Olympic games Event #7 - Metrandomizer Any%

[Jiffy]

Metroid Construction Olympic Games: August, Event #7

Hello folks! After last month's successful sixth event, we are again pleased to bring you the details and rules of the seventh scheduled race.
(A reminder that the rules can be found here. If you haven't done so already, the signup form can be found here.)



Race: (NEStroid) Metrandomizer Any%

We will be holding this race on two dates. These dates will be chosen to allow users of different timezones to participate when possible. Both races can be joined given the times are feasible for the runner, but remember that only the best score out of the two will be chosen. The starting times are an approximation. The restream will appear at https://www.twitch.tv/Metconst .

Race 1: Saturday 15th August, 4PM EST

Race 2: Saturday 22nd August, 12PM EST



Times

We will be running the stream from the start of the game, up until the late time. Any streamers beyond this point will have their stream cut off by the restream ending, but they may continue if they wish to do so. (Remember points will be awarded for finishing the race.)

Early Time: 45:00

Late Time: 2:00:00



Preparation, Setting Up and Rules

Sadly, there is no real guide that can be provided for Metrandomizer, neither is there a particularly good video to demonstrate the tricks needed to place well in a race like this. Instead, for practice, you could learn some techniques and get advice provided by Sapphy:

[spoiler=Sapphy's Handy Manual]Physics:

1) In NEStroid, you cannot aim down or midair morph. Keep this in mind.
2) There's a 50% chance[is this really 50%??] each time you jump with Hi-Jump that you will get either a 7.0 block jump, or slightly less so you won't be able to make the ledge. Same with bomb jumping, though this happens with and without Hi-Jump.
3) Your vertical acceleration has to be exactly zero in order to lay a bomb, and this cannot be manipulated. Your best chance is holding shot, then morphing and hoping you get a good pattern (keeping morph held, too).
4) Don't press any horizontal direction if you're trying to do a regular jump boosted by a bomb jump!! It won't work.
5) Jump height with Hi-Jump is ~7.0 blocks, and without is 5.5 blocks.
6) When you morph, you gain about a third of a tile's height. This can be manipulated to jump VERY SLIGHTLY higher.
7) If you unmorph midair and don't press any horizontal direction, you can perform a full jump midair. This is subject to the 50% rule mentioned in line 2.
8) Knockback is brutal in NEStroid and much easier to control if you are to morph right before taking a hit. You can then unmorph and jump midair to get back where you were. It's just a matter of learning knockback patterns and not losing your footing too much.
9) Spinjumping/Screw Attack is only triggered if you are above your initial vertical height. Once you fall below the spot you started spinjumping at, you will return to neutral pose but keep moving. 3 and 4 tile ceilings are especially hard to manage killing enemies with this limitation.
10) Door climbing will not be covered. It will rarely be useful.
11) Morphing has weird subpixels. There are some ledges you can fall off of and not make it into a 1-tile high passage because of bad vertical subpixels. Always be aware of this, especially in Kraid tunnels and Norfair secret passages. The best way to make it into a hole that's 2 blocks above the ground is to hold shot and then morph + hold the direction of the hole. For a hole 1 block above the ground, wait to fall to the ground and lay one bomb, then move to the direction of the hole.
12) Lastly, bombs give you LOTS of I-Frames. This can be easily abused on bosses like Kraid and for general movement. This is a great tool for Kraid especially.


Game mechanics:

1) Each time you enter a room a value from 0-255 is assigned to the missile drop amount. Every time you kill an enemy there is a chance for a missile to drop, but once this value is exceeded no more missiles will drop until you reload the room. If the game rolls a 1, you will only get 1 missile drop no matter how many enemies you kill in that room.
2) Enemy RNG is straight-forward, there is basically a 0 or 1 value assigned to all enemies' RNG upon power-on/reset. They either do movement 1 or movement 2. Example: Sidehoppers might jump high on movement 1, and jump low on movement 2. It's basically another 50% chance.
3) Boss RNG is also straight-forward. Same thing as before, 0 or 1 value assigned. Ridley can shoot his fireballs far or near. Can't manipulate it without a reset. Also if Ridley shoots his fireballs far you can just shoot quickly at him and down him in less than a minute.
4) At any point in time, there are 5 enemy slots that can be filled up. I don't believe there can be more than 5 enemies on screen of the non-respawning variety. Some enemies that are supposed to fill that slot will not spawn if you transition between screens or door transitions. Either way, don't worry about it.
5) There can only be 3 beam shots on screen at a time. If you pick up Long Beam you can miss significantly more shots and spend a much longer time waiting for the shots to disappear so you can shoot more. This is why we don't pick up Long Beam, though feel free to if you don't trust your ability with short beam.
6) Metroid drops give 30 missiles a piece or 60 energy a piece.
7) Beams can be shot faster by holding down shot and performing another button input rapidly. If you don't have missiles you can use shot, but if you do use one of the d-pad buttons. Each time you press another input while shot is held creates another shot on screen.
8) Ice+Wave's damage is 1 and has to be unfrozen after each shot, while Wave's damage is 2 per shot and doesn't have to be unfrozen. If you can get Wave early on and Ice is close to Tourian, skip it and come back. Weigh the pros and cons of this per run.
9) Damage values: Ice+Wave/Ice/Regular shots all deal 1 damage. Wave deals 2 damage. Ice is technically half as effective as regular shots against normal enemies due to dealing 1 damage every other shot. Bombs deal 1 damage but can hit multiple times (can deal up to 4 damage on Kraid per bomb). Missiles deal 4 to bosses, and all enemies (except completely invulnerable ones like brown rippers)die in 1 hit to them. Kraid has 96 hp, Ridley has 140 hp, and MB has 32 hp + 1 shot to break the tank. Only missiles can be used against MB.
10) I'll let MST cover bridge skip.
11) When spawning, your forward-facing pose cannot be hurt by enemies. If you spawn next to a ton of enemies feel free to stand still and not make any inputs until danger is out of the way.
12) Any enemy can crawl into a door (or if it's a refill bug, fly through the door)and deal a lot of damage to you. However, respawn bugs won't respawn immediately if their drop hasn't been collected yet. Abuse it.
13) A+B+Start+Select can be used to restart to the beginning of a zone, on the elevator. All of your items will be saved (but check next line...)but your energy will be reset to 99. All progress is saved too.
14) Some items can be removed accidentally by doing the reset, but this is a thing that we cannot avoid without proceeding through the entire game without resetting/dying a single time. I've only noticed 1-2 missile packs or an e-tank being removed maybe twice in 14 seeds.
15) Damage constants: Most enemies deal the same damage per area except for a couple cases. Brinstar, Kraid, and Ridley are basically all the same. Not sure about Brinstar's rios though.
16) Acid gives you I-Frames and can potentially be abused to take less overall damage from a higher-damage source by passing right through it.
17) Enemies freeze for ten seconds. Especially useful on Rinkas.


Metrando generation/logic:

1) A couple seeds CAN be impossible despite being generated. The program isn't perfect. However on this complexity it's a pretty low chance, honestly.
2) A real Tourian entrance will be about 2-3 screens long and be flat up until the door, and have a Rio along with a Skree (sometimes)there. If the room isn't flat beforehand/it's longer, you have yourself an item room ahead.
3) Morphing Ball's location tends to be in Brinstar, but in some cases Kraid and even rarer, in Norfair. Have not found a single seed with Ridley morph in all 20 of mine. Keep in mind just because I say they're rare doesn't mean they can't happen.
4) Along with Ridley's lack of morph spawn, I notice that I rarely ever find a major item in Ridley. The only one I've ever found was not necessary for progression but I suppose it IS possible. Just incredibly rare.
5) Dead ends are EVERYWHERE. Be ready to turn back at any point. There are no secret passages in Brinstar, but Kraid has some pretty noticeable ones and Norfair has a few sneaky ones. These are much more noticeable if you've played the vanilla game or looked at a collision map of vanilla to see where some tiles are shot blocks and where some aren't. https://nesmaps.com/maps/Metroid/MetroidCompleteMap.html
6) Room generation is entirely per-screen. Just because a room looks empty doesn't mean it will be. This can also create some incredibly stupid passageways through rooms and general frustration.
7) Item generation is also completely random. Any item can be on any pedestal. ALSO there are a LOOOOOT of empty pedestals. No invisible items, but there are item orbs that are clearly noticeable. Also haven't found a single orb without an item in it.
8) Tourian is basically the same, maybe some shorter rooms. No softlocks here YET but they might be possible. Escape could require a mid-air bomb jump depending on the layout and lack of Hi-Jump.
9) There are also a good amount of softlocks present by not having bombs, Hi-Jump, morph, or a combination of the 3. However there are also a lot of situations that look impossible to get out of that might be possible depending on the equipment. Feel free to ask me if you come across any.
10) Kraid and Ridley have a lot of vertical shafts. Kraid has a lot of useless ones at the top. I just like this line :)
11) Generation's not perfect as we know with softlocks/impossible seeds, so there can be some door transitions that stop you from proceeding completely or screens that are impossible to get back up. One screen was replaced completely by an elevator shaft and air tiles so I couldn't get back up and had to reset.
12) If you find Ridley's back door without morph (purple, 10 missile door. Easy to notice)you can actually walk through the door and clip through the pillar blocking the back door, and fall down + be able to fight ridley. Technically with Wave + Long you could do this without this glitch, but just saying. This can be important.
13) You aren't able to tell which elevator is going to be which, Kraid or Norfair. As I currently know there is no way to distinguish other than a 50% guess or going down and back up the elevator. Depending on how you approach the game you might want to go down and take a quick tour of the area to grab some items before heading back. Or, maybe even finish it.
14) You recover 50hp per big drop and 10hp per small drop. All else is unchanged except for Metroids' 60hp drops.


Personal tips:

1) Making a map helped greatly for me. I'd say it's an overall time-gain unless you have a somewhat photographic memory unlike me. Example: https://i.imgur.com/yMGLLmK.png
2) You'll have to decide early on in your practice runs whether you want to check an area upon coming across it (Norfair and Kraid)or skip it and full clear Brinstar or whatever your plan is.
3) Make personal note of equipment you can survive an area with. For example, 2 e-tanks, morph, bombs, and no Varia is a survivable Kraid's lair if played well (NOT Kraid himself, though.)
4) Kraid first or Ridley first? Only one major boss has to be killed, and that's for missiles. Ridley takes longer to get to on average but is WAY easier than Kraid with his easy pattern. I recommend sinking some time into Kraid practice if you go for him first like I usually do.
5) Spinjumping, bombs, screw attack, having a ton of enemies/hp drops on screen, etc. creates extra lag that you might not need. However, this is INCREDIBLY low on the list of priorities. Just something I felt like mentioning.
6) Ice-less Tourian is not survivable. Don't bother. A seed is basically impossible RTA if it's nowhere in said seed (it is technically doable, but requires precision/good dodging and focus, especially in room 1 & 3 + MB room).
7) Metroids can be BRUTAL with their drop RNG (giving missiles). I recommend farming after the second long vertical room, by re-entering the right-facing door and freezing both Metroids + killing them. Enemies will always drop the same pickup if killed on the same frame.


Boss tips:

Kraid
--
DO NOT RUSH THIS FIGHT. SPENDING EXTRA TIME IN THIS FIGHT WILL INCREASE SURVIVABILITY DRASTICALLY.
1) Quick tip to know: Long hops from sidehoppers in Kraid means a short (bad?)toenail pattern ON Kraid.
2) He shoots his spikes in a 3-3-2 pattern. Top to bottom, top to bottom, then top + middle. Bottom one doesn't shoot (so you can morph under if timed well), and you can get a few shots in during the time the middle spike is flying to the wall. Don't get greedy or he might hit you midair if you shoot his spike as it's about to respawn on his body. I'm serious. It does 20 damage without Varia.
3) By abusing the unmorph's vertical height gain you can get more shots on Kraid than you might be able to normally inbetween cycles. The needles aren't blocking your shots if you get that extra unmorph height, so you can hit more shots overall. This is a very difficult strategy but very consistent.
4) Kraid has a long and a short banana/flying toenail pattern.
5) Using the ledge on the right side of the room can help with dodging his 3-3-2 needle barrages, but after the second set of 3 try to fall down and morph on the platform to fall below middle needle.
6) If you stun Kraid's needles by constantly shooting them, the pattern can become slightly different. Instead of going top-to-bottom it can go top-bottom-middle.
Average damage I took during Kraid fights, over 17 different attempts of each type: parentheses is no Varia
Bomb: 160 (320)
Ice: 230 (460)
Wave: 170 (340)
Missile: 90 (180)
Beam-less: 260 (520)

Ridley
--
1) Quick tip to know: Long hops from desgeegas in Ridley means a short (bad)pattern ON Ridley.
2) Covered long pattern already.
3) For short pattern having Ice is a blessing here. You want to freeze all of the fireballs in roughly the same spot and sit in front of them, shooting shots or missiles at Ridley. After your 10-second freeze timer is up, refreeze them or wait for them to respawn to freeze them again. If you don't have Ice, it's a bit frustrating. Good luck.

Mother Brain's room
--
ALSO TAKE THIS SLOW. Having to reset Tourian is the biggest timeloss of the run as you'll probably need to exit and farm a LOT more missiles which can take multiple minutes.
1) Enter this room with >85 missiles, probably above 90 or 95 really. You need 73 to perfectly clear the room, and that doesn't happen often even to the best runners.
2) Zebetites take 8 missiles to kill, and they regenerate fast. However, you can shoot them once to get them down to 7 hp and they won't regenerate back up to 8. Zebetites only regenerate to 7 hp maximum which is great. Abuse this.
3) When Rinkas spawn they will target the center of your hitbox when they first spawned. They move pretty fast but only 3 can exist at a given time. They're easily freezable with Ice Beam but deal 30 a pop without Varia. Be very careful.
4) Speaking of Rinkas, they can spawn in a lot of different places. Always be on the lookout. I can't really cover all of their locations, you'll see with time.
5) Mother Brain's glass deals 20 damage instead of 30 from the Rinkas and as so can be damage boosted off of to take a potential 10 less damage than you would from the Rinka. If you choose to go for this you MUST abuse the ability to jump midair by unmorphing. Otherwise you'll fall in the acid.
6) It's a good idea to manipulate the Rinkas' spawn location by standing further back from the point where you plan to stand, and letting them all come toward that position and freeze 'em. The final zebetite stand right before MB can be used for this as well if you stand on the far right of it and run to the far left of the block after they all spawn and target that location.
7) Turrets only fire diagonally down, and go in rotations of 45 degrees each time. The middle turret above a blue platform only fires when it is looking straight down though.[/spoiler]

The seeds will be chosen in advance, in relation to the early and late times. For practice, Metrandomizer can be found here, and the configuration is as follows:

[spoiler=Configuration]

[/spoiler]

Setting up takes a long time, so we advise you arrive at least 30 minutes early and set up for the race. An account on the SpeedRunsLive IRC server is required in advance before joining the race(s). LiveSplit is advised, but not required. Make sure this is all set up before any race. There will be no exceptions. (A guide on all this can be found here.)

As part of the restreaming process, Twitch is advised as a platform to stream to, however we can do other platforms like YouTube. Only 4 streams can be relayed, so we will be picking 4 racers that set up their streams in reasonable time. (If you turn up 10 minutes before the race is expected to start, setting you up on the restream may take too much time!)

Since this is a randomizer race, racers are not permitted to watch other racers on the restream. (There is no real way to enforce this, bear in mind - this will rely on trust.)

If there are technical problems with your stream, this is on you. The race will not be stopped in order to fix any streams. You will be required to fix your stream as you go. If you have an internet connection prone to problems, you should make this clear before streams are chosen for restreaming.

For those who are being restreamed, we will not continue your streams if you choose to misbehave on your stream, such as fiddling with the layout or displaying rude messages. Any misconduct we deem inappropriate will result in your stream being removed.

For emulators, there are no requirements on specific emulators - as long as your emulator is commonly used and is reasonably accurate, it should be okay. If you wish to query this, MetroidMst and I can tell you, but I will provide the final say. (The best emulator to use for this NES game is FCEUX or NEStopia, but feel free to ask us about any obscure emulators you may wish to use. Bear in mind that Mesen is NOT allowed.)

Save states, fast forwarding, pausing and any emulator functions that cannot be performed on the console are not allowed. This should be commonplace, but it is important to clarify anyway.

If you have not signed up and do not wish to participate in the Olympics fully, you are still free to turn up and play, though your score will not be recorded and you will not be restreamed.



See you there!

[Jiffy]

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this!
Conner has made a mapping tool which might be helpful for Metrando.

https://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,5240.msg67847.html#msg67847