- AirXonix is an old game where you trap balls and fill the needed amount of area. The goal is to fill all levels.
- In certain levels I have tested multiple paths to find the best outcome. I manipulated the hit detection for the fastest ball trap, and in 1 part of the tas, cleaner did not destroy my path somehow, so I just thought to leave it there. I guess if the ball is close to a wall, it doesn't have an immediate hit detection so you can basically go trough the ball. I was aiming to finish all the difficulties under half an hour, I did that successfully.
- This movie is required, it is installation of AirXonix --> https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638556810044004211

eien86: Claiming for judging.

feos: Trimmed the end of the movie. It contained empty inputs as well as OS shutdown. We need the movie to stop at some kind of an ending, letting the music play.

eien86: AirXonix is yet another Qix-inspired game where the player needs to surround marbles that keep bouncing around. The game also contains enemies whose purpose is thwarting the player's goal, and powerups meant to improve the player's abilities. This movie completes all 'chapters' in order of difficulty.
I believe the goal of '100%', as specified by the author, does not apply here since it refers the number of levels completed, and not any other metric (powerups collected, enemies killed, etc). Since the completion of all levels is to be expected by any solution of this game (I don't think an Doom-style episode-per-episode solution makes much sense here), this should be deemed simply any%.
Then there is the question of optimality:
  • There is no analogous run in speedrun-dot-com to compare this against, as the most players only compete for the best solution on Easy mode. The sum of best solutions for Easy, Classic, and Modern adds up already to a larger time than this movie, which also includes Hard and Extreme, so one can infers this is much faster than the RTA solutions out there.
  • There was a discussion in the submission's topic about optimality. Arguably the author themself has admitted to this being suboptimal or 'not good'.
  • Others have pointed out this looks like superhuman play
In my opinion, this movie looks flawless, in the literal meaning of the word. It lacks visible mistakes or egregious slowdowns and reaches a consistency far beyond what we can expect from human play. That notwithstanding, it seems clear this solution still has a lot of room for improvement. However, the path forward isn't clear: a lot of research work only on pathing needs to be done. I don't think botting would even help here (the exploration space is astronomical).
I enjoyed watching this movie and believe the wider community will too. Accepting to Standard
Thanks for Randomno for the independent sync confirmation and encode. I based my judgement based on that. Thanks also feos for verifying sync and trimming the end of the input.

feos: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #9158: Dado's Windows AirXonix in 29:38.38
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Link to video AIRXONIX.ISO - this is the Kellogg's Frosties release, equivalent to this dump. md5 checksums after verification movie: Hard drive image: 4f52a8ca4a9f19bfc9f9c36a694042a8 nvr: 52a74ff0b68996140e7bb5f09ce9e6a8
GJTASer2018
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I do love how for most of the run the score counter is hopelessly far behind what your actual score is, even after beating a mode. :P You might recognize this game as essentially a fancy 3-D JezzBall clone. (The original release of JezzBall unfortunately doesn't run under DOS so can't be TASed through the usual method of libTAS + PCem - did anyone ever try it through Hourglass "back in the day", perchance?)
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
CoolHandMike
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Is there an RTA 100% example video for comparison?
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
DrD2k9
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Is there an RTA 100% example video for comparison?
I’m not sure what all difficulties were done in this TAS: But for what it’s worth, the combined time for the human world records from speedrun.com for difficulties Easy, Classic, and Modern is 25:46.747. I’d find it hard to believe that a human could complete both Hard and Extreme difficulties in under 4 minutes. Edit: this run does indeed do all 5 difficulties; it’s likely much faster than what a human could do. I did notice one thing of concern regarding optimization: there are multiple points through the run where movement speed modifiers are obtained. While some of these sped up the player, others slowed the player down. Simply by watching the encode, I cannot see a reason why picking up these slow-down modifiers would be desirable. I would assume maintaining a higher movement speed would be the more optimal approach. If there’s no intentional reason for getting the slow modifiers (that somehow leads to a faster finish overall), I’d struggle to agree that it’s not sloppy play/rushed TASing.
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
You might recognize this game as essentially a fancy 3-D JezzBall clone. (The original release of JezzBall unfortunately doesn't run under DOS so can't be TASed through the usual method of libTAS + PCem - did anyone ever try it through Hourglass "back in the day", perchance?)
? This very submission is showcasing Windows NT with PCem
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I'm going to point out that the author states multiple times on Discord in the lead up to this submission that their work is suboptimal. Not only that, but the author also stated a few times in the lead up to this submission that they don't think that they should submit the movie, due to their own belief that it is suboptimal, and that was showcased by actually having the uploads of their submission first started off as a userfile. If that was implied... I'm not really surprised due to how proactive they were about on this game, getting it to work and other comments they made months before this submission. The author is at the very least self-aware enough about their work being suboptimal, and throughout the watching of this movie, that thought of the author's own knowledge going "this ain't good" (paraphrased) is kinda what weirdly made me vote no on if I enjoyed it. Yeah, I know it's asking about my entertainment, but it's like that nagging thought that's in the back of your mind slowly diminishing something, which dragged the entertainment for me. Honestly I think the author should've started with a different Qix type title to understand on how to be optimal (even after being stated on how to be optimal) instead of jumping the shark with a libTAS x PCem submission instead picking something such as the PlayStation title Qix Neo, which has the requirements in being optimal, and there being a great TAS to refer to.
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Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Patashu
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DrD2k9 wrote:
I did notice one thing of concern regarding optimization: there are multiple points through the run where movement speed modifiers are obtained. While some of these sped up the player, others slowed the player down. Simply by watching the encode, I cannot see a reason why picking up these slow-down modifiers would be desirable. I would assume maintaining a higher movement speed would be the more optimal approach.
The 'slow' powerup slows down only enemies, unless I misunderstand. --- This was one of my childhood games, and this is incredibly superhuman play and a delightful treat, thank you for making it! I can see the upper bound for optimization is essentially infinite due to RNG manipulation and routing possibilities, so while this could be improved you could also never prove anything optimal, so I think as a first gen TAS it's good enough and anyone who wants to improve it is welcome to. The AirXonix developers made some other TASable games, but I don't know if you have the nostalgia for any of the other ones, e.g. https://www.axysoft.com/moneymania/
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DrD2k9
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Patashu wrote:
The 'slow' powerup slows down only enemies, unless I misunderstand.
Perhaps, it’s just an optical illusion (for me). If that’s the case, then i can’t see any other blatantly egregious issues; and thus can’t otherwise argue against this run as a baseline/1st gen submission.
Post subject: Slow and accelerate
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The reason I've picked up "slow" powerup is because it is easier to trap the balls, also you don't have to follow the balls as much, and "accelerate" because it is just faster to trap them, both of them have adventages, they trim down the time, that's why i chose to pick them up.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [6129] Windows AirXonix by Dado in 29:38.38