Kingdom Grandprix

[Smile]

Not only milking, but there must be esoteric secrets as well.

I milked Kobold's Tower on the first loop, but maybe there are more boulders to destroy if you play it on the second loop; same goes for the "ice" and "mushroom" levels.

[Smile]

Smile - 1,422,467 - Miyamoto - ALL

Scraping the bottom of the barrel now.

[ProjectAKo]

I've been looking for that missing score as well. I think I figured out how to get a huge score boost in this of about 200k, but it's gonna be heavily RNG based and risky. Maybe about 1.8m is possible with what I'm thinking of.

[ProjectAKo]

Holy shit people



I figured out how the WR was achieved. This is something I couldn't find anywhere on the internet, I actually got very lucky when I stumbled upon something in the game's code.

If you kill an enemy by bumping into him while your character is doing a twirling animation, you get DOUBLE SCORE. The twirl is very difficult to trigger, but you can weaken bosses and then bump into them for the double score kill.

Look at my first loop score



I'm sure it can be optimized to 1,200,000, and that will even give you the fourth extend.

By the way, boss of Deep Dungeon and Crossfire are bugged and don't give the bonus score.

[Shepardus]

Strange trick, but awesome that you were able to figure it out! Looks like you could easily beat the western record with this knowledge and even take a stab at the world record!

[ProjectAKo]

Working on it, but 2-5 is super tough...

[ProjectAKo]

I finally tried a single run with all the strats I've been routing. Went horribly of course. Need to grind out everything a lot more to increase success rate. If I could just finish the run I should be able to reach 1.8 million minimum.

Project A-Ko - 1,165,632 - Miyamoto - 2-3



Also this hasn't been updated in millenia, so god know why I'm even posting.

[CloudyMusic]

Why not take over maintaining the board, or find someone else who'd like to? You could post about it in here, maybe, if you're not interested.

Seems preferable to just letting it languish.

Cool findings.

[ProjectAKo]

Why not take over maintaining the board, or find someone else who'd like to? You could post about it in here, maybe, if you're not interested.

Seems preferable to just letting it languish.

Cool findings.

I may or may not be too lazy for all that, but if no one who enjoys running boards (like despatche) decides to remake it I will probably get on it eventually when I actually have some good scores

[Hagane]

I just read your PM, I was as clueless as you were about where the extra points came from.

So, you need to kill stuff with a bump or a bump while doing that twirling animation? I don't know how that animation comes out, but if it's just a finishing bump it's pretty cool and would make the game much more interesting for sure.

[ProjectAKo]

I just read your PM, I was as clueless as you were about where the extra points came from.

So, you need to kill stuff with a bump or a bump while doing that twirling animation? I don't know how that animation comes out, but if it's just a finishing bump it's pretty cool and would make the game much more interesting for sure.

Indeed, it gets pretty awkward. The twirl is not easy to do. You need to go a real long distance to the left or right and then do an instant turn. This does about 4x the damage of a normal bump, which is actually VERY little damage, so you need to almost kill the bosses and then do the bump.

But, double points from bosses is a huge amount. 1-5 graveyard level boss gives 100k instead of 50k. Some of the bosses are bugged and don't give full or any extra points. Each final boss only gives 30k extra points instead of 70k extra. Either way, it all adds up and explains how the japanese WRs got so much higher.

Oh, and the most important thing. If you bomb while twirling, you activate a glitch which gives you a permanent twirl effect letting you fly around bumping into everything for double points. That's pretty important Just be careful to never twirl again, or the glitch is deactivated. I'm sure the arcade players knew about this as well, they had to to get those scores.

[Despatche]

i don't really like this game, sorry

if people really want me to, i'd do it i guess

[Hagane]

OK, I finally got what you meant. It's not that hard to get to come out, at least on a keyboard since it's very easy to switch directions with it (Prometheus was right!). You have to quickly change directions when your character is in a fully tilted position, which as you say happens when you move towards the left or right for a while. For example:





I can get the permanent bump powerup glitch consistently, too. The damage you get for bumping while in this state is actually pretty good against normal enemies. Of course things get much harder against bosses, but getting double points for every single enemy is huge, and it's also quite fun to bump the shit out of people.

That doesn't mean much yet though, now I have to put it to work. Thanks for re-igniting my interest for this game!

[ProjectAKo]

Here's my stage selection theory for this game using the twirl glitch

Stage 1: You can bump almost everything. Boss can be a little tricky. It dies after bumping both cannon wings.

Air Circus: Tons of stuff to bump here, but it's very tricky as you can get shot in the face. Mages are worth the most. Tons of points from enemies and the boss. I choose this stage because air circus is way too hard on loop 2.

Haunted Castle: Almost nothing to bump except the boss. Zombies are bugged and don't give extra score. One of the simplest stages. I go here instead of the ocean because it's very easy to come in 1st place and you need that.

Ice corridor: I come here because the boss of deep dungeon is bugged and gives NO extra score, so you can just survival kill him on loop 2.

Graveyard: I come here because you get the biggest bonus from this boss, 50k extra, and it's damn near impossible on loop 2.

Kobold's tower: You absolutely need to come to this stage on loop 1. You can get so much damn score here from bumping rocks, bumping random enemies, bumping the boss, and bumping ALL those ships after the boss. You can almost double your score here. Note the boss only gives 30k extra instead of 70k.

2-1: Same as 1-1 except much trickier.

Velmatic ocean: Not much worth bumping here except those medium sized rust-colored ships and the boss of course. Small green enemies are way too dangerous and don't give much bonus score.

Crossfire: I don't even activate the glitch in this stage. There's nearly nothing to bump into. Instead I activate it when the boss appears, lowering the health of his arms with miyamoto's bomb. You can fly above him then and bump his arms painlessly. Note the boss head is BUGGED and doesn't give extra score.

Deep dungeon: I don't activate the glitch. I save bombs for survival on the boss, because he's hard as hell sometimes and there's not much opportunity to bump stuff here.

Stratosphere: The wide planes are bugged and don't give extra score. All the others seem too dangerous to bump, so I save bombs and activate the glitch at the boss, then weaken and bump the boss.

Yashiki of ninja: I come here because there's tons of opportunities to bump on this stage if you find all the little tricky spots with savestates. Activate the glitch right away and you can bump kill tons of stuff all through the stage, especially big rust colored dragon statue enemies. Also, you can use the rest of your lives and bombs to farm the boss's little ninjas, worth 5k each. If he spawns a lot of them, you can get a huge boost. My crappy savestate here has 1.67m points and my best luck ever ended me up with 1.91m, so at least 230k from the boss alone.

I'm not sure if that's the route the arcade guys used, but it seems good.

[ProjectAKo]

Project A-Ko - 1,491,684 - Miyamoto - 2-5 - shmupmame 4.2
http://www.twitch.tv/project_ako/v/38924132

trash run, but I pulled off enough of the big tricks to beat the old site score

[ProjectAKo]

Small update. My old route actually sucked and was missing over 100k score potential, so I did a large amount of testing with savestates yesterday and today.



And I absolutely now know how to reach the gamest score. That score from a savestate is, amazingly, only 300 points above the gamest score. Now I just have to practice the hell out of my new route, which is dangerous as hell...

If anyone cares, the highest possible scoring route is surely this

Stage 1 (end with 83,600 pts + 10k)

Stage 2 - Air Circus (end with ~255,xxx pts)

Stage 3 - Haunted Castle

Stage 4 - Ice Corridor

Stage 5 - Strato Storm! (Spam all bombs + suicide for more at regenerating enemies. Milk entire stage slowly and LOSE race)

Stage 6 - Kobold Tower (end with around 1,277,xxx)

2-1 - Standard bumping route. WIN race for extra 10k.

2-2 - Full milk, lose race. Speedkill boss with bumping to generate more enemies.

2-3 - Lose race, speedkill boss with bomb.

2-4 - Lose race, slow milk everything, save bombs.

2-5 - Forest of dead: Lose race, fully bump all dangerous eyes for extra 30k.

2-6 - Kingdom Grandprix: Lose race, bump all high value enemies. Speedkill boss with bombs and suicide for more bombs. Try to bump all final zakos.

That's it. I'm sure that's how they did all the scores in Gamest.

[EmperorIng]

I'm truly impressed at your sleuthing out this "hidden" strategy, AKo. Makes me want to fire up mame and bump the shit out of things.

[ProjectAKo]

It's really so damn annoying though. Since the infinibump is a glitch, you lose it if you move in the wrong way and do a twirl animation. That's what sucks about scoring which relies heavily on one super glitch. The game is janky.

Also I guess I will remake this thread soon and actually start updating the scoreboard. Not that anyone ever plays this

[DMC]

ProjectAKo,
Great work! Very impressive score hunting.

So sad though that this scoring mechanism seems to destroy the game. It was already bad that slow-playing the stages increased scoring potential, but this sounds like a definitive game breaker, I'm afraid.

That does not take away anything from you excellent discovery, and if you strive for the world record, I wish you the best of luck! A replay would still be interesting to watch.

[ProjectAKo]

Yeah, I'll make one. But my plans are very dangerous and it will probably take a few months to get a real good run...

[ProjectAKo]

WTF, infinite score bug

In this video, somehow I destroyed bascinet's armor in a certain way which causes him to enter an invalid state so he never times out or does anything else. Since you become invincible at the finish line, you can just tank all of his shots for 10 points each. Sometimes, you can stay in this state forever. http://www.twitch.tv/project_ako/v/41549267

Here I used mame speedup at 1000% for 5 minutes.


Also, I think I've figured out how to do it. It has something to do with confusing his hand animation by moving from the extreme left and right side of the screen very quickly. Then his hands enter an invalid state and his whole pattern just gets stuck forever.

[Plasmo]

WTF, infinite score bug

In this video, somehow I destroyed bascinet's armor in a certain way which causes him to enter an invalid state so he never times out or does anything else. Since you become invincible at the finish line, you can just tank all of his shots for 10 points each. Sometimes, you can stay in this state forever. http://www.twitch.tv/project_ako/v/41549267

Nice find!

Can you still finish the game afterwards or are you stuck there forever? If it's the latter, this bug fortunately is irrelevant under Arcadia rules.

[ProjectAKo]

Yep, you can finish the game. You can even just fly up to bascinet and bump him safely and get full score for doing so, and finally the game will end. But I haven't figured out how to reproduce this at will. It just kinda happens sometimes. If I spent a lot of hours in mame debugger I'm sure I could figure it out, but meh...

[ProjectAKo]

Full video of the bug showing the game ending. Still not sure why his hands get stuck there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xffQRcN18Vg

Since I don't have time to practice this game anymore, that's about it for me.

[CloudyMusic]

Since AKo has said he doesn't have the time anymore and nobody else expressed any interest, I went ahead and made a new thread: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=56902