This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6815: tormented's NES Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum in 06:08.28

TAS is two seconds too slow. No vote. Real vote is Meh.

A side-by-side comparison with the WR speedrun shows very little difference. It appears to be approximately 8 seconds faster, although it is hard to tell. In your text, you mention a few time saving techniques that help out, but they are shared with the human run. The only difference I see is the ability to execute the techniques on queue. Somethings I would ask... RNG doesn't seem to be a factor in this game. Can you elaborate? From the re-record count, it appears that this was only an optimized version that a human could possible achieve. What kind of experimentation did you perform to see if any more cuts could be made beyond RTA abilities?

Yep, there's no randomness in this game at all. All you have to do to proceed is collect enough items, which are always in the same place. Thrilling stuff. You're right, there isn't much in this TAS that I would say is worlds apart from what the best real-time run is. In my defense, though, this isn't a hard game to optimize; 50% of the run is just walking around the map, you always have enough health to take tons of damage from enemies, and Dash himself is so stiff that you have a lot of wiggle room to control him (just look at how long he takes to start moving after a jump, or climb a ladder). If you're able to memorize what to do, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to recreate a good chunk of this run on an actual NES, though obviously stuff like pressing the select button to deplete oxygen on the first frame every time is impossible. I should also mention that KHANanaphone, the guy who holds the real-time record for this game, has been doing speedruns of it for years and years, so he has it down to a science at this point. This is in sharp contrast to the TAS, which only has one publication. So it's one of those games where the real-time community is significantly ahead of TASVideos. Makes sense though. It sucks.

Yep, there's no randomness in this game at all. All you have to do to proceed is collect enough items, which are always in the same place. Thrilling stuff. You're right, there isn't much in this TAS that I would say is worlds apart from what the best real-time run is. In my defense, though, this isn't a hard game to optimize; 50% of the run is just walking around the map, you always have enough health to take tons of damage from enemies, and Dash himself is so stiff that you have a lot of wiggle room to control him (just look at how long he takes to start moving after a jump, or climb a ladder). If you're able to memorize what to do, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to recreate a good chunk of this run on an actual NES, though obviously stuff like pressing the select button to deplete oxygen on the first frame every time is impossible. I should also mention that KHANanaphone, the guy who holds the real-time record for this game, has been doing speedruns of it for years and years, so he has it down to a science at this point. This is in sharp contrast to the TAS, which only has one publication. So it's one of those games where the real-time community is significantly ahead of TASVideos. Makes sense though. It sucks.

That's good enough for me. As usually, I have a different way of voting than most people on this site. Yes vote for improved cuts over current publication.

Didn't understand a lot, but it was entertaining enough for me to watch it all ^^ Yes vote

The main question here is exactly how bad is Dash Galaxy? The combination of Australia’s Beam Software and Data East USA does not inspire much initial confidence. There doesn’t seem to be much of a backstory to the game. Data East had been publishing bad NES games for years, and Dash Galaxy was one of the many forgettable games quickly pumped out by Beam between 1989 and 1991. The movie input ends early. Using real-time speedrun timing, I recorded the time as 6:07.53, which is faster than the real-time speedrun record of 6:15, but not by much. The gameplay has two different styles. The first style is best described as a weak ripoff of Bomberman, but there are not many bombs exploding. The second style is a platformer with a lanky character somewhat resembling Albatross from Rolling Thunder. The gameplay appears unimpressive mainly because of the awful controls that allow Dash to do either a long jump (while running) or a high jump (while walking) but not both at the same time. Although Dash moves faster left-right while doing long jumps, there is also a significant delay every time he lands. I sample-tested the input from the first platformer screen, and I beat it by 3 frames on my first attempt. (The screen turns black on frame 1545 v 1548.) Since Dash immediately does the exact same screen, that’s another 3 frames that could be saved, in theory. The author says the game has no RNG, and so I assume that these improvements are genuine and could be incorporated easily into the TAS. I can’t say whether there are other sub-optimal parts since I haven’t examined the input anywhere else. The currently published movie has quite low entertainment ratings, although I should disclose that my own rating of it is the lowest one publicly available. Regardless, the movie clearly belongs in the Vault, as Nach judged.

Thanks for taking a look, Arc. Indeed, I edited numerous platforming sections of this TAS after they were done, so there's no reason to think those 6 frames couldn't be implemented. Since I've already managed to save a frame from your input file, I will redo the platforming sections of the TAS.

I was able to improve this submission by 23 frames. I improved Arc's .bk2 by two frames, which resulted in a net gain of 10 frames. I found 1-2 frames to save in most of the rooms. The most egregious error in the original submission was that, at frame 13120 or so, I did not jump as soon as I began running in order to land on the trampoline as soon as possible. It only cost 2-3 frames, but it's a careless error, so I'm glad I was able to correct it. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/65022322343218900 I won't be touching this game again as long as I live. It is very bad. I voted meh.

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