Body Harvest 64 improvements?

2016-12-16 12:18:31 pm

long post incoming:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjpjO3B4f2ioEv7_2godqxaH9Nd8O803R

the run is finished, here is a link to the playlist which includes my new Siberia in 16:07... the final time is 48:40!

the best time for Siberia using these strats is around 15:55. but this level has the most potential for a TAS to be a lot faster... all the other levels would basically be the same but:
1) you can do a couple different, possibly faster iceberg skip strats in stage 2
2) in stage 3 you can use the jet to kill the processor from above the water (just park it on the water right above where you first appear with the aqua tank) which would save at least 20 seconds. but it is far too unreliable for me to bother attempting here
3) the jet's missiles fly perfectly straight and seem to have no limit to their range, so the possibilities for quicker kills on the processors, the jellies, shield tower, and everything are very great
4) while carrying the SCUD with the Hangman it is possible to get the SCUD to push you along at a much higher speed and save some seconds, but this is completely unpredictable and unreliable, especially so far into the level
5) it may be faster to skip the jet altogether... i did some tests and it seems pretty close, but it would be an incredible pain in the ass on console
6) in stage 3 if you can manage to enter the house before the cutscene starts showing the save point appearing for stage 2, the cutscene will play after you exit the house and the oil rig bomb timer will run down for the 5-6 seconds that the cutscene plays. i never managed to do it on console (this run is probably the closest i ever got) but on emulator (with the jet's tighter turn radius) it's very possible
7) speaking of cutscenes, i have no idea why the save point cutscene for stage 3 never played. that has never happened to me before, on any stage, on console or emulator! of course it's very fortunate it happened here on such a great run and saved me a completely unforeseen 6 seconds. it looks like my jet took damage against the hillside right before the pop-up message with my score, which may be the cause. if so it should be reproducible in a TAS, and possibly in other stages as well to save up to a minute on the run overall.
8) for the record, any kind of SCUD skip seems impossible, and believe me i looked at a lot of different possibilities. it seems hard-coded that you die if the SCUD explodes without actually firing it, period. but interestingly the stage 4 processor still appears if the truck explodes, and also appears if your human meter hits 100% (thereby causing the truck to explode). but since you die instantly i don't see any way of taking advantage of his appearing.

...

as for the run overall, it seemed to me that sub-50 should be possible after all the comet skips (and grenade skip) were found, so that was my initial goal. my perfect estimates with all known strats is a lot closer to 47:00 now, so the run loses just about a minute and a half. the most time lost was in greece (fucked up against the third processor, sigh) but i dont feel like spending another 15 hours trying to get the impossible bike jump again...

i'm not interested in trying a single-segment run. the game is just too glitchy to risk getting stuck in a random wall or having your vehicle explode for no reason 45 minutes in... also the strats i did in this run are too suicidal, so you would have to use slower, less risky, less interesting strats. but i think a time of 54-55 minutes would really be a solid run.

also i'm not interested in a Hero mode run as i think it would basically be the same as Normal.
and i'm not interested in a 100% run as the artifacts and extra weapons don't really change any of the strats. basically you would do a collect-a-thon in a flying vehicle and then head for the shield generator.
as for a possible low% run, the any% actually IS low%... the only item you're required to pick up now is the SCUD launch code in siberia. technically i do grab a machine gun in java 1 but that doesn't really change anything...
but a different kind of challenge run could be a "fewest vehicles" run... for example you can TNT launch around greece and ultimately the only vehicle you need to touch is the plane. this would be a difficult and tedious run, however.

so that's all i have for now. enjoy the run!

long post incoming:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjpjO3B4f2ioEv7_2godqxaH9Nd8O803R

the run is finished, here is a link to the playlist which includes my new Siberia in 16:07... the final time is 48:40!

the best time for Siberia using these strats is around 15:55. but this level has the most potential for a TAS to be a lot faster... all the other levels would basically be the same but:
1) you can do a couple different, possibly faster iceberg skip strats in stage 2
2) in stage 3 you can use the jet to kill the processor from above the water (just park it on the water right above where you first appear with the aqua tank) which would save at least 20 seconds. but it is far too unreliable for me to bother attempting here
3) the jet's missiles fly perfectly straight and seem to have no limit to their range, so the possibilities for quicker kills on the processors, the jellies, shield tower, and everything are very great
4) while carrying the SCUD with the Hangman it is possible to get the SCUD to push you along at a much higher speed and save some seconds, but this is completely unpredictable and unreliable, especially so far into the level
5) it may be faster to skip the jet altogether... i did some tests and it seems pretty close, but it would be an incredible pain in the ass on console
6) in stage 3 if you can manage to enter the house before the cutscene starts showing the save point appearing for stage 2, the cutscene will play after you exit the house and the oil rig bomb timer will run down for the 5-6 seconds that the cutscene plays. i never managed to do it on console (this run is probably the closest i ever got) but on emulator (with the jet's tighter turn radius) it's very possible
7) speaking of cutscenes, i have no idea why the save point cutscene for stage 3 never played. that has never happened to me before, on any stage, on console or emulator! of course it's very fortunate it happened here on such a great run and saved me a completely unforeseen 6 seconds. it looks like my jet took damage  against the hillside right before the pop-up message with my score, which may be the cause. if so it should be reproducible in a TAS, and possibly in other stages as well to save up to a minute on the run overall.
8) for the record, any kind of SCUD skip seems impossible, and believe me i looked at a lot of different possibilities. it seems hard-coded that you die if the SCUD explodes without actually firing it, period. but interestingly the stage 4 processor still appears if the truck explodes, and also appears if your human meter hits 100% (thereby causing the truck to explode). but since you die instantly i don't see any way of taking advantage of his appearing.

...

as for the run overall, it seemed to me that sub-50 should be possible after all the comet skips (and grenade skip) were found, so that was my initial goal. my perfect estimates with all known strats is a lot closer to 47:00 now, so the run loses just about a minute and a half. the most time lost was in greece (fucked up against the third processor, sigh) but i dont feel like spending another 15 hours trying to get the impossible bike jump again...

i'm not interested in trying a single-segment run. the game is just too glitchy to risk getting stuck in a random wall or having your vehicle explode for no reason 45 minutes in... also the strats i did in this run are too suicidal, so you would have to use slower, less risky, less interesting strats. but i think a time of 54-55 minutes would really be a solid run.

also i'm not interested in a Hero mode run as i think it would basically be the same as Normal. 
and i'm not interested in a 100% run as the artifacts and extra weapons don't really change any of the strats. basically you would do a collect-a-thon in a flying vehicle and then head for the shield generator.
as for a possible low% run, the any% actually IS low%... the only item you're required to pick up now is the SCUD launch code in siberia. technically i do grab a machine gun in java 1 but that doesn't really change anything...
but a different kind of challenge run could be a "fewest vehicles" run... for example you can TNT launch around greece and ultimately the only vehicle you need to touch is the plane. this would be a difficult and tedious run, however.

so that's all i have for now. enjoy the run!

reality

2016-12-18 08:43:09 am

Nostalgia Kills

Oh man. I am happy to see this in full.

I think you might be a little optimistic about single segment keeping up with segmented strats . I can see it on java and america, but definitely not Siberia and Greece due to the more extreme vehicle use.

Anyway I've enjoyed following your project for a few months, and I can say that it's been worth it.

jaytheham

2017-02-16 08:47:11 pm

I don't know if it will be useful at all but I just found an indoor object debugger is still in the game, you can use it with controller 2, no hacks required. It lets you move and resize object collision and interaction zones, I've added all the details here: https://tcrf.net/Body_Harvest

blackbox64

2017-02-19 11:28:33 am

I go fast I guess

Quote from jaytheham:

I don't know if it will be useful at all but I just found an indoor object debugger is still in the game, you can use it with controller 2, no hacks required. It lets you move and resize object collision and interaction zones, I've added all the details here: https://tcrf.net/Body_Harvest

While this is very interesting, I doubt that would be allowed in runs. I suggested a ICheat run a few years ago and that was shot down very quickly

As for the finished run, I personally believe that most of the tricks used could be used in single segment runs (excluding the Bike Jump in Greece 3 until a setup can be found). I feel like the problem is focused on Comet, you have a 1:30 Level time vs the Safe 10:00 time. It would be better to go for the risky start as you can fit about 6 or 7 attempts in before the safe tactics work.

Also, Body Harvest has been listed on speedrun.com http://www.speedrun.com/Body_Harvest/full_game and it's been set into 4 categories. Easy%, Hard%, Very Easy% and Very Hard%. The thing is, with the Very%, they aren't view able on the difficulty selected and can only be accessed by pressing left or right a few times. It's not my decision but I personally believe that Any% should be Easy%, and Very% shouldn't be a thing since it's more of a secret difficulty.

[quote="jaytheham"]I don't know if it will be useful at all but I just found an indoor object debugger is still in the game, you can use it with controller 2, no hacks required. It lets you move and resize object collision and interaction zones, I've added all the details here: https://tcrf.net/Body_Harvest[/quote]

While this is very interesting, I doubt that would be allowed in runs. I suggested a ICheat run a few years ago and that was shot down very quickly

As for the finished run, I personally believe that most of the tricks used could be used in single segment runs (excluding the Bike Jump in Greece 3 until a setup can be found). I feel like the problem is focused on Comet, you have a 1:30 Level time vs the Safe 10:00 time. It would be better to go for the risky start as you can fit about 6 or 7 attempts in before the safe tactics work.

Also, Body Harvest has been listed on speedrun.com [url]http://www.speedrun.com/Body_Harvest/full_game[/url] and it's been set into 4 categories. Easy%, Hard%, Very Easy% and Very Hard%. The thing is, with the Very%, they aren't view able on the difficulty selected and can only be accessed by pressing left or right a few times. It's not my decision but I personally believe that Any% should be Easy%, and Very% shouldn't be a thing since it's more of a secret difficulty.

jaytheham

2017-02-19 07:55:43 pm

Is there any proof that the Very Hard / Very Easy modes actually exist? I don't see any evidence of them existing in the ROM, and I've tried pressing all and any buttons at the select difficulty screen but nothing changes...

blackbox64

2017-02-20 05:32:27 am

I go fast I guess

I don't think it appears, you just press right or left a few times and select it and is "should" be in Very mode. I honestly doubt it exists but I haven't tested it

leftysheroes

Edit history:

leftysheroes: 2017-05-24 06:42:53 pm

leftysheroes: 2017-05-24 06:42:00 pm

leftysheroes: 2017-05-24 06:35:48 pm

leftysheroes: 2017-05-24 06:35:33 pm

2017-05-24 06:35:13 pm

I have been streaming attempts of this game pretty regularly on my channel twitch.tv/mikeakabill

This is a really amazing Greece from one of my streams. This would be a 10:49 using blackbox64's timing.

leftysheroes

2017-06-10 09:30:08 pm

Slowly making my way towards sub hour. Shouldn't be too long just need first try SE Launch/Final Boss instant win and I will have it.

bh guy

2017-09-28 03:35:11 pm

first off, congrats to leftysheroes on his full game runs and finally achieving sub-hour. it's a great milestone for this game and he's brave/insane for trying such a long run with so many chances for instant failure Smiley

anyway here's a 13 second improvement to my segmented run, bringing the total down to 48:27. i use a more aggressive angle of jumping over the first river, keeping all my speed, and blasting into the city in a slightly different spot and keeping all my speed all the way to the first gate. as always the gate is a pain in the ass but the second one goes smooth and i get a perfect alignment right away for the boss skip. finally, i blast backwards down the hill without wasting time lining up or turning the camera around, and this time i didn't mess up the sideroll into the boss trigger. i think 1:15 or 1:16 would be the absolute perfect limit with these strats (dont get stuck on the gates, and 1-shot the second tree at the beginning) but it took me several hours just to get this so i'm not going to bother unless some new strats turn up.

ideas for a TAS:
1) maybe go for a third set of fragcannon at the start, so you have extra shots to reach even more outrageous speeds.
2) turn alpha 1 sideways as you approach the central tower,so when you exit the vehicle you warp immediately into the doorway and don't waste time walking. this is possible, but seems easier on emulator.
3) turn alpha 1 sideways at the last second before hitting the boss trigger so when you exit the vehicle you immediately hit the boss trigger and don't waste time walking. you would need to release the A button while turning so you don't go out of alignment for the boss kill, but maybe this would make you lose enough speed to actually hurt him?
if these improvements work i could see maybe taking the time down to 1:05... is sub-minute Comet the new holy grail for body harvest? Wink

in other news, just this morning i was messing around in Greece and found a new Bike Jump. it's done immediately to the right of the bridge that Dark Adam blows up, landing just the other side of the bridge (when i landed, i was close enough to the bridge to activate the cutscene... but a good jump can probably avoid this). you can make this jump keeping the motorcycle as well.

so i'm wondering now if a faster possible (TAS?) route would be: do this jump -> drive straight down and kill the processor on the motorcycle (very hard because the bike has such little health, and the processor is surrounded by mantis enemies) -> drive all the way north to the airfield -> fly straight to the shield generator. i may look into this some more, and post a video if the route looks promising.

as well, it was interesting to see in leftysheroes video that the resonator can destroy multiple arms of the Crab boss at the same time. i see no reason the fragcannon shouldn't be able to destroy 2 or 3 arms at once (again probably best left to TAS). but this should save several seconds per arm.

if a faster Greece route exists, and with an improved Crab fight, it may be the case that the "perfect" Greece run is under 9 minutes Wink

first off, congrats to leftysheroes on his full game runs and finally achieving sub-hour. it's a great milestone for this game and he's brave/insane for trying such a long run with so many chances for instant failure :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJOGE6zjRI0

anyway here's a 13 second improvement to my segmented run, bringing the total down to 48:27. i use a more aggressive angle of jumping over the first river, keeping all my speed, and blasting into the city in a slightly different spot and keeping all my speed all the way to the first gate. as always the gate is a pain in the ass but the second one goes smooth and i get a perfect alignment right away for the boss skip. finally, i blast backwards down the hill without wasting time lining up or turning the camera around, and this time i didn't mess up the sideroll into the boss trigger. i think 1:15 or 1:16 would be the absolute perfect limit with these strats (dont get stuck on the gates, and 1-shot the second tree at the beginning) but it took me several hours just to get this so i'm not going to bother unless some new strats turn up.

ideas for a TAS: 
1) maybe go for a third set of fragcannon at the start, so you have extra shots to reach even more outrageous speeds.
2) turn alpha 1 sideways as you approach the central tower,so when you exit the vehicle you warp immediately into the doorway and don't waste time walking. this is possible, but seems easier on emulator.
3) turn alpha 1 sideways at the last second before hitting the boss trigger so when you exit the vehicle you immediately hit the boss trigger and don't waste time walking. you would need to release the A button while turning so you don't go out of alignment for the boss kill, but maybe this would make you lose enough speed to actually hurt him?
if these improvements work i could see maybe taking the time down to 1:05... is sub-minute Comet the new holy grail for body harvest? ;)

in other news, just this morning i was messing around in Greece and found a new Bike Jump. it's done immediately to the right of the bridge that Dark Adam blows up, landing just the other side of the bridge (when i landed, i was close enough to the bridge to activate the cutscene... but a good jump can probably avoid this). you can make this jump keeping the motorcycle as well.

so i'm wondering now if a faster possible (TAS?) route would be: do this jump -> drive straight down and kill the processor on the motorcycle (very hard because the bike has such little health, and the processor is surrounded by mantis enemies) -> drive all the way north to the airfield -> fly straight to the shield generator. i may look into this some more, and post a video if the route looks promising.

as well, it was interesting to see in leftysheroes video that the resonator can destroy multiple arms of the Crab boss at the same time. i see no reason the fragcannon shouldn't be able to destroy 2 or 3 arms at once (again probably best left to TAS). but this should save several seconds per arm.

if a faster Greece route exists, and with an improved Crab fight, it may be the case that the "perfect" Greece run is under 9 minutes ;)

bh guy

2018-02-07 02:46:22 pm

in case anyone is still reading this thread.

here's a 17-second improvement on america. the total time for my segmented run is now 48:09. there's a couple faster strats i know of for america, which are in the video description, but they're fucking hard/random and i won't be trying to get them in a run anytime soon...

a small addendum to an earlier comment i made on page 15 in this thread, re: TNT launching. i said the most height i could reach was 9000. it's actually perfectly possible to blast straight through the max possible height value (32,767) and suddenly reappear back on the ground, which looks like adam stepping out of water (because there's a layer of water under the ground). it seems like he would keep flying for a quite a bit higher if the ground did not wrap around. i wonder what height you would eventually reach?

congrats to leftysheroes again for his new 57:53 SS run, and it looks like he still plans to keep pushing that time down. truly a madman!

i've tried some SS runs for a few days recently. today i managed to actually finish one, in 1:00:03, missing sub-hour by 4 fucking seconds. but there were a ton of mistakes. if i can find time to try some more attempts, maybe i can take the WR before lefty comes back for it Wink

in case anyone is still reading this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYnI_buasA&t=485s

here's a 17-second improvement on america. the total time for my segmented run is now 48:09. there's a couple faster strats i know of for america, which are in the video description, but they're fucking hard/random and i won't be trying to get them in a run anytime soon...

a small addendum to an earlier comment i made on page 15 in this thread, re: TNT launching. i said the most height i could reach was 9000. it's actually perfectly possible to blast straight through the max possible height value (32,767) and suddenly reappear back on the ground, which looks like adam stepping out of water (because there's a layer of water under the ground). it seems like he would keep flying for a quite a bit higher if the ground did not wrap around. i wonder what height you would eventually reach?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HewMiTjKx2Y

congrats to leftysheroes again for his new 57:53 SS run, and it looks like he still plans to keep pushing that time down. truly a madman!

i've tried some SS runs for a few days recently. today i managed to actually finish one, in 1:00:03, missing sub-hour by 4 fucking seconds. but there were a ton of mistakes. if i can find time to try some more attempts, maybe i can take the WR before lefty comes back for it ;)

bh guy

2018-02-10 12:52:08 pm

after some more SS attempts i got a 54:35! overall it was pretty tight, except for two major mistakes costing a minute each. so looks like a reaaallly good SS time would be near 52:00, before you have to start going for suicide strats to gain more time. sub-50 SS just isn't happening without a major breakthrough or new tricks. that would mean coming within 2 minutes of the current segmented time, and my "safe" comet strat already loses like 40 seconds. the entire run is already a gauntlet of possible random deaths and it's ridiculous that you have to do not one but TWO one-shot tricks in the last two minutes of the run

if i can't improve on this time soon i'll upload the full vid to my youtube channel, probably within the week...

bh guy

2018-03-13 04:55:39 pm

53:13! definitely still improvable by 2 minutes but i need a break for now. i still say sub-50 is a bit too much without adding in greece bike jump or something. meanwhile check my channel for other random unused glitches and strats. with every single known improvement and perfect play, the segmented run can theoretically be somewhere around 44:30. i wonder if TAS could go under 40?

WMJ

2018-03-31 12:55:02 pm

I was following this thread at least 5 – 6 years ago and remember being blown away by all the discoveries. As the game was totally broken on emulator at the time I moved on.

I picked up the game again recently and played through it trying a lot of the speedrun tricks. I think this game makes a fantastic speedrun so I have now decided to properly learn it.
The game’s problems on emulator have been solved since recently (at least on the Project64 emulator with the latest GLideN64 plugin) so I figured why not try making a TAS really utilizing all the tricks. I think it would make for a fantastic watch seeing all the tricks implemented optimally and likely a sub 40 minutes time. I’ve made a lot of TASes for F-Zero X in the past which is an extremely technical game so I know how to approach it.

Sadly, I encountered a lot of problems playing it in the Bizhawk emulator. While the game runs at a solid 60 fps in Project64 not so much in Bizhawk with the exact same plugins. In fact it’s running at about 50% of the intended speed which messes up the sound as well. On top of that making the TAS the extreme lag of harvester waves often causes the movie to desync. I have had to do the Greece 2 and Greece 3 stages multiple times because it would just randomly desync. The only way to find it is to play the whole movie from the start to discover where and if it desyncs. Because it’s running so slow the music is also messed up.

I guess if these technical difficulties can be solved with the game running at a solid 60fps I would be more than happy to really commit to this project but for now I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s not an exciting watch because of how slow it is. I am kind of hoping that maybe it’s my computer that causes this. If so then maybe the TAS can run at the normal speed with a more powerful computer. Wouldn’t solve the desync issues on my end but at least a great video could be produced.

This is the test TAS I have made of the Greece level. It’s not super optimized for reasons mentioned above (mostly the constant desyncs). I tried the new route bh guy suggested for Greece 3. I kinda doubt it’s faster than the classic Greece 3 bike jump strat but it looks cool anyway. Killing the processor on bike is also very tough and I guess required for it to have a chance of being the faster strat. I also couldn’t manage to skip the cutscene at the bridge. I tried landing as far to the right as possible but the trigger for that cutscene seems to be pretty large.

I guess if the technical issues can be solved I would be very interested to hear what TAS only ideas there are and commit to making a full game TAS. I already have a ideas few myself such as blowing up the SCUD missile truck and live. I have literally seen it happening so I know it’s possible just not exactly how (or if it was a freak accident). The sliding move for on foot I couldn’t get to be faster in my initial testing. I’m also interested in what makes a processor (such as America 1) commit instant suicide. Perhaps with a TAS only squeeze through the cacti that could make that stage really fast.

TAS movie file for Bizhawk if anyone wants to see if they can make the playback better than what I could manage https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ugDWzs79ucg2sJFPQqk1bitsViTCQHqP

I was following this thread at least 5 – 6 years ago and remember being blown away by all the discoveries. As the game was totally broken on emulator at the time I moved on.

I picked up the game again recently and played through it trying a lot of the speedrun tricks. I think this game makes a fantastic speedrun so I have now decided to properly learn it.
The game’s problems on emulator have been solved since recently (at least on the Project64 emulator with the latest GLideN64 plugin) so I figured why not try making a TAS really utilizing all the tricks. I think it would make for a fantastic watch seeing all the tricks implemented optimally and likely a sub 40 minutes time. I’ve made a lot of TASes for F-Zero X in the past which is an extremely technical game so I know how to approach it.

Sadly, I encountered a lot of problems playing it in the Bizhawk emulator. While the game runs at a solid 60 fps in Project64 not so much in Bizhawk with the exact same plugins. In fact it’s running at about 50% of the intended speed which messes up the sound as well. On top of that making the TAS the extreme lag of harvester waves often causes the movie to desync. I have had to do the Greece 2 and Greece 3 stages multiple times because it would just randomly desync. The only way to find it is to play the whole movie from the start to discover where and if it desyncs. Because it’s running so slow the music is also messed up.

I guess if these technical difficulties can be solved with the game running at a solid 60fps I would be more than happy to really commit to this project but for now I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s not an exciting watch because of how slow it is. I am kind of hoping that maybe it’s my computer that causes this. If so then maybe the TAS can run at the normal speed with a more powerful computer. Wouldn’t solve the desync issues on my end but at least a great video could be produced.

This is the test TAS I have made of the Greece level. It’s not super optimized for reasons mentioned above (mostly the constant desyncs). I tried the new route bh guy suggested for Greece 3. I kinda doubt it’s faster than the classic Greece 3 bike jump strat but it looks cool anyway. Killing the processor on bike is also very tough and I guess required for it to have a chance of being the faster strat. I also couldn’t manage to skip the cutscene at the bridge. I tried landing as far to the right as possible but the trigger for that cutscene seems to be pretty large.

https://youtu.be/KSrAbFn1kv4

I guess if the technical issues can be solved I would be very interested to hear what TAS only ideas there are and commit to making a full game TAS. I already have a ideas few myself such as blowing up the SCUD missile truck and live. I have literally seen it happening so I know it’s possible just not exactly how (or if it was a freak accident). The sliding move for on foot I couldn’t get to be faster in my initial testing. I’m also interested in what makes a processor (such as America 1) commit instant suicide. Perhaps with a TAS only squeeze through the cacti that could make that stage really fast.

TAS movie file for Bizhawk if anyone wants to see if they can make the playback better than what I could manage [url]https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ugDWzs79ucg2sJFPQqk1bitsViTCQHqP[/url]

bh guy

2018-04-02 07:21:17 am

hey WMJ, nice contribution. i still have hope the greece 3 cutscene can be skipped with that jump (or in another spot slightly more south that looks very promising) and if it works, with optimization i'm pretty sure that would be fastest for a TAS.

bizhawk on my 1.5 year old laptop also runs at about half speed so it's probably not just you. project64 runs fine but most buildings have no collision. i haven't tried changing any plugins though.

i was thinking about making a "human theory TAS" or whatever it would be called, just splicing together like 20 short clips of the best strats for a stage. i think it will look pretty impressive and can serve as a guide for future runners or TASers. i dont have much experience with video editing though so i'll have to find an easy program/setup to make it work.

bh guy

2018-04-02 08:14:09 am

ok i just tried some more and actually managed to land that jump. this is legit 10x harder/rarer than the original bike jump. i can usually get that one within probably 20 attempts. this is the ONLY time i've made this jump after literally hundreds of attempts. you need a ton of speed and you have to just throw the control stick to the side and hope for SICK AIR.

bh guy

2018-04-02 09:10:19 am

another recent find, can save a few seconds getting to the airport on the original route (but not on the new "Ultra Jump" route)

jaytheham

2019-08-05 11:49:22 pm

I've been doing some more poking around in the ROM lately and discovered a new hidden feature: Pressing R on the second controller opens the portal through the current stage's shield wall, so you can pass through to the next area without killing the current processor. Obviously it's kind of cheating, but at the same time it's a built in feature of the game, it works on any save file.

bodyharvestfan

2020-05-12 12:34:13 am

Hello everyone, amazing to read through this thread and see how much progress has been made in the 22 years since the game came out. I posted on this thread about 8 years ago now, it's funny to see you all still attempting new bike jumps after all this time. I also remember downloading and watching Mashmallow's back when I was in secondary school.

I recently posted a giant wall of text about my experience with the game on gamefaqs. If you are interested please have a look!
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/196796-body-harvest/78641905

Jaytheham, I messaged you on gamefaqs to ask if you ever extracted the texture maps for the other levels. The map you made of Greece all those years ago is really cool. The hidden feature you discovered last year has the potential to blow the game apart. I'm surprised no one has commented! I expect a new category of runs is necessary.

Belated congratulations to Lefty and BH Guy for their amazing runs.

jaytheham

Edit history:

jaytheham: 2020-07-03 05:36:55 pm

2020-07-03 05:36:45 pm

bodyharvestfan asked about them so I extracted the data and built full resolution maps for each of the games levels: http://www.jaytheham.com/BodyHarvestMaps.7z

This got me excited about BH again and I smashed out this level viewer which lets you view the trigger bounds among other things, could be useful for speed running: http://www.jaytheham.com/bodyharvest/levelviewer/

bodyharvestfan

2021-02-10 10:27:09 pm

I don't know if anyone still reads this board but Jaytheham and I have started a body harvest discord. It's pretty full of body harvest content. Anyone is welcome!

https://discord.gg/pfZQdat9

Bodyharvestfan

2021-02-26 09:13:49 pm

The invite expired.
This one should be permanent.

https://discord.gg/ANJZPP7Qwp