You were absolutely right about being closer to the targets on the final boss. I can now get a steady stream of bullets fired.
Are you sure about when the t-rex dies? Because in this run, it had just started backing up when it died (40:00 is the timestamp). I think his roar when he explodes is simply his death roar, and not the roar during the cycles.
I got T-rex down to the last hit, and it turns out it is vulnerable during all animations and all parts of the body. Final hit cancels at least some animations and triggers the death roar.
Probably I'm doing things too fast again and there are i-frames after it getting hit. Doing double blasts of different weapons at the same time lead to way more hits required so it's something like that.
The damage table vs cage and hits required (on normal at least)
Converted Cage Damage (hits req vs cage) 1 Auto-Tranq (60) 1 Taser Tap (60) 1 Rifle (60) 1 SMG (60) 7 RPG (9 hits or 8 hits + 4 CCD) 7.5 Shotgun (8 hits with all projectiles or 7 hits + 8 CCD) 8 Taser Charge (8 hits or 7 + 4 CCD) 25 Bazooka (3 hits (2.4) or 2 hits + 10 CCD)
(RPG = Tranquilizer Bazooka. Bazooka = Super Tranquilizer Bazooka)
CCD is normalized to the four lowest damaging weapons, so 1 burst of shotgun = 7.5 shots with the rifle or equal weapons.
I expected Shotgun, RPG and Charged Taser to be equal but it seems not.
For the fights I have analyzed on normal and hard, T-rex has died on values of 808-835 CCD, the lowest being on normal but I'm not sure if there is a difference since they are all so close.
I still don't understand the T-rex fight but I managed to beat it 3 seconds faster making the TAS time 32:58 (32:57.933). Will upload.
There was an RPG shot that I missed early in the fight and didn't notice until I had hit the final shot and I then went back to aim it correctly. It did not change how many hits were needed at the end to finish the fight, which probably means it dealt no damage! You have had RPG deal the last blow so we know it should do damage vs T-Rex right?
I really cannot tell when T-Rex is vulnerable and not S:
I'm starting to guess there might be a few frames of invincibility after a hit, which means we can't spam as fast as possible. It likely won't matter in real time, but we might have to space out our inputs for the tas, if that's the case.
But hey, sub 33 happened! \o/
Will do more testing about that specific shot! "Huh, that's odd" is the first step to new discoveries!
Latest TAS:
It's getting harder to shave off time now unless we learn new tricks or skips but there are still some optimizations possible.
I might switch to hard mode TAS or real normal runs after reaching the milestone!
Update: The shot hitting or missing does not matter. Removing it completely first meant T-Rex did not die. After minor tweaks to running inputs it then caused a shot from auto-tranquilizer to go in a weird direction and miss, and that resulted in T-Rex dying 2 shots earlier at the end. So missing 1 RPG and 1 Auto-Tranq made the T-Rex need to take 2 CCD damage LESS at the end than hitting all prior shots 10 CCD total (but this was still 8 frames slower). That first RPG hit might cause i-frames and deny damage from a shotgun blast just after as I was doing double-shots, and that could be an explanation but earlier versions of the TAS did not use double-shots and had a slower fight overall but hit very nearly the same amount of shots. So much weirdness going on.
Wow, that T-Rex fight looks sick!
How much different do you think a hard mode tas might be (minus the final helicopter fight)? I know you mentioned that some kills would have to be slightly altered, but I think you could still be able to run through each encounter without slowing down like in the current tas, unless I'm missing something. I think the final time, up to the t-rex kill would be VERY close, like maybe no more than 3 seconds. You have better and more experience with this, so do you think that's a reasonable assumption?
It would definitely be cool to see a tas of the final helicopter kill. I can imagine that you'd be going for multiple targets on each cycle, alternating spamming diagonal up and diagonal down every frame. If done properly, I bet it could be killed on the 2nd cycle, which would be insane.
I think main difference would be strats vs flamers on Drop ship, scout and HQ. Current scout route gets very low on hp on normal so that would probably have to change a bit. Do flamers deal more damage on hard?
How many hits does each target need on the final fight? I suspect max fire rate will still be one shot per two frames even if the direction changes. You'll just have to learn to mash 30 times per second :D
It's really hard to tell exactly how many hit each target takes, but it looks like they might not all have the same amount of health. Give or take a few shots...
Gun: ~30 Bombs: ~30 Engine: ~25 Missiles: ~20 Thing next to missiles: ~15 Dudes (4 total): ~3
Even with the video slowed down, it's difficult to count, but those numbers are about right.
Edit: I was actually wondering myself if enemies do more damage on harder difficulties, and I honestly don't know.
On the topic of the t-rex fight, I got a 37 kill. :) I could've gotten a 38 if I didn't miss one of the last shots, but I think this is close to the limit with these strats.
I've started TASing hard mode and through Blockade it's only a few frames slower and most changes are just the timing of shots and jumps. On AuxPS the first Dilophosaurus is actually easier on hard! (though not faster)
I'm going to attempt some real runs and goal is just to finish a run. Trying to stream but get some stutters in game so I have to fix that.
I did test streams on youtube yesterday. Maybe YT caused the stutters, but I think it's fixed anyway. Got encoder and scene settings up and running so setting up for Twitch should be simple. Set up splits and did a few test runs, the best of which ended in a game over on dropship I think :D I will run more for sure
I discovered a new graphical glitch :D Got stuck in the white flash animation after taking damage. Then I tried to turn on TAS to see what caused it and if there was any use for it but that reset the game. Good to know Not really sure how it happened. I was damaged by flames and then fell into the abyss
I think I vaguely remember that graphical glitch happening to me a long time ago, but maybe not, I don't know. Maybe we could replicate it by damaging ourselves, then entering a new room at the same time. Don't know if it would have any applications to anything though.
I wish I would get notifications on youtube when you go live. :/ I might just have to constantly check to see if anyone is live.
Just out of pure curiousity, do you know how many pixels you have to get an edge skip? I think I remember you saying they can save UP TO 2 frames, and it sire looks like sometime you get a further boost than others, so it seems like you have a couple of pixels you can land on.
