Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
arkiandruski wrote:
People say that about art and science all the time, and they are constantly proven wrong.
Professor Frink (circa 1970): Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
mmbossman wrote:
arkiandruski wrote:
People say that about art and science all the time, and they are constantly proven wrong.
Professor Frink (circa 1970): Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Or Bill Gates's famous quote about 512 kilobytes of RAM...
People say that about art and science all the time, and they are constantly proven wrong.
Professor Frink (circa 1970): Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Or Bill Gates's famous quote about 64 kilobytes of RAM...
fixed.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
upthorn wrote:
Deep Loner wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
arkiandruski wrote:
People say that about art and science all the time, and they are constantly proven wrong.
Professor Frink (circa 1970): Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, don't touch it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Or Bill Gates's famous quote about 512 kilobytes of RAM...
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
I'm sorry: this is not the post you were hoping for. : (
I regret to announce that my run is on temporary hold. Real life has gotton in the way and there are some issues that need to be addressed.
I know that a lot of people were very interested in this run, which is why I am NOT abandoning the project, just delaying it. My apologies to all, but it has to be done.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I'm sorry to hear that, but I totally understand because real life has a way of getting in my hobbies too. And putting a run on hold is much much better than ditching it; hell my damn N64 run has been on hold for a good 2 months now. Anyway, I hope things improve and that even if you're not working on your run, you'll continue to swing by the site to add your input.
Joined: 11/19/2005
Posts: 3
Location: Why do you want to know?
I'm definitely looking forward to an improved version of this done on crazy hard, and it will be helpful since I'm interested in attempting a crazy hard run for SDA at some point.
Can the bunnyhop be done in real time? I'll have to give it a try.
Joined: 12/26/2006
Posts: 256
Location: United States of America
MMAN wrote:
Can the bunnyhop be done in real time?
I can only offer an educated guess. I'm a terrible unassisted player. : )
With tool assistance, the optimal bunny hop is to press (or hold, depending on where the booster meter is at) the jump button on the frame before the character animation changes from "jumping downward" to "on the ground" -- this is the frame when the speed value drops in memory due to friction from being on the ground.
Horizontal movement speed is 2560 according to the value in memory when boosting sideways (2048 when boosting diagonally). If bunny hopping is done optimally, movement speed will be 2432 after the first hop. However, the speed drops to 1024 while the character is in the "falling" animation after boosting the character into the air (either sideways or diagonally). An optimal hop after this will only give a speed of 896, which is barely faster than the normal walking speed, which alternates every frame between 768 and 704. Therefore, it is imperative that, to begin bunny hopping, the forward boost be done on the ground.
Based on the numbers, it seems that bunny hopping should be feasible for a skilled unassisted player, since it takes many frames for friction to reduce the speed from 2560 to 768, and a good player should be able to make the timing at least reasonably well. Beware, though, that jumping preserves forward momentum at whatever the current value is, even if it's below walking speed. Also, the tool-assisted run requres frame precision to make some jumps. An obvious example is the jump over the wall after destroying the trucks. A more subtle example is the second jump in the video, which, if held for too many or too few frames, will either kill the character or result in major speed loss. So you'll just have to try and see what works.
I will say this, though: if you can do a crazy hard speedrun without tools, you're pretty darn good! Let me know if anything comes from it.
Another useful tip is that the booster meter doesn't have to be visibly filled in order to boost. The booster can be released on the 63rd frame after holding down the attack button (except under lag), when the meter is almost filled but not completely.
Maybe you can try things on the emulator to see how things might work in real time? The memory address for horizontal movement speed is 00FF380C, signed, 2 bytes, and the booster value is at 00FFC05D, 1 byte, unsigned. Particularly, you could pause the game when the booster memory value is at 63 and see where the on-screen meter is to get an idea.
Hope this information helps.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Hey D.L., just wanted to say I hope things in real life are getting worked through. I'm glad you've still been around and haven't dropped off the earth entirely, so keep at it and no rush at all to get this done. And good luck with whatever you're dealing with.
Since deep loner has disappeared, and I have got a new Gens release out, I have started work on improving Dan's currently published Rocket Knight submission.
I am working on the U version, with the difficulty set to the hardest setting, as Deep Loner was doing.
I have posted a WIP through level 2 on youtube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4vClHCQTFM
As of the end of that WIP, I am 2541 frames ahead, despite being unable to take damage, many enemies and all bosses having more HP, and the (U) version suffering from lag more frequently.
Also, Dan has also expressed interest in improving the run, so there may be some collaboration between us later on.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I haven't been around much either lately, and I'm saddened to hear that Deep Loner isn't around anymore, but thank you upthorn for picking this up! Since I've been MIA I haven't heard about the new Gens version, but I love the hitbox detection schema in the video (at least I'm assuming that's what it is). Keep up the good work!
Nice video! I especially like seeing the bounding boxes, since it gives some insight into how the game's physics works. It's a pity that there's no standard way to do this so that you could use the same hack on multiple games.
One note - you end the second level way off center, and the game has to slowly scroll you back to the middle before tallying up your bonus.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Are you going to attempt the oh-so-different SNES version when you're through with this?
There is no SNES Rocket Knight Adventures. However, Konami produced a sequal to Rocket Knight Adventures, called Sparkster.
There is a Sparkster for Genesis, and a Sparkster for SNES. They are not the same game.
But the SNES one has already been TASed.
By Nitsuja.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
At 2:28, you jump backwards (I'm guessing that the rocket is refilling, but you also lose some downward screen movement....
Is it possible to lose life to stop the life counter at the end? It's not long, and if it looks like crap, it isn't worh doing.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
You can get pretty close to skipping half of stage 4. By heading left on the top of the ship and trying to boost up+right as you fall off the back edge, you can almost reach the door to the inside of the ship and skip the entire outside section, including the flamethrower miniboss. I'm posting this here in case someone more experienced in TASing than me wants to take a crack at it, since the above is my best attempt.
Also, on the stage 6 boss, killing the four turrets on the outside are not necessary to defeat it.
I've kept trying the above skip whenever I got a new idea, and while I found a couple interesting things (if you take damage, you have a one-frame window where you can jump after the 'damaged' animation finishes, even in midair; it might be related to possum-hopping), nothing worked out. I'm really curious to see if the skip is theoretically possible though. Is it possible to input a cheat that locks the rocket charge bar on full?
Also, one other improvement... could've sworn this was in my last post, but I guess not: at the beginning of the stage 5 boss sequence, Axel sits on the ground and stares at you for a bit before jumping in his mech. He can be manipulated into jumping in earlier by swinging your sword.
You can get pretty close to skipping half of stage 4. By heading left on the top of the ship and trying to boost up+right as you fall off the back edge, you can almost reach the door to the inside of the ship and skip the entire outside section, including the flamethrower miniboss. I'm posting this here in case someone more experienced in TASing than me wants to take a crack at it, since the above is my best attempt.
Also, on the stage 6 boss, killing the four turrets on the outside are not necessary to defeat it.
