Posted: 10/29/2014 5:30 AM
Post subject: BisHawk N64 desync with certain savestates
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SkyKnight34
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Joined: 10/29/2014
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Location: United States
I'm experimenting with TASing Zelda: Ocarina of Time using BisHawk, and I'm getting a desync problem that I can't seem to figure out. I'm about 17,000 frames into the TAS, and when played from the beginning I get a desync toward the end, directly after a pause. The same happens when I start from a save state about halfway through the movie. However, I don't get the desync if I start playback from either of two save states a bit closer (still not necessarily "close") to the pause. I've used TAStudio to look through the inputs of the two and they seem, as far as I can tell, identical. I thought maybe I'm missing some setting that can help prevent this? I haven't found anything in the BizHawk documentation, but I could easily be missing it or not realize what I'm looking for. I'm pretty much brand new to TASing so my lack of experience here is somewhat of a roadblock. Thanks!
Posted: 10/29/2014 6:08 PM
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TASeditor
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Do not use TAS Studio, it's an unstable beta version until now. Your inputs can be wrong displayed. For now use a text editor to see if your inputs are identical. Insert or remove a line with blank input where your desync happened.
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Posted: 10/29/2014 6:17 PM
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adelikat
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1) If you used an official release of BizHawk you don't even have access to TAStudio. So that's a red flag there, you need to make sure your TASes sync with an official version. 2) If you used TAStudio to edit any inputs in your movie that would explain desync issues unless you are using one of the latest svn builds (still don't use it, it isn't ready!). 3) Make sure your CPU type is Pure Interpreter and NOT dynarec in N64 -> Plugin Settings. Dynarec is more unstable and will be prone to desyncs. 4) It is known that there are stability issues with N64 emulators, and mupen64plus is no exception. It seems to be more stable than mupen, but still there are issues. I studied the savestate code and couldn't find any missing info, but there may be some important info not being saved I haven't discovered. Or it could be the core itself is inherently unstable. From my experience, some games are worse than others. Make lots of backups and replay your movie from power-on regularly. 5) If you movie syncs from power-on, at least your movie is fine, discard any savestates you currently have and make new ones. If you movie needs one of your savestates to sync, it is a desynced movie and you have lost work unfortunately.
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Posted: 10/30/2014 7:29 AM
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SkyKnight34
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Joined: 10/29/2014
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Location: United States
Yeah, after a couple crashes I figured TAStudio was pretty Alpha :p Switched to using a text editor after learning more about .bk2 file format.
Make sure your CPU type is Pure Interpreter and NOT dynarec
Ahh! This is what I was looking for. After making this change I noticed a significant difference in the frequency of desyncs. Thank you!