Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis)

VorpalEdge

Edit history:

VorpalEdge: 2013-03-23 03:41:23 pm

VorpalEdge: 2013-03-23 03:40:52 pm

2013-03-23 03:40:42 pm

welcome to the machine

every run that got to queen died on her :<

rezard's a beast

Rezard

Edit history:

Rezard: 2013-03-28 03:12:12 pm

Rezard: 2013-03-28 02:44:47 pm

Rezard: 2013-03-28 11:35:17 am

Rezard: 2013-03-28 09:57:51 am

2013-03-28 09:55:15 am

Meteor Swarm

one of my twitch viewer found an VERY huge game breaking glitch , i will give information later one.
Trying it here.
http://www.twitch.tv/rezard/new.

Video of the undercave double glitch here (the dafuq skip + sonar map exit). with button input (it may help a lot)
Acctualy this is very very timming based , you must stand still (no mouvement at all) then press down and sightly after or nearly at the same time press B , this will make the camera mess up. Then press up , then again Down +B ect , i repeate this is extremly tought to do.
The pteranodon pond is also fully skipable, the glitch is almost the same but is harder to do , once i will knew the timming i will post a video with button input.

edit : did the "tas" ridge water skip at the end , its possible on real condition.

Video of it , the input may help for the timming , Mashing B like i do is a wrong idea but is cause of the timming , but i don't know what do do at the end , but this one doens't wroth the risk . The most interesting is the pterandond skip but i can't do it yet (basicaly , is the same but horizontaly, and visual clue is almost unexistant).

one of my twitch viewer found an VERY huge game breaking glitch , i will give information later one.
Trying it here.
http://www.twitch.tv/rezard/new.

Video of the undercave double glitch here (the dafuq skip + sonar map exit). with button input (it may help a lot)
Acctualy this is very very timming based , you must stand still (no mouvement at all) then press down and sightly after or nearly at the same time press B , this will make the camera mess up. Then press up , then again Down +B ect , i repeate this is extremly tought to do.
The pteranodon pond is also fully skipable, the glitch is almost the same but is harder to do , once i will knew the timming i will post a video with button input.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A87Id-mZrP4

edit : did the "tas" ridge water skip at the end , its possible on real condition.

Video of it , the input may help for the timming , Mashing B like i do is a wrong idea but is cause of the timming , but i don't know what do do at the end , but this one doens't wroth the risk . The most interesting is the pterandond skip but i can't do it yet (basicaly , is the same but horizontaly, and visual clue is almost unexistant).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0SuLsFtogw

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-28 10:06:22 pm

Newpants made a janky TAS and found the clip is possible in every stage except for two.

RIP Ecco.

Mecha Richter

2013-03-29 05:50:42 am

Haters gonna hate

Whaaaaaaaat???

Rezard

2013-03-29 07:36:44 am

Meteor Swarm

Yea this is getting ridiculous , we should ban this clip glitch.

VorpalEdge

2013-03-29 09:50:56 am

welcome to the machine

Link to Newpants' video: http://www.twitch.tv/newpants87/c/2084668

Rezard

2013-03-29 10:17:25 am

Meteor Swarm

this is so broken ^^^, personaly i forbid myself the use of this glitch.

ButtersBB

2013-03-29 11:14:54 am

I guess Ecco will have two categories then.

Any% with clips
Any% without clips

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-29 12:17:27 pm

What about lagoon clip :/

Rezard

Edit history:

Rezard: 2013-03-29 01:42:13 pm

2013-03-29 01:35:50 pm

Meteor Swarm

well i talk about the "camera clip" lagoon is a way different glitch. The last one is way to much broken , and make run not fun to do or to watch (doing out of screen in almost every level is not interesting).
Personnaly when i run the game i will never use this new glitch.

Watching a full clip run is like watching a dear ester speedrun.. its not that interesting.
The second glitch will fit more for a tas.

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-29 02:13:18 pm

Regardless, if the time is faster it'll become the true "any%". As in, beat the game as fast as possible without cheats/modifications etc. It'll be similar to Paper Mario cutting out the blue house skip and making the "all cards" category I guess.

Also, it's difficult to word, because although I agree lagoon is an entirely different glitch, you still clip into the rocks by use of the camera, so it is still technically a "camera clip".

JackintheBox333

2013-03-29 02:42:39 pm

Professional Shaq Fu Speedrunner

Just want to correct something: The All Cards category used to cut out the Blue House Skip, but it is done there as well now because it deactivates chapter 2 triggers and skips part of Chapter 5. I don't think that the comparison works as the All Cards run shows off all the chapter bosses. These new Ecco skips just skip past levels. Is it very interesting as a viewer to watch? From the perspective of how broken it is, yes. But as a viewer could I watch it multiple times? Probably not, because there is hardly any gameplay involved.

But I watched the video that was posted and this game has gotten crazy in such a short period of time. It's amazing how much of the game is still taken up by the final level (a level I've still never beaten without using save states, stupid maze).

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-29 03:33:53 pm

Haven't been keeping up with PM apparently lol. And yeah, ideally the machine would be skipped and the rest of the stages done naturally... Sucks that it's the opposite. Regardless, it's looking like it'll be divided into two categories for the sake of entertainment in both running and watching.

BlueGlass

Edit history:

BlueGlass: 2013-03-29 10:29:51 pm

2013-03-29 10:07:29 pm

Yep yep yep!

Wow, this is ridiculous. It should definitely count as a separate category, but then the problem becomes how to define it. Personally, I'd call this new trick the "camera freeze" clip, since it seems to work by letting Ecco move inside the wall while the camera is stuck in place.

My idea is that the category separation would be the use of this trick, so we can still take advantage of the clips and glitches Rezard and others have found over the past couple months.

Also, there's no way I'm going to use this when I do my run at SGDQ.

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-29 10:58:52 pm

Camera freeze clip sounds acceptable. Lagoon skip holds ecco in place while moving the camera, whereas this glitch moves ecco while keeping the camera stationary.

I wouldn't expect you do this glitch at SGDQ, but please learn the pteranodon glitch to show it off :p coolest thing I've seen in the game

VorpalEdge

2013-03-30 12:42:05 am

welcome to the machine

i'm going to be pretty amused if we think we have the no major skips category nice and tidy and then enough distinct new skips are discovered to make it identical to the just-clip-through-everything run.

Sonikkustar

2013-03-30 09:59:28 pm

The Great Farming Empire

So apparently Newpants reccently did another TAS that clocks in at 17:33 by SDA timing:
http://www.twitch.tv/newpants87/c/2092748

All that's left to break is The Machine. If only there was a way to glitch it. Sad

I gotta say, it sure is exciting seeing all this activity on Ecco. I'm looking forward to the final run.

VorpalEdge

2013-03-30 11:48:27 pm

welcome to the machine

got a first run w/ the glitch. I wouldn't call it good (messed up more of the swimming than I'd like (undercaves =( ), chumped out on queen in the interest of finishing a run, etc) and I left a lot of the harder and/or more marginal stuff out, but judge for yourself I guess? time is 20:16

Rezard

2013-03-31 03:10:05 am

Meteor Swarm

haha i released out this glitch here , but i have soo much troubles to do it , is there any clue for the timmig ? (horizontal one)

VorpalEdge

Edit history:

VorpalEdge: 2013-03-31 10:02:50 am

2013-03-31 10:01:04 am

welcome to the machine

it's kinda weird. as far as I can tell, you always want to be turning in the opposite direction, so you start turning one way and then have until the turn finishes to buffer the opposite direction, so you start turning back immediately. You can watch Ecco's sprite for cues, and when he's offscreen you can use the shaking of the camera. There's a kind of rhythm to it, and it took me a while to learn since I don't have any rhythm unless it's coming down the screen at me as a brightly colored button.

this really is one of those things where eventually it will 'click' and it'll start getting a lot easier. I wasn't able to do it at all at first, so really the best thing I can tell you is to spend more time on it... you can practice not losing the glitch by doing back+B once and then just turning back and forth forever, and then once you're more confident with that you can start hitting B after every couple backs.

halfbakedprophet

2013-03-31 07:45:29 pm

I learned it by doing one dash and then holding the camera by having Ecco pivot left/right (you can do so indefinitely). The timing is really bizarre, it's jumpy in a way... immediately after you press B, you need to shift directions on the d-pad really quickly. Newpants did some streaming with input display, maybe that'll help?

Also worth noting you should buffer every dash, as in do a left/right turn before setting yourself up for another dash... doing them consecutively won't work sometimes (works for the first two though it seems)

VorpalEdge

Edit history:

VorpalEdge: 2013-04-30 11:25:17 pm

VorpalEdge: 2013-04-30 11:17:45 pm

2013-04-30 11:17:32 pm

welcome to the machine

the time for the glitched run is down to about 18:17 or 18:18. that's available here, as well as an explanation of why the time is uncertain. my target for an sda submission is sub-18, but I don't know when I'll resolve the recording problem so I don't know when that will happen.

since I feel bad bumping a thread just to say that, let's post some ecco tides of time stuff. I don't think the game has a dedicated thread? well, in any case, I'm too lazy to make one right now, and I know blueglass might play this game at sgdq, SO:

You can destroy Eagle Bay (I think) by doing this.
[00:28:31] <Newpants87> there's a flat piece of cliff jutting out
[00:28:51] <Newpants87> you just wanna get hit by the eagle there while touching that flat piece
[00:28:56] <Newpants87> and you'll just get knocked in

You can skip half the autoscroller in lunar bay mk2 by doing this.

the TAS skip in crystal springs is really easy, I got it just by playing around with it for 1 minute without having an explanation. You dash into the gap between the bottom two rocks and you get slightly in, and then you mash some combination of right and C and you go through? I've only done it twice out of curiosity. Similarly, halfbaked has a decent setup for the first of the two tas glyph skips in the good future, idk what the level is called, and the second is possible but iirc he said it's harder? Or something. If it's not clear by now, I don't actually run this game, I'm just relaying what info I have =p

I uploaded a set of map files I found when looking for maps of ecco 1. Might help you plan out the Eye or Deep Ridge if you put orb locations and such on them. You can download those here.

re: the game's difficulty, apparently there are three difficulty settings. diagonal up-right from the menu is easy, right is normal, up is hard. easy and hard are fairly self-explanatory, but as for normal, the exact text from the manual reads:

Quote:

NORMAL skill level automatically adjusts the game difficulty as you play, so that Ecco's quest will be easier, or more difficult, depending on your ability. Some of the factors determining the game difficulty are how fast you finish the levels, how often you start levels over, and how many teleport rings you successfully past through.

pretty much all the info we have. the exact formula, questions like whether there are just two versions of each stage (maybe there's more granularity?), etc, we couldn't tell you. There's a lot of room for research. Theoretically a run that manipulates difficulty to select the fastest version of each stage could be really neat, but I can't think of anywhere where hard is faster. The game's pretty big on making hard take longer (deep ridge, I'm looking at you).

also, there's a #ecco on the speedrunslive irc. only three people there so conversation doesn't happen often, but perhaps YOU can pick one of the games up and change that? <uncle sam ww2 poster>

on a side note, searching youtube for glitch videos for these games is so frustrating, because every idiot who manages to debug teleport themself into getting stuck in a wall puts up a useless vid of that and calls it a glitch. =/

the time for the glitched run is down to about 18:17 or 18:18.  that's available [url=https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/this_run_should_be_3_seconds_slower..html]here[/url], as well as an explanation of why the time is uncertain.  my target for an sda submission is sub-18, but I don't know when I'll resolve the recording problem so I don't know when that will happen.

since I feel bad bumping a thread just to say that, let's post some ecco tides of time stuff.  I don't think the game has a dedicated thread?  well, in any case, I'm too lazy to make one right now, and I know blueglass might play this game at sgdq, SO:

You can destroy Eagle Bay (I think) by doing [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_VB_UH0tXM]this[/url].
[00:28:31]  <Newpants87> there's a flat piece of cliff jutting out
[00:28:51]  <Newpants87> you just wanna get hit by the eagle there while touching that flat piece
[00:28:56]  <Newpants87> and you'll just get knocked in

You can skip half the autoscroller in lunar bay mk2 by doing [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLY6gCLrs3I]this[/url].

the TAS skip in crystal springs is really easy, I got it just by playing around with it for 1 minute without having an explanation.  You dash into the gap between the bottom two rocks and you get slightly in, and then you mash some combination of right and C and you go through?  I've only done it twice out of curiosity.  Similarly, halfbaked has a decent setup for the first of the two tas glyph skips in the good future, idk what the level is called, and the second is possible but iirc he said it's harder?  Or something.  If it's not clear by now, I don't actually run this game, I'm just relaying what info I have =p

I uploaded a set of map files I found when looking for maps of ecco 1.  Might help you plan out the Eye or Deep Ridge if you put orb locations and such on them.  You can download those [url=https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzM7ti8dj0VdcXZGc1pXZnBna0k/edit]here[/url].

re: the game's difficulty, apparently there are three difficulty settings.  diagonal up-right from the menu is easy, right is normal, up is hard.  easy and hard are fairly self-explanatory, but as for normal, the exact text from the manual reads:

[quote]NORMAL skill level automatically adjusts the game difficulty as you play, so that Ecco's quest will be easier, or more difficult, depending on your ability.  Some of the factors determining the game difficulty are how fast you finish the levels, how often you start levels over, and how many teleport rings you successfully past through.[/quote]

pretty much all the info we have.  the exact formula, questions like whether there are just two versions of each stage (maybe there's more granularity?), etc, we couldn't tell you.  There's a lot of room for research.  Theoretically a run that manipulates difficulty to select the fastest version of each stage could be really neat, but I can't think of anywhere where hard is faster.  The game's pretty big on making hard take longer (deep ridge, I'm looking at you).

also, there's a #ecco on the speedrunslive irc.  only three people there so conversation doesn't happen often, but perhaps YOU can pick one of the games up and change that?  <uncle sam ww2 poster>

on a side note, searching youtube for glitch videos for these games is so frustrating, because every idiot who manages to debug teleport themself into getting stuck in a wall puts up a useless vid of that and calls it a glitch. =/

VorpalEdge

Edit history:

VorpalEdge: 2013-05-21 11:53:09 pm

VorpalEdge: 2013-05-21 11:51:27 pm

2013-05-21 10:34:33 pm

welcome to the machine

Got a time of 43:43 in Tides of Time a few days after picking the game up. It's a decent baseline to start from, I guess? The death in city of forever was really bad but a: the game fucked me, I don't feel as if it was my fault and that level sucks and b: I destroyed my target time, and I picked the game up mostly to race, not to actually go for sda attempts. Everything else went spectacularly well for my skill level. I'm satisfied leaving it there for now and just playing game every so often for races. Maybe I'll play it more seriously later, idk. I think an optimized run could easily go sub-40, maybe even push 35 minutes with current knowledge (I bonked a lot of walls).

weird stuff: in the first dark future level, if you go left then down from the first checkpoint, the glyph there sometimes gives you the power to sonar out blocks, sometimes doesn't, and sometimes looks like it does but then you reach the end of the level and it doesn't work. no idea what's up with that, so I went with the safe option since it's not much slower.

attached are annotated maps for the eye and deep ridge (the two big orb fetch levels) and the orca level with relevant stuff marked on them. newpants was awesome for making them. Should be relatively self-explanatory. For the orca level, orca #4 changes location based on difficulty, so that's why there's a duplicate number (white for easy, red for hard).

Got a time of [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U8hjCVtZTk]43:43[/url] in Tides of Time a few days after picking the game up.  It's a decent baseline to start from, I guess?  The death in city of forever was really bad but a: the game fucked me, I don't feel as if it was my fault and that level sucks and b: I destroyed my target time, and I picked the game up mostly to race, not to actually go for sda attempts.  Everything else went spectacularly well for my skill level.  I'm satisfied leaving it there for now and just playing game every so often for races.  Maybe I'll play it more seriously later, idk.  I think an optimized run could easily go sub-40, maybe even push 35 minutes with current knowledge (I bonked a lot of walls).

weird stuff: in the first dark future level, if you go left then down from the first checkpoint, the glyph there sometimes gives you the power to sonar out blocks, sometimes doesn't, and sometimes looks like it does but then you reach the end of the level and it doesn't work.  no idea what's up with that, so I went with the safe option since it's not much slower.

attached are annotated maps for the eye and deep ridge (the two big orb fetch levels) and the orca level with relevant stuff marked on them.  newpants was awesome for making them.  Should be relatively self-explanatory.  For the orca level, orca #4 changes location based on difficulty, so that's why there's a duplicate number (white for easy, red for hard).

Attachments:

Edit history:

Mikalia: 2013-08-05 11:25:35 pm

2013-08-05 11:25:12 pm

Hello. I'm not a speedrunner, but I'm very interested in it. I really enjoy Ecco 1 and 2, and use to play it A LOT as a kid. I'm surprised now that I'm older, how I was able to get as far as I did in them. The first Ecco I went to the past and got stuck on the level where the Asterite attacks you. Many hours were spent on that level alone, and I never figured out how to get past it. Years later I found out about it from the internet. -_- Anyways, I really came on here to say hello to Blueglass and to tell him I thoroughly enjoyed his run. =) I wish I had seen it in person. I also wanted to share with you this picture I drew of Ecco. I'm really hoping it gets printed as a Yetee shirt. I wish it had been a SGDQ shirt. So here it is. ^^ http://miraimika.deviantart.com/art/Aliens-vs-Dolphin-389602551 I hope you enjoy it.

Rezard

Edit history:

Rezard: 2013-08-18 12:22:00 pm

2013-08-18 12:14:07 pm

Meteor Swarm

Im using necromancer power to ressurect this thread.
No camera freeze glitch

Ridge water small skip

Stream sound playing when recording , anyway you only need to hold diagonal up and C , there's no need to mash the C button

Hard water skip (easy to do) and pternaodon skip (i think there's some camera freeze glitch in it but , doesn't work like the horizontal do)