I've been getting into TASes recently and thought I'd try making one for TAP Death mode. I gave myself the challenge of scoring only tetrises except for the x99 boundaries, and this is the result: Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZaq0jQcZVQ INP File: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6430099/TAS/TAP Death Gm 2-48-93.inp It obviously does a lot of things a human player could never do, and the pre-500 stacking gets a bit insane at times because I wanted to only score tetrises. If going for pure speed I would have kept the stack as low as possible between 100-299 using singles etc. To replay the INP file you have to use mametgm64.exe. Put it into your inp folder and delete and tgm2p nvram files and run: mametgm64.exe -pb [file] tgm2p
Nice run! I'd put a note on the video in Japanese perhaps to state again that it's a TAS, though to be honest that should be blatant for anyone watching the video with any skill at the game.
Good stuff. What tools did you use to make the TAS? I'd be interested in putting some work in on something as well.
two suggestions: -you should submit the video to http://tasvideos.org/ -why not doing something funny during the staff roll ? like secret grade or whatever ? Interesting to see that getting tetrises seems to shave the torikan by only 3 seconds on ultra-optimized tetrominos placement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lBgPi_I0To
Thanks for the feedback. I'm currently trying to figure out a way to optimize the run before I submit it to somewhere like tasvideos. I'll also add something during the credits for that as well. I've written myself a tool that lets me manually edit the INP file, but I'll need to make a custom build of MAME that doesn't care about the frame timings when reading the file otherwise it will desyc. I made the TAS by just using the frame-step in MAME (shift-P) while using the recording feature. If I made a mistake or needed to backtrack MAME lets you read and record an INP file at the same time, so I'd read-record up to where I wanted to restart, close MAME, and read-record the truncated INP file then continue after it ended. It can get quite tedious at times, especially when I had to backtrack a lot to avoid being forced to score singles/doubles/triples. Sometimes I'd have to go up to 20 pieces back and place a block differently for it to work out.
Wow! I don't see a lot of mistakes, in any case. Do you make sure you can make best use of the techniques that moves tetrominos twice per frame? Like wall-kicking as many times as possible? I've seen that at some occasions but some other are a bit too hard to see ' Also, I don't really understand, but this one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-lKIkJP5sY by DeHackEd seems faster than your first 300 levels, which I have trouble understanding. Where could be the difference? Can anyone explain? EDIT : Just noticed that T 438 could be one frame faster by simply pressing B + DAS right and then left, if I'm not mistaken
Yeah there's a lot of places I could save one or two frames by using wall kicks. I'm not surprised DeHackEd's 300 is faster because I do a lot of crazy stacking to avoid scoring non-tetrises, which will be slower than just blasting away lines as fast as possible.
I'm puzzled. Are you sure about this? My reasoning goes like this : Placing a block will always be a certain speed that is x * 1 frame, x being sort of the distance from the center. So if you end up with a flat stack you will notice almost no difference, and it will be imperceptible in any case. So the only time loss you can have is tetris vs non tetris. So I don't explain the time difference =_=
Please submit to TASVideos; there's no TGM series games there yet and it would be great to finally have one! Since TASVideos focuses a fair amount on entertainment as well as speed, may I make the following suggestions on top of the "(almost) only Tetrises" requirement? - Stack with the open column on the left, to make it even more obvious that only tool-assistance could pull it off - If possible, aim for high score instead of time (would involve bravos, combos, etc) - Play through the credits roll and use it to goof around such as by abusing step reset to keep a piece alive for several seconds, move pieces around in strange ways, etc.
If the stack is high, you lose a lot of time. He does this notably at the end, where it's obviously unnecessary pieces placed, but it's not the only time it matters - ideally at the end of each section you want the stack to be low too. For example, 100-300 is considerably faster than 0-100 in terms of the maximum speed you can play at. The video in the OP has around 8 lines of pieces stacked when he breaks 100 - 8 lines of stuff is 22 pieces placed at the slow 0-100 speed that could have been placed at the faster 100-300 speed if he'd broken 100 with a bravo.
It's a really nice video you pulled off. Well done ! I'm always mesmerized by the theoretical max at level 300+. It's like I'm back to square one in Tetris and watch someone play death or shirase for the first time .
Oh yeah, that's right! Oh my goodness, there's still room for improvement for this one! And I thought it was near perfect haha.
Great to see a full run but it would probably be rejected if submitted in it's current state due to lack of optimisation - most notably a lot of wasted blocks in the end, should probably be aiming to finish on a bravo.
Yeah I agree. You'd probably want a bravo at 100, keep the stack as low as possible until 300, and then power on to a bravo at 999 for the fastest possible speed.
If you're going for a speed run here's my suggestions: End each section up to 500 with as low of a stack as possible. This means that the ARE penalty for having lots of pieces on screen is low. If you're getting all tetrises then the line clear penalty is more than made up for it. Once you have your M you can stack however you want until you.... End the game (level 999) with the stack as low as possible for much the same reason. Use wall kicks to move pieces around a bit faster when possible. Since the frame processing order is "Rotate, Slide, gravity, lock" if you can do a wallkick then it's possible to get a piece moved 2 squares in one frame. There's no line clear penalty between levels 100 and 299. If you want to dick around with non-tetris clears (eg: gold CO medal) then that's the time to do it. I modified MAME to rerecord for real, though it didn't meet the tasvideos.org standards (most notably no rerecord count) and there were sync issues due to how the emulation core deals with save-states if you didn't watch out for them. As well as the Death video on my youtube account there's also a silly video where I play with the Laser item in Item Master mode and TAS-power forces a Laser for the first item in two games as well as a crazy-wide laser blast.
Is there a fixed distribution by the time you begin the death mode? If so, do you have the distribution for the fastest start in Death mode? I think it could be an interesting problem to solve! EDIT : What!? Do you mean every line is cleared in 0 frames? I don't think it's the case, but I'm a bit confused here
For Levels 100-299: When stacking normally: ARE = 14 frames, Line delay = 0 (obviously). So total delay is 14 frames. When clearing lines: ARE = 8 frames, Line delay = 6 frames. So total delay is 14 frames again. So... "there is no time penalty for clearing singles instead of tetrises from level 100 through 299", as taken from the wiki. Also, there's no need to have a low stack for the transition from 199-200, as you don't benefit from any faster delays after the transition, so 100-299 is the ideal place to go for the gold CO and perform a first recovery (you need a total of 4 for the gold RE medal).
