Rockman movie. Completed in the length of 16:57.93 at October 2nd, 2005.
It is 1:23 (83 seconds) faster than the previously submitted Rockman movie.
The making of this movie, which is v6 in my personal numbering,
started in February 2005 when Finalfighter contacted me and
demonstrated a ceiling-jump-wrap trick, which you will see
near the end of the Cutman stage.
Before that, I was making v5, very slowly, in hopes that I will
somehow be able to improve v4 by about 5 seconds.
Soon thereafter, I found out that it's actually possible to get
the Magnet Beam from the Elecman stage without possessing either
the Hyper Arm (Gutsman's weapon) or the Elec Beam (Elecman's weapon).
I did some testing, and found out that despite the fact that Elecman's
killing takes tons of time with the regular weapon, the gain gotten
by using Magnet Beam in the Gutsman stage still outweighs this loss.
Enough of the memories. Here are the plain numbers:
- Elecman stage: Lost 781 frames.
- In the stage, I gained 520 frames, but in the boss, I lost 1281 frames because I only had the regular weapon.
- Iceman stage: Gained 524 frames.
- Fireman stage: Gained 274 frames.
- Bombman stage: Gained 368 frames.
- Gutsman stage: Gained 1811 frames. This outbalanced the loss from the Elecman stage.
- Cutman stage: Gained 380 frames.
- Between-levels: Gained about 90 frames.
- Wily1: Gained 296 frames.
- Wily2, Wily3, Wily4: Not precisely measured.
I am very indebted to the following people for making this movie possible:
- Blechy for pointing out that the small score balls accumulate to time
- 4matsy for pointing out that getting 50000 points for each boss makes the movie faster
- Highness and AngerFist for continuously whipping motivation to me
- Feitclub, Truncated, Spider-Waffle, Boco and many others for constructive feedback
- Morimoto for the strategy in Cutman and Iceman stages and for motivating me to start making v5 and v6
- Finalfighter for the ceiling-jump-wrap trick, the Wily1 spikeroom zipping trick, the Wily2 Cutman rematch escape trick and many kinds of constructive feedback
- AlphaBeta (?) for a commented disassembly of the Rockman ROM
- Blip for movie support in FCE Ultra
As usually, the techniques that were used in this movie are mostly
listed on the
Rockman Tricks page. If something is not explained,
please ask it in the discussion thread and it will be added if
possible. Otherwise too, please comment on this movie and give
feedback.
About v4, many people complained of the usage of the pause trick as
a "cheap" way to kill enemies. Therefore I used it as little as
possible now. It was only used as a last resort when otherwise
there would be loss of time. In fact, avoiding the trick sometimes
gained speed in the form of lag reduction.
Ps: I'm sure that some people would like to know.
Besides the fact that this movie was played
tool-assisted like every other movie on
this site, the following unorthodox techniques were also used:
- Using Nesmock and dd (standard unix tool) to copypaste sections of the movie between different versions of the movie (every single stage of this movie has been completely redone at least 3 times, when new improvements have been found).
- Programming a robot to play some sections of the game: namely, the sections where weapon refills are acquired. It requires luck manipulation and tons of retries, and such laboursome work is best done by a robot. BisqBot also optimized the Wily3 boss battle.
FAQ
Q: Why did you shoot three elec beams in Wily1?
A: To dispose of obstacles ahead. There are three blocks that can be either picked up or electrocuted away.
Q: Can't you zip through <...>?
A: Please read the
Rockman Tricks page in detail to analyze whether your idea is feasible. Although it's possible that I've overlooked some possibility, most ideas just don't work, and the reasons to that are explained on that page.
Q: About drops from killed enemies...
A: The type of the drop doesn't depend on the type of enemy killed. The only thing it depends on is the "random seed", which is a number that changes 60 times in second and is affected by the number of objects on screen at each moment, the screen scrolling position and other volatile factors. The statistical chance to get a big weapon refill from a killed enemy is 2:100, regardless of the enemy (unless the enemy never drops anything, like bosses).
In this movie, I delegated most of the weapon refill acquisitions to
BisqBot. Details on this can be found
at this forum discussion.
Q: A jump in the Cutman stage looks like it's not as fast as possible.
A: There is delay. Rockman has to move 1 pixel to the right, or otherwise he'll miss the platform on the right when he jumps. Unfortunately Rockman starts walking slowly, and that the room is lagging heavily doesn't help at all. But it's still the fastest way in that place.
Q: What
is that trick you use in Wily2, alternating between the screen edges?
A: Please read the
Rockman Tricks page in detail ― it explains everything you need to know. Particularly, this trick is the "horizontal screen wrapping" phenomenon. The wall is first entered using a magnet beam, later using the "grabbing the ladder too high" trick, by pressing up+down at the top of the ladder.
Q: Why do you pause during two jumps in the Cutman stages? You're not avoiding damage there...
A: Actually I am, but the point is that the room is lagging heavily (the game is handling many onscreen objects plus the one magnet beam from previous room). Pausing gives some lag-free movement (because some collision checks aren't done during pause) at the cost of two frames, and in that room it was worth it.
Q: Why is the graphics broken at...?
A: (At Gutsman stage) Because I zip so fast that a special object, that was supposed to remap the graphics of the enemies, never activated.
A: (At Fireman stage) Because the game creators assumed that nobody will ever catch the boss's weapon while a ground flame is still active on the screen. The graphics used by the flame is remapped as the "CLEAR POINTS" text graphics.
A: (Last battle) Because the game creators assumed that nobody will ever beat Wily while the plastic pieces are still on the screen. The graphics used by those pieces get remapped as Wily's graphics.
Possible future improvements
- Kill the flea after the refill in Wily1 in faster manner.
- Time each and every jump so that it won't eat the 2-pixel walks, but only 1-pixel walks.
- Don't take the second small refill in Wily1 ― it was never used.
- Alternatively, don't take the third refill in Wily2. The gain gotten with the four beams near the end of Wily2 doesn't cover the expense of getting that refill (but then you will need the small refill).
- New zipping tricks already found!
The biggest problem in the making of this movie has been that by the time I get one part completed, a flaw has been found in the previous one. This movie is constantly in the state of being rendered obsolete!
Even now, this submission file has already been updated three times.
The original submission was 17:00.52, but it was first shortened to 16:59.47 (last battle redone), then to 16:58.97 (Elecman optimization), and then to 16:57.93 (Wily3 boss, and consequently, entire Wily4, redone ― this after the submission already receiving 30 yes-votes).