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Competition Central / Re: Carrying over shields in S3&K

« on: November 16, 2006, 01:55:25 pm »

Note that you usually have to get them in a certain order (left to right?) to get more than one. And it seems the Launch Base 1 monitors can change depending on where the screen is scrolled to, but those are the monitors it said were there in the ROM.

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Competition Central / Re: Carrying over shields in S3&K

« on: November 16, 2006, 03:38:24 am »

Here, have a map or something:

EDIT: I forgot Knuckles Angel Island 1 but it wouldn't have fit anyway. There aren't any ring boxes there, only invincibility + bubble shield + extra life.

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Competition Central / Re: Lava Reef 2 question

« on: November 14, 2006, 02:39:44 am »

If you watch the newer S3&K TAS (this, although I plan to obsolete it soon) you'll see it. It can be done in real-time with Sonic. Tails isn't the right size to zip there, so skipping the boss with Tails is probably only possible in a TAS (because it would require going through both of the unbreakable walls using only spindashes).

EDIT: By the way, even though there are two extremely difficult moves in a row, you don't have to actually succeed at them in a row to skip the boss. Both of them can be retried ad infinitum until you get through, and you'd have to fail 10 or 20 times in a row to be slower than waiting through the boss fight. It's actually pretty easy compared to a lot of the tricks you guys do, I'm surprised nobody has beaten my time yet...

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Competition Central / Lava Reef 2 question

« on: November 12, 2006, 11:31:15 pm »

Is it allowed to exit via Knuckles' route in Lava Reef 2 when playing as Sonic or Tails, or are such times invalid? I ask because that exit gives no act completion screen, and I remember there being some rule about that screen needing to be visible if the level normally displays it.

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Emerald Challenges / Re: Future Challenge Suggestions (Read Page 1 First)

« on: November 11, 2006, 07:37:35 pm »

now onwards to S&K?:-)

Yep. All of the S&K levels went by without any major problems, to the ending. I'm attaching demos of a couple of the easiest Sonic 3 levels, if anyone wants an idea of what it looks like. EDIT: Huh, those movies make it look easier than it is... in most levels it's hard to figure out what to do and easy to screw up and die or get stuck. Just try beating Sandopolis or Flying Battery like that and you'll see what I mean...

How about get all the chaos emeralds in Sonic 2 by the end of Emerald Hill 2/S&K by Mushroom Hill 2?  Is something similar possible for Sonic 3, my memory of super ring locations is letting me down.

I think Sonic 3 would take until the first big ring in Hydrocity 2.

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Emerald Challenges / Re: Future Challenge Suggestions (Read Page 1 First)

« on: November 10, 2006, 06:12:57 pm »

Without using left or right to turn around, yes. But Knuckles can turn around in a few ways without pressing left or right, which I took advantage of when necessary.
- glide at a wall and jump from it
- stand just barely on the edge of a ledge or object
- hit a spring that faces the opposite direction

Bosses become extra-challenging when there are no walls or ledges to use to change direction, but they were all still possible so far.

EDIT: Confirmed that Carnival Night 1 and 2, Icecap 1 and 2, and Launch Base 1 and 2 can also be beaten this way, without exceptions. Marble Garden 2 I think needs an exception for the very end of it to be possible, unless there is some easy way for Knuckles to get into Sonic's route that I don't know about. Launch Base 2 had a nearly-impossible section by a switch that probably warrants an exception.

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Emerald Challenges / Re: Future Challenge Suggestions (Read Page 1 First)

« on: November 10, 2006, 05:44:39 pm »

Here's an interesting idea, not sure what theme it would fit but it's more challenging than it sounds: Play through some number of levels in S3&K using Knuckles, anything goes except you are not allowed to press either left or right at any time. So far I've gotten through Angel Island 1 and 2 and Hydrocity 1 without pressing left or right, and Hydrocity 2 with only one exception (pressing left once on the first set of hover fans, couldn't find any way around that), and Marble Garden 1. I stopped when I got stuck somewhere in Marble Garden 2, but I was probably taking the wrong route. Also, I would say Super/Hyper Knuckles shouldn't be allowed, at least I didn't need to use them.

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Competition Central / Re: New method to sneak into Knuckles' route on CN1

« on: November 06, 2006, 06:47:59 pm »

That only worked because the game still thinks Sonic is ducking to keep the screen down when Tails picks him up, Tails alone couldn't have done it. The only way I know of to pass through this barrier with Tails is to do a full-speed spindash at it from the top of the hill, and then do 2 minimum-power spindashes within 10 frames of hitting the barrier (which is almost impossible in real-time).

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Information Kiosk / Re: Suggestion for RA's involving the annoying lil' "?"

« on: September 22, 2006, 07:22:49 am »

It would be simple for the game to do something like "if the player is in Boost mode, add a 10% chance of getting more rings" or "add a 2% chance of getting more rings for each enemy the player has killed in the level". Until someone disassembles the game's instructions to see what it's really doing, it's hard to know or notice that sort of thing.

As for bosses, I know that a surprising number of the Sonic Advance 1/3 bosses use a random number generator to determine their actions, and aren't reacting to the player in any meaningful way. Even if you somehow do the exact same things during the fight, the boss can still do completely different things as a result of whatever happened before the boss fight. (Ice Mountain, Angel Island, Sunset Hill, Ocean Base, Toy Kingdom, Chaos Angel, are the only ones I am sure do that.)

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Information Kiosk / Re: New Competition Suggestions

« on: September 19, 2006, 02:35:05 pm »

and you can't simply disallow it because there's basically no way you can tell.

Since when has that stopped anything? I see lots of rules on the rule page that you can't tell if they were followed besides asking for video proof or something.

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Beef / Re: Site errors

« on: September 19, 2006, 01:03:57 am »

I think it's fixed now.

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Information Kiosk / Re: Suggestion for RA's involving the annoying lil' "?"

« on: September 19, 2006, 01:00:42 am »

Hmm, I double-checked just now and while that was what I noticed in one or two cases before, you're right, it doesn't work like that consistently. That doesn't prove that there might not be some kind of pattern to it, however (and even if it is very random, certain things could alter the chances of different outcomes). Anyway, I still think it's dumb to pretend you always get lucky when the game simply doesn't work that way. But I guess this idea has enough opposition already that it won't be made a rule...

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Information Kiosk / Re: New Competition Suggestions

« on: September 18, 2006, 10:46:09 pm »

Yeah, but it's more precise to do it while paused.

So is almost anything else in any game... But I can see the point that the problem is magnified when you're controlling the stylus position instead of regular controls.

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Information Kiosk / Re: New Competition Suggestions

« on: September 18, 2006, 10:36:52 pm »

There's a trick in Rush's special stages, where you pause the game and move the stylus to where you want Sonic to go, then unpause and Sonic immediatley moves there.  This isn't really fair, and it will be very hard to find out who uses it.  So no Rush special stages.

That isn't much of a trick, you can just take the stylus off the screen and put it somewhere else and get the same result. Sonic doesn't teleport there, he just moves quickly like normal. So it's just normal pause abuse (although it may be so easy to use in this case that it should be disallowed for the sake of competition, I don't know).

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Leaderboard Disputes / Re: lol Sonic Advance 2 Sonic Times

« on: September 18, 2006, 10:24:48 pm »

sorry, i didn't know if i could enter somebody elses statistics

There's one word that describes what just happened. Plagerism.

Well, that's definitely not the only issue. Even if the guy who did the video those times came from submitted them, it would still be against the rules.

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Beef / Site errors

« on: September 15, 2006, 11:29:44 pm »

I'm seeing stuff like this all over the site:

8: Undefined index: division_name
/home/rolken/public_html/source/content/rankings.php
34

or

8: Undefined index: rank
/home/rolken/public_html/source/content/members.php
618

For instance at http://www.soniccenter.org/rankings/sonic_2/times/metropolis_1 or at http://www.soniccenter.org/members/quartz/sonic_advance_3

I didn't see any mention of this problem anywhere else so...

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Information Kiosk / Really random?

« on: September 15, 2006, 02:35:58 am »

I'm not sure those item boxes are really random in all of those games. In Sonic Advance 2 the number of rings seems to be roughly proportional to the speed you're moving at after that delay before the item kicks in, and in Sonic Advance 3 it seems to depend on how recently a tag action was used (like if you start a high jump immediately before the item activates). I didn't test those extensively, but they would kind of make sense, and maybe some of the other games have their own hidden condition for getting more rings from them...

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Competition Central / Re: Moral questions about a certain trick in Sonic Advance 3

« on: July 04, 2006, 01:05:54 am »

It didn't seem like the sort of thing that TSC tends to ban (most importantly, it doesn't prevent competition), and pause abuse on its own is allowed. BTW, it can be done without pausing, but it's riskier.

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Hiya Folks / Re: hi...

« on: June 02, 2006, 10:18:56 am »

And you already got a record I see! Nicely done

Yeah, I think it's likely to be surpassed soon though, since my strategy is known and I lost several seconds on its execution. EDIT: I was right, even though I beat that original record by quite a bit.

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Hiya Folks / Re: hi...

« on: May 28, 2006, 10:46:49 pm »

Oh no... the TAS guy.

I don't want to be shot down.  I could finally have first!  MY CONQUEST SHALL NOT BE STOPPED!

Oh, don't worry, I'm really not very good at these games. Especially boss fights, I must be boss-fight-challenged or something. (I must be one of the only people to exceed 10 game-overs on the first boss of Sonic Rush before finally beating it once.)

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Hiya Folks / hi...

« on: May 28, 2006, 06:12:57 am »

Thought I should say hi. I don't plan to do a lot here but I might submit an occasional time.

I had a question though: Is it allowed to press the Start button to help with timing in the game? It isn't really necessary, but it makes some things a lot easier for me to do. (If it's not allowed then the time I submitted isn't valid since I ended up pausing 6 times in that attempt.)