User Files from Darkman425

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, NESHawk core

Game hash:

Sha1: ACEC431CAB42C1143374499482B0A1332A93AAA0
Md5 :         5870755E1652C3C62BF21C319853FB15

Just the first world done. Lots of trying to be grounded for max speed when possible, usually involving the shorter spin jump or even shorter low jump to get back to being grounded. Entering doors quickly is a matter of releasing left or right for a while. Level 1-2 does a little lag management at the start by tossing the shell at the koopas as otherwise they cause a ton of lag.

Gotta do a check on how the RTA runs play the rest of the game since the cape is helpful but you're not grounded. There might be a few cases where not flying over the level might actually be faster due to faster grounded movement.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, Gambatte core

Just a heads up, I do all the RNG manipulation without a bot. That doesn't excuse accidentally getting an extra PutrePup bronze medal pretty far back before beating the BossTroll, though fixing that would require redoing 2 days worth of heavy RNG manipulation. The worst part of the RNG manipulation so far has been the BossTroll fight as fire attacks have a 30% hit rate and I couldn't get RNG to behave well enough with manual checking to get a 2 round fight.

Despite that big gaffe with the extra medal, I will press on at a later time since as far as I know there's nobody who has had any progress for an all gold medals TAS that has gotten this far. For now I should focus on other things.

Current progress: 23/165 gold medals

NOTE: This is for the Game Boy Color version of Dragon Warrior III only!

This isn't a super fancy RAM watch file as it doesn't have any specific RNG addresses. I don't know how I'd find them but changing inputs and/or delaying inputs works decently enough for figuring this stuff out. An important part for each active character slot is the partial values for stats. Due to an added check to the international versions of the game, these partial values are checked for the Pachisi bug. The important ones are what I assume to be the STR and AGI partial values as those are involved with triggering the level up bug part of the of Pachisi bug.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, Gambatte core

I got frustrated with doing the RNG grind for this game in Retro Achievements for the moment. Like, frustrated enough to get the idea of seeing what a potential "all gold medals" TAS could be. Turns out a lot of waiting for RNG medal drops. As Silver medals require 2 Bronze medals and Gold medals require 2 Silver medals for each monster in the game, the actual odds for a Gold medal in a reasonable time is dire.

At least this proof of concept does have a certain party in mind to get through this. A Hero with a personality with a good strength, agility, and intelligence growth, and three mages with two of them having a personality for good agility and intelligence growth. I went with the sexy personality for the Hero as that provides great stat growths across the board and Smart for the two recruited mages for the agility and intelligence. The one already in the tavern is ordinary, which isn't the biggest dealbreaker since it's just base stat growth. Ultimately the plan is to do the Pachisi level up bug for all the main party members to 99 quickly. I might route in changing one of the mages into a sage for better weapon choices but that's definitely pending.

#8475: Jack-Retro's Arcade Marble Madness II in 08:06.13

This input file is ahead of the submission by 327 frames across the first 5 levels.

This is mainly for resyncing this submission so it starts from a verifiable SRAM rather than an unverifiable save state:

#8475: Jack-Retro's Arcade Marble Madness II in 08:06.13

Due to how sync settings work, accessing the service menu and then continuing with the rest of the TAS in the MAMEHawk core isn't possible as DIP switch settings require core reboots. This input file instead generates a SRAM from a fresh boot with the Service Menu DIP switch ON. In the service menu the Game Settings are adjusted as such:

Once this is done by the input file, stop the input file playback. Then the Service Menu DIP switch should be set back to OFF and the core should be rebooted. If done correctly, the SRAM should save with the tutorial messages off when starting a credit from the beginning. It's now possible to make a new input file without any tutorial messages if one is done starting with the SRAM generated.

This is for this submission:

#8582: Suru486's SNES Super Mario World: Quest for Gaming "98-Exit" in 1:44:46.41

Mostly wanted to try my hand at what looked like improvable sections in a handful of levels. Uploading this here in case the author wants to improve those bits further, or at least see what I managed. It's definitely not totally optimal as I'm no SMW super expert.

Original publication: [66] NES Arkanoid "warpless" by Genisto in 16:30.47

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, NesHawk core

I was watching dwangoAC's stream working on verification tests for the Arkanoid TASes but this one didn't sync on stream. I got curious about how hard it would be to sync this on a modern NES emulator. With a minor modification adjusting the time when first input past the title screen starts, I got this old input file originally made in Famtasia to sync. This should in theory make this more likely to be console verifiable. I also edited the header to match the original rerecord count of the original publication.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1

Not sure if the final boss HP RAM watch is completely correct as that value is seemingly used for other variables as well but it was good enough to find the frame of death for RTA timing. Power chip watch is incomplete as there are 3 variables that track their own counts.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, NESHawk core

This was done as a test for #8309: longbao's NES Rockman Claw in 19:11.40.

This test file checks a segment done with as much jumping as possible.

I accidentally uploaded an untrimmed file the last time.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1, NESHawk core

This was done as a test for #8309: longbao's NES Rockman Claw in 19:11.40.

This test file checks a segment done with as little jumping as possible.

Emulator: BizHawk 2.6.2

This is a fix for Mikewillplays. This is not my file.

For this thread: Forum/Topics/24419

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9

Arcade game version: ddragon3

This is a simple but effective RAM watch sheet of enemy HP values. There are 4 addresses the game uses to track enemy HP.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8

To compare with: #8143: Eduardo_EVF's Genesis Show do Milhão Volume 2 "One Million of Reais" in 05:03.57

Main time saves were pressing Up instead of Down to reach answer slot 4 and delaying the B press to lock in answers to get shorter load times between questions.

This answers 5 questions but is 21 frames ahead by that point.

131 frames faster moving through Mu compared to this submission:

#8045: Eduardo_EVF's GB DuckTales 2 in 14:37.94

I didn't do the boss fight since the boss RNG works differently from the NES version and doesn't seem to care about Scrooge's X-position.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8

Oops. By the way, even though this is a Saturn exclusive game I went by MARP rules where the settings have to be at whatever defaults are set upon loading the game. Thus there's no adjusting top speed. There are turns and tight maneuvers that require slowing down so adjusting top speed might actually be detrimental for maintaining a consistent coin chain.

Anyways I tried out the analog for this game and it works fine. Probably wouldn't need that for a TAS if all I'm going for is the fastest score counterstop. On the other hand, going for the largest bonus at the end (coins * time * 1000) would want finer adjustments. The problem is that I kinda forgot where that analog viewer lua file was so I just kinda manually did it with a controller. Thus the inputs are a terrible mess but this is a good baseline for both fastest coutnerstop and largest end bonus. I might get back to this later.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9 release candidate 2

This is an input file that saves after the credits as it shows that the regular S rank, buster only S rank, and maximum mission score unlocks are obtained. This also saves so if nothing else this serves as a verification movie for anyone who wants to do a Hard mode TAS of Zero 3 if they're so inclined.

This has very little info but it has two incredibly important watches: Zippy's speed and the boss's X-position during boss fights.

The main trick to preserving speed is to not be rolling on the ground.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.8

This is a preliminary TAS to see how long a Zippy TAS could take. One thing I noticed is that only 10 levels out of 16 are needed to be played to reach the ending. The boss locations are also determined by the frame the title screen is cleared. This run does it on the first frame which leads the the tremendous problem of playing all of the very laggy Aqua Zone levels. There might be some optimizations per level but I think that the levels themselves are sync friendly.

The boss fights are influenced by player input so some of that will be needed in a more refined pass of this game. This is especially important since this affects how long each cycle takes between hits by about a range of 100-200 frames.

A simple RAM watch that has Somari's screen position, map position, horizontal and vertical speed, and a boolean check for ascending state. Things of note is that just running is faster than using the spin dash, and that jumping in the air loses horizontal speed.

This one made for despoa.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9 rc2

This is an unfinished WIP. Initially I couldn't get the tutorial skip of activating the right elevator early in my test runs, but later real time testing managed to get that happening sometimes. If someone can get it to trigger early then maybe I'll get back to this sooner rather than later.

Also worth noting that the RTA PC record now goes back through the boss arena after getting jump. I can do that and maybe cut out the machine gun ammo upgrade. If I do skip out on the ammo, then I'd have to work out a better boss 2 fight that involves manipulating ammo drops for more mines and maybe eitehr machine gun or rocket ammo. I'm not quite satisfied with that fight in any case.

YouTube encode available over here.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9 release candidate 2

ROM name: ddragon3

I mostly did this as kind of a goof. it's definitely not refined considering that I'm roughly 8 seconds behind this speed run by Janet before entering the door to the boss arena. Enemies have more health on Hardest but considering that the boss only has about 1 jump & stomp more health between Normal and Hardest, I'd definitely have to work on understanding getting damage before knockdowns better since it's not an enemy HP problem.

Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9 release candidate 2

I didn't stutter when I said I'd do quiz games. However this input file was doing a max score run. The thing about that is moving the joystick at certain frames changes where the icon goes for the multiplier and I haven't quite found an ideal one for one of the questions. Getting that manipulated right would save a second or two. If I didn't give a damn about score this would be completely trivial.

YouTube encode for anyone curious.

For this submission:

Found a faster strat for avoiding the dogs in stage 1.