La-Mulana

2014-05-10 11:23:55 pm

The original, since 2003.

I can't remember if anyone tested this previously or not, but I did this as part of an All Characters Ending run (Which somehow managed to break itself, no surprise there).

I wanted to test whether or not the Mantra skip had an effect on unlocking Hell Temple for 100% Inventory/ All Characters. As it turns out, you can perform the Mantra Skip in those categories too. You do not need to seal Palenque's Mantra (Or any of the others for that fact) in order to take the lava warp and unlock Hell Temple.

Obviously in a speedrun you might as well finish the Mantras off anyways, because you can't fight THE BOSS unless you do.

tijit

2014-06-06 05:06:59 am

i did a hell temple speedrun on hard mode

HiddenDistance

Edit history:

HiddenDistance: 2014-06-07 02:32:19 am

2014-06-07 02:30:00 am

Nice Tijit!

Two things on my front to note: First, I did wind up cracking off another PB in the last week or so, putting the remake record at 1:45:14.1 afaik.

Second, I played around with something in mother's Phase 5 earlier tonight- http://www.twitch.tv/hiddendistance/c/4415431
The video has a description, but I may as well expound on it here.

So, as most of you know (but for those reading who might not), when you do enough damage to mother during her phase 5, she calls up the next seal relating to the next guardian - amphis, sakit, ellmac, etc. up until Tiamat. During the time that the seal is currently on the screen, mother has I-frames, so additional damage there doesn't really do anything (but it's sometimes fun to just lay into her anyway)

Going by what tablet has recently displayed, and what attacks have already been queued up in her AI pattern, you can figure out exactly where she's going to go & what she's going to do. Near the end of the fight in the clip, I trigger the Baphomet seal while she's in the air doing the Palenque attack - but I know she's already queued up another Viy laser - which will be on the same side of the screen as the Palenque energy bullet rain. By waiting for her there, and anticipating her arrival, I can rail through all the damage to get her Tiamat seal to pop.

This is the important thing though: since I'm doing the damage earlier in the Viy attack based on that anticipation, Tiamat's seal goes away before she has an opportunity to fly up to do her next queued attack, the baphomet spires. Since her I-frames go away, you can actually power through all 4 shots necessary to end the fight before she flies off. The only thing to watch out for is for firing too fast, as you'll trigger her normal I-frames and still miss the damage.

I suspected it earlier when I did a practice run when I was able to shoot her 3 times before she managed to fly away. That clip above was my initial attempt on stream at investigating if it was possible or not. I've done very little practice off-stream or testing with it so far, but I've managed to get it every time, so it seems very consistent, just an issue of good timing. The pistol helped end that part of the fight quickly before, which was quite a boon, seeing as that part has a tendency to eat up time - incorporating the earlier damage & quicker kill should save a good chunk of time on that fight.

Nice Tijit!

Two things on my front to note:  First, I did wind up cracking off another PB in the last week or so, putting the remake record at 1:45:14.1 afaik.

Second, I played around with something in mother's Phase 5 earlier tonight-  http://www.twitch.tv/hiddendistance/c/4415431
The video has a description, but I may as well expound on it here.

So, as most of you know (but for those reading who might not), when you do enough damage to mother during her phase 5, she calls up the next seal relating to the next guardian - amphis, sakit, ellmac, etc. up until Tiamat.  During the time that the seal is currently on the screen, mother has I-frames, so additional damage there doesn't really do anything (but it's sometimes fun to just lay into her anyway)

Going by what tablet has recently displayed, and what attacks have already been queued up in her AI pattern, you can figure out exactly where she's going to go & what she's going to do.  Near the end of the fight in the clip, I trigger the Baphomet seal while she's in the air doing the Palenque attack - but I know she's already queued up another Viy laser - which will be on the same side of the screen as the Palenque energy bullet rain.  By waiting for her there, and anticipating her arrival, I can rail through all the damage to get her Tiamat seal to pop.

This is the important thing though: since I'm doing the damage earlier in the Viy attack based on that anticipation, Tiamat's seal goes away before she has an opportunity to fly up to do her next queued attack, the baphomet spires.  Since her I-frames go away, you can actually power through all 4 shots necessary to end the fight before she flies off.  The only thing to watch out for is for firing too fast, as you'll trigger her normal I-frames and still miss the damage.

I suspected it earlier when I did a practice run when I was able to shoot her 3 times before she managed to fly away.  That clip above was my initial attempt on stream at investigating if it was possible or not.  I've done very little practice off-stream or testing with it so far, but I've managed to get it every time, so it seems very consistent, just an issue of good timing.  The pistol helped end that part of the fight quickly before, which was quite a boon, seeing as that part has a tendency to eat up time - incorporating the earlier damage & quicker kill should save a good chunk of time on that fight.

tijit

2014-06-09 03:10:55 am

cool sequence break

tijit

2014-06-12 03:03:44 am

just gonna throw this here before i forget:

my theory is the mother crash can happen when loading in the sakit projectile sound effect.

if you want the game to not crash, when you boot up the game load a save at the end and fight mother (at least up until where the game would usually crash) so that the sound is already loaded before starting a fresh run.

HiddenDistance

2014-07-13 10:17:18 pm

Something brought to my attention the other day -

I don't know if anyone else was aware of this; I had an inkling of a suspicion after something happened in one of my runs, but never got around to testing it as I just tunnel-visioned on SGDQ practice. Turns out, jumping in the remake costs a very small amount of time. Unnecessary jumping isn't something I'm particularly guilty of, but something to keep in mind.

Credit to offlineman for working it out and bringing it to my attention.

HiddenDistance

2014-08-19 06:37:36 pm

Hey all, been a while since we've seen much activity in here - I wanted to get some feedback on something I've been working on during my time off this summer.

So, I've been routing a 100% All Characters Ending for the remake - it's been coming along quite nicely. All of the emails are squared away in the routing, everything is quite clean with the money management throughout the run (no coin grinding, woohoo!), and most of what's left is to practice some of the fights that are different in hard mode - namely Viy, and bone up on my hard mode Hell Temple a little.

One problem I've run into however is the weapon fairy for the end credits. The cited trigger on the La-Mulana remake wikia is that you have to activate all of the fairy points in the game (with the exception of Hell Temple). I've performed this myself in the past, weapon fairy shows up - no drama etc. While I've been practicing and routing however, I haven't seen the weapon fairy show up. I did a practice run last night to practice and memorize the route, and no weapon fairy.

After rewatching the relevant segments, I definitively get every fairy point and have a save afterward. In the middle of the game I have some weird shenanigans where I'm forgetting some of my route, but I do go back later and get those points properly. I had thought or suspected that doing a S&Q to the menu to reset the fairy point may have been screwing with the trigger, so I've been using the miracle/mirai software combination to get the points to spawn faster (hell, it's quicker than going to the menu anyway if the points are just *there* when I'm ready to scoop up another fairy). Still no luck at all.

This leaves me at a bit of a dilemma. I don't currently have any ideas as to what's going on with the trigger, and I doubt I have the programming experience to investigate the matter in that kind of depth myself. From my position, I see that I'm either not going to be able to do 100% ACE runs at all - since the weapon fairy just won't show, or - I do all of the things that should be necessary for the weapon fairy to show up in the credits, and the run counts just fine as a 100% ACE whether or not it shows up, as long as I confirm after the fact that all was well, and I did activate every fairy point during the run.

I can't say I like the first option for a couple of reasons. First, it means I've wasted a bunch of time routing something that isn't going to get off the ground because of a bug. Second, I don't actually get to run the game/category which was sort of the goal - go fast, have fun, all that.

The second option I don't like a tremendous amount, because if the category is "All Characters Ending" and all the characters aren't in the credits, it's a bit of a slap in the face - though one I could live with. The manner I reasoned it was like this: If say, an E-tank in Super Metroid was bugged and didn't always count towards the 100% score in the end credits - but the runner collected every single item during their run including the bugged E-tank, would I consider the run to be invalid or illegitimate on the basis that the credits don't have the 100% term - despite the fact that all necessary actions to qualify for the category were completed during the course of the run. My answer to that is simply no - the runner has skillfully executed all that was required, and because of a tracking error in the software they don't get the appropriate display. That's my take on it anyway, I'd be happy to hear feedback or entertain arguments to the contrary.

Aside from that, if you have any ideas for testing or know what the issue might be, let me know. I do know some people had talked about the bug with the weapon fairy in the credits relating to speaking to Mulbruk after you get the forbidden treasure, but as that would waste time, I don't visit Mulbruk at all after completing Hell Temple, so I would take that to be incorrect (or possibly correct, but relating to an entirely different problem than the one I am experiencing).

Cheers!

Hey all, been a while since we've seen much activity in here - I wanted to get some feedback on something I've been working on during my time off this summer.

So, I've been routing a 100% All Characters Ending for the remake - it's been coming along quite nicely.  All of the emails are squared away in the routing, everything is quite clean with the money management throughout the run (no coin grinding, woohoo!), and most of what's left is to practice some of the fights that are different in hard mode - namely Viy, and bone up on my hard mode Hell Temple a little.

One problem I've run into however is the weapon fairy for the end credits.  The cited trigger on the La-Mulana remake wikia is that you have to activate all of the fairy points in the game (with the exception of Hell Temple).  I've performed this myself in the past, weapon fairy shows up - no drama etc.  While I've been practicing and routing however, I haven't seen the weapon fairy show up.  I did a practice run last night to practice and memorize the route, and no weapon fairy.

After rewatching the relevant segments, I definitively get every fairy point and have a save afterward.  In the middle of the game I have some weird shenanigans where I'm forgetting some of my route, but I do go back later and get those points properly.  I had thought or suspected that doing a S&Q to the menu to reset the fairy point may have been screwing with the trigger, so I've been using the miracle/mirai software combination to get the points to spawn faster (hell, it's quicker than going to the menu anyway if the points are just *there* when I'm ready to scoop up another fairy).  Still no luck at all.

This leaves me at a bit of a dilemma.  I don't currently have any ideas as to what's going on with the trigger, and I doubt I have the programming experience to investigate the matter in that kind of depth myself.  From my position, I see that I'm either not going to be able to do 100% ACE runs at all - since the weapon fairy just won't show, or - I do all of the things that should be necessary for the weapon fairy to show up in the credits, and the run counts just fine as a 100% ACE whether or not it shows up, as long as I confirm after the fact that all was well, and I did activate every fairy point during the run.

I can't say I like the first option for a couple of reasons.  First, it means I've wasted a bunch of time routing something that isn't going to get off the ground because of a bug.  Second, I don't actually get to run the game/category which was sort of the goal - go fast, have fun, all that.

The second option I don't like a tremendous amount, because if the category is "All Characters Ending" and all the characters aren't in the credits, it's a bit of a slap in the face - though one I could live with.  The manner I reasoned it was like this:  If say, an E-tank in Super Metroid was bugged and didn't always count towards the 100% score in the end credits - but the runner collected every single item during their run including the bugged E-tank, would I consider the run to be invalid or illegitimate on the basis that the credits don't have the 100% term - despite the fact that all necessary actions to qualify for the category were completed during the course of the run.  My answer to that is simply no - the runner has skillfully executed all that was required, and because of a tracking error in the software they don't get the appropriate display.  That's my take on it anyway, I'd be happy to hear feedback or entertain arguments to the contrary.

Aside from that, if you have any ideas for testing or know what the issue might be, let me know.  I do know some people had talked about the bug with the weapon fairy in the credits relating to speaking to Mulbruk after you get the forbidden treasure, but as that would waste time, I don't visit Mulbruk at all after completing Hell Temple, so I would take that to be incorrect (or possibly correct, but relating to an entirely different problem than the one I am experiencing).

Cheers!

tjp7154

2014-08-19 11:40:49 pm

#Casual

I have a quick question: Does anyone know why Lemeza sometimes clips into corners? Has that been researched or a way found to manipulate it?

ShadowWraith

2014-08-20 02:10:46 am

.

HiddenDistance: All SDA cares about is the gameplay. If you can show that all of the actions you performed would provide 100% + best ending (all characters, I guess) then that's acceptable.

HiddenDistance

2014-08-20 07:19:38 am

Thanks ShadowWraith, I appreciate the input!

tjp7154: I'm not entirely sure if you're speaking to the remake or the original - "corner clipping" in the original is a fairly well known/exploitable bug that is used in speedrunning, though I'd have to leave it to one of the original speedrunners to explain how it works.

As for the remake, do you just mean randomly getting stuck in the floor or walls & that sort of thing? If that is what you mean, then the answer is yes... and no... and no.
There's a fair bit of getting stuck in things that can happen every once in a while. I've seen it happen to other runners who literally just jump into a wall - this happened to th3schwartz in the gate of guidance while going for the ankh jewel - just jumped into the wall and it shoved him through to where the ladder was. We tried to replicate it, couldn't do it. Sometimes when I just jump vertically with no other inputs at all, I've gotten stuck in the ground randomly; not necessarily corners, but terrain-objects.

I know some others and also myself have screwed around with trying to determine what causes it (and if we can do it repeatedly), as it has the potential to skip some stuff - like getting into Chi You's boss room without bothering with the mini doll, or other things like that. So in that sense, Yes - we've researched it... but no, we haven't researched it in the sense that it was fruitful in any way - and that leads to the other no - we haven't found a way to manipulate it. About the only thing that I do know about it - it's best not to jump again if you get stuck in the floor since it'll act almost like quicksand; it'll just suck you in deeper until (chances are) you get booted out to the surface. Instead, just wiggle Lemeza's horizontal direction back and forth quickly and he should pop out and you can just continue. Hopefully that's what you were inquiring about. If not, you might have to be more specific.

Thanks ShadowWraith, I appreciate the input!

tjp7154:  I'm not entirely sure if you're speaking to the remake or the original - "corner clipping" in the original is a fairly well known/exploitable bug that is used in speedrunning, though I'd have to leave it to one of the original speedrunners to explain how it works.

As for the remake, do you just mean randomly getting stuck in the floor or walls & that sort of thing?  If that is what you mean, then the answer is yes... and no... and no.
There's a fair bit of getting stuck in things that can happen every once in a while.  I've seen it happen to other runners who literally just jump into a wall - this happened to th3schwartz in the gate of guidance while going for the ankh jewel - just jumped into the wall and it shoved him through to where the ladder was.  We tried to replicate it, couldn't do it.  Sometimes when I just jump vertically with no other inputs at all, I've gotten stuck in the ground randomly; not necessarily corners, but terrain-objects.

I know some others and also myself have screwed around with trying to determine what causes it (and if we can do it repeatedly), as it has the potential to skip some stuff - like getting into Chi You's boss room without bothering with the mini doll, or other things like that.  So in that sense, Yes - we've researched it... but no, we haven't researched it in the sense that it was fruitful in any way - and that leads to the other no - we haven't found a way to manipulate it.  About the only thing that I do know about it - it's best not to jump again if you get stuck in the floor since it'll act almost like quicksand; it'll just suck you in deeper until (chances are) you get booted out to the surface.  Instead, just wiggle Lemeza's horizontal direction back and forth quickly and he should pop out and you can just continue.  Hopefully that's what you were inquiring about.  If not, you might have to be more specific.

tjp7154

2014-08-20 11:17:51 am

#Casual

Yeah, I was thinking of the remake. I encountered that a fair number of times, first in the Inferno Caverns -- I was going up the ladders past the deep lava well for the Ankh pedestal and I just popped through to the other side. I watched another stream VOD where the streamer was in the Moon Temple, clipped near the entrance to Eden, then ended up back at the Surface on the first screen. If it's random -- maybe there's some subpixel-ish thing going on??? Dunno...

Traysandor

Edit history:

Traysandor: 2014-08-20 09:05:41 pm

Traysandor: 2014-08-20 09:00:54 pm

Traysandor: 2014-08-20 09:00:48 pm

2014-08-20 08:58:37 pm

The original, since 2003.

The game engine can be a bit weird sometimes. Random stuff like that I guess are leftover bugs that don't occur often enough and weren't important enough to patch.

On winding up in the surface, finding yourself warped to the surface is hard coded into the game as a sort of "Anti-cheat/glitch check" thing where if the game thinks you've made a wrong screen transition or somehow wind up in a place where you're not supposed to go, then the game will kick you out of the Ruins entirely and place you back on the Surface. That's the main thing to discourage you from TAS-breaking the game in ways that were unintended by the developers.

As far as the original goes, you can pretty much do whatever as long as the game doesn't crash.

HiddenDistance

2014-08-30 03:08:36 pm

Hey all,

So I fired away at a 100% ACE run yesterday, and managed a 2:53:XX - http://www.twitch.tv/hiddendistance/c/5028978
Lot of slop to cut, and doubtlessly there are improvements that can be made to the route (at the end of the run SpootyBiscuit suggested one that seems pretty plausible).

Here's the notes I'm working off of. They don't account for a few things (what software to have equipped, which coin pots) but it more or less provides the scaffolding for the route, and seems like a reasonable first effort. Definitely going to be playing more of this category to improve the route and the run.

http://pastebin.com/HSnVyu67

Goost

Edit history:

Goost: 2014-10-14 01:13:45 pm

2014-10-14 11:35:14 am

Hey all,

Been doing a little bit of practise in the remake to actually start running it. Last night I was streaming with a few people from IRC in chat. I was derping around with the laptop glitch in 1.0.0.1, and found out that you can actually enter shops twice.
This begged the question: is it possible to abuse it, and is it possible to use it in such a way that you can buy any amount of one single item.

Turns out, it's possible to buy up to 6 ankhs in the Chamber of Birth! Here's my video to explain it:

Goost

2014-10-14 03:21:07 pm

So, after some discussing and trying out various things, I think we can safely say that the glitch I demonstrated above can be generalised as a storage glitch, you can basically store any shop screen and some conversations, and access them from practically anywhere. To do so you have to use the laptop glitch, enter the store, press escape and do either of two things:

- Enter a different conversation where pressing confirm doesn't do anything except advance the text (so for example, Xelpud's tent), after entering this conversation screen, press confirm once and walk out of the shop. This allows you to get out of the laptop glitch, while still keeping the shop stored
- Scan anything you can scan, press confirm, which kicks you of the scan screen, while simultaneously 'telling the shop' that you want to buy the highlighted item. In the shop screen this will put you into the conversation where the shopkeeper asks you to confirm whether you want to buy something. After getting out of the scanning screen, re-enter the store and walk out by pressing down. This is the way it's done in the video above.

After doing either of the steps, you'll have whatever screen you wanted to store stored, and you can go ahead and continue playing and teleporting and all that jazz, because both of the above steps kick you out of the laptop glitch, while keeping the screen stored. Once you need to access the screen again you either have to walk into a conversation screen, or scan something again.

So, after some discussing and trying out various things, I think we can safely say that the glitch I demonstrated above can be generalised as a storage glitch, you can basically store any shop screen and some conversations, and access them from practically anywhere. To do so you have to use the laptop glitch, enter the store, press escape and do either of two things:

- Enter a different conversation where pressing confirm doesn't do anything except advance the text (so for example, Xelpud's tent), after entering this conversation screen, press confirm once and walk out of the shop. This allows you to get out of the laptop glitch, while still keeping the shop stored
- Scan anything you can scan, press confirm, which kicks you of the scan screen, while simultaneously 'telling the shop' that you want to buy the highlighted item. In the shop screen this will put you into the conversation where the shopkeeper asks you to confirm whether you want to buy something. After getting out of the scanning screen, re-enter the store and walk out by pressing down. This is the way it's done in the video above.

After doing either of the steps, you'll have whatever screen you wanted to store stored, and you can go ahead and continue playing and teleporting and all that jazz, because both of the above steps kick you out of the laptop glitch, while keeping the screen stored. Once you need to access the screen again you either have to walk into a conversation screen, or scan something again.

soufside

2015-01-29 07:48:03 pm

hey everyone,

ive been trying to learn la mulana as of late, but I am just now realizing that I have ver1.5.5.2

I looked a few pages back & I skimmed through the first few pages but didn't seem to see anything that discussed the differences and if it can still be ran like 1.0.0.1. so apologies if it was already explained somewhere in these 33 pages but if anybody would be down to fill me in on what the differences are and whether or not I should get a copy of the previous version in order to run this game properly (and if so, where can I get that?), id be much obliged

HiddenDistance

2015-02-19 06:34:48 pm

Howdy everybody, just wanted to fire off a notice here that I went ahead and requested (and subsequently setup along with Goost & DraQu) a page for leaderboards on http://www.speedrun.com/la_mulana
I decided to go ahead and create a series entry so that both the original and remake had a section, with room for La-Mulana 2 when it comes out (because really... speedrunning it is probably just going to happen).

I populated it with a few times/videos I know of, but if you have a run you want to add, hop on over.