The linked video is not updated and only plays through one loop. The submission was updated to play through 3 loops as done in this userfile.
"The object of Jungle Hunt is to rescue Sir Dashly's kidnapped mate, who, after hours of valiant fighting, was overpowered by two man-eating (and woman-eating) savages. To rescue Lady P., you'll have to make your way past four sets of obstacles: the vines of the Forest, the crocodiles of Reptile River, a landslide of bouncing boulders, and the spears of the two masked cannibals."
Objectives
Plays on hardest difficulty
Plays through three loops starting at Skill Level 2 (after which there is no further difficulty increases)
Genre: Action
Difficulty
The hardest difficulty to start the game at is Skill Level 2 (expert), which was selected here. Apparently, this effectively starts the game at 2nd loop difficulty (meaning this TAS effectively ends play at loop 4 difficulty). From what I can tell, loop 2 start difficulty decreases the loftiness of your jumps in the Deadly Forest and increases the speed of vines, crocs, and boulders compared to loop 1 start difficulty.
Deadly Forest
There are 10 vine jumps you must make to progress. Jumping at the highest point of the vine's sway will give the greatest loft to your jump. The TAS goal is to just keep the screen scrolling as you jump from one vine to the next.
Loop 1: I delayed the screen scroll for 4 frames on the 4th vine jump to get the next vine in a better position and manipulate luck on later vines, as the initial sway position and sway speed of each vine is determined randomly.
Loop 2: Perfect! Screen does not stop scrolling at any time.
Loop 3: Deadly Forest really ramps up in difficulty here. Your jump loft is now reduced to practically nothing, so you must be very smart with vine hops to not lose distance up the vine with each jump. The jump loft is so low that I had to let the screen pause in places to A) line up vine cycles so I wouldn't lose too much height and/or die and B) manipulate vines to have a fast enough sway to keep up with the screen scroll better. The speed and initial positions of the first two vines cannot be manipulated—they always start swaying that slow—and it is a very suboptimal pattern. It is so suboptimal that it is faster to die and respawn higher up the vine, which allow greater risks to be taken later. Despite this section looking suboptimal, I examined it very carefully. I predict the only practical way to improve it would be to program a brute forcer to find a faster solution.
Reptile River
You must stab all 14 crocs to progress. A limited number of sprites can be on screen at once so each croc is stabbed as early as possible to get the next one to spawn ASAP.
Loop 1: No frames sacrificed.
Loop 2: Crocs move much faster and are separated by 48 frames minimum between spawns instead of 64. At first, it might look like I lost frames letting the 3rd croc go by. However, a rogue croc only spawns once both Main RAM address 0x64 reaches a value of 0 and there are no other crocs on screen. Address 0x64 counts down from 48 by 1 unit every frame. When I stab the 4th croc at the earliest possible time, 0x64 reads a value of 27, the 3rd croc disappears at a value of 13, and the 1st rogue croc appears just after a value of 0.
One bizarre fact about this stage is that the 2nd rogue croc is the last place where RNG manipulation can be performed for Cannibal Camp in single-frame increments. Stabbing the 2nd rogue croc 5 frames later than earliest ensured the largest time save on Cannibal Camp.
Loop 3: I was able to stab all the crocs this time, and although the 2nd croc was stabbed late, no frames were lost once again. The 2nd rogue croc was stabbed 2 frames later than earliest to ensure the largest time save on Cannibal Camp.
Boulder Field
You must bypass 17 boulders to progress by ducking under or jumping over each. I try to keep Sir Dashley running as far to the left as possible because if you lag behind for too long, the screen scrolling will slow down and you'll lose time! Briefly ducking will not lose time. I don't ever duck for more than 5 frames at a time which in no instance was long enough to lose frames. This opens up limited opportunities for entertainment, where I show off ducking under a small boulder in the 3rd loop!
Cannibal Camp
On this stage, jumping has significantly greater horizontal speed than running, so it used when practical. You must jump over 2 cannibals and then you can rescue Lady P. You could just run and jump as fast as you can over each. However, the next cannibal (or Lady P.) will not load until the previous one is off-screen. Therefore, we should start scrolling the screen left when the cannibals are as far to the right as possible (the cannibals will not jump again if the screen is scrolling). By timing my jumps such that I am barely to the right of the cannibals when they decide to jump again, they will be lured to the right and scrolled off-screen fast.
As mentioned earlier, RNG must be manipulated all the way back in Reptile River for different RNG on Cannibal Camp, specifically the duration between cannibal jumps. Basically, the quicker the cannibals can be manipulated to initiate their first three hops, the more frames you will save.
Frames were also saved by jumping right before the game freezes your controls and zooms you to the right when bringing the next cannibal or lady P on the screen. You will regain control about one sprite's length from the right margin instead of at the right margin.
I try to get fancier in the way I beat the stage with each loop to keep up the entertainment value, such as more backwards jumps. None of the goofy movement wastes frames overall.
Samsara: File replaced with a version that goes through 3 loops of the game to maximize difficulty, and judging.
Samsara: Short and sweet little beep-boop game, revolutionary in its bold decision for the player to go left! Such groundbreaking innovation, shown in TAS form, should certainly be rewarded with an acceptance! It also helps that the run is very tightly executed and well-researched, and the submission text explains away the questions I would have had otherwise, but WOW! LEFT!!!
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6444
Location: The land down under.
After 6 years I'm still personally in the camp of "this TAS is incomplete as this title features more than one loop".
I mean at least it's faster than the attempts from 6 years ago so thank you for that, but this game does get increasingly more difficult.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 933
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
Spikestuff wrote:
After 6 years I'm still personally in the camp of "this TAS is incomplete as this title features more than one loop".
I mean at least it's faster than the attempts from 6 years ago so thank you for that, but this game does get increasingly more difficult.
I've been having this conversation with DrD2k9 and I've been saying the same thing; however, he states that the updated rules don't require it anymore...as long as there isn't any "Significant Differences". I think we need to identify what that means...if it doesn't apply to speed and increased tasks.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence.
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SOYZA: Are you playing a game?
NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing.
SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real?
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Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes?
Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :)
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BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
As NYMX mentioned, I had been discussing with him that I was under the impression that exhausing all difficulty increases was no longer strictly required for looping games, so long as new content was not being introduced as the method of increasing the difficulty (i.e. speed increase as the only difficulty increase). I would have sworn that I remember seeing a disucssion about this somewhere, but for the life of me, I can't find it now. I had also mentioned that I was under the impression (again from that discussion that I can't find at the moment), that longer runs which showcased more of the harder dififculty loops would be preferred over shorter runs of fewer loops when such runs came under consideration for obsoletion. But I was still under the impression that a singular loop of a game would be sufficient if no new content were introduced thereafter. I had also shared with Spikestuff that this was my understanding of site policy for loopign games.
Here is the rule as it's currently are written:
If there's no clear ending, end after all unique content (enemies, level layouts, game mechanics, etc.) is exhausted.
-Alternately, after completing all unique content, you may end when the in-game difficulty (enemy speed, AI, etc.) stops increasing.
The way I read this; the first line states that exhausting unique content is the minimial end point for looping games. The second line allows for (but does not require) continuing farther onward through all difficulty increases.
These are the basis for my understanding of the policy on looping games, and also the reasons I believe that one loop may be sufficient for a game like this one.
FWIW, I will be performing a formal review of this run as-is. I'll update this post with that review once I complete that review.REVIEW:
I was able to sync the run.
Optimization looks solid; I wasn't easily able to find any improvements.
Completely theoretical improvements:
1) Forest Stage - IF the vine swings could be better manipulated, this stage may be improvable.
2) River Stage - There are two types of crocodiles (standard and rogue). Multiple standard crocs can be on-screen at one time with their spawns being separated by 64 frames on a count-down timer stored at RAM address 0x64. Only one rogue croc will be on-screen at any one time. Having a rogue croc on-screen prevents standard ones from spawning even if the timer hits zero. So IF it were possible prevent rogue crocs from spawing and yield only groups of standard crocs, it would be possible to clear the necessary 14 crocodiles faster. I was not able to readily deduce how the game determines when to spawn a rogue instead of standard. (I tried using trace-logger to no avail).
3) Boulder Field - There are a couple large boulders that Winslinator ducks underneath instead of jumping over. Ducking stops horizontal leftward movement slightly delaying progress. While it is possible to jump over the first of these two large boulders (pressing UP while jumping in this stage increases Dashly's jump height slightly) and maintain forward momentum, I was not able to jump the second without manually delaying movement anyway. So waiting to duck for this second large boulder effectively eliminated the savings made by high-jumping the first. I didn't dig in to see if the boulder sequence is predetermined or if it's RNG, but IIRC it is RNG based in other ports of the game. So IF it's also RNG based in this version, it may be possible to manipulate boulders in such a way that could yield a sequence where no ducking was necessary; this would save a few frames.
Thoughts on difficulty:
1) The game's manual allows for staring on two different difficulties; this run uses the harder. The manual also mentions that the difficulty increases in subsequent loops after rescuing Lady P, but does not specifically describe HOW the difficulty increases.
2) In other ports, a monkey is added to the Forest stage. The monkey climbs on vines and can knock Dashly off a vine, thus making that stage more difficult. This port does not contain the monkey.
3) The gators do increase speed on the loop immediately following this run, but their speed doesn't seem to increase further with subsequent loops. (The loop number is stored in RAM address 0x0B, and selecting the harder difficulty at the start simply increases this from 0 to 1, effectively making this run's starting loop what would normally be the second loop if starting on easiest difficulty).
4) In the Boulder stage, the boulders do seem to bounce slightly different heights when poking different values into the adress that holds the Loop #, but this is mitigated by holding UP on the jumps. The sequence of boulders was otherwise unchanged, and thus is either pre-programmed or based on RNG values from earlier in the game.
5) I did not note any differences in the Cannibal stage regardless of what values I was poking into the Loop # address.
SO....thoughts on difficulty while also considering my comments above this review: I believe 1 loop of this game is sufficient to satisfy the rule requirement of exhausting new content. That being said, it would require only one more loop of play to also exhaust difficulty increases of this otherwise never-ending game (the loop counter resets to 0 after 255). Therefore, while I feel this submission is acceptable as-is, I'd strongly encourage Winslinator to revisit this run and complete the 2nd loop so as to also exhaust difficulty increases.
Hey it's Wins, just using an alt account temporarily
Please replace the BK2 attached to this submission with this one [https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/637976833925552352], which plays through three loops of the game's four stages in 4:36.389. Accordingly, I have also expanded the submission notes to discuss the new content. I do not plan on updating the linked temp encode.
DrD2k9 wrote:
So IF it were possible prevent rogue crocs from spawing and yield only groups of standard crocs, it would be possible to clear the necessary 14 crocodiles faster.
The crocs seem to spawn in the same order every time: 4 standards, 1 rogue, 7 standards, 1 rogue, 1 standard, and I've never witnessed a deviation from that.
DrD2k9 wrote:
...it may be possible to manipulate boulders in such a way that could yield a sequence where no ducking was necessary; this would save a few frames.
You have to duck or lag behind for quite a lot of frames before you start losing actual time—I don't know the actual number. No duck lasts longer than 5 frames in the updated TAS so we're well within the no-time-loss region. I decided to showcase this fact in the first loop by ducking for a total of 6 less frames in this new BK2 compared to the original submission, and you can see the stage end still occurs at the exact same time.
DrD2k9 wrote:
I'd strongly encourage Winslinator to revisit this run and complete the 2nd loop so as to also exhaust difficulty increases.
Even better! It's now got a third loop :) The third loop is definitely a difficulty increase compared to the second but only appears to be the Deadly Forest stage that is harder with the insanely reduced jump loft.
