Link to video
This also officialy marks the 4200 rerecord mark for Curvature (1-3)! 4200 rerecords on about 3.2 seconds of gameplay! Everybody raise your hands! WOOOOO
Movie to get into the windmill: http://pastebin.com/uYfwxuQv
Link to video
curvature, crushing dreams since 2006
On a more serious note, I've found what I consider to be the 'perfect angle'. The only problem now is rebouncing to the goal..
Here is a mspaint pro skills example: http://imgur.com/ma5BP04
Here, what happens is that I bounce on the location of the beginning of the red line, then phase through the goal. What I want to happen is change this trajectory a little to the left so I go straight through the goal line instead.
Hopefully almonst there!
what
so in touch and roll when you are falling, movinng in a direction is faster
but only if that direction is strictly horizontal or vertical; falling while holding a DIAGONAL direction makes you actually SLOWER than a strictly HORIZONTAL or VERTICAL direction
TOUCH AND ROLL
the first is with holding straight up on the touch screen (0,96), the second is with holding up left on touch screen (0,0), compare the speed on the bottom left
also the other thing is that i bounced to the LEFT so going UP RIGHT is slower, way to limit my movements! thanks touch and roll!
oh yeah dont forget this is almonst 5400 rerecords in a 3,4 second level, way to invalidate my strat touch and roll!
well time to redo the strat
The forums and IRC channel are frequented by people of all ages, and thus, content posted should consider the possibility of younger readers. While adult-themed conversations are not prohibited, they should be mature, purposed, and limited. In other words, don't be dirty simply to be dirty.
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
@Masterjun Haha, sorry! Edited the post. Was pissed off a little bit when I found it; I'll refrain from doing that :)
Since all else fails, I've decided to examine more in-depth why speed is faster when holding up middle instead of diagonally. The results are something that is very interesting..
To resume it, when going forward for a bounce and while in air, there seems to be only one thing that matters: the current inclinaison of the level.
(Note: All numbers are coordinates. For refrence, holding up 128 is basically holding up at the perfect center of the touch screen).
When falling off, there are two 'arrays' of inputs: the outer array and the inner array.
The limit seems to be at which point the game considers the input is diagonal and massively slows you down (you lose from 2 to 6 speed). In the 'inner' array, all directions give you the highest speed possible you can have when holding that direction, but they all are slower or faster when bouncing: the middle one (here in blue) is generally always the fastest. When the median input is uneven (for example 131,5, which happened here) you want to hold up on the touch screen 131 and 132 for the same number of frames, which amounts like you were holding up 131,5.
This array of inputs and position seems to change each time, but the general consensus I've seen so far is that holding up center (128) is always in the 'inner array', unless your angle is very diagonal, and the diagonal inputs in air (up left, up right) are always slower.
This is a bit complicated, so feel free to ask me if you don't understand. The reason which direction you hold while in air changes your momentum is because of tweaking (see earlier.)
Yeah, it would definitely be helpful; the only things that are problematic is that I can't do any Lua =( and the other thing is that when the inclinaison of the level changes, the position of the inner array changes; this may be pretty hard to reproduce here
Overall, in simple cases (= forward movement in air when falling from a flat platform) the inner array will always be in the same position, but in more complex cases I think it will be more a case-by-case basis on more complex platform and inclinaisons (see Truffles aka 11-3, where the platform is only made of pyramidal bumps)
While on the ground, moving diagonally is always faster no matter what (this isn't new though)
More falling tests!
I won't disclose the full results, but for these tests, I basically falled off a platform, held one position on the touch screen for 51 frames, and compared the results for a lot of positions.
What do the results show?
Tweaking forward in the air (aka holding up on the touchscreen) is beneficial: the more you tweak upward, the faster you get.
As such, holding downwards on the touchscreen while falling slows you down.
Visual cue for your viewing pleasure.
This is actually a problem, because it means we have to balance exactly how far up our input is going to be.
Because of this, holding close to the center of the screen makes you slower than holding nothing! This also happens in the Gamecube version.
There are three main strats I've found that have potential to be faster or equal to the current WR:
- first off, doing what the WR does: this is not easy, as the bounce is extremely precise (so precise, in fact, that holding a single direction on the touch pad will not work: you have to hold two for a separate amount of time to make your angle more precise; but it is like that for the other strats too)
- second, gathering a lot of speed and clipping in the corner of the end platform for 1 framed to end into the goal: this is what i do in my 56,76 attempt, and the thing is I need to slow down for about 4 frames to avoid the ramp that is next to the location I bounce off first: if I didn't need to slow down, this strat would probably be lower than 56,60
- third: bouncing under the platform where I do the bounce, this is the hardest method by far because you slow down at the beginning due to having to do a quick detour, but the speed you gain from bouncing under the platform makes up for it: the problem is aiming for the goal, which is probably even more precise than the first method
At 7000 rerecords in, I think I'm more going to opt for the first method since the second is 3 frames too slow and the third doens't guantree any results..
This is made even harder by the fact that none of the ram adresses help you (the only I can think of that would help would be X, Y, Z position, though I haven't tried to find them) and bouncing on flat edges is immensely retarded because of their collision (not as ridiculous as corners but still very ridiculous)
Don't load an EU savestate on an U rom or you will be troubled forever.
Link to video
(My voice is hard to hear, but the things I say aren't important)
So, why have I been not updating for almonst a week, for me who basically updates bidaily? I was routing and speedrunning a new RPG (Eternal Senia). Because the game is extremely hard to speedrun, however, I'll shift focus to this TAS again..
What is the current plan? Sell my soul and get cool strats! That's really how it's gonna work: I am currently working on the first strat (see above) which doens't really deviate from the current WR strat by Silver.
The problem is if you followed earlier posts, that strat is so precise that even Silverboxer himself (the WR setter) hasn't managed to replicate it in his TAS, which is why I'm taking over for this level - and I wish I never did =(
The reason it is so hard is because every input on this game is controlled by your stylus position. On the touch screen, there are 49980 inputs possible, and just for one X position, there are 196 Y positions (and 256 X position for one Y position).
Add that with the fact that a single position change can massively influence your bounce and direction, and you have something that's as precise to do as trying to hit a moving bloon with a single dart from 50 meters away: it almonst purely relies on random inputs within the inner array and hoping it works.
This is why TASing this game is hell on earth, at least for 'falling' levels like this, and this is one of the most precise ones. Note that we are still open for people interested to join, just hit me up with a PM.
I remember Nahoc doing a WiP TAS of this game. How did that go? Or am I wrong?
I don't know if Nahoc did a WiP of this game, but I'll try to contact him :)
Quick update! I searched a bit through 'corrupted EU savestate hell' as I call it and I've found something very important looking through it.
If you look carefully in the video (most notable beginning at 0:45 in the above video) you can notice the big flat yellow platforms are actually made of two small look-alike platform. You can see the little 'line' in the middle. Basically, the big yellow platform is not one but two platforms stuck togheter!
Now, why is this important? First off, the red borders are not actually next to the yellow platforms: they are actually put IN the two yellow platforms as borders.
In his current WR, Silverboxer (
Link to video) hits exactly the little tip of the border, but what I didn't notice is that he also hits almonst exactly at the same in the middle of the two yellow platforms!
And he managed to get much more speed than in most of my attempts. For the past week, what I've tried to do is repetadly trying different angles: but the point is you may need to hit in the middle of these two yellow platforms to get the much-needed extra speed that may allow me to hit the goal with a much sharper angle that I expected.
For comparaison, my best attempt doens't hit in the middle of these two yellow platforms.
This is very helpful; the titan known as Curvature by the living world is giving me its last hope to finish it faster than the current WR (although it will most likely be a tie.)
This also means I have to look into the second method again! More work for me (although it will be much easier this time because I know exactly what I have to aim for.)
For this reason, for the rest of the TAS, I will TAS in the 'corrupted EU savestate hell' because the collision is much easier to see this way and I can see accurately where I want to aim. This would be much easier if we had tools, but making tools is for the people who TAS in an efficient way; it's not for Super Monkey Ball TASers, who quote "try random shit until it works" unquote.
(the real reason is that I can't make tools =()
An helpful find? Am I dreaming?!?
Link to video
So there are alderaly a lot of ways to clip into a goal post: the one that is used the most often is 'ripping the goal post, AKA going in the sides of the goal post and not clipping BUT going close enough into it so that the goal post hitbox triggers.
If you have enough speed, you can straight up just pass through the sides..
Another method (that I will use in three levels, Descending Rings, Spiral Staircase and Oblivion) is going straight through the TOP of the goal post (the part where the two pillars converge).
However, passing through the goal post like this is completely new, and even if the attempt in the video failed, and it is not usable on Curvature, I will remember it for later use: will definitely save some time.
Okay, time to switch over to J ROM! Yay! Woo! *crickets*
So, why is J ROM faster? Two reasons:
- First, loading times are faster by about 10%. I went to get the J ROM for another reason, and one that will change the banana grinding route dramatically..
- For the banana grinding route, you need 2006 bananas to pass, which is the number of bananas equal to the year the game was released in EUROPE. Now, since the game was released in 2005 in JAPAN, you only need 2005 bananas to pass the banana grinding. You save one WHOOPING, one AMAZING, one MARVELOUS f***g banana.
Guess what, it destroys the entire banana grinding route!
Touch&Roll: destroying well planned strats, hope, humanity.. anything your previously dark, grim life had left in a little spot for you to feel, reach out to, and live. All of that is long, long gone now (as is the .83 strat on Curvature).
Link to video
(My voice is hard to hear, but the things I say aren't important)
So, why have I been not updating for almonst a week, for me who basically updates bidaily? I was routing and speedrunning a new RPG (Eternal Senia). Because the game is extremely hard to speedrun, however, I'll shift focus to this TAS again..
What is the current plan? Sell my soul and get cool strats! That's really how it's gonna work: I am currently working on the first strat (see above) which doens't really deviate from the current WR strat by Silver.
The problem is if you followed earlier posts, that strat is so precise that even Silverboxer himself (the WR setter) hasn't managed to replicate it in his TAS, which is why I'm taking over for this level - and I wish I never did =(
The reason it is so hard is because every input on this game is controlled by your stylus position. On the touch screen, there are 49980 inputs possible, and just for one X position, there are 196 Y positions (and 256 X position for one Y position).
Add that with the fact that a single position change can massively influence your bounce and direction, and you have something that's as precise to do as trying to hit a moving bloon with a single dart from 50 meters away: it almonst purely relies on random inputs within the inner array and hoping it works.
This is why TASing this game is hell on earth, at least for 'falling' levels like this, and this is one of the most precise ones. Note that we are still open for people interested to join, just hit me up with a PM.
