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So about Time Soldiers...
Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:02 pm
Last edited by Aleste on Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:34 am; edited 1 time in total
Disclaimer: Sorry if there's a thread already. These forums without the option search for "topic titles only" are a nightmare.

So about Time Soldiers. How hard It Is to complete It with the allocated continues given?

The manual states, or rather seem to suggest, that time portals aren't random, but each leads to a precise block. Has anyone tested this?
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Post Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2022 9:11 pm
And another thing: could the fact that this reprogrammed Port by sega didn't see the market in Japan indicate that the port is somewhat unfinished? I mean, the absence of a simple mechanism to strafe or lock shooting direction while holding the Fire button Is suspicious. Not to mention this cart has one of the most atrocious attract mode ever...
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:11 pm
It's very hard. But it's more fair than its unabashedly quarter-sucking unfair coin-op version, IMO. The last time I played the arcade version, it was on free play at a retro gaming convention, and it still felt outrageously unfair.

I don't think the absence of a strafe function indicates that its unfinished, more that it came out in an era before that type of function became more common. Also, I think the majority of the games in the SMS library didn't come out in Japan, due to its unfortunate poor performance in the marketplace there. The attract mode is pretty arcade-accurate, isn't it?

As an aside, this is one of the games that's a lot of fun to play when using the Sports Pad. Since shots can come at you from any angle, it's nice to be able to effectively move in more than just the standard 8 directions.
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:20 pm
I don't think anyone of us gave much of a shit about attract mode accuracy in 1989, but as Centrale said it's not all that different. I'm also not sure how one would implement a strafe mode for a two button game, so no, there's nothing here that implies it was half-finished or whatever was being implied.

It is a hard game. The portals are deterministic, but remember that there are multiple portals in each time zone.

Centrale: you wrote "it's nice to be able to effectively move in more than just the standard 8 directions." <- does Time Soldiers actually support the Sports Pad's more analog granularity?
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Post Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:44 pm
The game honestly needs a double lives hack.

But regardless of having never beaten it, I think that it's an awesome game.
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2022 11:25 am
SavagePencil wrote
I'm also not sure how one would implement a strafe mode for a two button game


By allowing an autofire rate and keep the direction locked until you hold the Fire button?
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2022 11:31 am
SavagePencil wrote
It is a hard game. The portals are deterministic, but remember that there are multiple portals in each time zone.


So if one memorizes each portal It's possible to make the quest somewhat easier by not repeating unnecessary blocks?

Is this a case like the SMS newzealand story that passes for being kinda impossible due to limited lives, and yet It's actually doable by carefully exploiting the correct warp holes (I've done this)?
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2022 12:47 pm
It's a tough game no doubt. But there are some strategies I use to make it manageable:


    Your starting world is random but just keep resetting until you start on World Wars. You should be able to pick up a couple of Speed Up items early on. If you're lucky, when you get to the middle of the town section, an enemy will spawn that drops a Warp item when you shoot him. This appears to be random though, as I haven't found out a way to make him appear every time. The Warp item will take you straight to the first boss.

    Always keep some of your secondary weapon in reserve. As long you have some bar, you will always have your increased speed. If your bar depletes, you lose your speed straight away (not sure that mechanic is intentional). Avoid the P item, as it automatically depletes.

    The reason you want to keep your increased speed is because it's easiest just to run through the level and dodge enemies.

    Against the sub and big bosses, you can move to the top of the screen and projectiles will not hit you. Some of the big bosses can kill you if they make contact whilst you're at the top of screen. To avoid that, you have to be facing up and holding Up so that your walking animation is playing.

Regarding the rolling demo, the reason it doesn't look good is because it's affected by RNG. If you watch it enough times, you will eventually see the indended demo where they reach the boss.
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2022 1:51 pm
SavagePencil wrote
I don't think anyone of us gave much of a shit about attract mode accuracy in 1989, but as Centrale said it's not all that different. I'm also not sure how one would implement a strafe mode for a two button game, so no, there's nothing here that implies it was half-finished or whatever was being implied.


I know at least NES Smash TV used one standard fire button, and the other button autofires in the initial direction as long as it is held down.
I'd imagine the Sega 8-bit ports likely having a similar feature?

Otherwise, I don't know, if it does use two buttons... some kind of awkward control method switching using the Pause button? Though yeah, probably awkward without playing close to the console.
(as I found out the hard way once when playing Contra Hard Corps for the Genesis for the first time with a friend. It supports two firing methods, toggled by a button combination I didn't realize I was pressing.)
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Post Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2022 12:32 pm
Hey thanks Ian! These seem some good protips! I had noticed that the bosses bullets' patters are somehow weaker if you are above them / behind them (on the top of the screen), I will surely have to try the run animation trick. :)

Speaking of tricks, I've been trying the extra continues (up up down down, 2 at game over screen) listed on this site but It doesn't seem to work. ?
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Post Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 10:33 am
That seems to be a fake cheat, so I removed it. We usually have higher standards and test such things...
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Post Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 10:57 pm
SavagePencil wrote
I'm also not sure how one would implement a strafe mode for a two button game, so no, there's nothing here that implies it was half-finished or whatever was being implied.


In Ikari Warriors for the Atari 7800, you just hold down the fire button to strafe.
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Post Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 11:16 pm
Touche. I think that if the game did autofire, I would want a different sound effect for that gunshot. Eesh!
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Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2022 8:31 pm
I've played Time Soldiers a lot when I was a kid, got to the last boss a couple times but it is just too hard. I remember kicking the cart and console and getting a weird screen (maybe a error screen or something).
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Post Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:38 am
I probably also got it from @ian 's site, but there's also a boss skip item on the Rome stages (that looks like a normal speed item for some reason), so if you get a really lucky run you can do world war skip to boss, followed by rome skip to boss.

@PrOfUnD Darkness, you may well have encountered this, it's quite easy to get to using Meka
https://www.smspower.org/forums/2489-TimeSoldiersDebugMode#11990
As far as I'm aware, there's no code to reach it 'properly'.

I wonder if there's a boss skip in every level, effectively giving the game testers a stage select if they knew exactly where to look?
.
EDIT - and I just noticed you actually replied to that debug mode thread! :D, oh well
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2022 1:56 am
Hillbert wrote
I probably also got it from @ian 's site, but there's also a boss skip item on the Rome stages (that looks like a normal speed item for some reason), so if you get a really lucky run you can do world war skip to boss, followed by rome skip to boss.

I haven't come across a warp in the Rome stages. Do you remember whereabouts it appears?
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Post Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2022 5:31 am
There's a screenshot here on the guide that I used (just scroll down to the Warp section)
https://www.smspower.org/seganotebook/timesold/timesold.html

It appears to be a lot less reliable than the World War skip, but I've managed to get it to pop up a couple of times.
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Post Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2022 10:12 pm
Ha, I feel old now.

Hillbert wrote
I probably also got it from @ian 's site, but there's also a boss skip item on the Rome stages (that looks like a normal speed item for some reason), so if you get a really lucky run you can do world war skip to boss, followed by rome skip to boss.

@PrOfUnD Darkness, you may well have encountered this, it's quite easy to get to using Meka
https://www.smspower.org/forums/2489-TimeSoldiersDebugMode#11990
As far as I'm aware, there's no code to reach it 'properly'.

I wonder if there's a boss skip in every level, effectively giving the game testers a stage select if they knew exactly where to look?
.
EDIT - and I just noticed you actually replied to that debug mode thread! :D, oh well
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2022 8:31 am
It seems like we have the makings of a pretty sound strategy for a TAS here, try and manipulate both known skips, get a speed up ASAP then use the secondary weapon exploit to keep it for the whole game and run past all the enemies.

Then the only problem becomes making the bosses as efficient as possible. I guess make sure you have rockets as secondary and try and manipulate them to move down the screen towards you with their random movements.

I think I'll give it a go and see how I get on. It's never going to be TASVideos standard because I've never done one before, but it sounds like a fun think to try with a relatively simple game like this one.
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2022 12:19 pm
I've been playing the start of the first World War level to get a feel for it, and it's possible to get two speed upgrades (which appears to put you at max speed, second bit of C031 set to 3) and two energy cannons (you can get a third level as well which does even more damage) without slowing down and before reaching the boss skip.

There's definitely an element of randomness to it, on some runs some of the enemies that drop items just don't appear.

I have not managed to pull off 2 speed ups, 2 energy cannons and the skip item yet. Hopefully it doesn't only appear if you don't collect anything else or something annoying like that.
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Post Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2022 3:33 pm
SavagePencil wrote
Centrale: you wrote "it's nice to be able to effectively move in more than just the standard 8 directions." <- does Time Soldiers actually support the Sports Pad's more analog granularity?


No, but you can play it using the Digital mode on the Sports Pad. Since the game receives an input from the Sports Pad every frame, you can effectively move at more than just the standard 8 directions because the per-frame input might be something like Left-Left-Left-Up-Left-Left-Left-Up etc. (Technically also possible with a Control Pad, but not really humanly possible.) It also makes it possible to effectively move in arcs and circles and start and stop with pixel accuracy - it's great in Fantasy Zone and Power Strike, for example. The good feeling of control depends on the game not limiting your speed or directions of movement too much - it doesn't feel as good in Rambo where you can't move quickly or turn around.
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2023 9:32 pm
Nice update for this game

https://www.smspower.org/forums/19528-HacksCompetition2023TimeSoldiersProByBcnAb...
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