Mischief Makers All S Rank TAS by Comicalflop
- EMULATOR -- Mupen 64 rerecording 0.5 m
- ROM – MISCHIEF MAKERS
- COUNTRY -- USA
- CRC -- 1B05930B
PLUGINS --
- video: Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6[1]
- sound: Jabo's DirectSound 1.6
- input: TAS Input Plugin 0.6
- RSP : RSP emulation Plugin
CONTROLLERS --
1: Present
2: Disconnected
3: Disconnected
4: Disconnected
Goals
- Aims for fastest in-game time
- Takes damage to save time
- Manipulates Luck
- Abuses programming errors in the game
- Genre: Platformer
- Shakes things a lot
- Rides animals, like Cats and Bees and Ostriches!
[1] Jabo's 1.6 was used to record the run. No current graphics plugin emulates Mischief Makers with 100% accuracy; Jabo's gives me the advantage in world 4 by not darkening the screen at all, making it easier for me to see. So far, Rice 6.1.1 Beta 10 (and Rice 6.1.4) seem to emulate it the closest, removing the yellow/blue/green outlines in backgrounds and giving the correct darkness effect in world 4; however the ground in world 2 is not right (ground/platform/background textures do not repeat correctly.) Nitsuja's modified plugin emulates world 2 perfectly (and makes the boulder in 4-01 visible), but seems to throw world 4 out of whack (unless something's wrong with my settings; the circle in the middle should be a ray of light, not a ray of dark.) If world 4 can be made to work with
Nitsuja's plugin, then encoders should use that. If not, Rice is recommended. For viewing, I recommend using Jabo's like I did, since you'll be able to see more clearly in world 4.
One more part about Mischief Makers emulation is that 2-03, 2-08, and some of the events in 3-10 (100m dash, 200m dash, 400m dash, and hurdle) run at 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS because of too many sprites onscreen. This is unpreventable, and an unfortunate reduction of entertainment. You can fast forward through these, since mupen's inferior fast forwarding capabilities will make it run at a little more than 60 FPS and seem more fluent. An AVI will not fix this problem.
Lastly, the questions in 3-10's Mathfun are hidden by a black bar.
About Mischief Makers
Mischief Makers is a side-scrolling 2D platform/puzzle N64 Treasure game made in 1997. Starring Ultra-Intergalactic-Cybot G Marina Liteyears, the robotic maid of the absent-minded Professor Theo. Marina is easily bamboozled from preventing Prof.'s capture, who is taken by mysterious creatures named Clancers, and it's up to Marina to save him from the evil Empire.
Marina travels on 5 different parts of the Clancer world: a grassy/desert area (world 1), a volcano (world 2), a snowy mountain (world 3), an underground cave (world 4), and aboard a battleship (world 5). Each of the worlds are split into 10 or so (depending on the world) individual stages. In each stage, you must complete objectives to grab the blue exit star and proceed to the next stage. Your time is kept track of, and a rank is given to you based on your time.
Marina can slide, jump, dash, boost, grab, throw, shake, roll, hover, and much more. Her wide array of moves and abilities, as well as her quick speed/acceleration and speed preserving capabilities, make her a very fast paced character.
The game is very fun, colorful, amusing, and a great game to speedrun due to its time-attack nature. Achieving all S ranks in the game, and also all gold gems is a very great feat of skill.
About this run
I started this run 1 year ago.
Nitsuja's WIP was left incomplete after beating Cerberus Alpha, and no one would take it up. Well, Deign tried, and I tried with him as well. Deign found a trick, I found more tricks, and then I took over the project entirely and proceeded to spend an entire year making this movie.
I restarted this run from scratch 9 times. Every time I found new tricks that needed to be inserted into most of the stages. Each time I improved the precision, and in the final version I was satisfied. I tried to be as entertaining as possible, and also make it as optimal as I could. My goal was to create something that myself and others would have an immensely hard time obsoleting. I also tried to show off glitches when it wouldn't waste time.
When making this run, I used the TAS Input plugin, and a USB analog controller. true story, the number of buttons that I needed to hold down/press at a whim's notice was so great that, at times I needed one more digit to hold down buttons; I devised a clever solution to this problem.
Overall, 66.72 in-game seconds were saved compared to Nitsuja's WIP (he ended at 3-12). His run was good, and I highly recommend everyone watch it before watching this run; the improvements will be very visible, yet his run is entertaining despite no memory watching. It really laid the foundation for how good a Mischief Makers TAS would be. I also advise watching all of the speedruns of the game (check
veysey's youtube channel or
playlist) to get a feel for what the game's like.
Now, on to the comments!
Goals
In-game time is the goal of the run, rather than fastest real time. Fastest time means managing lag; the game is unfairly laggy in a few stages (aka the 30 FPS stages), avoiding lag means on some stages Boost Grabbing above the stage and flying over the entire level is fastest(which is boring), and real time also requires standing still during "lag potential areas" of the game. I felt that working hard to maximize real time frames, in a game where in-game time is more important, where the real time frame counter of mupen isn't accurate, and where I have many laggy sections that I can't prevent, would be a waste. In-game time makes more sense since each stage is given a rank based on how low the in-game time is. Also, I could spend more time showing off during waiting periods, and I also could include the time-stopping trick which improves the variety of the movie. Lastly, when making comparisons between Nitsuja's run and my own, the input frame counter was the most reliable, as was the memory address which displayed the current stage's in-game time.
As a rule, I ignore lag; in very rare cases will I consciously try to avoid it (most notably was in 5-03 where I found a pattern of movements that prevented a heavily laggy area during the spinning spikeball section.) Sometimes I lag the game up a little bit while showing off, but I felt that showing off with a tiny bit of lag was better than just standing still.
The game gives you a rank based on what time you get. The ranks are D, C, B, A, and S. S ranks are the best score you can get, and this run gets all S ranks.
Gold gems were avoided as much as possible. The reason for this is that at bosses, getting a gold gem after the fight increases your time because the scene where you collect the gem still has the clock running; taking damage at those bosses was done to prevent getting the gold gem. The other reason they were avoided is that there is a cutscene before the final credits, and the more gold gems you have, the longer the cutscene will be. I only got 1 gold gem (in the 100m dash event) which is gotten from getting under 11 seconds on that course. I felt it was a fine sacrifice; it would increase the in-game time of the 3-10 stage itself by slowing down. Besides, 5-09 story line isn't that much longer by the lone 1 gold gem collected, so you can still get to the credits kinda fast!
The final in-game time on the game file for all of the stages combined is 27 minutes, 45.52 seconds.
Memory Addresses
Zdude and I found many addresses for this game in MHS that really help in optimizing stuff, like HPs for every single boss, x/y speed, x/y pixel and subpixel positions, Teran's Speed, the speed when on the tricycle, Game File Timer, current in-game time (MASSIVELY helpful address to have) mathfun digit answers, and more. PM me if you want the list.
New tricks that will make you pee!
A year gives lots of time for trick/glitch finding. Here's what I found:
Clancer Boost
If you do an extended slide jump as you hit something, your speed increases really slightly, but enough so that if you boost grab your way through a level, it saves some frames. It's more beneficial to do this trick over a long distance. Deign found this one, because he was the first to find the speed address for Marina using MHS.
Go through floors
If you are on a thin floor, if you either:
-press A, then vC, wait 3 frames, then press B
or
-Do a slide jump (vA, 1 frame, vA), vC, wait 2 frames, then press B.
There are limitations. It can only be done on thin floors (aka the blocks that are 1x2), some levels have a layout where it is not beneficial to go through floors, and I can't seem to go through thin vertical walls, like those in 2-08 and 5-05.
Corner Clip
If you try to do the go through floor trick at a corner of thick blocks, you will go inside the corner and get pushed out 20 pixels. Marina moves at 5 pixels per frame when at max slide jump speed. When you do a corner clip, your speed slows down, so it's more useful to do it so you touch the ground sooner, and at max it saves 2 frames per use.
Boost Grab anywhere!
When boost grabbing, you can press B in any direction. This doesn't save time speed wise, but sometimes you can do it to get in an extra Boost Grab without grabbing onto something. It also increases the entertainment.
Boost Grabbing
Oh yeah, to those who don't know, if you press any of the C buttons then B, your speed is preserved. You can gain height (with ^C and ^B) and skip portions of the game by going over obstacles. This technique is used a lot not only to skip portions of the game, but it is also faster on a sub pixel level than Slide Jumping.
Text trick
If you activate a text during the game, like talking to clancers or grabbing the pink hint balls, the in-game time of the current stage is paused.
Throw off Springball
If you grab-throw off a springball when you get on it, you'll launch yourself off slightly sooner and gain 1 frame. Also, for most distances it is better to not spring the coil at max speed, since it takes 3 frames longer to launch yourself off it.
Clanball boost throw
If you press ^C then throw off when throwing off a clanball to go vertical, you gain some height.
Cancel hit animations
In some cases, pressing B at the right frame can cancel damage animations (this seems to work only with spikeballs; more testing needed). You can also rapidly press A to recover from a hit animation when you're in the air; this is used in the Final Fight.
Go through ceiling
In 4-01 Rolling rock, on one of the slopes you can simply jump up and through one of the ceilings, thus saving a warp star transition. (Veysey found this one.)
Abuse moving objects
Many objects that you cling to can move or swivel, such as ropes of clancers, clanball pinwheels, etc. When you grab one of these and press C and >D every other frame, you can achieve movements faster than normal slide jumping (5 pixels per frame.) In some cases, like the clancer ropes, you can save massive amounts of time and launch yourself off at wayyyyy higher than normal speeds; in some other cases, like the pinwheels, it saves only a few frames.
There's various other time saving tricks here and there, some major, some minor. Much of the improvements simply came from using better precision. If I think of other significant ones, I'll add them here.
Useless (for now) Glitches
I found many glitches which were not useful, in that I couldn't find a time saving application for them.
Go through ceiling v1
vid
If you grab an object above you through a thin floor, you can throw the object down to propel yourself through the ceiling.
Push object through floor
vid
Same as above trick. Go through a floor and grab the object above you, and throw the object down. Using this, you can make the object go through the floor below you.
Note: there's an even faster application of this trick for getting the gold gem in 1-05.
Worm is a ^%$*@ing stupid boss
vid
The AI for the boss in 1-07 Wormin' up is incredibly stupid.
Clancer spikeball boosting
vid
vid 2
vid 3
A very interesting property of the spikeballs is that by holding an object in front of you, you can get a significant boost if you make the object hit the spikeball in a specific spot. You can get boosted horizontally for greater speed, or vertically which shoots you straight up. However, there's limitations.
-Only 1 stage in the S rank run has a situation where you hold the pot and get the boost. This is in 4-07, where the boost is attained for about 2-3 frames before the pot is thrown.
-For Clancers, the boost does not work horizontally unless the Clancer has been damaged once, and lives (doesn't get ghosted.)
Going through another ceiling
vid
In 3-05, if you go through the floor before the first warp star, by going to the far left with the triangle corner, you can simply hop out.
Go into Ghost catcher Stage
vid
By rolling under the wall at the end, you can hop up into the thick part of the ceiling/floor. If you take too long jumping up, you'll get stuck.
Lodge a bomb into the floor
vid
This is very odd, but slide jumping then boosting into a corner when holding an object can sometimes lodge the object into the floor.
Marina stay standing on mid air
vid
If you grab a pot when you are standing on top of it (even if the pot is in the air) and if there's no objects inside it, you are standing on the ground for 1 frame and can do just about any action. You can grab, throw, slide and jump, but not slide jump. Potential usefulness in gold gem run?
Megaman style floor zip
vid
vid 2
Oh man, if only I could get this trick to work. You can zip at 6 times the normal slide jump max speed. No matter what I did, I could not replicate it going to the right, nor in any stage without a bomb (the clancers seem to be the wrong size, but this trick works in 1-08?)
Pull objects through walls
vid
The vid is hard to see, but you can pull objects through thin floors by starting to throw the object 3 frames before you grab the object.
There's more vids/tricks, but I need to upload them.
More in-depth comments to come.
1-01
Deign used a clancer boost to finally beat Nitsuja's time by 1 frame; I attained the boost sooner and got 1 frame faster than that. This stage is really easy, a corner clip unfortunately does not save time (but it does for the gold gem strat). If only the talking clancers didn't require a waiting period before you could talk to them.
6.33"
1-02
Interestingly enough, this stage was what helped me to start the run in the first place. Veysey had just discovered going through the ceiling in 4-01, and was exploring collision bugs in the game. One of the things he was testing was clipping past corners, where if you boost grab through a 1x2 block just before the first warp star, you'll get pushed ahead. Nitsuja had this featured in his WIP, and I worked constantly to figure out why Marina can get clipped like that, where it can be done, etc. Of course, the text trick eventually obsoleted the use of the clip in this stage, but my analyzing of that trick in this stage is what got me started on the project.
For improvements, I added corner clipping, using the text trick on 3 clancers, and smoothed up the ending. If there was a clancer standing right next to the exit star, there would be a major time saver, but alas. (see useless tricks section for going through ceilings.)
11.53"
1-03
What a fun stage. There's so much movement going on, and a lot of tricks you can do to save time. Changed the beginning, by using a text trick, and then was more precise in the second half, such as using throwing off spring trick, pinwheel, etc.
14.38"
1-04
This stage was the first one where I was struggling to save time versus Nitsuja. By using his strategy, I wasn't saving more than a few frames. However, the first improvement came when I boosted into the corner to grab the exit star sooner. This application would eventually become the corner clip trick. It actually took me a long time to test and see if the trick would actually save time anywhere else. The other improvement came in cancelling the hit animation, so that I could slide jump up rather than damage boost my way up. Again, if only there was a grabbable object next to the star, I would save time.
4.68"
1-05
I changed the route to prevent backtracking; I juggled the 2nd and 3rd clancers at the same time to bring them back to the house. I invented that route out of pure boredom, and was surprised when it saved a lot of time. I shook the clanball to make the springball appear, which saved a few frames. I also used the text trick.
16.08"
1-06
Not much changed here, except dismounting off Teran by throwing then boosting down.
30.77"
1-07
By throwing Celes first before the Worm, I was ensuring that the falling object was, well, falling first. Celes was falling in the air sooner than if I had grabbed Worm. It also prevented a little bit of backtracking to grab the closer Celes first then go chasing for the Worm, and I could use a quicker up throw rather than a slide throw. Riding the Worm during the explosion was very fun. :-)
18.23"
1-08
I used Teran to attack the bad guy clancers simultaneously (after Teran hit someone, he'd punch someone new with a OHKO), and also showed off a lot of glitches, such as going through the floor, getting stuck at a corner so that when I did a slide, I wouldn't move, and doing an advanced technique called "Shake Cancelling" that allows for many numerous shakes of an object when near a ledge. The zipping thing is a weird side effect of getting stuck in a floor holding an object; I couldn't use it to save time in any stage though. How far deep you are in the floor, and the object you're holding determines what happens. With the bomb, you can move at 30 pixels per frame, so it would be a major time saver, but sadly I could not replicate it anywhere at all.
37.97"
1-09
I used the text trick, and changed how I kill the Cowboy Clancer. There's a faster method of killing the clancer, but it requires me showing up at the spawn point much later. I also changed the ending by throwing the bomb better, and standing on top of the blocks as they were exploding to get closer inside them.
16.15"
1-10
I kept working on this stage trying to beat Nitsuja's time with no luck. I kept changing Boost Grab patterns to try and only do 1 slide jump in the entire stage, which I calculated would save enough sub pixels for me to save at least 1 frame. However the corner clip finally let me beat Nitsuja's time easily.
9.93"
2-01
Clancer boosting and text tricking. It took a lot of hexing and luck manipulation to get this result. I would send Halamantariel the file, and he'd insert different numbers of frames in certain spots to change the outcome, then send me 100 or so .m64's. I'd look through them all and see which one gave me the best result.
23.45"
2-02
Improved in small ways here and there, but shaking the bomb at the end made the timer disappear and it went kerplooie boom faster than if I had thrown it. I think it is quite eerie that many of the jumps are in synch with the music; that was completely accidental.
8.90"
2-03
I don't know how, but the music got screwed up here when entering the stage. Weird! Only 1 frame saved from a Clancer Boost.
8.65"
2-04
Lalalalalala, save the clancers and wait for the autoscrolling exploding blocks to catch up- NOT! Going through the floor, and saving 14 seconds sounds wayyyyyyyyy more cool. This was, I believe the first stage where I found a major time saving opportunity to use the going-through-floors trick.
19.10"
2-05
Yes, grabbing the last clancer rope saved 2 in-game frames. I also improved things here and there, and tried to maintain max speed more with boost grabbing and less jumping (which slows you down slightly per jump.)
5.62"
2-06
It's the Flambee! Run away! Burn his butt! Jump around like a maniac! Take a dive in the lava to avoid that silly dance!
24.50"
2-07
Didn't change much here, just went the other way after the red star. Not only could I get higher earlier, but it meant I could slide jump, and boost grab, and Marina's hand would be outstretched longer to grab the star.
16.00"
2-08
Damn that lag, the stage normally is very fast since boosting down is very fast. Going through the middle of the brown blocks is faster then going around. I tried very, very hard to go through walls/floors here, but met with no success.
19.07"
2-09
Few minor things, such as boosting off the spring faster and using that handy dandy throw-launch trick.
9.90"
2-10
BOING! Nitsuja didn't grab the second spring ball, the silly. I started off climbing faster to reach the first platform earlier, climbed the moving platforms better, and even managed to get stuck inside one of the ones that comes in and out, and got shoved up on top!
9.37"
2-11
Faster by 7 seconds, yep.
Haha. Oh my god, I did this boss 3 times, and each time it took 1 month to do. URGGGGGGG. A lot of delays were done on purpose to save time, such as the very last hit which manipulated Migen to go into his death animation sooner, and taking a lava bath helped me to remove his "fake punches" (which waste a lot of time). This boss is so incredibly random, and leaves lots of room for showing off. I tried to show off as much as possible while controlling the fight so that Migen only did what I wanted him to do.
1 min 30.30"
3-01
Using the text tricks below, then jumping up near the high wall was faster than simply boosting up from the start.
14.42"
3-02
Not much new, but boy killing that robot was fun.
24.32"
3-03
Jumping on the missile and giving it the little love tap is faster than Nitsuja's Slide method. Getting onto the ceiling of missile surf is fun; there's tons of invisible blocks up there.
19.53"
3-04
Not much new here. Because of the clancer rope, it's basically on a sort of timer where you save more time if you don't have to pull it back to swing. What frame you enter doesn't change this luck. Therefore, I was only able to save a few frames.
14.03"
3-05
There's a lot that's new here. I Improved the springball section by not losing any speed, and I saved time on the boss by using new strategies.
42.38"
3-06
I Changed the strat here. Each throw I make does double damage.
17.08"
3-07
This is one of my favorite levels. Going through the floor here was the second application of the trick that I found. I also made general small improvements, such as grabbing the pot and collecting clancers sooner and using the pot to be closer to the exit star when it appeared.
21.63"
3-08
Delayed a few frames to get completely different luck and a new attacking strategy; no glitched hits, but I kill him way faster to save time. Using Nitsuja's strategy, I got a time of 12.80". Lunar is immensely random.
12.25"
3-09
Added text tricks and corner clips, and also improved getting through those brown blocks. During the cutscene, delaying 70 frames saved 70 in-game frames; it's not a deysnch.
29.68"
3-10
Long and boring, sorry. Fast forward through the dash events, but please watch the rest!
-100m, 200m, 400m dash: For the dash events, pressing >D, >C, >D, then >D every other frame was fastest. I got so much carpal tunnel doing these stages since I couldn't use turbo.
-Hurdle: Here, you can see what the corner clip looks like in slow motion. Oddly enough, because of the lag and sub pixel positioning it's not beneficial to corner clip on every single block.
-Jump: Saved some time, by maintaining speed at the end and by manipulating the clancers to jump shorter distances, as well as getting a fail on the 2nd jump.
-Ball: YES! Got WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY higher than the WR; you can control this event a lot. Nitsuja got 6 white balls; Veysey got 12 white balls; I got 21. You can control it so that no red balls ever appear; I made one at the end show up so that Marina can grab it and be like "WTF is this thing?" I couldn't get those last few white balls in the pot in time. I apologize about the last 10 seconds of gameplay; bombing myself spawned more white balls.
-Mathfun: using memory addresses, I was able to save time by answering 15 questions, rather than 14 which raised the score and thus lowered the in-game time (while not wasting realtime). Bonus to whoever sees the secret 5 numbers and knows what they mean.
Total time: 2m 30.90"
3-11
I like tossing kittens. I'm so mean.
9.15"
3-12
Ok, this is going to be confusing. Watch Nitsuja's strat, then understand: this is way different and way faster.
If you hold back your missiles in the first round, you can glitch Lunar to not do his beast change. When he jumps over you, you need to throw a missile at him just as he lands; his HP will have gone over the limit for his Beast change form, and he'll continue to launch missiles. In the first round, each of the 4 missiles had a purpose; the 2nd prevented me from getting the gold gem, and the last 2 were kept and thrown at the right time so that Lunar is manipulated and doesn't do one of his time wasting moves with the green laser beam.
Kitty LOVES to jump.
32.93"
4-01
INVISIBLE BOULDER OF DOOM! I like this stage, it's fast. Rounding all those corners perfectly was a real pain. Too bad I can't go through floors here, but going through the ceiling saves time.
16.48"
4-02
Froggy prince croaks. The throw dealt the last damage; it saved time, and also boosting down while holding onto the frog saved 1 frame.
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM
22.25"
4-03
Yeah, 7 bosses in a long stage are fun! This stage alone took me 2 months to do, I hope the effort shows. I redid the entire stage just to get sub 3 minutes. Each clancer I grab and slide him over closer to the middle, then I walk to the nearest side of him/her so that he/she starts talking sooner. For the spikebomb clancers, you can grab the next bomb as soon as he's damaged; assuming you grab the right one. I purposefully get hit and use the cancel damage animation to grab each bomb as quick as possible. For the Mining Laser Clancers, it took a shitload of manipulation to make them 1) start mining the rocks as soon as possible 2) make sure 12 rocks are pulled up 3) make sure the rocks get thrown in the right direction and 4) throw all the rocks to defeat him in one round. For the pot clancer, staying in the air was very fun, and easy to do with boosting. I also played around with fooling the camera.
2m 58.85"
4-04
Teran is ass slow. This stage was the first documented record of using the text trick, but it was unknown why 2 seconds were being saved. Veysey and I finally deduced that the in-game time is being paused, and thus another trick was born. Jumping when at max speed on the tricycle saves 1 pixel per jump. Also, starting to run wastes time, so on short distances constant hopping was faster.
35.20"
4-05
I have the WR for this stage on my console. Pretty cool. I did it completely by accident, and it was this accident that helped me to save a lot of time. Not destroying the bomb allowed one more hit.
27.93"
4-06
For some reason, throwing up a rock (blarggg uggg blub glub patooey sorry puking out rocks hurts my throat) makes a one hit knock out on Tarus. Someone's 3 second claim was bogus.
10.40"
4-07
One of my most favorite stages. I apologize: "who ya gonna call: Ghost Busters! Dun dun dun dee dun dun!"
This stage reeks of awesome. I got into the floors and ceiling, at the end, but the text trick from the clancer is faster.
39.38"
4-08
Boosting off slopes is faster. It looks like I miss a downslope, but it's not good to get, it slows me down.
35.08"
4-09
Awwwww, the little cuddwy wuddwy cutesie molie! DIE MOLE! Don't touch the ground!
Yeah, if the mole touches the ground, you can't grab him. Play ping pong with him off the wall instead. Interestingly enough, the throwing part is what damages him, not when he hits something. You can test this out by throwing mole up, then catching him in the air about 18 times or so, then throw him on the ground, go to the right side of him in near the right wall, and remain boosting in the air, and he'll die.
27.50"
4-10
Text tricks, corner clips.
26.42"
4-11
Sasquatch Beta is a sissy. He's the easiest of the bosses. At the mech part, boosting back, then forwards, then up, then down is faster because he takes less time to hop back onto the mech. For some reason, his explosions at the end got really confused.
55.40"
5-01
Too bad the robots don't have missile pods on top of them. I also got some Boost Grabs to go in time with the music, again by accident.
I also just recently got the console WR for this stage.
1m 20.70"
5-02
This boss was very fun to do. I saved time at the laser from jumping off with a tiny shot and getting in an extra hit, which prevented the need to throw one more bomb. See? there IS something as a free lunch!
25.02"
5-03
When you ride on Bees, you get stung! Well, no. I thought I killed Flambee? Hm. I liked letting go of a missile, and Marina looks back thinking "huh?"
1m 04.53"
5-04
Merco is so sexy, he's Mr. Smooth Love. He also looks like Alien Soldier. O_O
If only he wouldn't grab his spear again... it was possible to get 3 hits, but it was slower since he bounced more to the left. Odd. And he spoils the plan of the evil Empire? What a loyal general he is!
12.47"
5-05
Trapped!? I'm Trapped!? Oh NO!!!!
This is another of my favorite stages. That Pirate Clancer is kinda cool, and for some reason I was able to make him throw only one spikeball instead of 2 in his 3rd round. In the bomb room Marina is bouncing around and having fun. Sliding and grabbing the bomb before it hits the ground saves a lot of time.
44.33"
5-06
Phoenix GAMMA, yah!
This stage was a lot of fun. A lot of action going on (reminiscent of Nitsuja's Cerbus Alpha fight).
In the first stage, I shake away his Spear and Shield, and when he charges, I throw both the spear and the shield. I have the time to throw the shield a second time, but oddly the extra damage doesn't convert over to his next Beast Form.
In the second stage, I grab the head and pull it away so it thwacks him in the head.
In the third stage, I take one hit to prevent getting the gold gem, and grab the missile, and the stage is done.
46.60"
5-07
Delayed some throws to make the clouds come faster. And the winner of the sensitivity award goes to........ Prof. Theo!!!!!!
Marina is cute when she's pink.
I redid this stage after submission to improve it by 1 second by delaying throws even more.
1m 04.85"
5-08
Everything here is about dealing the right amount of damage and preventing his slower attacks (11 slams, 1 throw, 3 slams, 1 throw, then the missile fist, and finally 3 slams 1 throw makes him dead before he can do his justice laser attack.) I got hit on purpose to avoid the gold gem.
I redid this stage after submission because the fight desynched after a hex edit and redoing it ended up saving a few frames. 0.17" improved, and getting sub 1 min 3 seconds which is really boss.
1m 02.88"
Cutscene
1 gold gem = King Aster getting cut off mid sentence. He deserved it for his ugly ass crown.
Here's the ending if you want to see all of it, and the secret ending you'll have to wait until a gold gem run is completed ;-)
Many thanks
Huzzah! Here's to thanking those people who helped immensely.
Halamantariel
He was my main hexer and main WIP watcher (only veysey, thecape, and reik got to also see progress), and good friend throughout the entire year. We talked about everything, had fun, and he kept me mostly sane. And he hexed just about everything for me, bless his soul.
Nitsuja
His WIP was very strong work to compare with. He invented many helpful techniques which were instrumental. Glad to have you back, and I hope you sit back and get a real kick out of this run; you're the reason I worked on this game in the first place.
Veysey
We didn't get to chat live, but we discussed hundreds of ideas. His speedruns were good guides for me, and I hope we get to submit individual levels of MM to SDA together.
TheCape
We chatted live a huge deal, discussed endlessly about techniques, and co-found more tricks with cerbus alpha (like not wasting the 3rd missile.) Best of luck to finish your gold gem run mate.
Reik
We chatted live some, and he offered many helpful tips.
Zdude
He provided me with an incredible amount of useful memory addresses, most notably boss HP and Mathfun addresses. Without those addresses, the run would be nowhere near as optimal as it is. I commend you good sir.
I thank you all for waiting so patiently for this. I hope everyone enjoys it; I put so much work and effort into it and I hope the end result exceeds everyone's expectations.
mmbossman: The viewers have spoken, and it seems that the year of work you put into this game paid off. Accepting for publication.
adelikat: Setting status to delayed while the author attempts some possible improvements.
adelikat: Replaced submission file for author. The new version is 1.17 seconds faster in-game time (68 real frames). Levels 5-07 & 5-08 were improved. Resetting status back to accepted.
Raiscan: Attempting to process.
Raiscan: Initial capture shows that this, much like OoT, is a game that when captured has audio desync. As a result this is going to take longer to encode than usual.
Raiscan: Task of processing given to
ShinyDoofy since my free time has gone out the window.
As you can see (or not), the audio very very slowly desyncs up to a certain point in the capture. At that point, the desync starts to happen faster (though that section is still linear). Theres two ways of fixing this:
1. Split the track in two, stretch the two tracks to the correct speed, rejoin them together and mux it into the final encode
2. Split the track in two, mux them into an MKV and specify stretching parameters to the muxer
For OoT, I did the latter. This is the result:
The gap in the audio track is purely for the purpose of illustration.
I really can't be bothered making a diagram for MiMa, but it's pretty much the same, with one of two outcomes (depending on the settings used):
1. The audio desyncs over time but with many more places where the desync speed changes.
2. The audio desyncs for bried periods during the start of some levels. Please note I wasn't aware of this until it was brought to my attention by someone else.
So why doesn't it desync in other games? I don't know, but if I had to take a guess it seems to be directly correlated with the game changing framerates. The more frequently the game changes it's framerate, the greater the chance it desyncs.
Though I won't jump to conclusions, since correlation is not causation..
Conclusion: if you want a better encode, get someone to fix the problems in mupen. I personally feel that mupen is technically too problematic for reliable TAS encoding for.. well, anything really.
The above post was written by an author immensely hyped up on caffeine and may not make any sense. Please excuse the crudeness of the diagrams.
