there may be room for improvement yet. This seems like one of those games where you'd need to frame advance EVERYTHING, what with the jumping being so slow and all, and this doesn't look completely optimal yet. And as for the earth boss, if something costs that many frames, it's generally best not to use it. See what people's reactions are, though...it is pretty neat, I will give it that. =) Also, have you looked into making enemies drop magic? If you can manipulate this you may be able to avoid some of those stops for it. *shrug* One more thing...do you HAVE to stand in front of a treasure chest to acquire the item? I seem to remember that you could just start going back after opening it, but that may be wrong... You've been doing an excellent job thus far, and I think that after one more version you'll be getting an easy yes vote from me. =) -Josh
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
Okay, I have removed the entering my initials at the end. I have optimized the jumping a lot from the previous version, which saved a lot of time. There are some places where I jump a little extra to control my momentum. There are still probably some places left where it could be improved. I do manipulate the dropping of magic. That's why enemies are flying into me, dying, and giving me magic. Yes, you have to stand around in front of the treasure boxes to collect the item. It is very annoying. While playing, often I accidentally touch the edge and waste a key. The box opens, but as soon as it is off of the screen, it closes and costs another key to open. I waste a key and don't get an item for it. I did movie[0x8]|=(1<<0) movie[0x8]|=(1<<7) and neither caused the movie to be accepted. I get the same error. Is the validation script available so I can apply it to my movie and fix it in whatever way is necessary? ---------- Update: To make the movie submittable, I had to do: movie[0x8]|=(1<<1) and make the first byte of the movements 0x82 which means hitting power.
Former player
Joined: 3/13/2004
Posts: 706
Location: Elyria/Oberlin, OH
Ah, thank you for the explanation. Don't know much about the movie files, sorry. =/ Good luck, Josh.
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
Post subject: Finally submitted!
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
I have finally submitted it! http://tasvideos.org/queue.cgi?id=495 I misread that it said bit 1 as bit 0. Whoops again. I cut and paste a correctly started empty movie over the beginning to fix it. Yay for cut and paste! I hope that everyone enjoys the movie.
Former player
Joined: 7/6/2004
Posts: 155
Thanks to everyone who has voted. What are the exact criteria for a movie to get published? Does it have to be above a certain percentage and above a certain confidence? What are these values?
Post subject: Re: Voting
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
scubed wrote:
What are the exact criteria for a movie to get published?
Faster than existing non-TAS records, assuming speed is the goal. Cleaner / more entertaining / faster than any other TAS video with the same objectives. Played to a certain level of precision (no extremely obvious and easily-corrected mistakes that distract the viewer from enjoying the movie). The votes don't actually mean anything, they're just so that the encoders get a good idea of whether to even bother with a run, or whether to encode for a game unfamiliar to them because the community IS familiar and approves.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Former player
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 518
Boco wrote: Faster than existing non-TAS records, assuming speed is the goal.
is there a place where they archive these things? i know SprintGod did Sonic ones and Planetquake has a bunch and Arc pretty much provides everything else i can imagine... but is there like a little web page or readme or something dedicated to it? id really like to read up on them.
Former player
Joined: 6/27/2004
Posts: 550
Location: New York
I haven't looked around the webpage much, but I believe that's the purpose of http://www.twingalaxies.com
Former player
Joined: 3/30/2004
Posts: 1354
Location: Heather's imagination
TwinGalaxies forum (the scoreboard is mostly out of date, I believe) and SDA are your best bets. Though you should be researching any game you plan to run online anyway.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster. I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 551
Location: Karlstad, Sweden
How come, "the knight" just becoming uglier in every game? :D He is coolest in the first game :)
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Yeah, no kidding. Why are his eyes on the outside of his helmet now?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude