[TAS] GBA Donkey Kong Country 2 by illayaya, Pixiuchu & EZGames69 in  

lmao, you're not wrong

Warzone Warning

I would absolutely join again

@@ezgames6925 Poggers

I do have questions, although it's about TAS in general. I hope I'm not overbearing, I'm just really curious. How time consuming is it? How much real hours must be invested into crafting 1 minutes of game? Does it change depending on the game/section? Is it possible to publish the program and pathways you used, as to allow others to just punch in your work and see the game play itself on their computer, or perhaps optimize it further? Did you do that for any of your runs? Speedruns vs TAS was once described to be as comparing a sportsman to an engineer, as the first uses physical training and carefully studied techniques in one powerful performance while the second uses crafting and ingenuity to build a repeatable experience. Does this comparison strikes you as accurate? What makes you decide to do a TAS? What appeals to you in those? And how do you gather partners/teammates to work on it with you?

@@Contevent You're not overbearing, don't worry (: Granted the more questions there are, the longer it will take for me (or someone else) to reply, but I don't mind. I'll divide this into sections just to make it a bit easier to find answers to questions lol. NOTE: since I'm writing long answers, my answers are a bit of a mess in terms of structure, sorry ^^; *----- How time consuming is it? How much real hours must be invested into crafting 1 minutes of game? Does it change depending on the game/section?* On how time consuming it is, it truly depends on the game or section. For example, my rejected Dora TAS (tasvideos.org/5153S.html) took me about 10 hours to make, which is 12 minutes long. It likely isn't very improvable by more than a couple frames. So I'd say a ratio of 50 minutes a minute For this game, we have likely spent a couple hundred hours altogether across all the TASers in order to get the desired result. Based on the assumption it took us 300 hours, that would be 5 hours a minute. Of course, we may have to go back to previous levels when an improvement is found, and going back to previous levels may desync levels later on, meaning you have to spend time on a level you had finished already. I found an improvement in 4-3 (Bramble Scramble), which was applicable to 1-2 (Mainbrace Mayhem). After going through the process of syncing 3-2 (Glimmer Galleon) and 3-B (Kudgel's Kontest), we were finally back to 4-3. Then another improvement is found, we have to sync 3-2 and 3-B again. Another improvement, synced, and another improvement. I think we had to resync 3-2 and 3-B over five times in total lol. Of course it got easier over time, but it can be tedious. This all adds up, since we end up redoing levels. *----- Is it possible to publish the program and pathways you used, as to allow others to just punch in your work and see the game play itself on their computer, or perhaps optimize it further? Did you do that for any of your runs?* Yes, it's totally possible! In the TAS submission (tasvideos.org/6508S.html), you will find information about the run on the right. For this TAS, we used BizHawk, which is one of the main TASing emulators that you can use for a lot of systems. BizHawk 2.3.1, to be exact. You can also download the run by downloading the .bk2 file, which is the file that can be read by BizHawk that stores a bunch of information like rerecord count, inputs, the game, etc., and you will also need a ROM of the USA version of DKC2GBA. When everything is set up correctly (which really isn't hard to do), you can just load up the ROM, load up the movie and you will see exactly what happened in the video on the emulator. You can also adjust input yourself, so if you want to try to improve something off our TAS, you can use the TAS as a testing file, if that makes sense. Since it is easy to share TASes, it is easy to also make this a team project, which is why there are three authors listed for this TAS. When we improve the TAS or go a bit further ahead, we share the file with the other TASers and they can try to improve the TAS. This TAS would likely be around a 51:00 if it weren't for illayaya, who often improved levels pretty quick. *----- Speedruns vs TAS was once described to be as comparing a sportsman to an engineer, as the first uses physical training and carefully studied techniques in one powerful performance while the second uses crafting and ingenuity to build a repeatable experience. Does this comparison strikes you as accurate?* Well, it might be accurate. With the extra explanation, I would find it to be pretty accurate. In speedruns, you would practice a lot and try to get better, like you would in sporting. You can always get better at speedrunning, just like you can in sporting. I wouldn't say that for speedrunning it is in one powerful performance, though: unless you are a god, you will often reset and retry many times before you get a desirable result. Kosmic's sub 19 minutes took him a couple months of grinding to get, for example. But the idea here definitely feels right. For TASing, this definitely feels completely correct. If you're not creative whatsoever, don't bother TASing games like Super Mario World or any game that offers a lot of variety OR entertainment. Well, if you want to TAS games like these then please go right ahead, it's just that it may be a problem to get a good TAS. In this TAS, I was uncreative in my flying path in 4-3. Anyone who would have been a bit more creative than I was there would be able to realize, "what if you shoot the birds to be able to start flying upwards earlier?". So when illayaya spotted this mistake, he saved over half a second. This, to me, was an example of increativity. You want to be creative at all times, always consider every option, even if you think it has very or no chance of working. You will be surprised, sometimes. And I guess you could say that it is a repeatable experience, since you can play back the inputs that were created in an emulator on your own computer yourself. All in all, I would say that the comparison is very accurate. *----- What makes you decide to do a TAS? What appeals to you in those? And how do you gather partners/teammates to work on it with you?* I've had a passion for TASing since 2015, and I've always wanted to do a full TAS one day. I only did shitty TASes back then though. I eventually learned that a TAS has to be as good as possible, so I learned to get better. Though I would say I'm still bad at it, honestly, lol. I have definitely gotten better, at least. How I pick a gam... Well, I generally only pick games I care about. Donkey Kong Country 2 GBA is one of my favourite games. To extension, all the other games I have wanted to TAS (except Dora) all came because I loved the game. I've never finished a good, full TAS other than DKC2GBA, but one thing I can promise is that I *will* TAS Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. I am in the phase of routing a Glitchless TAS right now lol. This because, well, I love the game. How did I find other people to work on it with me? Well, it was a surprise to me. One day, somewhere back in April 2018, I decided: "I want to TAS DKC2GBA 102%". So I TASed 102% up to the first bonus of the second level. I decided to share the input file on the DKCGBA Speedrun Discord server. A couple hours later, illayaya introduced himself with: "Saved 35 frames" (Around that number). This was a complete surprise to me and I had absolutely no idea where I lost so much time, but that's how illayaya joined me on TASing DKC2GBA. He's TASed the game before, so he already knew a lot. That knowledge also helped us a lot. Eventually, my computer broke and I didn't have much motivation to TAS 102% when I got a laptop shortly after (we made it to 2-3 (Lava Lagoon)), so the 102% TAS has been on halt since then. In January 2019, Colin (AKA EZGames69) decided he wanted to TAS this game and improve Avanor's TAS. After he finished world 1, he showed up with an input file, and both me and illayaya immediately improved his TAS. Then we all worked together on the Any% TAS. In this particular case it's mostly just multiple people having an interest in TASing the game. So here's the end result of Any% (: I hope this comment made sense, I might have written a little too much lol. Sorry about that xd

@@Pixiuchu Those were excellent and fascinating answers. I love the sleek perfection of TAS, and I often wondered what process could bring those about. I had an educational game when I was a kid, where you had several games of memory and reasoning. The plot was about a mad scientist who accidentally fused his mind with his beloved lab rat, and you had to explore every parts of the brain in order t make things right. One of the games was putting the all movements a character in a labyrinth should do to get out and let the scenario play to see if you got it right. It was patient, methodical work, sometimes infuriating because you forgot an input and screwed the whole thing, or because an enemy appeared on the path and you didn't account for it. But it felt right, and the result was always satisfying. In a way TAS makes me nostalgic of this time. I thank you for your answers, and congratulate you, Illayaya, and EZGames69 for this TAS, it was really impressive. All the more now that I know the lengh and kind of work that hides behind it.

orig4mi thank you. Tired of people complaining about it, they really has no choice.

😅😅

Naughty.

*Gnauwty

I do want to eventually make a 102% TAS for this game, which would have all the mini games too, except for Kudgel's mini game. Also, fun fact: illayaya, one of the TASers for this TAS, made a Diddy's Dash TAS way back in 2011: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tu2YX9WISHg.html This TAS wouldn't have been nearly as good as it is now if it wasn't for him, honestly, lol.

at some point a 102% will be made, but most of us are pretty warn out from doing any%. it will happen someday though.

eh I wouldn't mind starting/continuing it soon. There's a WIP of 102% up to 2-3 but it's bad lol. Most of it was before this TAS even started, so that's partially why it's bad.

Thanks guys :) I look forward to seeing more DKC GBA, I have fond memories of it (or rather not being able to finish it).

As an update about the 102% TAS, I started working on it a month ago and I'm now at 2-Funky :)

You actually keep increasing speed until the maximum when you swim (or fly as Squawks) against a wall, so no matter how unoptimal it may seem, it actually is optimal! ;) Though I wish this was not the case because at least it'd be more difficult to optimize the level.

the sound never really bothered me as a kid.

@@ezgames6925 I grew up with the SNES and it's sad how much worse the GBA sounds when trying to play stuff from a system that just had a beefier sound chip. The games that had original tracks made to work within the GBA's limitations sounded amazing. And then you have stuff like this, alttp and zero mission, that have tracks that make it clear the system is struggling to put out what the composers wanted.

Hugo Maia I get where you’re coming from but I think out of all 3 of the dkc ports, this one is the most faithful to the original game.

At least you didn’t have to deal with Sonic the Hedgehog on GBA, worst choice I’ve ever made, thank goodness the second time I got to pick a game it was Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.

Nah actually this does the sounds a lot better not every enemy has the same stupid big guy grunt and some of the songs sound so much better

Followed by 8-bit abominations of some of the best video game music ever produced.

@@soranuareane Like the palettes, the GBA had stronger hardware than prior Game Boy iterations, but nowhere near enough in the way of resources to avoid unfortunate alterations. Of course, the sound issues were on full display with the next game, which had an entirely different soundtrack that was clearly hampered by the hardware itself (though some of it was more inherently flawed)...

They also exist in the SNES version, but the SNES TAS uses glitches in order to beat a couple levels faster than using the warp, so you don't see all of the warps in that TAS. No glitches like that in GBA though except for a shitty useless variant in 1-4 that is useless and, if it was useful, would be slower to use lol.

this game fucking sucks

this game sucks so fucking much

this game still sucks

@Yuri lima 2 Never heard of that port but I am somehow not surprised it has a port.

this game is so fucking good