"Destroying Angel: Reap & execute divine judgment upon el Pueblo de Mendez"
Goal: Perfect Score in fastest time.
- This is accomplished by achieving all kills except Bella Sisters during Bonus Chest timers.
Result:
- Score: 210400 (Perfect)
- Enemies killed: 124 (Maxed)
- Bonus Chest Kills: 38+46+34=118 (Perfect)
- Max kills in a row: 46 (Max combo is incompatible with goal of perfect score on this stage)
- Rank: 5 Stars (Maxed, Granted for scoring at least 60000 points)
About The Mercenaries
Mercenaries is unlocked by completing the main game. It is a timed minigame with the objective of scoring the most points before time runs out. Per the intro of a map "Eliminate as many Ganados as you can before your evac chopper arrives! Successive kills will result in earning you more points!" Initially only Leon is selectable. There are four other characters playable when unlocked after scoring 30000+ points in one of the four (unofficially named) maps:
- Ada from the Village (Stage 1)
- Krauser from the Castle (Stage 2)
- Hunk from the Base (Stage 3)
- Wesker from the Waterworld (Stage 4)
Each map starts with two minutes of gameplay time, and time extensions are spread throughout the map. The Castle map has a total game time of up to 9 minutes. Item menu, item grabs, and cutscenes do not consume game time. Gameplay ends when the player dies, or when time runs out (the player is "rescued").
Each map has three Bonus Chest timers. Each gives 31 seconds during which time extra points are awarded for each regular enemy kill. The majority of effort put into this TAS was spent optimizing the Bonus Chests, with kills being registered with few frames to spare.
The USA(NTSC) GameCube version using Wesker is acceptable for achieving Highest Score in this stage. The enemy AI is aggressive. Enemies run into the player's line of sight, meaning less time is wasted hunting, and more time is focused on killing and moving to the next objective. Wesker has the best weapon selection.
The score for a perfect run on this stage is 9500*6(Bella Sisters)+1300*118(Ganados)=210400.
See Baxter's scoring guide on Gamefaqs for more details
HERE.
Spawning:
The enemy spawning is relatively simple. 10 ganados can be on the map at a time. Bella Sisters may put this over 10. The bulk of enemies come from the huge central area of the map. 3 ganados spawn (one chance only) each from grabbing timers in the barn and behind the tower. 8 spawn from the big house. Except for the initial 10 ganados, 6 will spawn in the small house and 16 spawn on the hill. There was a spawn glitch during the second bonus chest where if I did not wait to get kill 25, 10 ganados would not ever spawn.
Manipulations: The reason for number of Re-Records:
Luck (RNG) is based on actions the player takes. RNG was manipulated throughout the run by trial and error. A little RNG manipulation was used for ammo (handgun ammo and hand grenades). RNG manipulation achieved the following:
- Critical Headshots- In high scoring real-time runs, the pistol is only used to shoot barrels and to get emergency kills if Rifle and Magnum ammo runs out due to unreliability. With a Crit probability of about 50%, TAS effectively turns it to 100%.
- Desirable Ammo drops, primarily Hand Grenades used for blowing up groups of enemies, and handgun ammo.
- Plagas (gorey monsters which randomly pop out of the necks of some ganados) were not allowed to appear.
Enemy AI was manipulated to:
- Keep them from damaging Wesker
- Get three poor AI ganados off of the roof of the big house so they can be gathered at start of bonus chest.
Enemies:
- Ganado: Standard enemy, easy pickings with the handgun. They wield either pitchforks, torches, knives, hatchets, sickles, or dynamite. The dynamite can be shot to cause an explosion, which is used twice in this video.
- Bella Sister: Six in total, these chainsaw wielding foes have high health and a damage limiter which requires them to be hit 8 times with a powerful weapon for a kill.
- Glitched Bella Sister: Occasionally, a Bella Sister will be replaced by a standard Ganado woman with high health that gives the same points as a Bella Sister, but without the damage limiter. Hooray! However, if she appears one other enemy will simply not spawn, reducing the maximum possible score. Therefore, only regular Bella Sisters were allowed to spawn.
Wesker's Arsenal:
Firearms:
- Silenced Handgun: Primary weapon used in this TAS, it shall hereby be known in this write-up as the "TASER" CANNON (don't forget the quotes). The silencer is usually discarded in high score runs to free up more space in the weapon inventory (attache case), but it is kept here for aesthetics. It is the fastest and weakest gun, quick to draw and lower. It's effective for getting critical headshots against Ganados, and stunning Ganados for melee attacks or follow-up shots (Not used in this run due to time constraints). It cannot shoot through any enemies.
- Killer7: A powerful magnum. Primarily used for killing Bella Sisters and getting a double heatshot. Limited ammo. Quick to draw and slow to lower. 3 enemy penetration. Body shot kills register when body stops moving.
- Sniper Rifle: The primary weapon in real-time runs due to its power, instant kills, and 5 enemy penetration. Very slow to draw and slow to lower, making its use in this TAS limited in this to Bella Sisters, after which it is discarded.
Granades:
The character runs faster with a grenade equipped, however switching inventory takes time so this is rarely used unless a grenade is actually needed for use.
- Flash Grenade: Used twice for stunning enemies. Can also kill plagas. Kept in inventory for increasing run speed when no other grenade is available.
- Incindiary Grenade: Lingering area of effect. Cannot kill any enemy on its own in this stage, used to damage Bella Sisters.
- Hand Grenade: Used for taking out large groups and for killing enemies outside player's line of sight. Vital for maximizing Bonus Chest kill.
Aiming:
- Analog Stick: Most Precise (Slowest), Has radial conversion (i.e., full right tilt with full up tilt will result in slower movement right than full right tile alone).
- D-Pad: Faster than full tilt A-stick. No radial conversion.
- D-Pad+Analog Stick: In opposition, this can fill the speed range between Analog Stick alone or D-Pad alone. Used in combination aiming is quicker than either individually. Constructively using this technique, the Rifle can swing 180 degrees in the time between shots. Used during immobility period after firing a shot to turn toward next objective, and is preferred method of aiming (fastest).
- C-Stick Quick Aiming: Tilting C-stick left or right and pressing R will cause the player to rotate while drawing a weapon, which is faster than turning with the weapon drawn.
- C-Stick Multi Turn: A C-Stick turn can be interrupted by releasing R for 1 frame, and holding R again. This can be chained together for very quick turning over large angles.
Iterative Optimization: The Cooperative Pursuit of the "Perfect Score"
Real Time Runs:
- 98krauser's 207700 World Record on Wii HERE
- This is impressive in that it is only 9 bonus kills from a perfect score.
- Derek Taylor's 207400 on PS3 HERE
- PeachyMike's 207400 with Hunk on Wii HERE
Potential Improvements:
- After the run was completed, some potential time savers I've Identified are: Skip the first and third time extensions, which will only mean less waiting out the clock at the end (some experimenting showed that this may mess up spawning, and makes gathering enemies for 1st bonus chest more difficult/slow). Also less grenade gathering is required, as were 8 leftover at the end.
Highest Score Links:
Cyberscore This site was briefly used before Shin's site for some players like myself
Shin's Site [dead link removed] This used to be "the" place to log Mercenaries High Scores and Main Game Speedrun Times.
Special Thanks to:
- Dolphin Developers, who made available the amazing Tools execute this Tool Assisted Score-Attack.
- SoulCal, whose amazing captioned Full Game run taught me many tricks.
- Capcom, for making such a great game!
Playing the .dtm file on Dolphin:
Use Dolphin 5.0-10833 with included dsp files. Use Direct3D11 (OpenGL causes laser sight line to disappear).
Use the following memory card file with Mercenaries and Wesker unlocked
MemoryCardA.USA.7z. You may need to export its contents to GCI folder to get the files to read.
Verification run to generate above memory file:
Full instructions are
HERE
Verified by Fog [/Forum/Topics/14804&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50|here].
Play this Mercenaries:Village submission on Disc 2, it desynced for me on Disc 1.
Other info for judging/publishing:
Suggested Screenshot: VI 4926 (Shooting at 2 Bella Sisters).
Native aspect ratio is 4:3 letterboxed to 16:9. Please crop out the letterboxing if encoded.
slamo: Very nice job on this one, all known records for the high score were beaten and the movie is obviously very well optimized. As explained in the judgement for the
Castle run, each Mercenaries map is an independent minigame that has an ending, so it meets our requirements for game completion.
This run uses the same verification movies as the Castle run. These movies were made on a version of Dolphin that is now deprecated, but not outright banned. The actual submission was made in an acceptable version of Dolphin, so we'll allow this.
Since this movie is save-anchored, it's not Vault-eligible and must be compared to other published runs of Resident Evil 4, namely the Castle run. I found that the level layout was vastly different and the strategies used were quite different as well. Generally people also agreed the run is unique enough, so it may coexist along with the published Castle run.
So is the movie entertaining enough to be in Moons? Voters certainly thought so. Despite the constant menu usage being a distraction, I thought the action was great, especially the rapid-fire pistol headshot sequences. Accepting to Moons.
feos: Dolphin let me go!!!
