TASBot steals enemy souls in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Fz-Last, klmz & Pike at AGDQ 2019

The second part of the TASBlock, TASBot takes the energy of his enemies as his own in this "all souls" run of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. VB gives us commentation for this run.
You can find this TAS at: tasvideos.org/3216M.html
Authors: Fz-Last, klmz & Pike
TASBot links:
Discord - Discord.TASBot.net
TASBot home - TASBot.net
Live stream - / dwangoac
GDQ staff and I (dwangoAC) also extended permission to TASVideos.org to post this content on the official channel.
All TASVideos.org content used with permission under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

[@justinokraski3796]

"something weird's going on at that castle down the road" "I'll be back in 20 minutes"

[@EphemeralWMD]

Im gonna take my sword to the ol castle road

[@Istreakilaz]

Mario: "I'm the most popular video game jumper of all time" Sonic: "Wanna see me break the sound barrier AND jump?" Celeste: "Ever saw a demodash?" TAS Soma: "Look Mina. No Sanity! WheeeEEEeEeeEeeeEEeeeeEEE"

[@HuslWusl]

"Dracula has risen." TASbot: **sips coffee with red bull** *furious clicking intensifies*

[@fade2black001]

coffee and redbull? that sound horrible

[@HuslWusl]

@@fade2black001 I never tried it myself and tbh I don't think I ever will try it

[@ActionGamerAaron]

Clicking?

[@arcaniumdragon2444]

Coffee and redbull...... What is this fowl concoction you have created? A poison to kill Dracula? *Or all of humanity?*

[@notyepdranel961]

*Julius Mode TAS wants to know your location*

[@sheenovh1182]

soma are u ok? *screams swinging an oversized sword, steals the souls of whole demonic castle and goes through walls destroying dracula, our reality and the multiverse itself * soma: *click * noice

[@matheusmvirgens]

Pause on 6:55, The Fleaman soul... I don't know if the game recognises the REAL mad hopping that it emulates right now

[@SaviourV]

😆😆😆😆😆

[@fovarberma752]

I came here to post that. Cheer friend.

[@genisay]

I saw that, and thought it was hilarious. It was perfect timing for TAS recently starting to bounce around like a jumping jack on steroids.

[@SaviourV]

@@genisay Brings life to the expression *" hopping mad "* 😆.

[@endermage77]

*Walls are a mere suggestion*

[@thedude5295]

This video makes me sad. With all the time I've spent in my life 100%ing Castlevania games I could have learned a foreign language or something. TASbot gets it done before an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is over.

[@pragmax]

Master Shake: I don't know what your problem is. I can beat that in like... 9 minutes. It's easy for a professional.

[@thedude5295]

That was good. I could actually hear Master Shake saying that while I read it. :)

[@silmarpinheiro3455]

Not at all. They had to 'train' the tasbot so it took a loooot longer than 10 minutes.

[@eatcomics]

Don't feel bad, a bot could learn a foreign language faster too :(

[@Mrcrow300]

@@pragmax Professional? are you sponsored by redbull or something?

[@Kevinsyel]

I always appreciate when DwangoAC talks, often insightful and always easy on the ears

[@Teapose]

8:29 And uh, see you later, Julius... **HNNNN.**

[@osueicj]

that "laugh" at the end got me hahah.

[@daywalker3735]

Lollllllll

[@JosephAlanMeador]

Absolutely fanTAStic run! Thank you dwangoAC. Subbed

[@dilloncasas4052]

3:02 ah you’re finally h- wait where are you going

[@adamneko]

that TAS of Aria of Sorrow was crazy. Thank you for sharing this insanity.

[@AndrevusWhitetail]

Okay, i remember like 4-5 years ago i commented on Kriole's All Souls TAS on how Soma was on like a fucking caffeine rush during the entire run...THIS...THIS IS SOMETHING WAY BEYOND THAT

[@bordyll5512]

Ikr whoever TAS is he is really good at games

[@loganb9697]

@@bordyll5512 this time soma was on an adderall rush

[@robinnohood5557]

6:40 And that's when the wave dashing starts....

[@InktheImpassive]

What bothers me is how it steals souls easily while I'm just grinding the same enemy so many times just to get it's soul

[@InktheImpassive]

@@adolphin9348 kill an enemy and it's soul will be given to you randomly some souls are like 10% chance of getting it like a enemy ability drops three of the souls are used to reach the final area otherwise you get the bad ending so ya better get grinding

[@InktheImpassive]

@@adolphin9348 it is a Tool assisted Speedrun

[@trashboi3428]

@@adolphin9348 The value determining whether or not the soul will drop is re-rolled after certain actions. Using cheat engine or any other extra programs for the TAS allows the TAS programmer to see this value, and by killing the enemy only when the value will allow a soul drop, the soul is essentially guaranteed on every kill. Additionally, the game can be rolled back by several frames with the assist programs, so if you don't get a soul drop you can rewind and try again. The TAS we see is the final product after several thousand retakes encompassing hours or days of work in crafting the run.

[@trashboi3428]

@@adolphin9348 I believe so, yes. Also, to correct my previous comment, I think that most of what a TAS uses is simply provided by the emulator that is used, though there may be a couple other programs involved as well.

[@jruler93]

To be fair, you're not playing through the game a frame at a time with heavy abuse of save states and RNG manipulation to get the best run possible. If you were, that would take much longer to do. I can usually get all souls in about 7-8 hours in-game time, while TASes can take several months to make.

[@Qardo]

Random Human: OH NO! Dracula has risen! TASBot: Hold my beer -10 minutes later- Random Human: D-d-d-Dracula has been slain?? TasBot: You are welcome human.

[@The24thWight]

I bet tasbot is irritated that your human hand warmed it's beer.

[@danthedan415]

Isnt this the one where the mc is the reincarnation of drac?

[@justas423]

Aria of sorrow takes place in the future so yes Soma could be a robot.

[@AlmightStick]

Yes this is the one where Soma is technically Drac

[@VirtualVernon]

That wasn't funny

[@craigschaffert]

This video was my first exposure to this game at all. Gotta say I feel like I missed out. It actually looks like a blast to play vanilla. Awesome TAS.

[@andotus7637]

Prevent cancer foundation: pfft, how can you raise money from people watching a robot? TASbot: excuse me what did you just say

[@magus13131]

I expect to see Miriam jumping around like this in speed runs of Bloodstained soon :P

[@genisay]

This is both awesome, and hilarious to watch. So MUCH hopping and clipping. XD

[@ultrixsoma2736]

Man, TASbot is such a good speedrunner.

[@xPandamon]

My favourite Castlevania, run by TASBot? Yes PLEASE! Such a good game.. Got all souls as a kid, aswell as all equipment. Getting the Chaos Ring felt so good back then. And yes Red Minotaur is super good, combined it with Headhunter and I think Alura Une for damage and sustain.

[@Istreakilaz]

killer clown card.....oh wait. that was the sequel. Say what you want, Black Panther and Persephone will always be my favourites, aesthetically AND damage dealing. And they Really buffed Alura Une in DoS. awesome! Aria of Sorrow was also my second and favourite castlevania as well. It's a bit on the easier side, but seriously, the game world is so beautifully crafted and balanced.... except for the items / souls. the unbalance made all the more memorable!

[@giin97]

Simply marvelous.

[@goldenalpaca3881]

VB: "SPOILERS" *Yoko gets stabbed* VB : "The rest of this run is done with 1 HP" yeah he ain't the only one

[@corvax8644]

movement-based tases are actually the best type of gameplay to watch

[@curtisbrown547]

yeah the commentary is seriously lacking... "so uhm... basically tas is doing stuff we don't understand... and now it's over! fascinating!"

[@natedor7739]

well, I mean, soma's only in a room for less than 10 seconds, and for those ten seconds, it's basically "backdash, attack, bat zip, crouch, get a soul, next room"

[@curtisbrown547]

@@natedor7739 still could've been a bit more in depth

[@Mike.d.p.]

the speech impediment was fascinating to listen at tho

[@MattZelda]

@@curtisbrown547 No it really couldn't have. There's not much to explain.

[@curtisbrown547]

@@MattZelda then perhaps if you truly believe that all that they are able to come up with is this vapid uninteresting commentary then this speedrun shouldn't have been commentated on as all the commentators did was provide what is essentially unnecessary background noise.

[@madalinpaull]

crazy run... also super amazing!

[@SproingBoing]

Those souls fuel the TASbot. It's why he always votes to save the frames at the end of every GDQ event :^)

[@DemonVido]

kinda sounds like the plot of a toby fox game lol

[@j_0anna]

@@DemonVido don't give him any ideas

[@sirdouglashowel5thseat776]

super humble commentator. good bro

[@SchmavidSchmobb]

“Thank you so much for having me, this was great” Hope he enjoyed it because it’s never going to happen again

[@MarxSoul2001]

I don't know anything about Castlevania or speedruns and I have no idea what just happened, but I liked it.

[@Edzward]

Very interesting how something that I can barely see be so entertaining

[@minchiedelacruz3442]

I've played this game when I was a kid and the game still doesn't stop to amaze me with its secrets. this is the reason classic console games are the best

[@bunch0nerdsgamingnmore221]

This was incredible... As a small-time speedrunner myself, its insane to think how your records could be destroyed by a computer wizard.

[@satibel]

it's mostly a routing wizard, you can tas if you want and know the glitches, do your run normally, record it, and shave off where you made mistakes. if there's no tas record you can easily have it. rng manipulation is basically just trying on every frame til you get the right outcome.

[@syrelian]

@@satibel Thats pretty much not at all how TASes are made, for a multitude of reasons, a route may be derived that way, but in a case like this, the route uses so much inhuman movement that it had to be planned in the space of TAS Time, frame by frame inputs and retries, RNG Manip isn't "Trying on every frame", its doing things like slightly changing movements earlier to generate dust that moves the RNG forward so that its in place later

[@airkami]

It is 4:20 AM. I know I need to go to bed, but there's always time for TASBot

[@keiko3520]

4:06AM to me

[@Qorelin]

Wtf I read this comment and looked at my clock and it was exactly 4:20 AM.

[@fartdog12345]

2:57am

[@Sonicgott]

Pure insanity.

[@VileLasagna]

This is an amazing run to watch but I feel that commentary was a bit lacking. Given how crazy fast the run goes, it felt like it was very easy for people not very familiar with AoS to have any understanding of what was going on and what were the main things happening. Things like commentary forgets to mention the Claimh Solais for a while and no prior mention of the Chaos Ring... felt like there was a bit of underpreparing for this one specifically, though I will say that given how crazy and fast TAS runs are, they're probably some of the hardest to prepare for if you do happen to commentate one. All in all though, TAS block remains one of the things I greatly look forward to in every GDQ and you guys are doing amazing. Tux hoodie for TASBot next event? =P

[@dwangoAC]

I will absolutely own that commentary was not what it should have been.A lack of rehearsal and late work on visualization contributed. Part of this is that VB didn't seem to be interested in doing a rehearsal round and that ultimately hurt us in the long run but there were a lot of other factors as well. This is something we'll be doing differently going forward.

[@VileLasagna]

@@dwangoAC TASBlock remains one of the highlights of GDQs and you guys keep doing amazing stuff. There's always a couple stumbles for anyone doing anything. It's a bit frustrating to look back to when we slip but don't let that distract from all the good stuff, cause there was a ton of it. You keep being awesome and rest in the certainty that you have indeed been so this far =P

[@nodrama490]

Vile Lasagna 💯💯👍agreed

[@zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba0]

@@dwangoAC You say rehearsal. We say you obviously didn't know shit about the game you were presenting. Also that whole answer sounds wonderfully corporate lol.

[@NightOmegaX]

@@zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba0 well A.) You're an ass and B.) The commentary was WAY too far on the side of understanding the game. The things that are exciting to the audience aren't brought up, and the commentary about really specific game stuff is way overdone.

[@NTBXP1]

The way the Soma moves... He is indeed a perv!

[@mazuiface]

"maramoosa"

[@AcidRainComics]

Radical.

[@dongeraci8599]

...moments later, Skynet became self aware.

[@awesomewo5381]

when he got the claim, I knew its over

[@firstnamelastnamethirdname]

A think Soma just inflicted fear into everything he hopped and skipped on.

[@goleo353]

MORE CHAOS THAN THE CASTLE ITSELF

[@justas423]

*Julius to Soma* Minions? You steal enemies souls and make them your slaves.

[@ThanatosZero]

Perhaps this could be said about all religions.

[@kuasocto3528]

Your words are as empty as your soul!

[@lamppostfog]

Crazy tas but needs clearer or more expansive commentary i wanna know what is going on

[@ShneekeyTheLost]

Something like 60-120 inputs per second to do stuff that mere mortals could not hope to accomplish, including manipulating the RNG with specific inputs to ensure they get get a monster's soul on the first encounter, for the most part. He starts off using jump dash canceling, basically jumping at the end of a dash to cancel the frames at the end of the dash where you lose your momentum, and swinging the short blade cancels the jump shorter than it normally would. I think there's only one speedrunner who actually can pull that tactic off, but many of them use the jump dash cancel in the early part of the game. Then once it gets Bat Soul, it proceeds to the breaking of 'zipping' which is a known glitch tactic used in glitched speedruns wherein if you warp into a wall as a bat, it moves you up/down and if you are human it moves you left/right . The TAS uses far more of the zipping tactic, because it's a very precise set of inputs that almost has to be frame perfect (most speedrunners who use them use pause-buffering strats) which it can trivially accomplish. The problem is that it is going so fast that it is impossible to keep up with the various things the TAS Bot is doing because by the time you get done explaining one thing, it's already done five other things that also need to be explained. Try looking up a Glitched Speedrun of this game which might provide better commentary on the various tactics speedrunners use . Once you're familiar with them, then you can start to pick up what the TAS Bot is doing, just in fast-forward.

[@stealthstar4]

He didn't even know what was going on. If you gonna do TAS, please explain the shit.

[@chieltjez]

Commentary was crap. Almost like he did not know what was happening at all

[@BurningWaterpark]

Just learn how to speedrun castlevania and boom you know what's going on

[@familystites4445]

You're in luck, dwango uploaded a newer version of this tas with some more detailed commentary

[@Alomoes]

This really reminds me of when mercenary Tao throws the pillar and rides it. He jumps, jumps again, generating extra height that shouldn't exist, and then converting the potential energy it into speed.

[@denisd654]

"Machines will take the world"

[@sleepdeep305]

Aria of sorrow Language of the mad Aria of sorrow!

[@Istreakilaz]

Sees the Whole TAS Run "SOMA, ARE YOU OKAY? CAN YOU BREATHE?"

[@solidus3168]

You can tell the programmers expected the heir of the Dark Lord to play fair.

[@XperimentorEES]

14:47 "That's not, humanly viable at all" I've a sneaking suspicion most of this run isn't XD

[@dinotheruler1690]

4:18 We will be doing a ton of damage Balore: Well it still feels like nothing to me lol.

[@psovegeta]

How fast is TASbot pressing these buttons?!?!? Data from Startrek be damned.

[@goergessunkist1229]

TASTLEVANIA

[@blueresonant5788]

Describe yourself with one of the soul descriptions.

[@SniperJoeLieutenant]

Flesh Golem - Demon Stomach "Enjoys eating the oddest things."

[@ar9907]

Cagnazzo- Punches enemies

[@bortzanator3018]

missed opportunity to introduce the game as "TASlevania"

[@TourFaint]

Man, i remember the casters being experiencing at running the game being tas'ed , and now it just seems like they have no idea and never explain anything. Quality going down drastically it seems.

[@LouSipher]

"What happened there?" "Uhhh, I don't know."

[@jcg7719]

"Some of this souls sound like they have very useful effects" well, no shit.

[@ayandragon2727]

J CG He said useless.

[@DarkNugget]

This guy seems especially unprepared! And it is difficult to understand what he is saying some of the time :/ its a shame as he is very clearly passionate about the game.

[@ninjaguyYT]

"did he just go through that door?" (Ignores question) "I TASk you to make a pun in return for this donation" (Nothing)

[@gildrop]

"Tsupher tsupher broken"

[@chudbabies]

these are always so painful...

[@ericesn]

Props to the commentator. I like the details and without you this run would have not been as interesting.

[@Littlefighter1911]

It's funny how this OOB is essentially the same as in Bloodstained.

[@snack4458]

Now its a room full of people watching a computer play a game.

[@RagingPink]

So, is it me or did this guy have no actual info on what was happening? "Was that a door?" 'Yep' "How?" 'So now we...'

[@Disatiere]

I guess you didnt pay attention to the plenty of other stuff he talked about

[@ae4164]

"Hey, Jim, who should we have do running commentary while we show the crowd this emulator?" "Hmmm... How about the kid who barely laid eyes on it before and has a speech impediment?" "Good thinking!"

[@jruler93]

To be fair, bat clips and wall zips are commonplace in AoS speedruns, the TAS just makes better use of them than a human could in real time (which is really the entire point of a TAS in the first place). You can use a precise combination of back dashing and transforming into a bat to clip into just about any wall in the game (I'm not sure how it works exactly). When you're inside a wall, it pushes you up in your human form, and it pushes you backwards in your bat form. If you go offscreen in a place that the game didn't intend for you to go through, it'll either crash, or put you in a wall in another room, depending on where you were and where you went.

[@ricwilliam9839]

UNLESS THE VIEWERS FINISHED THE GAME ONCE OR TWICE, OR AT LEAST KNOW C:SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT, THEY WILL HARDLY HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IS HAPPENING

[@ricwilliam9839]

I finished the game about 3x, but I still get a hard time following what just happened, lol

[@petera4149]

6:54 I feel like his question was answered by the fleaman soul a second before

[@midnightbassist]

you actually playing Castlevania not Michael Jackson Moonwalker

[@hcnuup]

I watched this video and didn't understand what was happening. I figured I'd try this game out for myself and played through it in one sitting. Did the chaos realm quest too. After finishing I watched this again, and somehow this makes even less sense.

[@dwangoAC]

That sounds about right... I'd like to apologize for the lack of informative commentary, we didn't get an opportunity to practice and it showed. I mean, even with perfect commentary I'm still not convinced this would make sense, but every bit helps :)

[@Eddiegames9]

You know, honest question; why do they kill Graham? Can they not clip into the Black Panther room? Or is there some other reason?

[@Walican132]

How does the rng manipulation even work? I’d have been curious to hear that.

[@AxltheTemplar]

I am Dracula, this is my castle and if I say fuck doors, I mean fuck doors, and walls. You know what? no, no physics.

[@seanpeacock4290]

even at 50% speed I can't keep up with the button presses.

[@SetoShadowVT]

O.o Me: The fuck? Perfect Cell: WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?

[@AnarchyintheNYC]

are inputs 100% pre programmed or is it reacting to audio cues or something as well?

[@kipstz8104]

they’re all pre programmed. you’ll notice in some other tas runs the tas will be de-synced with the game and they have to start the whole thing over again to make sure it’s in the proper place.

[@kenpanderz672]

6:41 when a Fox main plays Aria of Sorrow.

[@trashycannoey]

this is fake intellectually whoosh

[@kenpanderz672]

its a joke i read the title

[@graingert]

Unrehearsed commentary :(

[@dwangoAC]

Agreed. I'm not proud of this. I'm proud of the Final Fantasy commentary, but not this one. This one was bad.

[@spark9189]

melee in a nutshell

Guys imagine TASbot controlling our governments. world peace in 10 mins, world wide max wealth in an hour

[@asherdevin]

You still need a human to tell tasbot what to do though, and the world doesn't have exploits, resets, memory viewer, or a slow down time button. Ok, maybe it has exploits. But the rest of it I haven't seen in the world.

[@theochasid8996]

He completely broke the game xd

[@jimlevinthal3880]

it didnt realise this was similar to symphony of the night...just gameboy version

[@maxwellmegagamer8535]

17:14 there is actually a bad ending if you die where soma turns into dracula

[@thewatcherinthecloud]

16 minutes? I'm barely even at Chapel in 16 minutes!

[@KlausKlauskinski]

VB rules!

[@lorxsan4982]

He used za warudo

[@itachixmaster]

wonder how many times need to reload till the souls drop, some can take forever xD

[@zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba0]

I think for this one altogether its somewhere around +300K save states loaded in the creation of this TAS?

[@callmeshaggy5166]

How utterly ironic that a go-fast gameplay done by a robot is preceded by an unskippable 30-second ad. I know it's not your fault

[@yukimiasma9590]

Who would win? A horde of immortal, almost unkillable being that is beyong human comprehension Or One break dancing robot

[@WeskerXM96E1]

Used to be worth a good bit of money this game, I actually have the game box with manual etc but no cartridge, I was wondering what to do with these game boxes that I have as I must have 20, just box and manuals no game. If you wonder what happened to the carts well a good decade ago I pawned them and I didn't get them back in time and I try not to think about it but some people got some brilliant games and I still have a lot of boxes I don't really know what to do with them. If I don't sell them then I may try and get the carts back.

[@justinhackstadt6677]

This isn't the TASBot doing this. It is a player who played through the game for a run, with a TAS, recorded and programmed it into the TASBot, and then the TASBot simply duplicates the exact same moves for the next run. It is like a robot tracing a famous painter's artwork. Lol

[@dwangoAC]

So this particular run is definitely an exception, usually there's more "value add" and things like physical visualization devices. We always credit the original author(s) and in some cases we're lucky enough to have them on stage. It's a bit different than just tracing. Think of it as showing the original work in a new light.

[@animagi6844]

nintendo has been pimping out R.O.B. AI watch out AVGN

[@basicallyeveryone]

Are they applauding the Bot or the programmer?

[@JohnDoe-jm6oj]

I missed one aspect of this. How are the souls popping up almost every kill? They're much more random in the game.. Like, you have a much lower chance of getting a soul from a monster. Been times where I had to kill the same monster over and over again in attempts to get their soul. Did they change it so every kill drops a soul for this run?

[@randomnamelawls]

To put it simply, the creator of the TAS can manipulate randomness to ensure ideal results. A TAS is a frame-by-frame playthrough of the game, so if the person recording it ever gets a result that they don't want, they can rewind and try again endlessly until they get whatever they want. Here, the TASers probably also had to kill things over and over again until the soul dropped, just like everyone else. You just don't see the failed attempts (and all the button mashing to try and "rig" the randomness), because the point of the video is to have a flawless playthrough.

[@smikeee]

0:52

[@DanteFromDMC]

The way he says "Muramasa" bothers me for some reason "Muramayssa"

[@nickblank5712]

ok, now 11:38

[@lneri7152]

tasbot is cute

[@jackimus8987]

Not enough ULE / 10

[@user-mr9cx4ng8s]

But how normally u kill iron golem?

[@Der_Arathok]

Whoever made the music for TAS-BOT needs to lay off the speed xD

[@ReverendSyn]

Well, there's one glitch. It keeps dashing backwards instead of just running normally.

[@vegeta30000]

thats not a glitch dumdum

[@user-rg4wl4ex3h]

@@vegeta30000 That's a joke, vegetable man.