Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest

WunUnknownPlayer

Edit history:

WunUnknownPlayer: 2014-01-22 03:14:55 pm

2014-01-22 03:12:51 pm

Quote from Furious Paul:

So I got a 45:44 with only 2 deaths for the 100% run that is worth checking out!

Makes my 52 minute run look like crap. Thanks. Tongue

The route is spot on what I had first done and abandoned for early death abuse at Jova to get both Holy Water and White Crystal in Day 0. I gotta get back to this game.

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-01-31 06:51:23 pm

2014-01-31 04:44:45 pm

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

I finally got a sub 37 in!

Just got a time of 36:52 - with only 2 Deaths! (WR)

This run was SOOOO close to only having 1 death total, but I died accidentally at the end, that really irritated me. I have also figured out how to do 1 death runs with the Any% category through better micro optimizations everywhere without reducing time too much.

My goal has now changed from a sub 37 with 2 deaths to a sub 36:40 with only 1 death.

Quadstriker

2014-02-05 01:39:59 am

Really been enjoying all the work you've been putting into this game Paul

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-03-19 12:39:40 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-02-23 09:06:08 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-02-21 09:03:41 pm

2014-02-21 08:58:25 pm

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

Hey all, I have been grinding out "Glitchless Any%" runs through Castlevania II now for a little over a week, putting in about 45 hours into it, and I finally have the run right here for yall:

Final results: 38:28 - only 1 death!

No glitches are allowed, meaning no floor drops, no purple block tricks, no instant holy water Death kill, or other clipping through walls. Basically beating the game the way the developers intend you to play it.

This was also my very first single death Glitchless run I did, as normally I always finished before with 2 deaths. This also met my goal of a sub 38:30! Very solid run overall.

Im gonna be working on "Deathless" runs again now..

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2014-02-22 12:55:33 am

2014-02-22 12:54:28 am

Professional Second Banana

SDA generally doesn't recognize Glitchless as a separate category unless the speedrunning community for that game consider it a category (and agrees on what exactly is/isn't allowed for the category). Otherwise the expectation for any% runs is that any time-saving glitches are used.

Are there other CV2 runners that do Glitchless runs?

MASTER-88

Edit history:

MASTER-88: 2014-02-22 01:35:53 am

2014-02-22 01:24:18 am

Master-88

SDA rules are sometimes weird. For example my Iron Sword run is seperate category even i didn´t used game breaking glitch. But used some time saver glitches.

But i think those rules are changes after 2010. Some examples: Battletoads level 3 warp and Bionic commando area 8 wrong warp is allowed obsoleted current run.

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-02-25 03:52:26 pm

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Furious Paul: 2014-02-25 07:36:39 am

2014-02-22 02:18:28 am

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

Puwexil, there is no one else running this game right now except for me. From scurrying the web, I only found one person who did a "glitchless" run, and that was Bisqwit's glitchless TAS run of 38:53 done in 2004. I actually managed to beat his TAS run with a single segment run by 25 seconds.

So "glitchless" has been done before using the same rules that I did in my "glitchless" runs. The rules I use make sense in that there are no glitches and everything is played out the way the developers of the game intend you to play it. I made an image showing the "glitches" that are not used in the run i did..

http://www.furiouspaul.com/nes/castlevania2/glitchless.png

Why glitchless? Castlevania 2 is chock full of obvious things that look like glitches, zipping through floors, purple blocks that push you into some empty mansion, instantly killing bosses with one holy water shot, etc.. A glitchless speed run shows the fastest way to beat the game the way the developers intend for you to play it without all these glitches. I've had numerous people in my twitch stream requesting a "glitchless" run, which motivated me to actually start thinking of doing it.

So here are the rules I thought of and why I included them in the "glitchless" runs that I did:

- Eliminate all floor drops - This was obvious to me, as these are not intended to be in the game.
- Purple block tricks (both ways) - Another obvious glitch. Not doing these glitches actually shows the player to use skill to go through the actual game in places where you would only see during a run where the purple blocks are not allowed.
- No instant holy water Death kill - Definitely a glitch that was not to be part of the game. Very cool to see it done in all the other categories, but makes perfect sense to whip him to death during a "glitchless" run.
- The skip after the flame whip - That little clip through the floor is clearly a glitch and in a normal "glitchless" run the player must take the floating blocks back and around upwards.
- The whipping block jumps at the water passages - These are the only "glitches" that made me actually think about not including into the "glitchless" category, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it should be counted as a glitch. The developers of the game clearly intended the player to take the steps instead, and that was the main reason why I counted these as glitches. Bisqwits TAS run did not use these either.

The only other thing I considered counting as a glitch are all the "whip jumps" that are done to protect yourself from the many long jumps in this game. These whip jumps ensures a higher success rate of making the tougher/longer jumps and not falling and dying or something. I let these slide because these are very minor glitches and you are technically still going the path of the ways the developers intended for you to take. These whip jumps will not alter the "actual" final time in any way, and these whip jumps makes doing "glitchless" less stressful, so I let them in the "glitchless" runs that I did.

I figure the other past runners of this game would agree on what i decided, but yeah would be nice to get their opinions as well. Zombietraine? Seawolf? Or any others have thoughts on these rules? I don't mind doing glitchless again if the rules change. It's good that I got it started with a nice example to work with here at least..

Puwexil, there is no one else running this game right now except for me. From scurrying the web, I only found one person who did a "glitchless" run, and that was [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sIkwhhB4v4]Bisqwit's glitchless TAS run of 38:53[/url] done in 2004.  I actually managed to beat his TAS run with a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgAvdzFXD3U]single segment run[/url] by 25 seconds.

So "glitchless" has been done before using the same rules that I did in my "glitchless" runs.  The rules I use make sense in that there are no glitches and everything is played out the way the developers of the game intend you to play it.  I made an image showing the "glitches" that are not used in the run i did..

http://www.furiouspaul.com/nes/castlevania2/glitchless.png

[color="gold"]Why glitchless?[/color]  Castlevania 2 is chock full of obvious things that look like glitches, zipping through floors, purple blocks that push you into some empty mansion, instantly killing bosses with one holy water shot, etc.. A glitchless speed run shows the fastest way to beat the game the way the developers intend for you to play it without all these glitches.  I've had numerous people in my twitch stream requesting a "glitchless" run, which motivated me to actually start thinking of doing it.

So here are the rules I thought of and why I included them in the "glitchless" runs that I did:

[b][color="gold"]- Eliminate all floor drops -[/color][/b] This was obvious to me, as these are not intended to be in the game.
[b][color="gold"]- Purple block tricks (both ways) -[/color][/b]  Another obvious glitch.  Not doing these glitches actually shows the player to use skill to go through the actual game in places where you would only see during a run where the purple blocks are not allowed.
[b][color="gold"]- No instant holy water Death kill -[/color][/b]  Definitely a glitch that was not to be part of the game.  Very cool to see it done in all the other categories, but makes perfect sense to whip him to death during a "glitchless" run.
[b][color="gold"]- The skip after the flame whip -[/color][/b] That little clip through the floor is clearly a glitch and in a normal "glitchless" run the player must take the floating blocks back and around upwards.
[b][color="gold"]- The whipping block jumps at the water passages -[/color][/b] These are the only "glitches" that made me actually think about not including into the "glitchless" category, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it should be counted as a glitch.  The developers of the game clearly intended the player to take the steps instead, and that was the main reason why I counted these as glitches.  Bisqwits TAS run did not use these either.

The only other thing I considered counting as a glitch are all the "whip jumps" that are done to protect yourself from the many long jumps in this game. These whip jumps ensures a higher success rate of making the tougher/longer jumps and not falling and dying or something.  I let these slide because these are very minor glitches and you are technically still going the path of the ways the developers intended for you to take. These whip jumps will not alter the "actual" final time in any way, and these whip jumps makes doing "glitchless" less stressful, so I let them in the "glitchless" runs that I did.

I figure the other past runners of this game would agree on what i decided, but yeah would be nice to get their opinions as well.  Zombietraine? Seawolf? Or any others have thoughts on these rules?  I don't mind doing glitchless again if the rules change. It's good that I got it started with a nice example to work with here at least..

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-02-28 02:08:54 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-28 02:08:45 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-28 02:08:12 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 07:02:21 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 06:09:00 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 06:08:04 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 06:07:41 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 04:53:45 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-27 04:52:33 am

Furious Paul: 2014-02-26 06:56:40 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-02-26 06:29:11 pm

2014-02-26 06:21:51 pm

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

New skip discovered!!! Check it out:

http://www.twitch.tv/furiouspaul/c/3793811

This new skip, which is done in Death's mansion, saves anywhere from 12 - 24 seconds, or 18 seconds on average. This skip also increases the odds of getting a deathless run in or a 1 death Any% run in because I don't have to worry about getting killed by the gargoyles with the old method. The only drawback is that I would lose on getting some hearts, but that's not that big of a deal. My current success rate is about 85% though Undecided

If I miss it once and succeed on the second try, I can still gain a couple of seconds from it (on average). So definitely worth doing.

Another drawback to this skip is I am no longer going to be able to show the only use of the Diamond during the 100% run. Although I do plan on doing a "100% Glitchless" run, so I can show it off in that one.

I did not discover this skip, I seen this from Travis Miller's 100% (+ all Tomes) Deathless run on YouTube, done in 1:10:30. I don't know if he was the one who discovered it or not, I'm still awaiting on his reply.

New skip discovered!!!  Check it out:

http://www.twitch.tv/furiouspaul/c/3793811

This new skip, which is done in Death's mansion, saves anywhere from 12 - 24 seconds, or 18 seconds on average. This skip also increases the odds of getting a deathless run in or a 1 death Any% run in because I don't have to worry about getting killed by the gargoyles with the old method. The only drawback is that I would lose on getting some hearts, but that's not that big of a deal. My current success rate is about 85% though :-\  If I miss it once and succeed on the second try, I can still gain a couple of seconds from it (on average). So definitely worth doing.

Another drawback to this skip is I am no longer going to be able to show the only [url=http://youtu.be/5u3SFTPylGU?t=28m25s]use of the Diamond during the 100% run[/url].  Although I do plan on doing a "100% Glitchless" run, so I can show it off in that one.

I did not discover this skip, I seen this from [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCZYozQmXN4&t=41m21s]Travis Miller's 100% (+ all Tomes) Deathless run[/url] on YouTube, done in 1:10:30.  I don't know if he was the one who discovered it or not, I'm still awaiting on his reply.

theseawolf1

2014-02-28 12:39:35 am

SGL Scrublord

Damn, thats a nice skip.

My assumption is games that have multiple catagories have extenuating circumstances. My first thought comes to Legend of Zelda, with both no S+Q and S+Q catagories. As the option to Save and Quit is in the manual, I guess it can be considered intended. Many games have deathless and with deaths runs, when its clear that the deaths route typically saves more time.

I personally have no issue with the Glitchless catagory, but I leave it to the decision of the mods to determine catagory validity. Even so, hell of a run, and well worth having it stand as representative of an SDA quality run.

DumDumDugan

2014-03-08 08:38:28 pm

Quote from Furious Paul:

I did not discover this skip, I seen this from Travis Miller's 100% (+ all Tomes) Deathless run on YouTube, done in 1:10:30. I don't know if he was the one who discovered it or not, I'm still awaiting on his reply.

Travis here. I did discover that skip, but I didn't know nobody else knew about it. Furious Paul commented on my video, which lead me to check out his channel and watch his world record run. I noticed he didn't use the skip in his run, so I pointed it out to him. I recorded that video about a year ago to promote an event that never happened. I held on to the video, but I was reluctant to upload it because I didn't think there was anything exceptional about it. Now I'm glad I uploaded it.

moooh

2014-03-18 02:30:44 pm

Exoray

SDA does not accept "glitchless" runs as a separate category for a multitude of reasons.
To begin with, it would be difficult to define what is a glitch and what is not. You don't actually know the developers' intentions, at the very best you are just guessing.

You display the problems yourself within your definitions, as you are using a trick that you yourself are unsure whether or not it would count as a glitch. Some people may view it as a glitch, some may not. This vagueness simply can't be used as a basis for a category as it has to be something that everyone can agree upon.
Why is this important to SDA?
Well, we are dealing with obsoletions on the site. Someone submitting a faster run within the same category will obsolete an older run, as such we must have a way to compare runs and for that we need well formed categories so that we know which runs to compare with.

To illustrate things, let's replace the word "glitch" with "deaths" in your category and let's assume you were talking about a deathless run.
In a run without deaths, the following explanation would look very odd: "I let these slide because these are very minor deaths".
In this case, it would be indisputable that you died and everyone watching the run can agree upon this not belonging in the category. This makes runs "with deaths" a well-defined category.

The same does not work so well when it comes to defining glitches, since each person has their own personal list of what things are or aren't glitches and it would be futile even trying to debate. As such, a "glitchless" category is just not something that would work.

Instead, some games have category separation for use of large-skips. Whether or not a skip is considered large is far more easier for everyone to agree upon than whether or not something is considered a glitch. As such, it's easy to determine if a run obsoletes another in a large-skips category.

Your list does not fit a large-skips category either unfortunately (as some things in there are really minor). At the moment your category definition is more or less a regular run with some self-imposed restrictions. We usually refer to those as "challenge runs" similar to what it would be to say "finish the game as fast as possible without using cross" or "finish with no damage taken".
These kind of runs are fun to do and we're certainly not going to discourage you from playing the game this way, it's just that they wouldn't have a place on SDA. We're trying to avoid category bloat which is why we simply don't accept runs with arbitrary restrictions.

SDA does not accept "glitchless" runs as a separate category for a multitude of reasons.
To begin with, it would be difficult to define what is a glitch and what is not. You don't actually know the developers' intentions, at the very best you are just guessing.

You display the problems yourself within your definitions, as you are using a trick that you yourself are unsure whether or not it would count as a glitch. Some people may view it as a glitch, some may not. This vagueness simply can't be used as a basis for a category as it has to be something that everyone can agree upon.
Why is this important to SDA?
Well, we are dealing with obsoletions on the site. Someone submitting a faster run within the same category will obsolete an older run, as such we must have a way to compare runs and for that we need well formed categories so that we know which runs to compare with.

To illustrate things, let's replace the word "glitch" with "deaths" in your category and let's assume you were talking about a deathless run.
In a run without deaths, the following explanation would look very odd: "I let these slide because these are very minor deaths".
In this case, it would be indisputable that you died and everyone watching the run can agree upon this not belonging in the category. This makes runs "with deaths" a well-defined category.

The same does not work so well when it comes to defining glitches, since each person has their own personal list of what things are or aren't glitches and it would be futile even trying to debate. As such, a "glitchless" category is just not something that would work.

Instead, some games have category separation for use of large-skips. Whether or not a skip is considered large is far more easier for everyone to agree upon than whether or not something is considered a glitch. As such, it's easy to determine if a run obsoletes another in a large-skips category.

Your list does not fit a large-skips category either unfortunately (as some things in there are really minor). At the moment your category definition is more or less a regular run with some self-imposed restrictions. We usually refer to those as "challenge runs" similar to what it would be to say "finish the game as fast as possible without using cross" or "finish with no damage taken". 
These kind of runs are fun to do and we're certainly not going to discourage you from playing the game this way, it's just that they wouldn't have a place on SDA. We're trying to avoid category bloat which is why we simply don't accept runs with arbitrary restrictions.

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-09-02 02:40:43 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-08-26 03:40:30 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-08-26 03:39:56 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-08-26 03:39:35 pm

Furious Paul: 2014-08-26 03:32:12 pm

2014-08-20 09:51:03 pm

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

Hey all im getting back into Simon's Quest again (well sort of) and I made a theory TAS to see how a run would go if you skipped the chain whip and instead used the leather whip all the way to the morningstar whip:

Bottom line is hearts become a much bigger issue than the chain whip route, since you have to jump over a lot of enemies. Avoiding knights becomes more of an RNG nightmare than using a chain whip at them. In the end skipping the chain whip can only be slightly faster, but overall not efficient because the chance of getting enough hearts to buy an extra stake along with the morning star and the luck of not getting killed by knights is nearly impossible single-segment.

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-09-01 04:59:19 am

2014-09-01 04:26:27 am

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

Today, i have made 2 theory TASes to see how fast an Any% single segment run of this game can be and here are the results:

Theory TAS #1 in 35:08 - This is the usual route we all have been running. I was very surprised to see how much more time can be saved in this game!

Theory TAS #2 in 35:40 - This is a totally different route that is only about 32 seconds slower. This route involves using the camilla's cemetary jump to enter Camilla's mansion first. This route also only gets the chain whip and skips the morning star. This route is interesting and sort of fun to run. This could be considered another category to run in this game. Also JC583 has achieved a single-segment run of 40:05 utilizing this exact route.

As you can see one of my motivations for making these TASes was to see if the Camilla's cemetary jump route was any faster than the route we have been doing, and as you can see it's actually about 32 seconds slower. So that is good to know.

Today, i have made 2 theory TASes to see how fast an Any% single segment run of this game can be and here are the results:

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_tLK7QloRU]Theory TAS #1 in 35:08[/url] - This is the usual route we all have been running. I was very surprised to see how much more time can be saved in this game!

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qs3hDv8Ejk]Theory TAS #2 in 35:40[/url] - This is a totally different route that is only about 32 seconds slower. This route involves using the camilla's cemetary jump to enter Camilla's mansion first. This route also only gets the chain whip and skips the morning star.  This route is interesting and sort of fun to run. This could be considered another category to run in this game.  Also JC583 has achieved a [url=http://www.twitch.tv/jc583/c/5036379]single-segment run of 40:05[/url] utilizing this exact route.

As you can see one of my motivations for making these TASes was to see if the Camilla's cemetary jump route was any faster than the route we have been doing, and as you can see it's actually about 32 seconds slower. So that is good to know.

jc583

2014-09-04 03:27:31 am

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Hi Paul and thank you for doing this.

Just wanna let everybody in on yet another new route. In my last stream, Paul got to see me bang my head against a brick wall trying to pull this one off to no avail. I got damn close, and I know it can be done. All the challenge is in the first 10 minutes of the game, then it's easy.

I've confirmed this one's definitely the fastest humanly possible route we've seen yet, with a low 34:xx lazy TAS I did in a couple hours with a bunch of mistakes and slowness (it could be an easy sub-34 with Paul's expertise). But it's difficult as hell. I don't have a video yet, but I'll see if I have time to make one tomorrow outlining the first half of the route, which is the important part.

jc583

2014-09-06 02:23:44 am

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Right, so here's my crappy TAS, sorry for the bad quality:

The hardest part is making it all the way to the blue crystal before the second nightfall. This requires godlike RNG and decent execution, but it can be done. Here's me almost pulling it off in real time (Just 2 seconds away):

Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

2014-09-06 10:01:53 pm

Learning to Stream

JC, it was an interesting TAS to say the least and that new route is intense. Definitely going to make this category very interesting to watch in the forseeable future. Thanks to both you and FuriousPaul or pushing the crap out of this concept! It's amazing!

Furious Paul

Edit history:

Furious Paul: 2014-09-07 10:38:04 am

2014-09-07 10:36:29 am

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

JC has finally got a full run in with the new blob boost route, it's only a matter of days now until my record gets broken with that route. Crazy it takes over a hundred attempts just to get the blue crystal exchanged with this route! Crazy stuff!

jc583

2014-09-07 05:01:05 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Thank you Mr Kelly R Flewin, plus I need to give an additional shoutout to deranged_squirrel_fighter since he hasn't posted or been mentioned here yet. Much of the conceptualizing and optimization was discovered by him and put into effect in my real-time attempts.

jc583

Edit history:

jc583: 2014-09-07 06:00:20 pm

jc583: 2014-09-07 05:50:52 pm

2014-09-07 05:48:30 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Paul had an idea earlier that I haven't tested yet. The slime boost can be utilized in his WR route as well, and I think it would be even faster. There's two options to this: taking the detour immediately and sticking with a chain whip to the end, or taking the time to go grab the morning star and backtracking to the detour. The flame whip is right on the way if you grab the morning star first, so it's worth testing both methods, but I really doubt it can save enough time to make up for the extra 1:30-2:00 necessary to get it, as I already have a very solid endgame method from previous routes using the chain whip.

Edit: It just occurred to me, you wouldn't need the red crystal to do this! I'll get on it right away.

jc583

Edit history:

jc583: 2014-09-07 11:04:19 pm

2014-09-07 11:02:39 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Oh my god.

So I just learned you can't break the last two bridge blocks without the red crystal. That's one day of TAS work down the drain. I'll be back tomorrow. Sad

jc583

Edit history:

jc583: 2014-09-15 04:05:06 pm

2014-09-15 03:10:44 am

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Did I say tomorrow? I meant a week. Sorry. -.-

So a lot has happened. First of all I got a new any% WR with my new route. It's the same idea I mentioned earlier, I used the route Paul uses in his 36:52, and I included the slime boost (skip to 26:25 to see it done). If I can perform a 1cc run of this route, I could bring it down to 34:xx.

I also made two more theory TASes using this exact route to compare the time it takes to grab the morning star and flame whip upgrades vs. keeping the chain whip to the end. They're rough drafts, but they clock in at pretty much dead even with each other. To me, that's a no-brainer. This means grabbing the morning star upgrade will not slow you down in any significant way if at all, so it's a much better alternative. BUT you may not have the hearts for it, so learn the chain whip route in case that happens, since apparently that won't slow you down in any significant way either.

Did I say tomorrow? I meant a week. Sorry. -.-

So a lot has happened. First of all I got a [url=http://www.twitch.tv/jc583/c/5125755]new any% WR[/url] with my new route. It's the same idea I mentioned earlier, I used the route Paul uses in his 36:52, and I included the slime boost (skip to 26:25 to see it done). If I can perform a 1cc run of this route, I could bring it down to 34:xx.

I also made two more theory TASes using this exact route to compare the time it takes to grab the [url=http://www.twitch.tv/jc583/c/5125668]morning star and flame whip[/url] upgrades vs. keeping the [url=http://www.twitch.tv/jc583/c/5107484]chain whip[/url] to the end. They're rough drafts, but they clock in at pretty much dead even with each other. To me, that's a no-brainer. This means grabbing the morning star upgrade will not slow you down in any significant way if at all, so it's a much better alternative. BUT you may not have the hearts for it, so learn the chain whip route in case that happens, since apparently that won't slow you down in any significant way either.

Furious Paul

2014-09-15 03:42:10 am

Twitch.tv/FuriousPaul

Congrats JC! Also, you forgot to mention the floor drops too! Zbrannigan is working with JC to find ways to get all floor drops on the first try and they have already got about 5 of them figured out. This obviously saves TONS of time every run.

charleon

2014-09-15 04:16:42 am

What is a man?

Quote from Furious Paul:

Congrats JC! Also, you forgot to mention the floor drops too! Zbrannigan is working with JC to find ways to get all floor drops on the first try and they have already got about 5 of them figured out. This obviously saves TONS of time every run.

Does this mean that no floor-drop is the other one alike? or what has been found out to make them consistent?

PJ

2014-09-15 10:54:54 am

Is PJ

Wow good shit JC! It's really exciting to see so much progress on this game! I'm really excited to see how far you all push it now. Smiley

jc583

Edit history:

jc583: 2014-09-15 02:52:01 pm

2014-09-15 12:04:45 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAA

Yes, the code for the floor drops has in fact been broken, and we can manipulate them now.

It was pretty clear from the first 20 attempts or so that some floor drops were simply easier to do than others, to the point where I was convinced it couldn't possibly have just been luck or RNG that causes these drops to happen. I couldn't put my finger on it. Eventually a programmer came into my chat named Zbrannigan who heard me saying this on stream, and he decided to check it out himself with a hex editor on FCEUX.

(Bare with me because I may be slightly off about how I explain this. I'm not a programmer. But here's how I understand it so far.)

He found out that there were 32 different possible memory values (subpixels) to simon's Y position, and every 'Y-related" move simon makes (jumping, jump+B boosting, stairs, etc) consistently adds a specific number to the memory value relative to the input you give it. And it just keeps adding to the number higher and higher with each input you give until it reaches the maximum amount, and then it resets back to zero on the next input. He saw that only the memory values labelled '00', '08', and '10' consistently resulted in a floor drop at a 100% rate. The rest is simple arithmetic, just add the input values together and you'll find the setups to always have a 00, 08, or 10 every time. Hope I got that right. Smiley

Yes, the code for the floor drops has in fact been broken, and we can manipulate them now.

It was pretty clear from the first 20 attempts or so that some floor drops were simply easier to do than others, to the point where I was convinced it couldn't possibly have just been luck or RNG that causes these drops to happen. I couldn't put my finger on it. Eventually a programmer came into my chat named Zbrannigan who heard me saying this on stream, and he decided to check it out himself with a hex editor on FCEUX.

(Bare with me because I may be slightly off about how I explain this. I'm not a programmer. But here's how I understand it so far.)

He found out that there were 32 different possible memory values (subpixels) to simon's Y position, and every 'Y-related" move simon makes (jumping, jump+B boosting, stairs, etc) consistently adds a specific number to the memory value relative to the input you give it. And it just keeps adding to the number higher and higher with each input you give until it reaches the maximum amount, and then it resets back to zero on the next input. He saw that only the memory values labelled '00', '08', and '10' consistently resulted in a floor drop at a 100% rate. The rest is simple arithmetic, just add the input values together and you'll find the setups to always have a 00, 08, or 10 every time. Hope I got that right. :)