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Whizz (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verifier Responses

Quote:
Anyway, this game has no timer and I can't get DirectShowSource to work with it and it doesn't open in VirtualDub, so I can't accurately time it. I'll just assume the 18:08 is accurate. I saw no issues in the video or audio quality.

As PJ stated in the comments, there is a trick discovered by __sdfg that allows you to skip door breaker objects at the expense of making the run much harder due to you needing to be a minimum health. It would undoubtedly save a lot of time over this run, but since it was discovered so long after the run was completed, I don't think it should be considered for this run.

As for mistakes: PJ pointed out all of them in his comments, some missed jumps, bad handling around enemies and some navigational mishaps in the last three stages. I would estimate that adding all of these mistakes up would come to about 20 seconds of possible improvement, which is significant, but I feel that they don't add up to enough to consider rejecting this run. The handling throughout is impressive (this game is really annoying to control), and the luck on the last two stages is pretty ludicrous. I never had luck that good when I was playing this game. (admittedly I had no idea about the card range, that makes me feel dumb)

Unfortunately, I am forced to reject this run on the grounds of cruelty towards specific ethnicities. As you can see in 2-1 and 2-2, the rabbit specifically targets and assaults Eskimos. I find this to be a hateful act and any future run on this game should be done with tolerance towards these individuals in mind.

...

Accept. I look forwards to a future improvement including __sdfg's trick and ironing out the little kinks in the last few stages.


Quote:
Hey, sorry for being a slowpoke, guys.  I had some stuff I wanted to double-check, and the runner's comments gave me ideas for other stuff to look at.  It'd be pretty cool to get this through in one day.  I hope Flip's still awake, but if not, it's on me. Smiley

First off, I want to echo what the first verifier said about the gameplay.  It's really impressive how smoothly the runner is able to play this game.  The first world is especially good.  The runner wavers a bit in world four, but given the great luck with the gambling mini-games, I don't consider the small missteps there too much of an issue.

There are some problems with the route (ignoring the potential use of the silly door-breaking bug that was discovered way after this was submitted).  Most of them are minor and only cost a second or two.  However, the runner does lose nine seconds by taking the wrong path in 1-3 and another ten seconds from taking an unnecessary trip to pick up the last door breaker in 4-1.  I'd guess the runner could have cut off a total of about 30 seconds with tweaks, though maybe not that much since a couple of the route changes can cost time if they're done wrong (quick summary:  the iron door in 1-2 and the key door in 2-1 can be skipped by jumping onto an enemy and then over the door, but the enemies will move out from under you if you're too slow).  I don't want to hold this up too long, so I'll leave it at that, but I will come back with a more detailed post after this goes up so the runner's not left wondering what I'm talking about...

Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and give this an accept based on the strength of the execution.  The route isn't perfect, but as far as I can tell, the runner had to route the whole game himself, so it's to be expected that some things were missed.  I do hope the runner comes back to this game, though.  I think with the new door tech, there's room for a lot of time to come off, and the runner obviously has the ability to take advantage of it.  gogogo Cheesy

...oh, right, timing and that other stuff that's supposed to be my job.  The audio and video are both great.  There is no cheating (I checked!).  The countdown timer is useless for timing because it uses something silly like 102 frames per "second" as its base and it's possible to lag it pretty hard.  Going with real time, then, I get frame 1575 as the start and frame 66824 as the end, which agrees with the 18:08 time given by the runner and the first verifier.

What a slowpoke, it took him nearly a whole day to verify!

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Patrick 'PJ' DiCesare!
Thread title:  
Is PJ
Wow thanks for the quick verification, guys!  It took me like 3 weeks to write comments and you verified it in one day.  Haha.  I literally laughed out loud at "Hey, sorry for being a slowpoke, guys." from verifier 2.

Speaking of verifier 2.  Wow.  Those are some incredible suggestions!  I had no idea you could just jump over those walls.  That would definitely save time!  I didn't know about the wrong route in level 1-3 either, but as I hinted to in my comments it's kind of hard to figure out if a route is ideal or not for this game because there are so many different options.  These were the best I found, but I tend to get stuck in a muscle memory loop and inadvertently prevent myself from thinking of new paths for the early levels.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on the alternate route!

To be honest, this run would not have been submitted if it wasn't for the insane luck in world 4.  It had more execution errors than I would have liked, but the luck was so far above average that I knew it outweighed those.  I wasn't really happy with it, but wanted to move on.  Smiley  I'll definitely be returning to this game with the new routes in mind.  I also need to look into that plane shifting thing that happened to dram.  That could save a good chunk of time if it actually works like I think it does.

Thanks for verifying this!  Sorry for taking so long to get comments out (I completed this in March and submitted comments like...yesterday).  I'll try to be better about it next time I submit this.  Tongue
D:
Slowpoke here.  I want to expound on the stuff I said about the route and also respond to some things PJ mentioned in his run comments.  I know the run comments aren't public yet, so some of this might not make sense, but if I wait until the run's posted, I'm going to forget that I took all these notes, so... Tongue

1-1:  I've not been able to jump directly from the spring onto the moving platform near the end of the level on console.  I was able to get it to work in an emulator once, but I don't remember if I got bounced around by the enemies before then or not, and my next 20 or so tries all failed and I gave up.  So, it might be possible, but it's probably still a bad idea to try it in a run.

1-2:  The dinosaur (?) near the end of the level moves between four different positions, depending on where you're standing.  When it's at the corner of its path nearest the door, you can jump on top of it and then jump over the door.  That lets you skip one of the door breaker upgrades, and the one by the penguins seems to add 3-ish seconds to the run.  Of course, this is irrelevant if you play the level at minimum health...

1-3:  The route error here was near the beginning of the level.  Instead of going to the left after the springs, it's faster to go to the right a little, then go up past some starfish.  You end up taking a rolling-platform thing that slowly lowers you to the ground, and can go up from there past a spring floor and some other stuff that eventually dumps you near the wood door.  I know that's a pretty poor description, but hopefully, it'll be clear if you try it.  If you don't decide to get hurt a lot, you have to go pick up another door breaker to get through the wood door, but there's one not too far from the wood door if you go to the right.  I'm not sure the difference is actually nine seconds now that I notice I forgot to account for grabbing the door breaker in my calculations (I am an idiot and am glad I did not say to reject based on this because that would have been tragic), but it's still faster than the left path overall.  I've beaten the level with 40 "seconds" left on the in-gamer timer using this route and I consistently get 37+ unless I'm testing something or I'm playing really badly.  In case anyone other than PJ's read this far into the post, the submitted run ends with 35 left.

Also, you can save like half a second by approaching the blue spinner from the left instead of the top.  Fraemsz D:

2-1:  Running this level with the plane shift trick would be ridiculous, if the one PJ mentioned in his comments is the one I think it is.  It pushes Whizz's sprite about half a screen above where it's supposed to be.  I'd watch that.

This is another level where you can use an enemy to jump over a door.  The key door at the beginning can be skipped by jumping onto the pyramid/cone thing when it's next to the door.  This saves you from having to get the key, cutting off 2-3 seconds.  I think PJ actually gets the jump in this run, but he'd already picked up the key, so it didn't matter. Sad  You can use the penguin to skip the ice door before that, too, but it leaves you a door upgrade behind.

The last thing I want to say about this level (ever.  this level is dead to me after I finish this post) is that there's a faster way to cross the lake than hugging the right side.  If you go right a little bit and then run up to the very edge of the shore, you can jump across the two islands with flags.  You still have to jump into the water to make it to the far shore (at least, I think you do), but one jump into the water is faster than two.  The time saved is again 2-ish seconds.  The downside is that if you miss the jump, you land in the water in front of the island, and it's hard to recover without losing time.

That paragraph didn't make much sense upon re-reading it, but I hope you can figure it out...

2-2:  There's another series of jumps along the edges of tiles that can be used to hop across the lake in this level fairly directly.  You go up a little when you reach the lake, jump to the island to the left, and then run up the left edge of that island and jump onto the right edge of the shore tile above it.  It's hard and I can't do it consistently, but I believe it's faster than going around the left side of the lake if you get it.

If you do go around the left side of the lake, it is possible to get past the corner wall that normally blocks you.  You have to be near the edge of the shore when you approach it, and you have to jump at the corner of the wall.  If you hit it right, the game will push you a few pixels to the right without stopping your forward momentum and you'll land on the other shore.  If you don't jump, the game will push you into the water.  At least, that's what happened when I tried it without jumping.

2-3:  I actually thought it was impossible to get onto the platforms moving in and out of the cliff in this level without waiting a cycle, but then I saw PJ wondering the same thing in his comments and decided to double-check. Tongue  I did eventually get it, but the window for getting onto the first platform is pretty tight and the game's aversion to letting you change direction makes the jump onto the top of the cliff harder than it should be.  I'm not sure I'd recommend it -- it saves a second-ish and costs more time if you didn't get it on the first try -- but PJ's pretty good at this game.

Also, the corner trick from the last level can be used in the lake here.  Staying out of the water probably saves a second.  I guess that counts for something.

3-1:  Just before the end of the level, there's a fork where you can either go left past a beachball or up over a bouncy castle (yes this game has bouncy castles if that influences your opinion please play it thanks).  PJ goes over the bouncy castle in his run.  It's about three seconds faster to go left instead.

Other than that, this level went really well in the run.  Congrats on getting such a good run this far in, PJ.

3-2:  I actually have nothing to say about this level other than that the second hourglass doesn't seem to be necessary.

4-1:  PJ's run ends this level with 41 units on the in-game timer.  That means two hourglasses could have been skipped.  Finishing a run with one tick left would be pretty nerve-wracking and probably not a good idea, but I don't think it's necessarily as bad as it sounds.

The route error in this level was going for the iron door breaker near the end.  The last door is made out of...  I guess not ice because PJ called the blue doors ice in his comments (styrofoam, then?), but it is anyway something that can be broken with just the brick upgrade.  That detour took about ten seconds (real-time) unless I horribly mistimed it.  Part of that detour included an hourglass.  When PJ turned to get the door breaker, there were 34 ticks left on the clock.  When PJ came back with the breaker and the hourglass, there were 49 left.  Skipping the detour and the hourglass, then, would have put the end-of-level clock at about 26.

With 26 ticks, skipping one more hourglass would have left at least 6 on the clock at the end.  The hourglass locked in the cage seems like a good one to skip since getting it and the key takes 2-3 seconds, though I haven't timed the others to compare.  Ending the level with 6 ticks seems manageable.

Of course, this math assumes that you get the luck with the slot machines and high-low game that the first verifier called, "pretty ludicrous," but it can't really be that bad, right? Wink

Bonus fun stuff:  if you finish a level while poisoned, the game continues to drain your health as you walk from the finish line to the balloon.  I was playing with this idea in an emulator earlier tonight and managed to beat the level, get the end-of-level score bonuses, and then immediately game-over (I was genuinely out of lives at the time).  It might actually be cool to do this in a speedrun because I don't think it costs any time other than the verifiers' as they try to figure out why you're down a life.  It'd obviously be good to double-check that before doing it in a serious attempt, though.  BTW I don't think it would've been possible to finish the level without the first aid kit in the submitted run.  Getting it was the right call.

4-2:  You can use the snake to jump over the styrofoam (?) door instead of getting the door breaker that's maybe three tiles away, but it's completely useless to do so because you then can't break the brick door later in the level.  Oh, well.

...

Anyway, I'd be happy to help look for other route stuff when you get back into this, PJ.  I feel bad coming in with all these suggestions and criticisms after someone's already completed a run. >_>  Some of what I wrote above is going to change with the new door trick, but I don't know how much yet.  I'm kind of Whizzed out after putting this post together.

And thanks for running this game.  It is fun.  I like it.

I hope this post isnt ful of typos
D:
P.S.  pj pls figure out how i did this and put it in your next run thx

Sandbagging
Haha awesome finds sdfg!
Also congratulations on the Whizz run PJ!
Too bad you couldn't stream your attempts :c
I'm really looking forward to the updated (and hopefully much glitchier) run Smiley

P.S.: This game has pretty great tracks and art!
Congratulations PJ! Smiley

So we speedrunnin verification now?

Took one day and that is a "slowpoke"?

Speedgamers will never get satisfied will they...
Edit history:
PJ: 2012-11-12 06:49:16 pm
PJ: 2012-11-12 05:56:41 pm
PJ: 2012-11-12 05:28:11 pm
PJ: 2012-11-12 05:21:17 pm
PJ: 2012-11-12 05:05:19 pm
Is PJ
WOW!  Really awesome finds, __sdfg!  I feel really dumb for not noticing a lot of those.  <_<;;  I do remember ending level 4-1 with way more time than I needed, but forgot to mention it.  Definitely was just an oversight.  I did not know about not needing that door breaker.  I always just assumed that door was iron because of the color.  I never noticed it was the other blue one (which I called cobblestone and you called styrofoam).  That is so embarrassing.  Hahaha.

Anyways, I have a lot of stuff to look into!  I think I'm going to get to work straight away.  Perhaps a Whizz planning thread is needed...

Edit:  Found an OoB glitch.



No idea if it can be useful.

Edit2:  Just found out where I ended up after that clip.  I'm in the same place as before, but with really really really wrong graphics.  No big deal.  Not a useful clip.  Sad

Edit3:  I repeated your helicopter balloon, __sdfg!  Not sure what causes it yet, but I have an idea.  Also, I got a 44 in 1-3.  Will work on a video.



45 (and maybe 46) is possible.  Missed two jumps.  That strafe jump is so hard.  o.O  In fact, this entire route is pretty hard, and I'm not even to the world 2 revisions yet.  Haha.  Gonna be nice though.
D:
This thread's been up less than a day and you're already tearing the game apart. O:

I was going to make a sub-16 joke in my verification comments, but I'm not sure that's a joke anymore.
Edit history:
PJ: 2012-11-12 09:53:34 pm
Is PJ
Haha.  Idk about sub-16 but it'll be a lot faster.  Between 1-2 and 1-3 alone, I'll be saving close to 30 seconds.  :O  Speaking of 1-2, this is the best I could come up with.  The plank of wood is great at taking all my health away before the wooden door, which is very convenient.  I only need the ice breaker to beat the level.  I tried strafe jumping over the first ice wall of the level but had no success.  Didn't even get close.  Sad  I waste some time at the end killing the last plank instead of waiting for him to move; it'd be faster to wait for him, but I just wanted to finish the level so I didn't do that.  Haha.

tl;dr: The breakerless door breaker is way too strong.  I can potentially save ~20 seconds in level 1-2 alone.  o.O  You are amazing, __sdfg!



Edit:  Sorry about the audio desynch in all of these vids.  For some reason, the audio doesn't cooperate in SNES9x for me.  Deal with it.  Tongue
Edit history:
__sdfg: 2012-11-12 11:31:49 pm
D:
Have you tried using the lizard to run your health down before the ice door like in my demo video?  It looked like I had a high 31 going through the ice door and you had a low 31 in your video.  Also, I was pretty stupid in my video and let the lizard come to me instead of running myself into it as it went to the left, so it might be possible to cut another second off if you follow that approach.  I guess the downside is you need to be more cautious between the ice door and the wood door that way. :|  BTW I love the strafe jump through the brick door.

...I think a Whizz planning thread is indeed needed.  Care to do the honors?  You seem to be able to beat my in-game times by 2-3 ticks without really trying, so I think it'd be best if you owned the thread.

Also, yeah, Snes9x has no idea what to do with the audio in this game, or at least 1.51 doesn't.  It's really annoying.