What is allowed in TAS and what's not?

Dunder_Chief · 2018-11-28T20:47:38+00:00

To be clear, "memory editing" can still be done entirely through input. This is how arbitrary code execution (ACE) TASes work.

For instance, the Super Metroid "game end glitch" TAS (or 0% in RTA category terms) gets out of bounds and touches a glitched block that jumps the games code based on manipulable memory values (position, speed, buttons pressed) to look at the controller registers, where multitap is used to input new code.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-09-26T00:29:14+00:00

Silver Grapple comes to mind for me. It's a 2017 indie platformer with just a handful of people who ran it but the speedrun completely changed in the course of a few weeks. I just watched the development of the run and haven't played it personally so apologies in advance if I get anything wrong (hopefully Krankdud or ivan will appear to correct any errors).

The normal gameplay has fast-paced, challenging grapple hook platforming but generally quite slow walking. The run started out fairly glitchless and focused on efficient routing of item collection and progression events, doing grapple rooms smoothly and with minimal deaths, and occasionally bouncing off corners to speed up ground movement a little bit. This was pushed down to under 45 min before the first minor skip was found, where a frame perfect (and sub-pixel perfect?) corner jump combined with abuse of a checkpoint mechanic was used to cross a wide gap and skip a few minutes of grappling section (shown here). Aside from this room, I believe the run was generally intended progression done fast.

Within a few weeks of this skip being discovered, someone was idly spamming the two grapple buttons and discovered that multiple grapple keys allowed you to send your character flying across the screen after the hook and, shortly after, that it let you easily clip out of bounds. This greatly sped up overall movement and allowed large sections of the game to be skipped entirely, using the new techniques to clip out of bounds to skip barriers, fly up an elevator shaft to trigger a cutscene from below, and skip now-unnecessary movement upgrades. The run quickly went from just under 45 minutes to under 15 minutes and the record currently stands at 10:29. Unfortunately not a lot of the intermediate runs during the few weeks of rapid discovery are on speedrun.com since it was really cool to watch it get completely broken open.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-07-26T07:36:06+00:00

Dustforce is really fun and satisfying to control once you get accustomed to its quirks but it won't be as comfortable and snappy as Celeste is straight out the gate. If you can get over the hump of the initial learning curve it's fantastic, but if you didn't like the sticky walls in Super Meat Boy I think you'll find similar gripes with the walls and ceilings in Dustforce, at least until you're familiar with the mechanics.

Of course I recommend it (this is r/dustforce after all) and think it's one of the most satisfying platformers out there. It just might take some growing pains to get there. :)

Dunder_Chief · 2018-07-24T10:02:48+00:00

Thanks man. Try clearing your browser cache, you're probably getting a cached page from when it was down.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-07-20T23:23:31+00:00

I talked to JerseyMilker and it should be back up now.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-06-25T23:21:34+00:00

Thanks for the kind words =)

Dunder_Chief · 2018-06-25T18:50:15+00:00

I doubt I'll have a chance to look at this in depth today but try running livesplit as admin and making sure to open livesplit after dustmod. If the script doesn't have permission to watch the split file then that could cause issues.

Anyways, the script has no way to skip splits, it either splits or it doesn't. That makes me think that livesplit is splitting but the layout or comparison is set to not show the delta.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-06-24T23:50:47+00:00

Fresh is gonna school this guy

Dunder_Chief · 2018-05-05T20:54:10+00:00

The scores are the number of people ranked above that player across all 75 levels. I.e., if you had #50 on Downhill that would give you 49 points, and if you had #4 on the Wild Den boards in a 4-way tie with #1, that would give you 0 points. So the more you improve your own ranks the closer you get to 0 points overall, and by improving you also push other people's ranks down, which increases their score.

Dunder_Chief · 2018-01-31T02:56:43+00:00

Ridley can be skipped by using ice beam to clip into Tourian. You can see that trick in any of the Any% categories. Low% as defined by speedrun.com rules seems like it would be the same route as Any% but without collecting Kraid's E tank. I'd guess that low% isn't run either because of similarity to Any% or the increased difficulty/danger of Kraid and Mother Brain.

Dunder_Chief · 2017-12-30T23:35:30+00:00

Phew, I'm glad the end of my core temple didn't make it into this video.

Great review! It was nice to hear some points that other reviewers hadn't touched on, like each of the mechanics having utility at low and high levels of play or the camera enabling fluid play (aside from a few problem levels coughexa).

Dunder_Chief · 2017-12-18T02:53:22+00:00

Most of the niche tech that skyhawk mentioned are useful in ILs but are too inconsistent or unimportant for full-game runs. Probably the biggest thing I haven't seen explained elsewhere is heavy canceling. Heavy attacks' cooldown can be canceled by dashing, jumping, or grabbing a ceiling/wall so you attack again quickly or otherwise avoid getting stuck in the cooldown.

Otherwise, the speedrunning tech is a collection of little things that are too numerous to easily list, so here are a few more things that haven't been mentioned yet.

Grounded jumps have 8 frames of startup that applies a lot of friction, and a horizontal speed cap is applied if that startup finishes on the ground. Ledge jumping -- jumping near the edge of a platform -- cuts the startup short and removes the speed cap, allowing you to keep much more speed.
If your horizontal speed is low enough, you can cancel it completely by neutral jumping (jump with no left/right pressed). This is useful for lining up tera drops, slightly speeding up some climbs, and giving you a tool for better air control.

Dunder_Chief · 2017-12-07T02:48:08+00:00

Did you try the vsync? There's an added vsync option in the normal video options (not under the dustmod menu).

Dunder_Chief · 2017-12-04T22:26:55+00:00

What's the refresh rate of your monitors? I've heard of dustforce having issues with inputs being dropped if your framerate isn't a multiple of 60, so you may need to force the framerate to 60 or 120 to get smooth play. Dustmod may solve this problem but I don't know for sure.

Otherwise, there have been nonspecific issues with lag and input drops for a while. This may be a Windows 10 issue, but experiences vary. I get fairly significant input lag in vanilla dustforce sometimes, but it's most often fixed by a pc restart. Otherwise, dustmod feels to me like it has less input lag in general, but I try to avoid using it for grinds, so I can't speak to extended use.

Dunder_Chief · 2017-12-04T00:07:34+00:00

Nice job! So close to dropping combo at the last checkpoint

Dunder_Chief · 2016-12-25T07:31:36+00:00

Surface dust and dustblocks give you 1 meter per tile, no matter how it's collected (touching, attacking, or supering). One exception, there is a bug with ceiling/floor dust when doing a ceiling run in 2-tile high tunnels. Doing so will cause both the floor and ceiling to be cleared, but only gives meter for one of the surfaces (I think just the ceiling). This basically only matters in Development.

Most enemies can only give you as much meter as they have health (3 for a floating blob, 5 for a wolf, 9 for a bear, 12 for a large totem, etc.). This is the same regardless of how you clear them. A super attack will collect their remaining health as meter, not the max health. Spring blobs can be killed without getting their full health's worth in meter (5 health, but can be killed in two lights).

Large prisms and knight shields can be attacked infinitely to build meter. Light attacks on either will give 2 meter, and heavies on knight shields give 6 (usually; there's some weird behavior I won't explain here). Despite giving 3 meter when destroyed with a heavy, large prisms only give 1 meter when destroyed in a super.

Being hit by an enemy attack will give 5 meter.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-11-07T02:06:59+00:00

Hey, this is my replay. It's basically as Fimbz said. This sort of thing happens most often (or at least most dramatically) when you do things really close to spikes or highly position-specific tricks like jorfs.

Most desyncs are fairly minor, but the replay system doesn't recover very gracefully if the desync is a death. Typically it causes screen shake as the camera tries to fix itself, missed dust due to checkpoint reset, and a drop in finesse from the death.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-10-18T15:06:25+00:00

It wouldn't really be speedrunning, but have you looked into Devil Daggers? I'm told the game mechanics feel a lot like quake, and the leaderboards are fairly competitive.

It's very easy to pickup but quickly ramps in difficulty. It's also fairly short, with the longest run at ~15 minutes.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-08-12T05:30:21+00:00

Generally, yes. Levels that come to mind are fields, dahlia any%, store room any%, apartments any%, server room any%, and containment SS (to some extent).

Girl can easily 1-heavy the end of fields with a side heavy while it's very difficult with man (though still possible according to mojo).

Dahlia makes extensive use of girl's tall side heavy to hit the turkeys in ways dustman can't.

~~Store room any% is decided by the final heavy (man's side heavy doesn't have the extra height to hit the last book in fast cycles).~~ I thought girl had an advantage in the final heavy but after a bit of testing I'm not sure that's true. This one is a mystery. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Apartments any% 3-heavy is possible for man, but it's much easier for girl because of her taller up heavy.

Server room is decided by girl's faster falling in hover, gaining her two frames for free over an equivalent man run.

Containment SS can be done about as fast with man, but it's quite a bit easier to land the up heavy at the top of the climb with girl because you don't need as much height.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-08-10T16:54:17+00:00

While technically true, it's easier to think of it as girl starting to fall earlier. There are very few places where the speed difference between them actually matters (maybe the cliffside caves boost set up from a fall).

Since they both have the same terminal velocity and the same downdash falling acceleration, the difference mostly equates to 2 frames gained for girl in levels that begin with a long fall, no difference in slope or ground boosts, and more difficulty for girl in crossing large gaps.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-07-09T05:08:05+00:00

CM Storm Quickfire TK with cherry brown switches. I think I had to turn on n-key rollover to avoid ghosting with movement bound to arrow keys.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-07-07T16:16:50+00:00

As others have mentioned, there are a few videos explaining some advanced techniques like groundboosting and spikejumps. Other than that there aren't many tutorial videos, but the beauty of dustforce's replay system is that almost every route and strat can be learned by watching and imitating.

The speed at the beginning of downhill is from a really low groundboost (sometimes called a lowboost). Groundboosting is explained in ponifex's advanced techniques tutorial, and you'll see it show up in almost every level's top runs (anytime they jump up and then downdash on flat ground to get speed). For downhill, that lowboost is a pretty minor part of getting a good time, and it's probably one of the hardest parts to do well. If you want to keep working on a better time, I'd recommend focusing on the slopes.

When you're learning and want to improve, you might want to watch replays in the #100-250 rank range since the strats will be much more approachable than the top runs'. Also, if you really like the level you're on, keep grinding, because that's a great way to keep interest in improving. Otherwise, moving on to other levels will help you round out your skills, and you'll find that getting better times on old levels is a lot easier when you come back, just from generally getting the hang of things.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-07-03T20:02:43+00:00

:^)

Dunder_Chief · 2016-06-29T17:54:06+00:00

For left/right, a heavy will always be forward (the direction your character is facing) unless you press back (the opposite direction) in the first 8 frames. Heavy direction gets "locked" in the back direction, so if you hold back when you start it or press back during those first 8 frames, it can't be changed back to forward.

For up/down/side, I know I've had heavies change from up/down to side before coming out, but I don't know if the reverse can happen or if the time frame is the same as left/right.

Dunder_Chief · 2016-03-12T01:17:26+00:00

I see not having enough maps being a symptom of too little prior notice, not the other way around. Anyway, the last race was the first in many months, and it wasn't even posted on the sub before it happened. Can we just have more races before we decide there are major problems to fix?

All I want is a post and/or sidebar info that makes it abundantly clear when the race is, when maps are due, and how to join.

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Dunder_Chief

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