Pokemon Conquest is a tactical RPG crossover with the Nobunaga's Ambition series, released for the Nintendo DS in 2012. The primary fights are played out in a grid-based system, similar to another certain game series, with the standard Pokemon rules of type effectiveness, damage rolls, and crits (among other things) thrown in to shake things up. Outside of battle, you're tasked with overseeing your ever-growing army of kingdoms, defending from invaders, finding other warlords to recruit, and so on.
Naturally, a TAS of this game throws the expected balance out the window with practically guaranteed crits, AI manipulation, and making counterintuitive plays to save some more turns. Unfortunately, because the RTA route ends up diverging from the TAS at several crucial recruitment points, the TAS here ends up doing some things unoptimally (The Panpour, and potentially all the time wasted for getting Starly and Staravia). Some RNG related things still aren't known, like how map layouts are generated or which Warriors are generated in wild locations (Which required me to advance a month, wasting a few seconds). In spite of this, it's still over 13 minutes ahead of the RTA WR up to this point. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a member! (If you want): youtube.com/channel/UCngaLL0QDbsAGYj7zsB8o_Q/join Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej My Discord Server: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Side Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Project M/Brawl Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0Pokemon Volt White 2 Challenge Mode - Defeating Superboss Hilda with just one PokemonDyllonStej Gaming2023-09-02 | In which I show that Contrary Serperior is utterly relentless as long as you're not facing anyone with Ice Beam and a Focus Sash (Like Hilbert's Samurott, amusingly).
In this hack, Serperior's typing is changed from Grass to Grass + Dragon, which gives it access to Draco Meteor (And an amplified weakness to Ice moves). As its hidden ability inverses stat changes, repeatedly using Draco Meteor actually makes it stronger over time instead of weaker, which allows a potential sweep of the entire team if things are ordered properly.
Unfortunately, Serperior's Special Attack is insufficient to one-shot Zekrom on its own, which means it needs a boost from an item. The Draco Plate (1.2x boost) *still* isn't enough (This might be dependant on Nature, IVs, EVs, etc.), which means I'm left with either using Choice Specs or a Dragon Gem (1.5x boost). As the Dragon Gem leaves move selection unrestricted (And the boost is only needed once anyway), I use that.
I then immediately run into Hilda's own Contrary Serperior. With a Focus Sash, and Draco Meteor. But it also has a chance to use Calm Mind instead, despite its Contrary ability inversing the stat boosts. I'm then able to sweep the rest of her team with the exception of Carracosta (Which has Sturdy), whose Stone Edge still isn't enough to kill me, which means I can just finish it off on the second turn.
So, this has been a project I've been working on for the last eight months or so (Would've been shorter if I didn't have to work at a job), in which I show what a 100% completion speedrun of The Subspace Emissary would look like if human limitations weren't a factor. It features a number of new sections in comparison to the any% TAS, alongside new optimizations to preexisting rooms that can be directly compared.
Naturally, I kinda stole my own thunder right at the very end after I discovered a very useful glitch that sort of makes autoscrollers disappear, that could have been applied to a number of locations. Oh well!
To wit, I had to isolate Neo and Trinity, isolate all the different backgrounds (Removing characters from them in Photoshop), make the necessary green screens for Pit, make a *Cinema 4D* animation for the arrows in the bullet time scene since that's the best I could come up with, and do an exuberant amount of tomfoolery with the rest of the bullet time scene involving looping backgrounds, cropping, and a rotating ground texture lifted straight out of a SNES Mode 7 game from the early 90s.
In the castle lobby, start by waking Mario up, then collect 6 of the 8 custom placed doors (which are really just coins). Then finish by exiting the area through any warp door.
Timing starts when Mario is first able to move after waking up and ends on the first frame of the "pulling door" or "pushing door" action.
Prologue: Basically nothing but text mashing and moving Vaan/Penelo to their destinations ASAP. In general, it's faster to initially move units to a temporary point, and then set their final destination while they're still moving to the first point (If the intended point is beyond the scope of the camera).
1-1: Actual gameplay optimizations include moving all three characters to the spawn points of the second enemy wave before they actually spawn. Characters only start moving after they've finished completing the particular action they're in, which means certain characters (Kytes, here) wait longer due to higher attack cooldown periods.
1-2: Due to shenanigans related to EXP division, it's better for Vaan to not kill anyone here so that Kytes and Filo can level up.
1-3: There's a brief period after capturing the summoning gate where it's possible to actually interact with it and summon Espers before you're actually supposed to (The timing is TAS-only). This does save time, since the queue doesn't reset after the cutscene. I use Vaan's cutscene-summoned Alraune to bait the enemies on the upper left to come closer, while one of Filo's Alraunes is positioned to the lower area to attack its enemies sooner.
This game isn't as trivial to TAS as one would expect.
The hammer "power-up" that transforms the ball into a log outright prevents strikes from happening; as some layouts place the hammer too close to the head pin, perfect games are sometimes completely impossible. I had to reset the game twice (Which can be seen by frame advancing at the start) before I got a good layout.
While the fireball is an actually good power-up that guarantees a strike, its animation is much slower than simply knocking down the pins regularly, even when the initial throwing position is adjusted.
In the case of both the fireball and the hammer, I avoid them by adjusting my starting position, which takes an amount of time dependent on how far from the center you start (As Spongegar takes countable steps before beginning his throw). Naturally, fewer steps is better, so I tested several different cases to reduce that waiting period. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej My Discord Server: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Shorts Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCZ4Jpox8XmEWNN0f0hSOoYg My Other Side Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Project M/Brawl Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0[TAS] Spongebob Squarepants: Bikini Bottom Bust Up 100% Speedrun in 4:47.45DyllonStej Gaming2022-04-13 | Timing starts at boot-up and ends on the KO hit against Champ Mode Squidward.
This TAS goes through both of the game's modes (Newbie and Champ), consisting of six opponents and twelve rounds. The goal of the game, being a Punch Out clone, is to hit opponents until their health reaches zero by using punches or kicks, while also dodging their own attacks. Performing successful actions (Non-blocked attacks, and successful dodges) builds up a special meter that allows you to use a super move (Equivalent to Little Mac's "Star Punch") when full.
The game is more complicated than it looks thanks to the opponents' AI and ability to cancel their attacks into a block that prevents you from dealing damage. This means that I can only really hit them when they let me, which is after I successfully dodge them most of the time alongside a few stray hits elsewhere. There's also a rather heavy amount of luck involved, through getting them to not spam their own special moves (Which wastes a great deal of time). I wasn't able to find any particular ways to manipulate their attack patterns outside of some rare events, so this is just the result of me letting things go through on their own. Even with that, Sandy 2's AI appears to have broken for some reason, as I was able to kick her several times in a row while she just stood there doing nothing.
It resembles the Home Run Contest in Super Smash Bros., where the goal is to knock the opponent as far away as possible. The initial launch is simply a matter of mashing the space bar as much as possible, while the section after is just timing button presses correctly so the arrow is inside the green. If it's in the black, the projectile misses; if it's in the red but to the left, the anchovy comes crashing down; if it's in the red but to the right, the anchovy stalls a bit before falling down, making it the better option.
Even with TAS levels of precision (And fortunately no input buffer, making it faster than Brawl by two frames), there comes a point where the arrow just cannot land inside the green area, meaning you have to take a bad throw (Missing doesn't do anything to change it from my limited testing) to move on to a recovery.
This is a TAS of the Super Captain Falcon 64 ROM Hack, which replaces Mario with Captain Falcon and changes many of his attributes (Including a faster running speed, higher gravity, a Falcon Kick that boosts him to 120 speed in a single frame, and a Falcon Punch that destroys most objects in the game).
Over a year ago, I made a TAS of the "1 Star BLJLess" route, which doesn't use the Backwards Long Jump glitch to get a bunch of speed. Here, I allow their use, and perform a different route that skips the entirety of Dire Dire Docks.
I could've done a "1 Key" route, but I'm not smart enough to recreate that from scratch (As Falcon 64 uses different physics). Some strats here are also slightly unoptimal in comparison to a 0 Star route of the original game (Like the upstairs movement, in which I couldn't get the deceptively complicated "Clock Punch" maneuver to work), but everything is still done as well as I could do for working on this in a two-day timespan. It also contains some improvements that could also be back-ported to 1 Star BLJLess in places like the entry to Bowser in The Dark World, and most of Bowser in The Sky. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej Discord: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Other Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0[TAS] Project M Turbo Mode - Roy vs Ryu (Watermark Re-Upload)DyllonStej Gaming2021-11-30 | Re-uploaded with a watermark, finally, after seeing it once again shared around on Twitter without knowledge of the original source. Complete with the watermark itself being closer to the center of the video to drive home the point.[TAS] Bakugan Battle Brawlers DS - Tutorial Fight in 1:52.80DyllonStej Gaming2021-11-26 | In which I conclusively prove that the Wii version is over 2x slower.
This also saves 39 frames over Taechuk's TAS made several years ago by better menuing (Using buttons instead of the touch screen) and better throws (Like getting a lower angle on the first throw to hit the ground sooner, to stand sooner). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej Discord: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Other Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0[TAS] Bakugan Battle Brawlers Wii - Tutorial Fight in 4:13.23DyllonStej Gaming2021-11-22 | Timing starts at selecting "Yes" at exiting the Character Edit menu, and ends when the screen fully fades to black after victory.
So, Bakugan. This was the hot stuff when I was in elementary school, and my sister and I played the DS version a bunch. But since a TAS of the DS version already exists (youtube.com/watch?v=weKVcxqCv1I), I figured that I could try doing something with the Wii version.
As it turns out, the Wii version is much less suited for TASing thanks to Critical KOs not being present (As far as I'm aware), the battles themselves being 10 to 20 second autoscrollers, and larger downtime in general in comparison to the DS version. At least I saved 33 seconds over the RTA record, through a mix of RNG manipulation (In getting a 10-second fight instead of a 20) and actual technique (As manipulating the Bakugan right before it touches the ground allows it to Stand even if it's moving really fast). I'm probably not going to continue this, but I figured that I would upload something about it. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej Discord: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Other Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0[TAS] 3D Pinball Space Cadet (Wii) - One Mission Complete In 8.87sDyllonStej Gaming2021-11-16 | Thanks to the marvelous people behind 3D Pinball Space Cadet's decomp project (github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball), a port of the game was made for the Nintendo Wii (github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball), which meant it was prime real estate for me to make a TAS of the official demo instead of needing to use Full Tilt Pinball.
This is meant to obsolete マジあり's TAS made over three years ago, both through IGT and real-time, thanks to my own advancements in RNG bruteforcing ability. The general strat for all the bosses is identical: Use Peach, pull a Stitch Face turnip, and repeatedly Z-Drop it over and over to deal massive damage. Roughly ten seconds were saved in real-time, through manipulating all the RNG during the downtime between bosses instead of waiting in the Rest Area. 0.63s were saved in IGT, described through each individual boss as follows:
Rayquaza: Saved 0.14s due to fighting him in the first set of rounds instead of the second, which makes him have slightly less health. Ridley: Saves 0.01s thanks to a slightly earlier Turnip throw, which leads to a slightly earlier grab and so on. Petey: Loses 0.02s due to the game's own IGT tracking; I defeat him before the time's had a chance to rise, Petey *literally explodes* due to his health dropping to 0, and yet the timer still goes up during the slo-mo part. This doesn't happen for any other boss, so I'm very confused as to why it happens here. Duon: Loses 0.01s for reasons I don't understand, as I performed all the necessary actions at the exact same time as the old TAS. Porky: Saves 0.16s due to fighting him in the second set of rounds instead of the third, which makes him have slightly less health. Meta Ridley: Saves 0.37s thanks to his attack startup being slightly later, which allows me to more efficiently Z-Drop the Stitch and finish him off much earlier. Crazy Hand: Loses 0.02s due to fighting him in the third set of rounds instead of the first, which makes him have slightly more health. Master Hand: Loses 0.04s due to acting later than the old TAS, preventing me from Z-Dropping as early as I could. Tabuu: Saves 0.01s due to a very slightly better Z-Drop at one point; everything else is the same.
With everything said, I believe the time could get as low as a 7.04 assuming all the small timelosses from those respective bosses get reduced to 0, but I'm not sure how feasible many of those actually are. This would absolutely require even more exact RNG bruteforcing than what I currently have available (To the point where bruteforcing isn't enough; I need to know *what* each individual number actually does), but I'm still satisfied with the current result. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Check out my Patreon! patreon.com/DyllonStej Discord: discordapp.com/invite/T7rZqbm My Other Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL_aWcJRBfVKqn1QnYJyt4g Twitter: twitter.com/DStejGaming My Mods: dropbox.com/sh/67ce97vfa4xh9pn/AAAILWUMsqJ1I9NxHLwpsvaCa?dl=0STANDING HERE I REALIZE 4K HD Base TemplateDyllonStej Gaming2021-10-27 | Because I've seen a few memes thrown around dealing with Raiden's futile barrage of punches against Armstrong, I decided to make a video template. 4K 60FPS video, standard audio.