Joined: 6/9/2004
Posts: 17
Has anyone else played this game? It's an old favorite of mine from back when I actually had an NES, and those who've played it generally like it very much, but it's fairly obscure... I've done a video of this game in 17 minutes or so that never gets hit and was made without slow-mo. There's a lot of potential to be faster by getting hit in certain places, but it's my opinion that a no-hit video is far more entertaining, especially since the thing that makes this a hard game is the fact that there are always so many things to hit you.
Post subject: Re: Conquest of the Crystal Palace
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
You already submitted the movie to my site, which is good. But this forum is not the right place for publications. Regarding the movie, I haven't yet had a look at it.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Hey, it's been a while and I think tim's not continuing this run (shame). Anyway, I saw his cancelled submission and I was planning on doing a TAS of this game at some point anyway, so this inspired me to actually start it. I plan on trying to improve the run, using some of the techniques discussed in the submission thread (damage boosting, reduced lag etc.). When watching through the submission, I saw that tim333 did a lot of things right, but made a few mistakes, so I'll be using his run to help me through this one. Here's my first run through level 1. I'm already beating the submitted movie by 1147 frames. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3989/conquest-arkiandruski-wip.fcm A few things to note. -You use down A to call the dog. Down A also causes the dog to disappear. After he disappears, you have to wait a bit before calling him again. A is also the jump button, so you have to wait a frame before jumping to land on him. I try to hide the frames when I call the dog by always making them the frame I land or the frames right before I jump. Tim333 hesitated a few times before calling the dog. This was because he called him off screen right before he needed him then tried to call him back on. I try to avoid this by telling him to go away a few jumps before I actually need him. -You will see two missed attacks during the boss fight. They are there because if you attack then press the arrow to attack in the opposite direction the second attack is a lot more powerful than the first. I discovered that accidentally when I first use it in the movie. It's possible I can kill both of them using only two swings. I'll test this out when I go through again. -Health is replenished when you beat the levels, so I could theoretically damage boost three more times. I'm looking for good places to put those other boosts. If you have suggestions, please give them. I you have any comments or things that I missed or stuff that looks unoptimized, please feel free to comment.
Joined: 10/24/2004
Posts: 60
Location: Quebec
I'm just at the second background change and I'm 27 frames faster. 15 frames come from ennemy, but the other 12 is from another route in the mountain. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4038/crystal001.fcm
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Your example seems to stop right before the first level starts. EDIT: I'm redoing the level right now, and I'm at the place where the background changes to night. I'm now 68 frames faster than my first WIP. I'd like to see your route, though.
Joined: 10/24/2004
Posts: 60
Location: Quebec
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4065/NES%20Conquest_of_the_Crystal_Palace_%28U%29.fcm Well, I'm not completely satisfied with it, but here's version 2 of level 1, about 100 frames faster. Comments are welcome.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Alright, I'm done with this run, and if there aren't any glaring errors, I think I'm going to submit it. Let me know if I missed something. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/4532/arkiandruski_conquest%28U%29.fcm
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Man, it was hard to find this thread. Super Necro Go. So, I was watching Aloysha's run on youtube and one of the speedrunners for this game, known as spiderweb_ called it out for being sloppy. He claims that at least 10 seconds can be saved on one boss fight! Obviously I couldn't let that stand, also 10 seconds would definitely put it below 11 minutes, so it feels like a milestone, right? But I wasn't going to be lazy and just reuse input from the last run. No. The published run mostly beat mine by reducing lag. I was going to start from scratch! I pulled up Bizhawk version 2.2.2, the latest build on the site as of now, and opened TAStudio to start this run again. By the way, I have no idea why I was so reticent to use the program before. It is freaking fantastic. My quest was to cut lag down to nothing. I would be the lag killer. I would make red lines on the piano scroll the enemy and work to eradicate them. Did I get rid of all the lag? Hell no, the game's laggy as hell. Still I think I did a decent job of cutting it down. I also put more thought into where I took damage. Also, I use the dog to triple jump on vertical scrolling screens Anyways, here's stage 1 220 frames faster than the published run. I hope that this will get at least some attention. I'll cry if it doesn't. I'll see if I can get video posted sometime over the weekend. ROM is Conquest_of_the_Crystal_Palace_(U). Checksum 28cd4cd685b0f1b58d0aec9a8da325d8. Emulator is Bizhawk. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1119921075/conquestcrystalpalacelevelonev1.bk2 I'll look into posting video over the weekend. Thank you for watching.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3828)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
Woah it's been over 2 1/2 years since I looked at this game, time sure does fly! New run looks really smooth, although since you are starting from scratch I would recommend using NESHawk instead of QuickNES for the much higher accuracy, but it's not required so up to you. Anyway good luck!
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Good news. Switching the core to NEShawk didn't desync the movie at all. Continuing with new core. But if NEShawk is more accurate, why is QuickNES the default?
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3828)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
arkiandruski wrote:
Good news. Switching the core to NEShawk didn't desync the movie at all. Continuing with new core. But if NEShawk is more accurate, why is QuickNES the default?
Oh nice, glad it synced up for you, that's lucky. QuickNES is like 20x faster so is more accessbile for regular (non-TAS) users and those with weaker hardware.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1100050748/level2crystalpalace.bk2 Stage 2 done, now on a new core. 600 frames faster than published run. In order to change cores, I copied my input.txt onto a new project that specifies the NESHawk core. That means my rerecord count was reset. Before I switched over the rerecord count was 5315, if anybody still cares about that kind of stuff. There's also missing rerecords from when I made backups to see if another route was faster and found out it wasn't, so I reopened the backup and saved it over the original.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
So I tested letting the dog stay on screen during the boss fight and while he doesn't help at all he doesn't slow the fight down in any way either. In trying to attack the boss he does take a few points of damage. What do you think, would it be worth letting the dog stay to watch him impotently jump around the screen while I'm dealing with this boss?
Player (172)
Joined: 7/1/2016
Posts: 263
If i remember correctly in JP version the charged dog attack does the most damage in the game, but in US version it was like swing around sword attack. So this is like the big difference between JP and US version. Is there any research on what is faster? Using charged dog in JP or swinging sword in US? Charged dog in JP could be faster to kill bosses, but you have to buy a flute. So it's pretty interesting to me what is actually faster. JP or US
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
So I checked out this video. Looks like the only place that dog whistle would really save time is the second stage boss, but the amount of time it takes to go to the shop and get the whistle is obnoxious to say the least. EDIT: I tried buying the whistle at the last shop before the boss. It cost 3000G, which was less than I had. I thought it was going to be 1000G. Looks like the last shop in level one, you can get it for 300G. I'm going to see how much time is lost there. EDIT 2: And now there's a problem with that because the second shop is not on the path I take. Yeah, appreciate the idea, but this is looking less and less like it'll save any time whatsoever.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/367571121/Conquestcrystalpalacelevel3wip.bk2 Level 3 done. Now 700 frames faster than published movie. All new saved frames have got to be from lag reduction. Without lag, there really aren't that many time savers in the level.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Finally did that test on the shop girl. From the time you run into her and stop moving while the screen fades out, using frame perfect inputs to navigate the menus and buy the dog whistle to the time your allowed to move again afterward takes 872 frames. The second boss fight in my new movie lasts 389 frames from first hit to last hit.
Player (172)
Joined: 7/1/2016
Posts: 263
But Dog also one shots those "ball" bosses if i remember correctly. Also, you can ride it vertically up, but i don't know if this can be used somewhere or not edit: Link to video I don't think that this is useful, but it could be
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
I saw the doggyvator in the video I posted previously. If you've seen any of the movies for this game published on this site, you would know that the preferred TAS method for vertical travel is much faster than that. Sorry, but over 800 frames is way too much of a cost, and that's just the shopping portion. Getting to the second shop on level 1 would probably put the frame cost midway between 1 and 2 thousand, and grinding up enough coins to be able to buy from any of the other shops looks comparable. I am nowhere close to being able to buy that whistle at the times that girl is on my path. Seriously, I don't think all the bosses combined in my run get over 1000 frames in runtime.