Final Fight - November 17, 2015

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2015-11-17 03:50:45 pm

2015-11-03 01:42:24 pm

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/FinalFight.html

Final Fight (ntscus) (arcade) [Any %] [Single Segment] [Character: Guy]

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Sean 'MURPHAGATOR!' Murphy!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2015-11-03 01:42:24 pm

Run Information

Final Fight (ntscus) (arcade) [Any %] [Single Segment] [Character: Guy]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/FinalFight-20150920/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

Reeve

Edit history:

Reeve: 2015-11-05 03:13:38 pm

Reeve: 2015-11-05 10:24:46 am

2015-11-05 10:22:00 am

1st Stage: Didn't notice any mistake. Just a minor thing I'd like to ask: When you reach the last area, wouldn't it be better to jump and knee the punk and then throw him backwards instead of punching him? It seems it would be faster.
The boss fight was Ok. I hate that punk there, he makes me loose my rythm or find a way to hit me and the boss goes away.

2nd Stage: Shame you missed the second knife on the Andore. That costed a few seconds.
The second area of this stage was pretty good, but the 3rd area was bad. It seems you lost a pretty good chunk of time by getting knocked twice.
Got hit by the boss once, loosing a bit of time, but that happens sometimes.

3rd Stage: The sword could have saved a good chunk of time if the player had managed to keep it. Also a bit more of time lost by trying to grab the Andore while he was off screen and getting hit by him.
In the end of the last area, after throwing all enemies to the left the player jumped to the right just once and stopped which wasn't enough to make them desapear. A second jump or even just walk to the right would probably solve the problem, although the girl would probably stay on screen.
The boss could be better. Missing the combo definitely costed a few seconds.

4th Stage: In the first area, when going to the end of the screen where the elevator is, there's a sword on the second row of barrels (iirc) and if you had managed to reach the end of the screen with this weapon your life would have been a whole lot easier. You probably lost a good chunk of time/health compared with a situation where you would have the sword.
Not sure if the death costed any time here. The boss fight was great!

5th Stage: The beginning was great. The first mistake I noticed was right before reaching the area where the El gados and Holly Woods show up. The player knocked some enemies with the Sword, but decided to kill them instead of keep going. I'm pretty sure, by the position you knocked them and how fast Guy is, you could have made them desapear.
It was a shame you lost the sword so soon. It would really help here in this area and would have saved a lot of time by allowing you to lock the enemies in the corners without getting hit. The many times you got hit/knocked making you need both foods show how much time you lost here.
When you're almost reaching the boss you stop, kill the enemies with punches and proceed to the boss. It seems to me you would have saved time if you had stopped earlier, use a spin to knock them back and make them to desapear. Except for the punk, the other enemies are very slow and can't reach Guy.
Abigail: I guess it is faster to use 3 knees instead of 2 knees and throw the boss. Also, I guess it would have been better to knock him down once, wait for him to stand up and walk to the left, then lock him with the infinit combo. Once the other enemies spawn you could try to slowdown your rythm waiting for them to enter the combo and then proceed with it till the end of the fight wich would probably not take so long. If one of the enemies break your combo, then proceed to a plan B.

6th stage: Almost reaching the end of the first screen you stop to kill the enemies with punches while would probably be better to spin and knock them, then jump to the right to make them to desapear.
The 2nd area was amazing! Great work there!
The 3rd area was a bit messy, but it is really hard to get RNG to colaborate there and the lag generated is a pain.
The bottom barrel in the last area, right before the flame holly woods, has a Sword. I guess it could make this area faster, mainly the last enemies before the boss and if you manage to keep it, it would probably help to kill the boss faster too.

Veredict: I'm not sure what to say. I was expecting more than what I watched. I'd like every stage had what I saw in the second area of the last stage. I'll let this info here and see what the runner and others have to say.

1st Stage: Didn't notice any mistake. Just a minor thing I'd like to ask: When you reach the last area, wouldn't it be better to jump and knee the punk and then throw him backwards instead of punching him? It seems it would be faster.
The boss fight was Ok. I hate that punk there, he makes me loose my rythm or find a way to hit me and the boss goes away.

2nd Stage: Shame you missed the second knife on the Andore. That costed a few seconds.
The second area of this stage was pretty good, but the 3rd area was bad. It seems you lost a pretty good chunk of time by getting knocked twice.
Got hit by the boss once, loosing a bit of time, but that happens sometimes.

3rd Stage: The sword could have saved a good chunk of time if the player had managed to keep it. Also a bit more of time lost by trying to grab the Andore while he was off screen and getting hit by him.
In the end of the last area, after throwing all enemies to the left the player jumped to the right just once and stopped which wasn't enough to make them desapear. A second jump or even just walk to the right would probably solve the problem, although the girl would probably stay on screen.
The boss could be better. Missing the combo definitely costed a few seconds.

4th Stage: In the first area, when going to the end of the screen where the elevator is, there's a sword on the second row of barrels (iirc) and if you had managed to reach the end of the screen with this weapon your life would have been a whole lot easier. You probably lost a good chunk of time/health compared with a situation where you would have the sword.
Not sure if the death costed any time here. The boss fight was great!

5th Stage: The beginning was great. The first mistake I noticed was right before reaching the area where the El gados and Holly Woods show up. The player knocked some enemies with the Sword, but decided to kill them instead of keep going. I'm pretty sure, by the position you knocked them and how fast Guy is, you could have made them desapear.
It was a shame you lost the sword so soon. It would really help here in this area and would have saved a lot of time by allowing you to lock the enemies in the corners without getting hit. The many times you got hit/knocked making you need both foods show how much time you lost here.
When you're almost reaching the boss you stop, kill the enemies with punches and proceed to the boss. It seems to me you would have saved time if you had stopped earlier, use a spin to knock them back and make them to desapear. Except for the punk, the other enemies are very slow and can't reach Guy.
Abigail: I guess it is faster to use 3 knees instead of 2 knees and throw the boss. Also, I guess it would have been better to knock him down once, wait for him to stand up and walk to the left, then lock him with the infinit combo. Once the other enemies spawn you could try to slowdown your rythm waiting for them to enter the combo and then proceed with it till the end of the fight wich would probably not take so long. If one of the enemies break your combo, then proceed to a plan B.

6th stage: Almost reaching the end of the first screen you stop to kill the enemies with punches while would probably be better to spin and knock them, then jump to the right to make them to desapear.
The 2nd area was amazing! Great work there!
The 3rd area was a bit messy, but it is really hard to get RNG to colaborate there and the lag generated is a pain.
The bottom barrel in the last area, right before the flame holly woods, has a Sword. I guess it could make this area faster, mainly the last enemies before the boss and if you manage to keep it, it would probably help to kill the boss faster too.

Veredict: I'm not sure what to say. I was expecting more than what I watched. I'd like every stage had what I saw in the second area of the last stage. I'll let this info here and see what the runner and others have to say.

honorableJay

2015-11-05 07:05:08 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

A/V: Fine. Track 1 audio is out of phase, but that's probably by design since it's an arcade game. Add a 2-5ms delay to either the left or right channel to fix it (can be done by the viewer).

Good:
1. It's Final Fight
2. It's Murph
3. It's a 1cc
4. I am POM

Bad:
1. iFrames
2. Hitstop
3. That fucking elbow!!!
4. Sadistic designers

Accept

TheKeeperSA

2015-11-05 09:17:50 pm

A/V is great.

No cheating.

Time seems to be 23:06.

One death in a Guy run? I'm in.

Great despawning of enemies in most stages. I'm actually impressed by how well the El Gado / Holly Wood fight went in stage 5. They can really gang rape a player if he gets knocked down, which is bound to happen since most of their attacks knock the player down. I also really dig the Abigail fight with great crowd control.

There are minor mistakes here and there but since the game contain SOOOOO many RNG, it's impossible that everything goes super perfect in such a small amount of time. The biggest apparent mistake is when the player loses the rhythm against the police officer boss, and even then, he doesn't lose that much time.

Definite ACCEPT from me.

PJ

2015-11-05 11:06:24 pm

Is PJ

This run is pretty ridiculous. The number of split-second decisions you have to make in Final Fight is absurd, and is compounded when you consider that making the wrong decision in most fights has a really good chance of killing you. Murph could grind this game out for the rest of his life and still never get a perfect run just because of how dumb this game is.

An incredible amount of planning went into this run, and it is a really solid 1cc. There are obviously mistakes, but the good far outweighs the bad. Did I mention he actually 1cc'd this?

Definitely accept. Looking forward to the eventual improvement.

DK28

2015-11-06 09:41:49 pm

General Kong - Bullets and Bananas

Obvious Accept for a Guy run of this quality... Actually, I'm accepting for audio commentary. Points to Murph trying arduously to say technical things about the run and getting sidelined by the real talk.

Emptyeye

2015-11-07 08:07:37 am

Talk to the Hand

~~Reject for incorrect character choice~~

Okay, so for those who don't know Final Fight, Guy is the "quick but weak" character (AKA "The worst", in my opinion, because it takes him what seems like 15 minutes to kill some of the later bosses). Keep that in mind.

I once tried speedrunning this game. I was never any good at it, particularly as Guy.

Strong start, making use of Guy's wall kick.

Good infinite on Damnd. Also, liking the aggression and constant use of the super move a lot in Stage 1.

Very nice skips/despawns in the Subway car. Also, smart move using the Katana (Or whatever it's officially called) near the end. Guy's low damage makes that a smart move, particularly since his range isn't great, and he doesn't have the basically total invincibility with throws that MIKE HAGGAR does.

That Andore just up and instantly hitting upon getting back up near the start of Stage 3 is emblematic of this game as a whole. Good, well-balanced arcade game.

Good cage fight. Sometimes, even if you do that section "right", it just doesn't work--the Andores decide to just go right through your sword and hit you. Luckily that didn't happen here.

Verification digression: What PJ was talking about with the SNES version is that in general, to make up for the fact that that version could only have 3 enemies on the screen at a time, they made the enemies much cheaper and had everything kill you in about 3 hits. Even though this area was annoying enough in the arcade version, in the SNES version, this extends to randomly giving the cage Andores priority over EVERYTHING, INCLUDING YOUR EXTRA JOY. Essentially, if the SNES version wants you to die here, you WILL die, probably more than once.

Nice Edi. E. Would probably have been preferable to keep with the infinite, but maybe not, given how good the recovery was.

Loss of style points in Stage 4 Section 1 for not leaving the Andore alive.

Digression #2: I kind of intuitively figured that about the weapons, but it's nice to have confirmation. I forget where that preconception stemmed from, but it's definitely a popular one.

The death on the elevator was unfortunate from a style standpoint, but let's face it, in a game like this, it's gonna happen--like PJ mentioned above, this game is incredibly random, and making the wrong decision (Or even the right one, because "lol arcade game") tends to result in death. And as the commentary says, that's about the best possible place for it (Not only is it an autoscroller, but he manages to finish off that group of enemies before the next one comes down anyway). Nice Rolento fight too. If you've never played this before, it can't be overstated how important not letting Rolento go into Super Mode is.

Nice Andore skip. The way I tended to do that was to jump on the barrel and then jump off, but I think you still wind up dealing with Andore Jr. that way. Of course, I also primarily play MIKE HAGGAR, which reuires different techniues, so.

The knife/Poison section in Stage 5 is awful, good job skipping most of it.

Very nice Stage 5 overall. It looks like you know that at the start of the fight, he'll just run into your grab.

Of course, these first 5 Stages are really just one stage called "Not Uptown". Let's see how the last stage goes.

And as I resume the video, Murph mentions that. Of course.

Ah yes, the infamous invisi-barrel.

"The hardest screen in the entire game" I affectionately call "The Room of Death". The enemy composition, the fact there's eight of them total, plus the pillars getting in your way, make it just unfair even compared to the rest of the game. Getting out there without dying is amazing.

VERY nice Belger. It actually IS possible to get Belger in the infinite down to about a half bar of health (At which point he's scripted to jump near the window in preparation for the ending), but given how good the fight went, probably not worth it.

Maybe I'm just narcissistic, but I swear I hear someone say "Oh hey, Emptyeye showed up" in reference to MIKE HAGGAR making it to the ending.

Anyway. A 23-minute clear as Guy is amazing. I know Murph has stated an intent to try to do this on the hardest possible settings (1-life start, highest difficulty, no free lives), but for now, this is an easy accept.

[s]Reject for incorrect character choice[/s]

Okay, so for those who don't know Final Fight, Guy is the "quick but weak" character (AKA "The worst", in my opinion, because it takes him what seems like 15 minutes to kill some of the later bosses). Keep that in mind.

I once tried speedrunning this game. I was never any good at it, particularly as Guy.

Strong start, making use of Guy's wall kick.

Good infinite on Damnd. Also, liking the aggression and constant use of the super move a lot in Stage 1.

Very nice skips/despawns in the Subway car. Also, smart move using the Katana (Or whatever it's officially called) near the end. Guy's low damage makes that a smart move, particularly since his range isn't great, and he doesn't have the basically total invincibility with throws that MIKE HAGGAR does.

That Andore just up and instantly hitting upon getting back up near the start of Stage 3 is emblematic of this game as a whole. Good, well-balanced arcade game.

Good cage fight. Sometimes, even if you do that section "right", it just doesn't work--the Andores decide to just go right through your sword and hit you. Luckily that didn't happen here.

Verification digression: What PJ was talking about with the SNES version is that in general, to make up for the fact that that version could only have 3 enemies on the screen at a time, they made the enemies much cheaper and had everything kill you in about 3 hits. Even though this area was annoying enough in the arcade version, in the SNES version, this extends to randomly giving the cage Andores priority over EVERYTHING, INCLUDING YOUR EXTRA JOY. Essentially, if the SNES version wants you to die here, you WILL die, probably more than once.

Nice Edi. E. Would probably have been preferable to keep with the infinite, but maybe not, given how good the recovery was.

Loss of style points in Stage 4 Section 1 for not leaving the Andore alive.

Digression #2: I kind of intuitively figured that about the weapons, but it's nice to have confirmation. I forget where that preconception stemmed from, but it's definitely a popular one.

The death on the elevator was unfortunate from a style standpoint, but let's face it, in a game like this, it's gonna happen--like PJ mentioned above, this game is incredibly random, and making the wrong decision (Or even the right one, because "lol arcade game") tends to result in death. And as the commentary says, that's about the best possible place for it (Not only is it an autoscroller, but he manages to finish off that group of enemies before the next one comes down anyway). Nice Rolento fight too. If you've never played this before, it can't be overstated how important not letting Rolento go into Super Mode is.

Nice Andore skip. The way I tended to do that was to jump on the barrel and then jump off, but I think you still wind up dealing with Andore Jr. that way. Of course, I also primarily play MIKE HAGGAR, which reuires different techniues, so.

The knife/Poison section in Stage 5 is awful, good job skipping most of it.

Very nice Stage 5 overall. It looks like you know that at the start of the fight, he'll just run into your grab.

Of course, these first 5 Stages are really just one stage called "Not Uptown". Let's see how the last stage goes.

And as I resume the video, Murph mentions that. Of course.

Ah yes, the infamous invisi-barrel.

"The hardest screen in the entire game" I affectionately call "The Room of Death". The enemy composition, the fact there's eight of them total, plus the pillars getting in your way, make it just unfair even compared to the rest of the game. Getting out there without dying is amazing.

VERY nice Belger. It actually IS possible to get Belger in the infinite down to about a half bar of health (At which point he's scripted to jump near the window in preparation for the ending), but given how good the fight went, probably not worth it.

Maybe I'm just narcissistic, but I swear I hear someone say "Oh hey, Emptyeye showed up" in reference to MIKE HAGGAR making it to the ending.

Anyway. A 23-minute clear as Guy is amazing. I know Murph has stated an intent to try to do this on the hardest possible settings (1-life start, highest difficulty, no free lives), but for now, this is an easy [b]accept[/b].

MURPHAGATOR!

2015-11-07 12:21:22 pm

Terraffirmative!

I'm going to respond to Reeve's verification in particular because it points out a lot of good stuff.

Quote from Reeve:

1st Stage: Didn't notice any mistake. Just a minor thing I'd like to ask: When you reach the last area, wouldn't it be better to jump and knee the punk and then throw him backwards instead of punching him? It seems it would be faster.
The boss fight was Ok. I hate that punk there, he makes me loose my rythm or find a way to hit me and the boss goes away.

Throwing the J is for consistency, the further towards Axl I move, the more likely he is to wake up, and if he starts wandering he will cost far more time than doing the punch string could. I actually don't know a good time comparison for it, but thats the reasoning.

Quote:

2nd Stage: Shame you missed the second knife on the Andore. That costed a few seconds.
The second area of this stage was pretty good, but the 3rd area was bad. It seems you lost a pretty good chunk of time by getting knocked twice.
Got hit by the boss once, loosing a bit of time, but that happens sometimes.

Yea missing the knife was stupid. I timed it out and it cost exactly 60 frames, but Final Fight is not a game of frames. The 3rd area, as you mention, is more typical of how the game costs you time, which tends to happen in large chunks. Sodom is just complete RNG in if he knocks you down or not, so I pretty much accept any fight on him where I don't die.

Quote:

3rd Stage: The sword could have saved a good chunk of time if the player had managed to keep it. Also a bit more of time lost by trying to grab the Andore while he was off screen and getting hit by him.
In the end of the last area, after throwing all enemies to the left the player jumped to the right just once and stopped which wasn't enough to make them desapear. A second jump or even just walk to the right would probably solve the problem, although the girl would probably stay on screen.
The boss could be better. Missing the combo definitely costed a few seconds.

Having the sword would have been nice, but I actually intend to lose it before finishing the andore so that I can do the stacking in the interior section, its not a massive loss. The Andore being off-screen was a pretty bad misjudgement of screen position, but it's especially hard for me to tell since my TV cuts off the edge a bit. For the second right before Edi.e, Poison is 100% of the reason I waited. Poison can't be reliably despawned by any character, and bringing any enemies into the Edi.e fight will complete kill it. I tried to despawn her TWICE before getting to the position where I stopped, but at that point I no longer had any room to work with to try again without risking just complete failure.

Dropping the infinite was a bad error on my part, but Guy's strike damage is so low that getting kneebashes on him right away isn't as bad as it would have been for Cody.

Quote:

4th Stage: In the first area, when going to the end of the screen where the elevator is, there's a sword on the second row of barrels (iirc) and if you had managed to reach the end of the screen with this weapon your life would have been a whole lot easier. You probably lost a good chunk of time/health compared with a situation where you would have the sword.
Not sure if the death costed any time here. The boss fight was great!

In all honesty, having a sword here wouldn't really be helpful. Getting to the doorway with it would be extremely unreliable, and the sword is only really powerful against El Gados and Holly Woods. It actually does really terrible damage against Simons and the like because they stand up so slowly, and Simons is frequently the last enemy alive in the fight anyways. The boss fight was extremely lucky in that Rolento set himself up for the infinite after I grabbed him, but I was sort of forced to because of the item positions.

Quote:

5th Stage: The beginning was great. The first mistake I noticed was right before reaching the area where the El gados and Holly Woods show up. The player knocked some enemies with the Sword, but decided to kill them instead of keep going. I'm pretty sure, by the position you knocked them and how fast Guy is, you could have made them desapear.
It was a shame you lost the sword so soon. It would really help here in this area and would have saved a lot of time by allowing you to lock the enemies in the corners without getting hit. The many times you got hit/knocked making you need both foods show how much time you lost here.

Yea, unfortunately I have a bit of a mental block on this fight with Guy. Cody is so EXTREMELY good at this fight that I rarely failed it with him, but Guy having to hold the sword makes it difficult to both herd the enemies to one side and to deal with any extra enemies who might join. Then add to that the fact that Guys' hitboxes just kind of suck against El Gado and its just a mess.

Quote:

When you're almost reaching the boss you stop, kill the enemies with punches and proceed to the boss. It seems to me you would have saved time if you had stopped earlier, use a spin to knock them back and make them to desapear. Except for the punk, the other enemies are very slow and can't reach Guy.

So this screen is a bit unusual because its one of the only places where the sprite limit is both enforced and actually important at the same time. There are intended to be 2-3 more waves of enemies on the way to Abigail, including a group of Axls and Slashes, but holding all the Simons clones makes the game not spawn any of them. The consequence is that when you actually get to the Abigail fight, you no longer have any room to despawn them. I might look into just not despawning them and carrying them all the way into the Abigail fight with Cody since the infinite is so much more effective for him than Guy, but Guy really needs to start the fight alone to maximize the amount of throw damage he can do, since his throw damage is proportionally very high compared to his strikes.

Quote:

Abigail: I guess it is faster to use 3 knees instead of 2 knees and throw the boss. Also, I guess it would have been better to knock him down once, wait for him to stand up and walk to the left, then lock him with the infinit combo. Once the other enemies spawn you could try to slowdown your rythm waiting for them to enter the combo and then proceed with it till the end of the fight wich would probably not take so long. If one of the enemies break your combo, then proceed to a plan B.

Guy's striking damage is very low against Abigail, so I try to go for throws. Shoulder toss vs kneebash is a bit mixed, shoulder toss does more damage but takes a bit longer for the enemy to recover, BUT on Abigail this is important since it gives you more time to move before Abigail stands up. Abigail has a TON of invincibility after standing, and his AI pattern is basically entirely determined by your relative position to him when he does. If you are within half of the screen depth to him, he will move pretty much straight at you, and it is very difficult to stop him. I very much did not select the fastest possible strategy for this fight, but rather I selected one which gave consistently good times because Abigail can eat up a HUGE amount of time if things go wrong. If I ever aim to improve this run, I will definitely re-examine my approach to this fight to see if I can't save some time in a consistent manner, but even if I do decide to go for the infinite, it will most likely be after several reps of throws at the start.

Quote:

6th stage: Almost reaching the end of the first screen you stop to kill the enemies with punches while would probably be better to spin and knock them, then jump to the right to make them to desapear.

Again, like just before Abigail, there is an enemy I can despawn who is ahead of the screen, specifically a Slash who can't be despawned because of his starting position being too far to setup a scroll. With Cody, I've started just initiating the next fight without killing all of these guys, but with Guy my confidence in managing that fight with the extra spawns is not high.

Quote:

The 2nd area was amazing! Great work there!
The 3rd area was a bit messy, but it is really hard to get RNG to colaborate there and the lag generated is a pain.
The bottom barrel in the last area, right before the flame holly woods, has a Sword. I guess it could make this area faster, mainly the last enemies before the boss and if you manage to keep it, it would probably help to kill the boss faster too.

I hadn't thought about the possibility of bringing a weapon into Belger, but the fight right before is ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE unless you have the ability to do the striking string into throws. The enemy group here is far too large and aggressive, and add to that the fact that they spawn on both sides, and I just can't see hope in having the sword be in any way effective.

Quote:

Veredict: I'm not sure what to say. I was expecting more than what I watched. I'd like every stage had what I saw in the second area of the last stage. I'll let this info here and see what the runner and others have to say.

I'd certainly like to have the entire game look like that, too, but unfortunately Final Fight is an EXTREMELY random game and it is extremely unlikely I would ever be able to get that quality of run. With that said, this is not the finality of what I plan to do with the game, since I would like eventually to work on it with all of the dips set to the most difficult settings, and I am guessing that to accomplish that, it will have to look much more like the run you are describing. For now, I just wanted something solid to put up on the site, but believe me this is going to be a project for me for a long time to come.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to verify this. I appreciate the feedback, especially about the Abigail fight which I will look into more.

I'm going to respond to Reeve's verification in particular because it points out a lot of good stuff.

[quote="Reeve"]1st Stage: Didn't notice any mistake. Just a minor thing I'd like to ask: When you reach the last area, wouldn't it be better to jump and knee the punk and then throw him backwards instead of punching him? It seems it would be faster.
The boss fight was Ok. I hate that punk there, he makes me loose my rythm or find a way to hit me and the boss goes away.[/quote]

Throwing the J is for consistency, the further towards Axl I move, the more likely he is to wake up, and if he starts wandering he will cost far more time than doing the punch string could. I actually don't know a good time comparison for it, but thats the reasoning.

[quote]2nd Stage: Shame you missed the second knife on the Andore. That costed a few seconds.
The second area of this stage was pretty good, but the 3rd area was bad. It seems you lost a pretty good chunk of time by getting knocked twice.
Got hit by the boss once, loosing a bit of time, but that happens sometimes.[/quote]

Yea missing the knife was stupid. I timed it out and it cost exactly 60 frames, but Final Fight is not a game of frames. The 3rd area, as you mention, is more typical of how the game costs you time, which tends to happen in large chunks. Sodom is just complete RNG in if he knocks you down or not, so I pretty much accept any fight on him where I don't die.

[quote]3rd Stage: The sword could have saved a good chunk of time if the player had managed to keep it. Also a bit more of time lost by trying to grab the Andore while he was off screen and getting hit by him.
In the end of the last area, after throwing all enemies to the left the player jumped to the right just once and stopped which wasn't enough to make them desapear. A second jump or even just walk to the right would probably solve the problem, although the girl would probably stay on screen.
The boss could be better. Missing the combo definitely costed a few seconds.[/quote]

Having the sword would have been nice, but I actually intend to lose it before finishing the andore so that I can do the stacking in the interior section, its not a massive loss. The Andore being off-screen was a pretty bad misjudgement of screen position, but it's especially hard for me to tell since my TV cuts off the edge a bit. For the second right before Edi.e, Poison is 100% of the reason I waited. Poison can't be reliably despawned by any character, and bringing any enemies into the Edi.e fight will complete kill it. I tried to despawn her TWICE before getting to the position where I stopped, but at that point I no longer had any room to work with to try again without risking just complete failure.

Dropping the infinite was a bad error on my part, but Guy's strike damage is so low that getting kneebashes on him right away isn't as bad as it would have been for Cody.

[quote]4th Stage: In the first area, when going to the end of the screen where the elevator is, there's a sword on the second row of barrels (iirc) and if you had managed to reach the end of the screen with this weapon your life would have been a whole lot easier. You probably lost a good chunk of time/health compared with a situation where you would have the sword.
Not sure if the death costed any time here. The boss fight was great![/quote]

In all honesty, having a sword here wouldn't really be helpful. Getting to the doorway with it would be extremely unreliable, and the sword is only really powerful against El Gados and Holly Woods. It actually does really terrible damage against Simons and the like because they stand up so slowly, and Simons is frequently the last enemy alive in the fight anyways. The boss fight was extremely lucky in that Rolento set himself up for the infinite after I grabbed him, but I was sort of forced to because of the item positions.

[quote]5th Stage: The beginning was great. The first mistake I noticed was right before reaching the area where the El gados and Holly Woods show up. The player knocked some enemies with the Sword, but decided to kill them instead of keep going. I'm pretty sure, by the position you knocked them and how fast Guy is, you could have made them desapear.
It was a shame you lost the sword so soon. It would really help here in this area and would have saved a lot of time by allowing you to lock the enemies in the corners without getting hit. The many times you got hit/knocked making you need both foods show how much time you lost here.[/quote]
Yea, unfortunately I have a bit of a mental block on this fight with Guy. Cody is so EXTREMELY good at this fight that I rarely failed it with him, but Guy having to hold the sword makes it difficult to both herd the enemies to one side and to deal with any extra enemies who might join. Then add to that the fact that Guys' hitboxes just kind of suck against El Gado and its just a mess.

[quote]When you're almost reaching the boss you stop, kill the enemies with punches and proceed to the boss. It seems to me you would have saved time if you had stopped earlier, use a spin to knock them back and make them to desapear. Except for the punk, the other enemies are very slow and can't reach Guy.[/quote]

So this screen is a bit unusual because its one of the only places where the sprite limit is both enforced and actually important at the same time. There are intended to be 2-3 more waves of enemies on the way to Abigail, including a group of Axls and Slashes, but holding all the Simons clones makes the game not spawn any of them. The consequence is that when you actually get to the Abigail fight, you no longer have any room to despawn them. I might look into just not despawning them and carrying them all the way into the Abigail fight with Cody since the infinite is so much more effective for him than Guy, but Guy really needs to start the fight alone to maximize the amount of throw damage he can do, since his throw damage is proportionally very high compared to his strikes.

[quote]Abigail: I guess it is faster to use 3 knees instead of 2 knees and throw the boss. Also, I guess it would have been better to knock him down once, wait for him to stand up and walk to the left, then lock him with the infinit combo. Once the other enemies spawn you could try to slowdown your rythm waiting for them to enter the combo and then proceed with it till the end of the fight wich would probably not take so long. If one of the enemies break your combo, then proceed to a plan B.[/quote]

Guy's striking damage is very low against Abigail, so I try to go for throws. Shoulder toss vs kneebash is a bit mixed, shoulder toss does more damage but takes a bit longer for the enemy to recover, BUT on Abigail this is important since it gives you more time to move before Abigail stands up. Abigail has a TON of invincibility after standing, and his AI pattern is basically entirely determined by your relative position to him when he does. If you are within half of the screen depth to him, he will move pretty much straight at you, and it is very difficult to stop him. I very much did not select the fastest possible strategy for this fight, but rather I selected one which gave consistently good times because Abigail can eat up a HUGE amount of time if things go wrong. If I ever aim to improve this run, I will definitely re-examine my approach to this fight to see if I can't save some time in a consistent manner, but even if I do decide to go for the infinite, it will most likely be after several reps of throws at the start.

[quote]6th stage: Almost reaching the end of the first screen you stop to kill the enemies with punches while would probably be better to spin and knock them, then jump to the right to make them to desapear.[/quote]

Again, like just before Abigail, there is an enemy I can despawn who is ahead of the screen, specifically a Slash who can't be despawned because of his starting position being too far to setup a scroll. With Cody, I've started just initiating the next fight without killing all of these guys, but with Guy my confidence in managing that fight with the extra spawns is not high.

[quote]The 2nd area was amazing! Great work there!
The 3rd area was a bit messy, but it is really hard to get RNG to colaborate there and the lag generated is a pain.
The bottom barrel in the last area, right before the flame holly woods, has a Sword. I guess it could make this area faster, mainly the last enemies before the boss and if you manage to keep it, it would probably help to kill the boss faster too.[/quote]

I hadn't thought about the possibility of bringing a weapon into Belger, but the fight right before is ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE unless you have the ability to do the striking string into throws. The enemy group here is far too large and aggressive, and add to that the fact that they spawn on both sides, and I just can't see hope in having the sword be in any way effective.

[quote]Veredict: I'm not sure what to say. I was expecting more than what I watched. I'd like every stage had what I saw in the second area of the last stage. I'll let this info here and see what the runner and others have to say.[/quote]

I'd certainly like to have the entire game look like that, too, but unfortunately Final Fight is an EXTREMELY random game and it is extremely unlikely I would ever be able to get that quality of run. With that said, this is not the finality of what I plan to do with the game, since I would like eventually to work on it with all of the dips set to the most difficult settings, and I am guessing that to accomplish that, it will have to look much more like the run you are describing. For now, I just wanted something solid to put up on the site, but believe me this is going to be a project for me for a long time to come.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to verify this. I appreciate the feedback, especially about the Abigail fight which I will look into more.

Reeve

Edit history:

Reeve: 2015-11-09 04:51:11 am

Reeve: 2015-11-09 04:50:49 am

Reeve: 2015-11-09 04:48:22 am

Reeve: 2015-11-08 01:01:05 pm

2015-11-08 12:59:29 pm

Thanks for replying, Murphagator!

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

Having the sword would have been nice, but I actually intend to lose it before finishing the andore so that I can do the stacking in the interior section, its not a massive loss.

Weapons are probably the best option when you can hit many enemies at the same time, but once it is just you and one or two of them on screen, mainly the ones that takes a long time to recover, it is definitely better to use a infinite combo or kneebashes and throws.

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

For the second right before Edi.e, Poison is 100% of the reason I waited. Poison can't be reliably despawned by any character, and bringing any enemies into the Edi.e fight will complete kill it. I tried to despawn her TWICE before getting to the position where I stopped, but at that point I no longer had any room to work with to try again without risking just complete failure.

Poison is a pain to despawn! Unless you're lucky and she does a summersalt backwards. She not only catches up your character, but also hits you with a damn air kick. Not sure if you tried it, but right where the el gado apears, iirc it is possible to do something if you destroy that stuff in the middle of the screen, take the upper path and it's possible to throw back the fat guy over the Poison which helps to despawn her. It's something to test as I haven't played this game in a while. I should get back to it.

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

In all honesty, having a sword here wouldn't really be helpful. Getting to the doorway with it would be extremely unreliable, and the sword is only really powerful against El Gados and Holly Woods. It actually does really terrible damage against Simons and the like because they stand up so slowly, and Simons is frequently the last enemy alive in the fight anyways.

You made it to the end of the screen in a way that a carrying a sword would not make any difference, although I understand you may have been lucky there. Using a weapon against Simons is definitely not a good option, unless you're killing some el gados in the process, which is the case. After you notice the el gados are dead you can just pick up one of the knives on the ground to release the Sword and handle the simons without having to knock them down and they should not have many more life points. I still think it would be helpfull if you find a way to consistently have the weapon in that area. Anyway, probably something to test more closely.

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

So this screen is a bit unusual because its one of the only places where the sprite limit is both enforced and actually important at the same time. There are intended to be 2-3 more waves of enemies on the way to Abigail, including a group of Axls and Slashes, but holding all the Simons clones makes the game not spawn any of them. The consequence is that when you actually get to the Abigail fight, you no longer have any room to despawn them.

I noticed it was missing the axls, but didn't know it was because of the simons you held. I don't remember the last time I played this game in a difficulty that was not the hardest, because I usually play it online and the players likes this level of difficulty, so I thought the Axls would only spawn in the hardest settings.

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

Guy's striking damage is very low against Abigail, so I try to go for throws. Shoulder toss vs kneebash is a bit mixed, shoulder toss does more damage but takes a bit longer for the enemy to recover, BUT on Abigail this is important since it gives you more time to move before Abigail stands up. Abigail has a TON of invincibility after standing, and his AI pattern is basically entirely determined by your relative position to him when he does. If you are within half of the screen depth to him, he will move pretty much straight at you, and it is very difficult to stop him. I very much did not select the fastest possible strategy for this fight, but rather I selected one which gave consistently good times because Abigail can eat up a HUGE amount of time if things go wrong. If I ever aim to improve this run, I will definitely re-examine my approach to this fight to see if I can't save some time in a consistent manner, but even if I do decide to go for the infinite, it will most likely be after several reps of throws at the start.

If you kneebash him till you knock him down and just hold up or down depending on where you see you have more room to "run away" from him, he will go after your character, but can't reach him, then you can just grab him and kneebash again and keep repeating this. I will have to look into this more closely, cause I've been playing with haggar for a long time and you know haggar can grab enemies pretty easily, so I'm not sure you would have any problems to grab Abigail with other characters. Going for kneebashes/throws is definitely the way to start the fight. The idea of locking him with an infinite combo is for when you know the henchmen are about to spawn.

Quote from MURPHAGATOR!:

I hadn't thought about the possibility of bringing a weapon into Belger, but the fight right before is ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE unless you have the ability to do the striking string into throws. The enemy group here is far too large and aggressive, and add to that the fact that they spawn on both sides, and I just can't see hope in having the sword be in any way effective.

Yeah, taking the sword to the henchmen before Belger is easy, but keeping it would be a nightmare. If you somehow could find a way to consistently gather some enemies to quickly kill it could be still worth it, as even weak enemies can be a pain if you have too many enemies on screen to worry about. Anyway, something more to test, I guess.

Again, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to analyse my post. If you wanna play online with other FF lovers you could go here. I'm usually there and there is usually a ton of great players online.

Veredict: Accept

Thanks for replying, Murphagator!

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]Having the sword would have been nice, but I actually intend to lose it before finishing the andore so that I can do the stacking in the interior section, its not a massive loss.[/quote]
Weapons are probably the best option when you can hit many enemies at the same time, but once it is just you and one or two of them on screen, mainly the ones that takes a long time to recover, it is definitely better to use a infinite combo or kneebashes and throws.

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]For the second right before Edi.e, Poison is 100% of the reason I waited. Poison can't be reliably despawned by any character, and bringing any enemies into the Edi.e fight will complete kill it. I tried to despawn her TWICE before getting to the position where I stopped, but at that point I no longer had any room to work with to try again without risking just complete failure.[/quote]
Poison is a pain to despawn! Unless you're lucky and she does a summersalt backwards. She not only catches up your character, but also hits you with a damn air kick. Not sure if you tried it, but right where the el gado apears, iirc it is possible to do something if you destroy that stuff in the middle of the screen, take the upper path and it's possible to throw back the fat guy over the Poison which helps to despawn her. It's something to test as I haven't played this game in a while. I should get back to it.

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]In all honesty, having a sword here wouldn't really be helpful. Getting to the doorway with it would be extremely unreliable, and the sword is only really powerful against El Gados and Holly Woods. It actually does really terrible damage against Simons and the like because they stand up so slowly, and Simons is frequently the last enemy alive in the fight anyways.[/quote]
You made it to the end of the screen in a way that a carrying a sword would not make any difference, although I understand you may have been lucky there. Using a weapon against Simons is definitely not a good option, unless you're killing some el gados in the process, which is the case. After you notice the el gados are dead you can just pick up one of the knives on the ground to release the Sword and handle the simons without having to knock them down and they should not have many more life points. I still think it would be helpfull if you find a way to consistently have the weapon in that area. Anyway, probably something to test more closely.

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]So this screen is a bit unusual because its one of the only places where the sprite limit is both enforced and actually important at the same time. There are intended to be 2-3 more waves of enemies on the way to Abigail, including a group of Axls and Slashes, but holding all the Simons clones makes the game not spawn any of them. The consequence is that when you actually get to the Abigail fight, you no longer have any room to despawn them.[/quote]
I noticed it was missing the axls, but didn't know it was because of the simons you held. I don't remember the last time I played this game in a difficulty that was not the hardest, because I usually play it online and the players likes this level of difficulty, so I thought the Axls would only spawn in the hardest settings.

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]Guy's striking damage is very low against Abigail, so I try to go for throws. Shoulder toss vs kneebash is a bit mixed, shoulder toss does more damage but takes a bit longer for the enemy to recover, BUT on Abigail this is important since it gives you more time to move before Abigail stands up. Abigail has a TON of invincibility after standing, and his AI pattern is basically entirely determined by your relative position to him when he does. If you are within half of the screen depth to him, he will move pretty much straight at you, and it is very difficult to stop him. I very much did not select the fastest possible strategy for this fight, but rather I selected one which gave consistently good times because Abigail can eat up a HUGE amount of time if things go wrong. If I ever aim to improve this run, I will definitely re-examine my approach to this fight to see if I can't save some time in a consistent manner, but even if I do decide to go for the infinite, it will most likely be after several reps of throws at the start.[/quote]
If you kneebash him till you knock him down and just hold up or down depending on where you see you have more room to "run away" from him, he will go after your character, but can't reach him, then you can just grab him and kneebash again and keep repeating this. I will have to look into this more closely, cause I've been playing with haggar for a long time and you know haggar can grab enemies pretty easily, so I'm not sure you would have any problems to grab Abigail with other characters. Going for kneebashes/throws is definitely the way to start the fight. The idea of locking him with an infinite combo is for when you know the henchmen are about to spawn.

[quote="MURPHAGATOR!"]I hadn't thought about the possibility of bringing a weapon into Belger, but the fight right before is ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE unless you have the ability to do the striking string into throws. The enemy group here is far too large and aggressive, and add to that the fact that they spawn on both sides, and I just can't see hope in having the sword be in any way effective.[/quote]
Yeah, taking the sword to the henchmen before Belger is easy, but keeping it would be a nightmare. If you somehow could find a way to consistently gather some enemies to quickly kill it could be still worth it, as even weak enemies can be a pain if you have too many enemies on screen to worry about. Anyway, something more to test, I guess.

Again, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to analyse my post. If you wanna play online with other FF lovers you could go [url=https://www.fightcade.com/]here[/url]. I'm usually there and there is usually a ton of great players online.

Veredict: Accept

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2015-11-14 01:58:28 pm

2015-11-14 01:56:11 pm

This one seems to have received a lot of attention... that's great, cool that people are hyped for this run (I've just seen a little bit of the game myself), but wouldn't it be awesome if every game that got run and submitted received the same attention? To be frank, 5 accepts is overkill when at the same time multiple other games in verification are being ignored completely without enough verifications for a verdict.

You do NOT have to know the game to verify it. As has been said before. You just need to divulge some of your time if you could be so kind, so ktwo doesn't have to verify all the games himself. Tongue

I'm seeing a bunch of old-timers here so you should know that. And I don't wanna go on just this specific bunch of people but maybe you do recognize all this.

TheKeeperSA

2015-11-14 11:34:34 pm

LotBlind, I agree with you but you can't ask for people to verify games they're not interested in. I know it's kind of unfair, but then again, expected. That's how I roll, I verify games I know and like because I have so much time in a day.

Emptyeye

2015-11-15 10:32:17 am

Talk to the Hand

That's mainly what it is for me too. I happen to know Final Fight a bit. I mean, I could try to help out with games I don't know, but I'm super lenient, any verdict of mine would just be "Yep, looks good, accept", which is almost worse than if I don't say anything at all.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2015-11-15 11:55:43 am

LotBlind: 2015-11-15 11:54:04 am

2015-11-15 11:53:34 am

Hmm... Yes, it was more difficult for me too at first to make calls. I would even resort to things like counting time losses, comparing with previous submitted run and seeing if execution surpasses or amounts to the same (if I saw considerably more execution errors with new skips then I'd lean towards a reject), but in reality it's been only a very few cases where it's been so hard to make up one's mind! Most of the time, if the runner has already had a run accepted once, they'll know how they need to think and have the self-censorship to only submit when they've really produced something very easy to induce. Most of the time in public verification it's literally enough to make sure your run doesn't look sloppy because the route/RNG stuff you might have missed we have to accept will also be missed by the verifiers. After seeing 10 platformers you're going to generally know what a good platformer run will look like. After watching about half of the run, you've also got a good idea of what's possible to do in the given game and so you have effectively gained the game knowledge you'll need to give a verdict. If you were able to do a bomb hover over there earlier, why couldn't you have done the same there or there? Another thing is you can ask the runner (as someone did here) about anything you were left unclear about further helping you to form your opinion.

Maybe you're shy about it for no reason? The other side of the coin is, yes, there's work involved. Being a lazy verifier is definitely worse than being an inexperienced one! But it's honestly not rocket science. Or even regular science Tongue

EDIT: I took a look at your blog Emptyeye... With your level of speedrunning knowledge, I just don't get how you couldn't do basically anything you were tasked with over here :P. Barring those time concerns. If other verifiers tend to disagree with you in terms of what's worth an accept, you'll get an accurate picture of present-day standards which are, as I understand, much higher than they used to be (or maybe it's just they're more clearly established). But it's just a question of "could this guy easily do better if he just kept practising for now", and most people will happily take that challenge! Believe me! You're motivating them to become better speedrunners (and by proxy to improve their skills and standards in general) which is only going to boost their self-esteem in the long term. Gotta be cruel to be kind sometimes...

Furthermore, I consider myself a far more erudite and credible gamer (in terms of allowing myself opinions) by virtue of having exposed myself to dozens and dozens of runs (which are, after all, the most condensed form of a LP), and strangely enough often find the most obscure games the most interesting and enjoyable despite having had that silly dismissive sentiment initially.

That's why I do it... admittedly I've got some free time for it too.

Hmm... Yes, it was more difficult for me too at first to make calls. I would even resort to things like counting time losses, comparing with previous submitted run and seeing if execution surpasses or amounts to the same (if I saw considerably more execution errors with new skips then I'd lean towards a reject), but in reality it's been only a very few cases where it's been so hard to make up one's mind! Most of the time, if the runner has already had a run accepted once, they'll know how they need to think and have the self-censorship to only submit when they've really produced something very easy to induce. Most of the time in public verification it's literally enough to make sure your run doesn't [b]look[/b] sloppy because the route/RNG stuff you might have missed we have to accept will also be missed by the verifiers. After seeing 10 platformers you're going to generally know what a good platformer run will look like. After watching about half of the run, you've also got a good idea of what's possible to do in the given game and so you have effectively gained the game knowledge you'll need to give a verdict. If you were able to do a bomb hover over there earlier, why couldn't you have done the same there or there? Another thing is you can ask the runner (as someone did here) about anything you were left unclear about further helping you to form your opinion.

Maybe you're shy about it for no reason? The other side of the coin is, yes, there's work involved. Being a lazy verifier is definitely worse than being an inexperienced one! But it's honestly not rocket science. Or even regular science :P

EDIT: I took a look at your blog Emptyeye... With your level of speedrunning knowledge, I just don't get how you couldn't do basically anything you were tasked with over here :P. Barring those time concerns. If other verifiers tend to disagree with you in terms of what's worth an accept, you'll get an accurate picture of present-day standards which are, as I understand, much higher than they used to be (or maybe it's just they're more clearly established). But it's just a question of "could this guy easily do better if he just kept practising for now", and most people will happily take that challenge! Believe me! You're motivating them to become better speedrunners (and by proxy to improve their skills and standards in general) which is only going to boost their self-esteem in the long term. Gotta be cruel to be kind sometimes...

Furthermore, I consider myself a far more erudite and credible gamer (in terms of allowing myself opinions) by virtue of having exposed myself to dozens and dozens of runs (which are, after all, the most condensed form of a LP), and strangely enough often find the most obscure games the most interesting and enjoyable despite having had that silly dismissive sentiment initially.

That's why I do it... admittedly I've got some free time for it too.

SDAVerification

2015-11-17 03:50:48 pm

Decision posted.