Denver, CO, USAI finished a run with the royal regatta and everything went according to plan. Then this happened -
A few resets later I got the Regatta, woman combo again. However this time India 1900 was simply the right path and not the ending location. Any idea why this would happen?
Disclaimer: I have no emotional attachment to my very subpar Popeye runs, that's not what this is about.
I feel like the "overhaul/rules change" was handled poorly and sets a bad precedent overall. Changing rules and rejecting runs based on the new rules when the runs were accepted on the old rules does nothing but punish the runners, and in my instance, for runs that I did 2.5 years ago. That's not what we should be doing. It can frustrate the players and/or dissuade them from submitting runs at all. Why should I submit a run if rules can haphazardly be changed whenever and invalidate them? In an extreme scenario if every NES board did this my entire NES speedrun career would be gone because I used Mesen 0.9.8 (which doesn't even have the run ahead feature, 0.9.9 does and it's easy to detect anyway so blanket banning all versions is extreme) and various FCEUX versions.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that rule changes will happen from time to time. I just think this could have been handled better. I've seen plenty of boards with, right at the top: RULES UPDATE AS OF whatever date - The list of allowable emulators has changed. Please be sure your submissions adhere to the new standards. Runs submitted before date will remain as they were accepted based on the rules at the time.
@NESCardinality and I have been around a while so I'm curious about his thoughts regarding this as well.
@lackattack has a run pending in this with a time of 5s. This time save is due to pressing A to play the cartoon vs pressing start. There is a clear difference between pressing A and pressing start. Per the manual - "To view your cartoon from the beginning, press the start button. (To view from the current frame forward, just press the A button)" Pressing A excludes the title screen, so I would say that the full "cartoon" hasn't been played in that circumstance. The game itself even says "start = play" so it's intending you to play the entire thing with start. Using A almost seems like a preview as opposed to a "finished" product. I'm a huge fan of outside the box strats (hell that's what CharStrats are) and I like Lack so this isn't malicious, this is just me spending more time and energy than I should on a meme game that surprisingly has more than 2 runs on it haha.
So I'm posting here to collect thoughts on the matter before making a final judgment on this, but I'm leaning toward the A button start being "incomplete" unless someone wants change my mind.
I was watching Niss this morning and noticed a peculiarity. During transitions/kid switches between dark areas, the game seemed to load faster. This is probably due to not having to actually render all the obstacles. Most room transitions turn into 40-60 frame savings which should add up quite a bit. Of course the drawback is having to play in the dark haha
Here's a not at all optimized WIP for discussion or suggestions.
I broke stuff again.
Basically using enough new kid walks delays Ed's movements (and timers and stuff) so you can encounter him before the security room. If he's "in" the GT room when you go in he can't actually spawn there though he can move in from the red hallway. For some reason this bugs out GT (but Ed will finish his walking to the door to answer the bell.)
I didn't do it in the video but you can new kid walk through the GT room to reduce lag.
Trying to figure out how to best make this useful since he answers the door and that costs some of the time you saved.
I was messing around with stuff today and found that you can pre-store a New Kid command and activate it in certain situations. Could be useful for setting up dungeon skips ahead of time, plus it can be used during cutscenes.
Basically during a screen transition (this can also be between most doors/rooms) or a regular new kid switch you would hit select, then press A on New Kid while the screen is fading out. If done right, your next A press (or start during cutscenes) will immediately bring up the New Kid menu interrupting whatever is happening. I believe this works by queueing the "GET" command but overwriting it with New Kid, which the game just lets you do in most situations for some reason.
I'm not as familiar with meteor police % but could this be used to regain control in Fred's lab as the little police dude is running through it? Edit - in this video there was already a capture cutscene involving purple tentacle to bypass the new kid lock out in the lab.
I was screwing around and made a TAS for this while looking for extreme early ending input runs. Turns out the advance mode is better than the rookie mode for being able to drain much more time per play when you're on offense and should drive down the RTA time quite a bit.
Hello. Someone pointed out on my TAS of this that the best ending is actually considerably higher than we thought.
It's nearly 6 million.
I recently knocked out a TAS for this game ( ) and I may have solved the chopper dilemma.
Memory value 0x0019 displays the chopper's health starting at 18. (If anyone has video evidence of them getting 17 or 16 kills to beat the boss, please let me know.) I tried numerous things and it always started at 18. It decrements by 1 each time an enemy has killed, but not all kills count.
It seems like if you hit the enemy twice (either from a standalone double hit or like, kick them in mid air then hit them again on the ground) that it doesn't decrement the counter for that kill. This was consistent across all my tests.
Janky game is janky.
I was optimizing the TAS for this game and I came across a new route that should bring the time down to 51/50 ish seconds with a good wizard fight.
AI behavior is seeded to some degree based on frame entry from the title screens. One in particular has the AI cast the imprison spell in lieu of a fight. The spell is way faster than a second battle.
Note that this is optimized for TAS (final input) so you'll still want to end the fight as close to the end spot as possible.
Enjoy!
I found a couple interesting things in this game today.
First - I managed to get like ten jackpots in one shot. The ball did not go all the way to the "catcher" but hovered right near it in a way that confused the game into providing extra jackpots before it "un-lit" it. This was a fluke and I'm not sure how viable it would be to go for.
Second and much more important - It's possible to farm skill shots over and over again. When you drain with the ball saver active it plays a little animation. If you tilt during this animation your ball will be fully reset (not auto launched from the saver) and let you go for the skill shot again without costing you a ball. You can chain this indefinitely (as long as you drain before the saver disappears) on ball 3 for 3mm per shot. With a decent success rate I think it would clock in around 30 minutes or less. It's not the fastest strategy but it is pretty easy.
I wrote up a Twitter post guide about this game, maybe it'll be helpful
https://twitter.com/ShesChardcore/status/1421839583180906501?s=19
Hello! I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a discord for Wizardry speedrunning so I added a subset of channels to my own server, where people can chat, theory craft etc. for all 8 mainline Wizardry games. Feel free to join!
Hello! I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a discord for Wizardry speedrunning so I added a subset of channels to my own server, where people can chat, theory craft etc. for all 8 mainline Wizardry games. Feel free to join!
Hello! I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a discord for Wizardry speedrunning so I added a subset of channels to my own server, where people can chat, theory craft etc. for all 8 mainline Wizardry games. Feel free to join!
Hello! I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a discord for Wizardry speedrunning so I added a subset of channels to my own server, where people can chat, theory craft etc. for all 8 mainline Wizardry games. Feel free to join!
Not sure if this was known but I stumbled upon this today. If Ed captures a kid who isn't your active kid and you're already on New Kid and press A and Start during the initial dialog, then press start during the screen transitions it gives you the New Kid command and you can just walk right out of the open door. It only seems to work for Ed (even works in his room, grab hammy, switch kids, let him catch you, do the thing, and you just teleported back to the first floor, right to the Silver Key basically which could end up being a nice time save since you can do everything I just mentioned with one kid.
Have at it folks:
The mobile version of Monster Box has no delete button, only restart. How should I go about proving the data was deleted?
