Massachusetts, USAOhh that's interesting. This is new to me. Have you ever looped to the throne room before?
Yes, I tried again yesterday and had the same experience--closed door, but was able to jump in the room. Thanks for the followup!
Cool! No worries. If you haven't already, I know Crash has some videos (Ghost Ship and Time Device come to mind) that have detailed explanations which I found helpful as well, and I'd recommend those. Alowishus has tutorials up there, too. They are on Youtube.
I do agree that there are some unexplained components to level looping in this game, and our community would benefit from videos showing inputs/controllers. I'd be happy to make more little demos if there are loops that are tricky for you (or anyone else). The only one I cannot touch is the huge loop NoobKillerRoof does in Pools of the Ancient Dead, where he skips gathering the soul helmets and loops to the end trigger. I've done that exactly 2 times out of over 100 attempts, easy, and I do not understand what I am doing wrong. If anyone out there has advice for that one, I'm all ears.
Is this video helpful? Haha, be honest.
The "visual queue" is something I find helpful. For reference, it's about at 1:37 in the video when I exit the inventory, which I do by pressing Select rather than Triangle. That just so happens to be in my muscle memory, but please note that Triangle works just as well.
Nazzareno, if it helps, some months ago I clipped NoobKillerRoof's loops (most of them, anyway) for reference as I was learning the run. Are you referring to this Haunted Ruins loop?
https://www.twitch.tv/noobkillerroof/clip/FriendlyFrozenSaladKAPOW?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
Or this one? https://www.twitch.tv/noobkillerroof/clip/TiredAmorphousReindeerSMOrc?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
To begin, you are right that it is a matter of timing. This takes time to adjust to. For the first Haunted Ruins clip, after falling off the ledge (where you would normally wait for the bridge to lower), if you watch NoobKiller's inputs and match them with Dan's animation, you can count off that NoobKiller dashes 8 times. When I learned this loop I took this as the first part of the loop.
The second part is when NoobKiller stops dashing and holds Up on the D-pad. This he does for approximately 6 seconds (you can use the timer to help you), which is when the screen changes to reveal the sky. When the sky disappears and the screen is about to become black again you will notice he switches the input to Up + Left on the D-pad.
This brings us to the third and final part of the loop which is "the landing." Unfortunately, Noobkiller's video does not have in-game audio, so you cannot rely on audio queues to help you, however in a real setting you would hear the sound of Dan landing--this is the sign that the loop is over. Without knowing for sure when this sound happens in his video, I would approximate it at around 28:43, about 8 seconds after holding Up + Left on the D-pad. He lands by switching to the analog stick and holding down (I believe he does this for efficiency, since after you land you need to move Dan regularly with the analog stick and this makes it an easy transition). What I cannot explain is how the door he then goes through is open (perhaps he lands in a zone that triggers it to open?) since every time I have done the loop the door is always closed.
As for the 2nd loop which I linked to above, my advice is to pay attention to the initial camera angle as well as the visual clues you are given. It's difficult to navigate this one (it is for me, anyway), but if you watch closely you can see that Dan's path pretty much entirely follows a crack or line of the stage. You can see Noobkiller's analog stick wiggling back in forth as he does this. He does this until moving a little beyond the top of a tower--approximately 2 seconds--at which point he begins moving Up + Right with the analog stick.
The "landing" for this loop is pretty flexible, and you can see him moving around in a circular fashion. I have landed here in many ways, so I would say there's a reasonable amount of leeway with this one.
One last note: the first loop uses Circle until the dash begins (look at the inputs) whereas the second loop uses it throughout the landing. Someone else can correct me or add on, but as far as I am aware the original understanding of level looping was that Circle had to be held. As you can see, over time we've learned that's not true. Some loops have Circle, some do not.
Oh whoops. I meant to respond to you, Ju_raw.
Are there any loops/glitches in particular you're still having problems with, by the way?
Right, it was the PS3 remaster I was playing.
I've since recreated it and tried to move Tidus beyond the zone but the game wouldn't let it happen. But I think it could use more testing.
This happened to me during casual play and I just spent about an hour trying to recreate it. I finally got it, although the video quality is poor.
As you can see, it (presumably) won't let you progress to Mushroom Rock Road.
I'm not sure if this is known or even helpful but I wanted to post it just in case!
Reposting the clip:
I will try to get a more thorough clip up soon, where I detail how 23 has no 5th units but still cannot receive one, and will test if this is true from all neighboring provinces.
Still interested if anyone's encountered this before. I will post in the discord as well.
I've noticed in quite a few runs that when trying to move a 5th unit to 23 a message pops up that says "unable to send 5th unit" (or something like this--I forget the exact wording). My first thought was that this could be the case if there were already too many 5th units employed there, but during one run there was only one 5th unit employed in 23, and I've sent 2 to the same province before with no problem. So I have no guesses.
Has anyone else encountered this before? I don't remember if it's happened to me with other territories, but I know for a fact it has happened when moving troops to 23.
Word. Yeah, I think you're right. Well, it can still just be a personal goal I set for myself ^_^
Hey skyhawks.
So this game is pretty straightforward, with Any% being the most realistic option for a run (What would 100% include? And there are no known skips or glitches that would require distinguishing between them and Glitchless, etc.). However, considering that there is a high score board at the end, getting the top score is an additional realistic goal. In my head I've been calling getting this high score challenge "BeatBrendan%" since Brendan sits at the top of the scoreboard, laughing at you during name entry; typically, at the end of the run your score is 2nd place at best (or at least that's been true of the runs I've seen, and the ones I've submitted). Getting 500,000 or above is actually a challenge since it requires you to go out of your way to defeat more enemies, which is obviously risky, and it requires you to not use continues, which reset your score to 0.
My suggestion is to make a "Brendan%" category which would offer another challenge on top of the straightforward Any%. A further thought would be to track not only the time but the high score achieved. I figure it could be a fun challenge.
What do you folks think?
I've been testing it out during my runs, and it seems to be a timing thing. I've been able to replicate it during each Mission, though my best consistency is 4/7. I was scrambling around for a visual cue other than "aim for the center" and my first idea is this.
The red circle marks where I stop the plane and dock, and also aligns with where the satellite center is. Other than this, my only thought is that you simply have to get used to the timing for when to press the button.
I had also figured that your plane could only make the early dock by avoiding colliding into the satellite, but this video suggests otherwise?
Still testing.
Alright, I did some testing a bit today, though not extensively. During my stream I tried doing this before every mission, but it wasn't until before Mission 3 (I believe) that I was able to do it at all. I will try again soon and be more precise about when I'm able to pull it off.
For now, in my latest run I was able to perform the early dock before Mission 5, 6, and 7. I try it before Mission 8 but die (on PB pace, of course). If we assume that the trick is able to be performed during every satellite docking, then the fact that I've been unable to do it successfully during Mission 1 and 2 (for example) makes me suspicious. Obviously it could just be that my timing's off, but it feels different to me. I wonder if the trick only works during certain missions for some reason? Some kind of programming oversight?
Speculation aside, so far I am only able to do this on certain missions. More testing to follow.
Mm, yeah, I have tried that before too, but also just figured the alignment was off.
Yeah I also want to test this some more! I might do some tonight.
I did this on accident during a run, and re-created it during this run.
I have yet to test it, but I have 2 thoughts.
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The target zone exists on the screen already, and hitting it at all is what's required to dock with the satellite. Perhaps the spinning satellite lays over the zone, and colliding into it results in a death. In this interpretation, in theory one should be able to access the zone provided the plane is positioned in the appropriate coordinate. However, it would appear that this has to be done before the satellite fully loads on screen.
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The target zone exists, but is limited to the boundary placed on it by the spinning rectangular hole in the middle of the satellite. You'll notice in the clip that my plane is in sync with the satellite's center. Perhaps the zone loads in a spinning state, parallel to the animation of the hole itself. In this interpretation the game expects you to maneuver through the superficial overlay (the spinning satellite), but the zone itself already exists. All that would be required, then, is to know the pattern of the spinning, and match that with the timing of pressing the button to dock.
Any thoughts, skyhawks?
Okay--I will try this. Thanks for the help!
But that's the thing--frame 14810 would seem to demand a precise input window, right? So...how much longer than 5 minutes should it be?
My thought was that, assuming my PS2 processes the game at 60fps, then: 14810/ 60 = 246.83 seconds /60 = 4.1 minutes
^which would mean waiting roughly ¤4¤ minutes and about 6 seconds.
Am I wrong? How does 14810 become 5 minutes?
Greetings runners,
So, a question. I'm running this game on my PS2, and I just recently found out about the RNG manipulation that was recently added to the run (sick!). However, it would appear that the top runs on this site are done with emulators. I don't know the frame-rate difference between the console and the emulator, but I imagine there would be one? I understand frames somewhat, but I'm not too sure about console differences, or performance on my CR-TV versus someone else's gaming PC.
Is there anyone out there who runs the Any% (no card duplication), with RNG manipulation on the PS2?
