I saw this kill for the Gravity Boss (starts at 12 min mark) on a longplay of the JP version a while back - guessing it used savestates, but no serious TASing tools. I've always been curious how many of his opening patterns would work for getting a fast kill with the mecha suit this way, or at least take out a large portion of his health.
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It's food for thought, but I would imagine that you lose more time by having to collect all those extra letters than you would gain with the faster boss kill. Many stages don't really have all too many letters to offer that would be nicely on the way.
There's quite many different looking patterns Gravitus can do where you can kill him even with the red vest before you would knock him back. I haven't really figured out any way to be able to affect what he does, but you can slightly affect where he does it in the beginning.
There's quite many different looking patterns Gravitus can do where you can kill him even with the red vest before you would knock him back. I haven't really figured out any way to be able to affect what he does, but you can slightly affect where he does it in the beginning.
It's good to see someone pushing this game a bit further. A lot of the new strats was stuff i knew was possible but that i wasn't really willing to put in the route just because so much is decided by the RNG of the boss fights. I do like the use of sword bot against the Area D boss though. That was some smart routing, i've actually been trying to remember to utilize that for SGDQ practice.
After I do the SGDQ run i don't see myself putting much more time into the game tbh. I love playing this game but the RNG really does make the grind of trying to push times down feel a lot more uninteresting to me. There's still a solid amount of skill and execution in this run, but it always feels like that even on days when im playing at my top level it's so dependent on the boss RNG that it takes away from the desire to push further.
I hope you'll be able to match your times once you start playing console Tarbash. Then someone can do a proper SDA submission for the game. I'll still definitely play this game off and on and probably even do runs for marathon streams now and again but I feel confident that you'll give this run the effort it deserves as you've shown with your willingness to fight through the RNG to get better times.
Best of luck on cutting the 21 in the future.
After I do the SGDQ run i don't see myself putting much more time into the game tbh. I love playing this game but the RNG really does make the grind of trying to push times down feel a lot more uninteresting to me. There's still a solid amount of skill and execution in this run, but it always feels like that even on days when im playing at my top level it's so dependent on the boss RNG that it takes away from the desire to push further.
I hope you'll be able to match your times once you start playing console Tarbash. Then someone can do a proper SDA submission for the game. I'll still definitely play this game off and on and probably even do runs for marathon streams now and again but I feel confident that you'll give this run the effort it deserves as you've shown with your willingness to fight through the RNG to get better times.
Best of luck on cutting the 21 in the future.
Thanks and sorry to hear you feel that way about the game.
Here's my only weapon for fighting against the RNG: I noticed you go on the right side on your PB run at least against Gravitus. If you stay on the left side, you can land 3 punches on him instead of just the 1. By landing the third punch on him at the right height, you make him start his cycle again from there and increase the chances that he doesn't get stuck inside the ground when he actually chooses to use nova (if he uses nova instantly, it's just game over). The 3 hits also help when you actually get a good pattern as you have a much higher chances of killing him before knocking him back a single time after the nova if you don't get inside of it. Same idea in the re-fight where you can occasionally get two haymakers on him if you start at the ceiling.
I'm more annoyed by the box in Area B actually than Gravitus. It feels like if I go too fast in the first screen I get the grenade. If I go a bit too slow, I get the grenade. Having to figure out when I have to slow down to get the manipulation right is a real pain. Might just be the way I execute the screen anyways. That box and Cyborgape just leave me puzzled as I don't fully understand how they work.
Here's my only weapon for fighting against the RNG: I noticed you go on the right side on your PB run at least against Gravitus. If you stay on the left side, you can land 3 punches on him instead of just the 1. By landing the third punch on him at the right height, you make him start his cycle again from there and increase the chances that he doesn't get stuck inside the ground when he actually chooses to use nova (if he uses nova instantly, it's just game over). The 3 hits also help when you actually get a good pattern as you have a much higher chances of killing him before knocking him back a single time after the nova if you don't get inside of it. Same idea in the re-fight where you can occasionally get two haymakers on him if you start at the ceiling.
I'm more annoyed by the box in Area B actually than Gravitus. It feels like if I go too fast in the first screen I get the grenade. If I go a bit too slow, I get the grenade. Having to figure out when I have to slow down to get the manipulation right is a real pain. Might just be the way I execute the screen anyways. That box and Cyborgape just leave me puzzled as I don't fully understand how they work.
I actually used to fight Gravitus similarly to how you do but for whatever reason my bad patterns out of it were much higher. When i started going from the right hand side it became more common for him to do nova at the height where you can crouch on the ground inside the projectiles and do max damage to him, so that's what i've always stuck with. There's defintiely some ways to kind of push into the patterns you'd want but sadly to this day no ones found anything that's truly consistent. I think if anyone can ever find some kind of manipulation that could turn that fight into something even close as a coin flip, this game would get much more interesting for a lot of people.
The grenade box in area B I'm almost positive is global timer based and it seems to have a fairly long window between when it changes. I've found that for the most part when i hit my route for that section without any errors i tend to get the coin bag out of it, but there have definitely been times where I felt like i've done the exact same timing through that section only to pop a grenade. It's entirely possible it's global timer based but the global timer doesn't reset when you start a new stage or loading area. The inconsistency of that box is definitely one of the stranger things overall in the whole game RNG wise. Everytime I feel like i have it figured out it'll throw me a curve ball.
Honestly if there weren't a bunch of other projects I want to work on I'd probably spend some more time and try to delve further into the memory addresses to see if there was any kind of consistency that can extracted for some of the more random elements of the run. Maybe someday down the road I'll feel like trying to push things further with this game again, as like i've said, i think it's one of the more fun NES platformers to just play, and when you are doing a run it's really enjoyable to work out the routing and general gameplan, just the RNG makes the grind feel much worse.
Maybe playing on console might click the lightbulb on for you on some of the other RNG based parts of the run. One thing i noticed is that things I felt like were consistent on emulator became very inconsistent on console and caused me to adjust my approach. But after playing on console for a couple years i have a better "feel" overall for what i expect a lot of the random situations to do, if that makes sense.
Either way like I said im glad to see someone has pushed the run further and I look forward to seeing what you come up with for a final time on console!
The grenade box in area B I'm almost positive is global timer based and it seems to have a fairly long window between when it changes. I've found that for the most part when i hit my route for that section without any errors i tend to get the coin bag out of it, but there have definitely been times where I felt like i've done the exact same timing through that section only to pop a grenade. It's entirely possible it's global timer based but the global timer doesn't reset when you start a new stage or loading area. The inconsistency of that box is definitely one of the stranger things overall in the whole game RNG wise. Everytime I feel like i have it figured out it'll throw me a curve ball.
Honestly if there weren't a bunch of other projects I want to work on I'd probably spend some more time and try to delve further into the memory addresses to see if there was any kind of consistency that can extracted for some of the more random elements of the run. Maybe someday down the road I'll feel like trying to push things further with this game again, as like i've said, i think it's one of the more fun NES platformers to just play, and when you are doing a run it's really enjoyable to work out the routing and general gameplan, just the RNG makes the grind feel much worse.
Maybe playing on console might click the lightbulb on for you on some of the other RNG based parts of the run. One thing i noticed is that things I felt like were consistent on emulator became very inconsistent on console and caused me to adjust my approach. But after playing on console for a couple years i have a better "feel" overall for what i expect a lot of the random situations to do, if that makes sense.
Either way like I said im glad to see someone has pushed the run further and I look forward to seeing what you come up with for a final time on console!