TAS scoreboard

[Wriggle]

Not sure if this kind of replay is allowed here or should be in HME instead... Anyway, unlike cheaters that try to pass TAS runs as legit, some people actually make good use of these tools by pushing the score beyond human limits and showing the games' true scoring "limit", and most of these runs takes a lot of effort. Some people like me find these runs really cool to watch, some don't, so I'm going to make this list thingy anyway. :V

The tool used is mostly Hourglass, known to be buggy and only work properly under specific conditions, and the savestate feature often causes crash after a few states are loaded. The only other safe way of TASing I know of is using Cheat Engine inside a VM with 3D enabled, so you can savestate safely yet have slowdown feature, but it'd probably take too long between each state load.

Due to limitations in the score counter, pushing the score too far in some games causes minor glitches. Reaching 999,999,990 points in EoSD stops the counter (doesn't happen in Karisa's video thanks to a cheat fix), PCB's spellcard bonus/cherrymax glitches and brings a wrong sprite after 100,000,000 is exceeded, and UFO's score counter "overflows" after 2³¹ (2.147 billion), which can be delayed to 2³² (4.29 billion) with Nereid's fix.

---

Edit by Karisa:
From discussing this with Wriggle, I've concluded it's better to link to Arcorann's TAS wiki page instead of maintaining a list of various notable TASes here. Arcorann's page is both more actively updated, and more thorough.

[I have no name]

Extra: kopiapoa - SanaeB - 8.73 billion - video

You mean 873 million.

There's a survival oriented TAS of PCB ultra out there that sort of speedruns it (lots of shotgunning) without ever dying or bombing, though that definitely doesn't fit in here.

[Wriggle]

You mean 873 million.

Oh right, my bad. :V

[Karisa]

Arcorann has already been keeping track of these, here. No PCB Extra/Phantasm though.

Notable is that kopiapoa has TASed most of the Extras, but SA onward seem to crash at the end in Hourglass (which explains why the videos appear to be a direct recording rather than a replay). At least I've heard reports of them doing that. I've never used Hourglass myself.

I think Ansa121's latest UFO TAS is still slowdown-only like the previous ones; savestates should allow for much higher graze counts (maybe even a 400,000 maxed point item value) judging by the rest of the TAS replays/videos on Arcorann's page.

Regarding the display glitches, PCB's spell bonus glitches at 100,000,000. And to add to that, the cherry (not cherrymax) value also glitches at 1,000,000 (visible in non-TAS records) if the vsync patch is not used. And UFO's score counter overflows at 2³¹ (2.147 billion), but using either the vsync patch or Nereid's fix will delay this overflow until 2³² (4.29 billion).

And EoSD's score actually stops at 999,999,990, not 999,999,999 (yes it's minor but I find it relevant). I don't think this is just a glitch like the others; it seems to be intentional behavior. The later games stop at 9,999,999,990 instead (unconfirmed for StB/DS, confirmed for PCB/IN/PoFV/MoF/SA/UFO/GFW/TD, displayed as 1,410,065,398 in UFO/GFW).

[Wriggle]

Damn, I didn't know about that page. Well, I grabbed some links from there, plus the actual score of SA Extra one. Thanks for the technical stuff, I fixed/included them.

About Kopiapoa's Extra, I'm not sure, but a possible cause for the crash could be him removing the bgm.dat when making the runs (I'm not fully sure if he removes the actual file or just reduces the bgm volume to 0), maybe because that file causes sync stuff or idk, I'm not experienced with Hourglass stuff (not sure if it's also notable that he uses Win XP, and all my bad experiences with Hourglass could be possibly because I used it in Win 7/8 x64). The crash could be fixed by using the OGG vorbis dlls, but there are even more likely to affect the sync, I don't now.

About PCB Extra/Phantasm, I remember someone adding a somewhat old TASed Extra replay to the High Scores page in Touhouwiki, being shortly afterwards reverted back by KyouriAsh, with him stating it was tool-assisted. I never got to watch it, but it might be still in the Edit History thing. But I gotta sleep now, I will look for it later.

[Avakyon]

About PCB Extra/Phantasm, I remember someone adding a somewhat old TASed Extra replay to the High Scores page in Touhouwiki, being shortly afterwards reverted back by KyouriAsh, with him stating it was tool-assisted. I never got to watch it, but it might be still in the Edit History thing. But I gotta sleep now, I will look for it later.

The one I'm sure you mean is the run by mael, but not only is that a run that was trying to be passed as legit on RoyalFlare, it's a lower score than the current legit record by HS.

[Wriggle]

That name kinda rings a bell, so I think you're right, thanks.

[Wriggle]

So today Kopiapoa has uploaded some run on Stage 1 of DDC, but I'm not sure if it's scoring (I don't really know how you're supposed to score in this game) or something else. If MarisaB scoreruns are gonna be like that, looks like she'll have by far the highest scoring potential, but idk what's a good or bad score in this game. Anyone? :V

[Shimatora]

That is most certainly how Marisa B is used for scoring!

[ARF]

So today Kopiapoa has uploaded some run on Stage 1 of DDC, but I'm not sure if it's scoring (I don't really know how you're supposed to score in this game) or something else. If MarisaB scoreruns are gonna be like that, looks like she'll have by far the highest scoring potential, but idk what's a good or bad score in this game. Anyone? :V

I like how he only beat my best "legit" run of the stage by ~2 millions. Probably very suboptimal despite being very cool looking.

[Wriggle]

I copied his circling for the first and third wave of her spellcard. :V

Seems like MarisaB's scoreruns will bring back the TD experience then. :V But at least despite being bombspammy I think the scoreruns will still be more entertaining than TD's given how they don't make the run too skippy, and you can even supergraze shit while the bomb is working for you.

Btw, does Royalflare take long to open up a scoreboard for a new Touhou game after the full version is out? (assuming they won't open it for a demo)

I like how he only beat my best "legit" run of the stage by ~2 millions. Probably very suboptimal despite being very cool looking.

Well, being just stage 1, spellcard captures are worth a lot, and he bombed every single one. I doubt bombing the last spellcard is even useful, it's not any dense. And most of the results of his "cool looking" stuff would be seen in the latter stages. But it's probably very unoptimal indeed.

[Karisa]

I'm wondering if MarisaB's bomb will be modified in the full version, since even with the downside of it not making the player invincible (yes you can die during it, and you can't use another bomb either until the first one ends), right now it's basically worth a free life in the right places (example). Perhaps power items should only appear if not at full power (or limit it to something too small for a bonus, like 15 power items, if you're at full power). That way it could only be used to gain life/bomb parts at the start of the game or after a death, which should prevent it from being broken.

Btw, does Royalflare take long to open up a scoreboard for a new Touhou game after the full version is out? (assuming they won't open it for a demo)

http://score.royalflare.net/th14/

Regarding your question, the oldest TD scores in Royalflare's TD record history were dated 2011-8-18, while the full game was released on 2011-8-13. So that's five days, if the history page started keeping track of scores immediately when the full-version scoreboard was opened.

Edit: Oh, on the topic of kopiapoa's stage 1 runs, I recall finding this. It's a ~2500 graze improvement over stage 1 of Ansa121's 5 billion TAS. I wonder how much of an overall improvement that would translate to, if the rest of the run was unchanged?

[Arcorann]

I don't know the exact number, but I know that stage 4 to 6 have the equivalent of over 20,000 point items (don't remember what stages 2 and 3 have), which means that ~2500 graze equates to over 50 million, possibly 60 million improvement. I've also seen his supergraze on Ichirin which improves twice that much, by the way.

[Wriggle]

More Kopiapoa stuff of DDC:
Part 1: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20993690
Part 2: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20993845

Buuuut I can't check them out right now due to ISP issues. :V

[Arcorann]

If this doesn't convince ZUN to nerf MarisaB's bomb, nothing will. Seriously, he broke the life fragment counter.

[Karisa]

My guess is that DDC still contains TD's gradually-increasing code, but with every requirement changed to 3. I recall encountering that glitch in TD as well. Of course, it was irrelevant there since TD has a hard limit on life parts, not enough to reach the 7th extend, and the glitch only occurs if you cheat to reach the 10th or so (I think, it's been a while since I tried).

By the way, can anyone translate kopiapoa's video description?

[Arcorann]

It's basically referencing a meme in the Japanese TAS community: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E5%A4%9A%E5%88%86%E3%81%93%E3%82%8C%E3%81%8C%E4%B8%80%E7%95%AA%E6%97%A9%E3%81%84%E3%81%A8%E6%80%9D%E3%81%84%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99

Apart from that it's standard stuff (hourglass-r81, 1136 rerecords, improves over the real-time record by 17 extends).

[Wriggle]

Updated DDC, MoF (updated Extra, added Normal and Easy), and several unassisted records.

[Karisa]

The PCB TAS replay link now appears to link to kopiapoa's EoSD Extra replay for some reason. Didn't it link here in the past?

(Also UKT's DDC score is with SakuyaB, not SakuyaA, not that it really matters since it'll probably be improved soon enough)

[Wriggle]

Fixed both, thanks. The first was probably Ctrl+V shenanigans.

[Arcorann]

IN:
*Extra - kopiapoa - 4,349,748,170 - Youmu - 17,115 - http://www1.axfc.net/uploader/so/3028043.dat?key=th08ExTAS (Video)

Last I heard he was estimating 36, then 39. Must have underestimated the clear bonus or something.

Also, Honest Man's Death. Evidently the uber method isn't uber enough.

[Sakurei]

link to the replay gives me 404 not found. am I doing something wrong when I click the link or is it already down, if yes, does anyone who somehow got the replay care to re-upload to mediafire or something?

[Wriggle]

Yeah I noticed it on the twitter right as I woke up, but the link was down already. Could you reupload it Arcorann (or anyone else that managed to download before it was down)?

[fsvgm777]

Luckily, I could download it before the link went down.

Here's the reuploaded replay.

[Wriggle]

Updated, thank you! :3

[Karisa]

There's now a YouTube version of kopiapoa's IN Extra TAS, for anyone who finds it more convenient to watch it there.

[Wriggle]

Thanks for noticing. Added it to main post.

[Karisa]

Lunatic: kopiapoa - MarisaB - 1,616,959,790 - Replay - More focused on getting Extends. Obsoleted by unassisted run.

Are you referring to the way the extend count is obsoleted by an unassisted run, or the score?

If it was the score (as it seems to be), I've recently found out that the extend count has also been obsoleted by an unassisted run. Judging by the extend count memory address (4F586C), it only gains 36 extends, while this replay manages to collect a full 49 extends, on Hard instead of Lunatic.

I think kopiapoa's replay was actually more focused on collecting life parts, not extends. It seems similar, but life parts are converted into bomb parts at full lives.

[Star King]

Heh, the IN Extra TAS gets a bit more graze than the SA Extra TAS. Speaking of which, why didn't he fully graze Koishi's last two nonspells? He hadn't reached the 90k graze cap yet.

[Wriggle]

Are you referring to the way the extend count is obsoleted by an unassisted run, or the score?

If it was the score (as it seems to be), I've recently found out that the extend count has also been obsoleted by an unassisted run. Judging by the extend count memory address (4F586C), it only gains 36 extends, while this replay manages to collect a full 49 extends, on Hard instead of Lunatic.

I think kopiapoa's replay was actually more focused on collecting life parts, not extends. It seems similar, but life parts are converted into bomb parts at full lives.

When the TAS was made it was the highest score out there, so it was obsoleted score-wise.

Heh, the IN Extra TAS gets a bit more graze than the SA Extra TAS. Speaking of which, why didn't he fully graze Koishi's last two nonspells? He hadn't reached the 90k graze cap yet.

Good question. Maybe it wouldn't affect the score that much since it'd only affect 2 row of point items (the last noncard that gave more graze would affect just 1). Still, not a big reason, and I also dunno how graze affects the clear bonus, if it even does. So the question is still open to me.