Hi there,

I just saw that a lot of stuff happened on this forum for the past two weeks. First of all, I would like to congratulate NeGAtiv4k for his great run, that is quite something.

Second of all, I would like to add some thoughts on the timing method. It is good that we are looking for a better timing method in order to have an LB as precise as possible. I noticed that my run had been retimed and I suppose all the other runs of the LB will be as well very soon. When I started running the game in 2018, the only thing that was agreed upon was the last frame (when the trapeze disappears). sYn has a good point when he says that the first frame needs to be determined precisely. Is it going to be the frame when "Player A" disappears" or is it going to be the frame when "Start" is being pressed (in which case some additional work needs to be done with an emulator where you pause, then buffer the press of "Start", advance one frame to be on the actual frame where "Start" is being pressed and finally count the frames until you reach the disappearing of "Player A") ?

We had a discussion about that topic on the forum of Asterix (NES) where Kirua described a method that we are actually using now to time the runs for this game. Here is a link to his post in case you are interested: https://www.speedrun.com/post/1rk1k . In this post, the 30FPS and 60FPS situations are both adressed.

Also, I think the method that will be chosen should be known to the runners so that they can count the frames themselves and submit an accurate time. So maybe, it could be a good idea to put something about it in the rules.

Finally, I have a remark on how the retiming of my run was handled. I noticed that a mod edited the comment that I made when I submitted the run. I had written a sentence that said that my time was 3:25.750 because that is what the timer said on the last frame. Obviously, I was wrong because I did not have a good timing method, so I understand that a mod would want to change that time to make it fit the actual time. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is the right way to go because we should keep the integrity of what runners write in their runs' comment even if the statement is erroneous, plus it allows to keep a reliable history. Therefore, my suggestion would be to add a mod note to the comment that looks like "mod edit: The run was retimed according to the new rules and the new time of this run is X:XX.XXX", Something like that.

What are your thoughts on all that ?

NB: If you need any help to retime all the runs of the LB (because there is a lot of them), I would be glad to be of assistance.

Ah oui c'est dommage effectivement ! Du coup, la prochaine fois que tu es de passage à Paris, n'hésite pas à me contacter (via discord par exemple).

Yeah you might be a bit far from Paris. How long have you been living in Japan ? Taïwan is a very beautiful island, besides the sea, you have the mountains, the hot springs, the people and also the food is amazing. I actually also went to Japan while I was there because, as you said it, it is very close. I only stayed 4 days in Kyoto but it was a great experience. It is quite a nice city with a strong cultural heritage, I think it was a good choice for a first time in Japan.

Well I do not have a twitch account and I think the pm feature has been removed from youtube, so here is an invitation link that should be permanent: https://discordapp.com/invite/HEkrfxG

Hi Guys !

Sorry for my late reply, I was in vacation in Taïwan and I came back recently. I did not log in to my speedrun.com account while I was there although I visited the Asterix leaderboard several times as an unauthenticated user in case Baruch had submitted a better run :-)

First of all, I would like to say that I also thought that I could only improve the run by a few frames when I watched Baruch's run after I decided to speedrun this game in late 2018. The execution was good and there was just a small mistake during the boss fight which could be my chance if I grinded long enough. To be honest, I did not expect that Baruch would run the game again when I beat his 5:55, so I would have probably stopped running the game after I got 5:53.

Man, I was so surprised when you got a 5:52 and then 5:51 which was perfect in my opinion with the strats you used. At that time, I was running the game in Medium and Hard modes, so I figured that I would go back to Easy when I am happy with my runs in these modes.

Once again, I thought you had stopped running the game because you had a great 5:51 run and I did not think you were interested in the other modes. Then, something fun happened, I was visiting the website to check the leaderboard just in case, and I was wondering if you were running other games so I went to your profile page and there was a twitch button that said "Live now". So I clicked on it and I saw you playing Asterix. I realized you had never stopped playing and moreover you showed the fast 3-2 strat (that is how I call it) and you seemed pretty good at it. To be fair, I thought about a strat like that when I watched the TAS by Aglar and Randil but I was not ready to try it because it seemed too hard and I was just starting to make speedruns of the game (I think it was November 2018).

If I recall correctly, you tried to have a full run with the fast 3-2 strat and then after a while you switched to Medium mode. I had run the game in this mode for several weeks and I was a bit pissed when I heard you saying that you were going to beat it easily, but I soon realized that you were right because I had not studied your recent runs and I had not done a good job on the routing. I was amazed by the efficiency of your routing method and I learned so much watching it, so you clearly helped me a lot to improve on this game. That's how I was able to get a 5:52 on both Medium and Hard modes and also a 5:50 on Easy mode.

From this point, my goal was to learn fast 3-2 and then incorporate it in my runs in order to reach 5:49 in Easy mode. That was such a tough challenge, you need to get to 3-2 with 4 wings and then do the fast strat and then finish the game with your heart racing at 170 bpm. Overall, I had 19 failed attempts with a successful fast 3-2 until I finally clutched one but very poorly executed at the end, so I only got 5:50.650. I managed to beat that shortly after with a 5:50.483 but I still had a hard time finishing properly. Finally, I reached my goal today with a 5:49 run including a fast 3-2 and a good finish (not perfect at all but that'll do).

I chose this game because I had it when I was a kid and I never imagined I would still be playing it more than 6 months after I started to speedrun it as an adult. I will probably take a little break from Asterix and speedrunning as well because as you said it, Baruch, it is very time consuming. By the way, I went to Patagonia (mainly Ushuaia and El Calafate) four years ago and I was really astonished by the landscape and the peacefulness of some places, so I can relate to what you wrote in your post.

Kirua, I did not mention you because when I started running the game Baruch was number 1, so I mainly focused on his run. That being said, I had watched your 5:56 run and eventhough there were a few time losses that could have been avoided, some parts were very impressive and perfectly executed. It is even more impressive given that you spent so little time on it.

Anyway, I am glad I embarked on this journey, Asterix is a very fun game to speedrun despite the level of difficulty and I hope more people will try it in the future. Again, thanks to you guys because the game would not be where it is today if it was not for you.

Finally, I would like to answer Baruch's question at the end of his post. I developped a bad habit while playing the game: every time I reach the end of a level, I keep the B button pressed and I validate the screen with the score by pressing A. The problem with this is that you need to actually press A again at the right time on the title screen that comes afterwards in order to start the next level. So basically, I need to mash the A button to start as soon as possible (I think Kirua had the same habit). By doing this you will never be able to jump while punching on the first frame of the level. It is not so important on most of the levels but 2-2 is different because you need to jump at the very first frame to be able to touch the edge of the platform and jump again just like you do. When I do it, Asterix has moved a bit further so when I jump I miss the edge and land on the platform below, so I need to punch during the next jump in order to slow down and reach the next platform, otherwise I will fall. By the way, I tried to do it your way on my last run just for the transition between 2-1 and 2-2, it worked but I probably lost a little bit of time between score and title screens.

NB: Baruch and Kirua, I live in Paris and maybe you do too, so it could be nice to grab a beer one of these days. Anyhow, I am sometimes on the XXL Arena Community on Discord (it is about Asterix games), so you can find me there and drop a word if you feel like it. Here is an invitation link (valid for 1 day): https://discord.gg/QDeAq8

Yeah I never checked but I thought it had to be a frame perfect jump on level 2-1, the precision required is crazy !

level 2-1: Yes it only works if the snowman shoots low and even if that happens, making the jump without touching him and then landing successfully on the A box is quite challenging. Anyhow, in case I take the damage, I clearly hope that the last snowman will be nice but it is not mandatory. In fact, I only reset if I finish the level with less than 2 wings left.

Level 2-2: Indeed, if the snowman shoots high, I will take the damage but the run is not necessarily dead. It depends on how many wings I have left after that. For this level, I will reset if I can only finish it with less than one wing.

Hello,

I use the same strat for that catapult because it is RNG indeed. However, during this run I made a mistake by jumping a bit late when Asterix was about to fall from the platform. Therefore, the jump did not happen and I was just lucky the catapult shot high.

I am not 100% accurate on this jump, sometimes I also jump a bit early and Asterix bumps his head into the A box above. This actually happens on my new PB run I submitted today.

That being said, there is a way to kind of predict the behavior of a catapult (in Easy mode) based on what the previous catapults did. For instance, if the first catapult shoots high, most of the time the second one will shoot low and the third one will shoot high. Moreover, if the first one shoots low and then the second one shoots high, you are almost guaranteed the last one will shoot high. Nevertheless, I try not to play according to those assumptions because it is safer to make the jump anyway.

Thanks Baruch !

I am using OBS to record my runs (just like you do) and the output file is in mp4 format. This format is not handled natively by VirtualDub, so you need to add some plugins to make it work.

Here is a link where you can download the plugins you need to open mp4 files with VirtualDub:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubffmpeginputplugin/files/latest/download

You will download a ZIP file which contains two directories: "plugins32" and "plugins64". You need to put those directories and their content in the VirtualDub directory and then you should be able to open mp4 files.

Once you have your recording in VirtualDub you can move back and forward frame by frame using the left and right arrows of your keyboard.

So you are going to play Asterix again after all :-) It is good to read that you will be back speedrunning (a little) in 2019, eventhough this means that my Asterix record is in big trouble...

Well, I guess I will see you around. Have a good one !

Thanks, it sure took me many tries to get to 5:54 since I started running this game. Besides the difficulty level, the hardest thing to handle is the lagging. For some reason, it tends to happen at critical moments like in the middle of a jump for instance and sadly it is not always possible to reduce it effectively.

Anyway, I was not aware of the frame dropping issue you described and I will be sure to pay attention to that for my future runs. Generally speaking, you gave me an efficient method to framecount my runs and I will use it from now on, so thank you.

By the way, do you still run a few games from time to time or did you kind of retire from speedrunning ?

I think you found a reliable way to get a total number of frames that represents well the run. As I mentioned previously, I recorded my 5:55 run at 30 FPS (I changed this since then), therefore using your method, my frame 0 is f0= 451 - 2 = 449. Moreover, The last frame of the run is frame number 11111. So we get the following number of frames for this run: N = 11111 - 449 = 10662 frames, which gives us the official run time: T = 10662/30 = 5:55.400

From now on, I will include this calculation in the description when I submit a run and the recording will be at 60 FPS :-) (I am about to submit a run in 5:54 by the way).

Finally, I would like to thank you for taking the time to find that method and I wish you and Baruch a merry Christmas.

Yeah man it's cool. Don't worry there is no hurry, I am just happy that we are doing things properly. By the way, I appreciate your reactivity on this subject and the fact that you cared enough to seek a satisfying solution. I would also like to point out Baruch's fairplay because he could have been against the all thing but on the contrary he is willing to help improving the ranking system as well.

Ok, it sounds pretty good to me. I think we all agree that the end frame is the one with Obelix and Idefix with the rescue message. As regards the start frame, I took a look at several recordings in VirtualDub and it turns out that the first black frame (the menu disappears and the screen becomes black) after you press start could be a good candidate.

Indeed, I noticed that the gap between the first black frame and the first level 1-1 frame is always 18 meaning that the black frame is number 1 and the level 1-1 frame is number 19. I forgot to mention that my recordings were done at 30 FPS (sorry, I will change that for future recordings).

Therefore, I used those frames to calculate a more precise time for my 5:55 run. The first frame is the 451st and the last one is the 11111st. So the real number of frames for this run is N = 11111 - 451 + 1 = 10661 frames. As I mentioned earlier, I recorded at 30 FPS, thus the time for this run is T = 10661/30 = 5:55.367

Maybe you can double check for the start frame so we can be completely sure and if it is validated by you then Baruch can do the calculation to get his time with millisecond precision.

How does that sound ?

Hi !

I am actually the one who asked one of the mods to add milliseconds in order to reflect, as you said it, the fact that my run was slightly faster than Baruch's. However, you made a very valid point regarding the exactitude of the added milliseconds.

In my opinion, there are two options. The first one is to framecount all the runs starting on the frame where the runnner press start on the title screen and ending on the frame on which Obelix and Idefix appear (that is actually written in the rules). The second one is to not add the milliseconds but look very carefully when two runs are close in order to rank them accordingly (in that case two runs could have the same time on the LB but would not be tied). I do not know how the leaderboard has been coded so maybe it is not possible for a mod to rank two runs differently when they have the same time in which case I guess I will have to submit a run in 5:54 :-) or you can also decide to start counting on a later frame in order to make my run a 5:54 and Baruch's still a 5:55.

What do you think ?