Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I have done a little testrun of a 100% run (Not DX) a while ago with a time of 1:52. It isn't meant to be fast, just to show the route for those on SDA so they could give me comments of improvements, I didn't do any Text Skips, except regular B skip. My movements are quite bad because of the controller I had, etc. But the video does have a couple of nice tricks, mostly for 100% but any% too. Like when you shall rescue Bow-wow and when getting the 2:nd Ocarina song.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1340/TestRun.vbm
I'm going to do a Speedrun of this and aiming for <1:40.
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
Could somebody host Tompa's video at Rapidshare or some other hosting website?
Comparison of routes by order of events:
1) Sword, warp to bow-wow's house, 50 rupees from chest, boost across pit in forest, get tail key, play trendy game for powder and doll, trade through dog food, finish 1st dungeon.
2) Sword, manipulate 10 rupees from enemies, trendy game to get 30 rupees, powder, doll, trade through dog food, tail key, 1st dungeon.
Direct comparison:
I take ~23700 frames to reach the first dungeon (in the DX version). Using Graveworm's route in the original version, I reached the first dungeon in ~20000 frames (accomplishing the same tasks). However, the orig. version can skip text, and I could save a good amount of time from the start/select trick. I don't think this would make up almost 4000 frames, though, so Graveworm's route would probably be best. I'll have to check if the pit-boosting trick is possible (although it most likely is).
On a side note, would it be reasonable to get a game over on purpose? I would like to just steal the bombs, shovel, and bow from the shop without paying if it would save time (more rupees for buying ocarina songs and so on).
I'm open to tips and criticism if and when I work on this run.
Doing what I did is the fastest way of getting to the first dungeon. And yes, boosting over pits is possible in both versions. It's also possible to do it manipulating an octorok 2 screens before the 1st dungeon.
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
Here it is on FileFront instead, Chef. http://files.filefront.com/LArar/;4806264;;/fileinfo.html
Everything you might need is there, even if I know you already got it... But all on SDA haven't got the emulator and rom and stuff, so I uploaded those things as well. But as I said, this is meant as a Speedrun, not a TAS. So bad gamequality.
Joined: 3/17/2006
Posts: 243
Location: Back to good old Germany
I liked your movie. Just two little questions:
Why is it a timesaver to leave the 4th dungeon before beating the boss?
And why doing the 8th before the 7th dungeon? (It's been done on the other speedruns, too) Because of the fire-rod?
And a minor improvement (just in case you didn't know):
When you go to the beach to get the boomerang, you can talk to the guy "over the desk" like this:
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
1. If you beat the 4:th dungeon directly you will have the ghost with you after. But by leaving the dungeon earlier the ghost won't appear. Maur found this neat trick. (I think anyway...)
2. Yes, that's one reasons. But I can still kill the 7:th boss just as fast when I have the lvl 2 sword. But the other reason is that you can jump down to get the Heart Piece in the water cave, and it is also close to dungeon 4.
3. Hehe, I know... I usually did that all other times I have taken the boomerang, but for some reasons I forgot it now.
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Might want to check the runs at SDA first... Not sure if the timing is calculated differently or not, but the non-TAS runs there are 1:30 for LA and 1:45 for LA:DX.
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
1:40 is indeed possible in a 100%. And I'm more on SDA than here so I know perfectly about those runs. The LA dx run has been improved on the "sucky-stupid-no-movies-site" Twin Galaxies, I really dislike that site, to 1:36 instead of TSA's 1:45. The old LA run on 1:44 ndone by Lucid was improved to Maur's 1:30, mostly because of the StartSelect text skip which I didn't use. Then the run has been improved to, I think, 1:24 on TG. I couldn't find the time somewhere. And the improvements is mostly because a Piece of Powerr route, which Ididn't use either. And by using those things in my 100% run a goal of <1:40 sounds quite easy to me.
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
I'm really sorry to bother you again, but I can't use .rar files (as far as I can tell), so can you put it on rapidshare or similar directly?
Anyway, here's a new run through the first dungeon, ~4000 frames (about 1 minute) faster than the previous run:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1349/Testrun2.vbm
Thanks for all the tips so far!
Heh. I'd started working on a TAS before you posted that, but due to procrastination/redoing it over a couple times/more procrastination, I'm only at the sword at the beach.
However, I pick it up at frame 4881 while you pick it up at 5013. Also, I'm playing on the original b&w version. Also, no l+r either. I inherently dislike something that requires me to disassemble my GB to do. :/
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1350/2%20-%20to%20beach.vbm
(rapidshare link, for chef)
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
Okay, I just did a check of where I could have lost those frames (132 by your count). Here's what I found (based on several points of comparison):
1) 15 frames behind at the title screen. I know I used a longer name, but I could have lost a frame or two bypassing the screens... you never know.
2) 75 frames behind (60 more) upon leaving Marin's house. I found that in the DX version, there's one extra line of text for getting the shield: "You can use it to flip enemies" vs. "hold the button and repel [here there's a text scroll] enemies." I may have lost a few frames in my position when talking to Tarin, but it's hard to tell.
3) 123 frames behind (48 more) when scrolling the screen out of the "bow-wow" map square. This was due to your clever use of bow-wow (good trick, btw) to push you through the grass (which I did use once in the newest run).
4) 125 frames behind (2 more) when jumping off the first ledge, but this is insignificant.
5) 133 frames behind (8 more), which roughly corresponds with your frame counts above, when pushing the second "spiny." Again, this was a result of bumping off an octorok with the shield.
So basically, I lost the most from the "bumping enemies" trick, and from an extra line of text (which I can't control in the DX version anyway), but I still optimized the route pretty well.
Thanks for the input, everybody; now what about the rest of the testrun? Comments? Criticisms? Line after line of praise? :) I want to try and optimize this first part before I get too deep and have to redo too much...
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 100
Location: Michigan, United States
Exactly.
Sorry if I offended you or anything. I'm actually going to watch your test run right now because I'm quite interested in it at this point. Would there be any way to convince you of doing a run on the DX version instead? Since you're going for completetion/entertainment over pure speed?
Edit: Just watched it. That was awesome. I can't wait for the optimized run, B&W or DX. Haha my screen looks so... vibrant after looking at B&W for 2 hours.
Joined: 3/17/2006
Posts: 243
Location: Back to good old Germany
Good work, Chef. This looked really impressive. Especially the new route "from behind" to the tail key. If you could include the bow-wow-shield-bumping it would be near perfection.
btw: Why is it faster to go into Madame MeowMeow's house?
btw2: Will Tarin appear at the tree with the beehive although he's still a racoon? I'd say he will, because usually there's no need for the game to check if you used the powder on him...(only interesting for 100%-run)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
I don't own the DX version, and I don't know anyone that can borrow it to me either... Only way is that I do a TAS of it, but I don't think I got enough "emulator experience" to do it. And this run won't be done anyway, I'm doing Oracle of Ages for the moment. Shall record segment 2 today.
Nice done Chef! One thing you shall think about during the run: Try to have a Piece of Power route. Slay a lot of enemies so you will have the PoP in the start os as many dungeons as possible. That will save a lot of time.
http://rapidshare.de/files/25520489/TestRun.vbm.html
Here is the 100% Testrun, it is meant as a Speedrun and the quality is like it too. It shall be improved with around 15 minutes.
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
The only way I've been able to cross pits is by the damage-boosting trick. At best, you could make it about 3/4 of the way across that pit before it "sucks" you in. Otherwise it would save a few seconds...
I will definately consider this. First place to set it up would be in and right after the tail cave, since it's a long trek to the moblin cave. Having the feather means that you can swing your sword in midair and never slow down, so I can set up further piece of power counts more easily.
Anybody know if bosses count for the Piece of Power "killed" total?
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1943
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
If you are able to get the PoP in the moblin cave this will save some time on the boss. With the PoP you can keep it in the air all the time. I'm doing the bug in my run so I don't need to explain...
And no, I don't know if the bosses counts. Never tried it.
Joined: 5/23/2006
Posts: 361
Location: Washington, United States
Okay, I just watched hero of the day's movie, and I want to know whether people here want me to try and use the left-right glitch to save time in the TAS. In the black and white version, I think a TAS would aim for "no glitches" as part of the requirements (to differentiate from the other movie), but I'm not so sure with the DX version...
In case anybody wonders, I downloaded the movie on a different computer.
I'm aiming for no left/right because it requires a hardware modification - it's in the same category as using the crooked cartridge trick on n64 games to me. I'm not going use any warp glitch (select or any of the other ways) simply because there's already a movie with them.
I do plan on walking through stuff, but I'm not warping across the map.