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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/32722373011773225
I decided to give this another look to test the EXP route. I redid the first part of level 3 and completed up to the end of the stalagtite room.
At this point I am 200 frames ahead, but 600 exp behind. With some more work in optimization maybe I could save another second or so. The problem is that even 300 frames of savings is not worth 600 exp. I wouldn't even have the final attack by the end of the game at that rate. This was my fear from the beginning with dave_dfwm's WIP skipping enemies.
I'm not sure if this approach is salvagable. If I played the rest of the game at least as good as the published run I would end up way behind. If anything I want more exp not less.
Well if anyone has any ideas or if I'm missing something please post, this game is really hard to optimize.
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OmegaFlareX wrote:
In that case, NES and PCE. SMS/GG would be cool too if it's not that much work, but I'm not as much of a fan of that system.
NESHawk's architecture currently has CPU emulation tied in very closely with sound emulation, necessary for recent accuracy improvements . It would be trivial to overclock the whole thing but that would correspondingly speed up sound. I'm not sure I can seperate out the sound without creating spaghetti, so yeah fceux 2.2.3 is probably your best bet for NES.
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Eh? Maybe I don't get the question then. Why is it even a question whether this run can/should obsolete the 2 player one or not? Wouldn't the answer be no it can't? (going by all that stuff you posted)
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My opinion is that number of players should only be concerned with going faster, not be regarded as a seperate category in any other respect, so yes I would say it should obsolete both 1p and 2p.
But I don't know how or if this is formalized anywhere in the rules. I know Battletoads for example maintains seperate 1 and 2 player runs (my opinion there too would be that it shouldn't) but does this always have to be true whenever 2 players is a possibilioty? Maybe some formal guidelines should be added regarding this for consistancy?
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The last run published in 2004 is finally obsoleted now that Combatribes is done, hurray!
Things are going slowly, but now only 15 to go!
I'm not sure what to focus on next, let's see where my next random motivation spike comes from!
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I think the multi-run was the weakest part of the TAS block this time around. The commentary was poorly delivered and it takes a lot of practice and experience to make reading from a script entertaining, which this one wasn't. More then that, the fact that controller input wasn't synced up really took away from the whole point of using the same inputs to play each game. If the contoller lights aren't in sync, it is far from obvious that this is happening. I know with real world hardware this is tricky to do, but I think the point of the run was really lost.
I actually liked memory tour, it was obvious that things were changing when blocks were being hit, it was a cool demonstration.
I thought VVVVVVV was pretty boring. It's obvious that a TAS will complete the game perfectly, so there really just isn't much excitement in watching it happen. I think a lot of the entertainment in GDQ's in general is the human aspect of speed running, which a normal TAS simply can't re-create. I think this is part of what pushes the TAS block towards extreme glitches and hardware antics to begin with, since a normal TAS just doesn't have the life that a human runner can provide to a run.
Of course the 2 second SMB3 run was amazing 8D
I think the hot pocket race was a fun and much needed bit of humor, so that was good.
Overall though the block as a whole was really well organized and executed, even if the content was a bit lacking, your growing experience with these events is really showing Dwango, keep up the great work!
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The characters are not just cosmetically different.
Bullova is the strongest but slowest
Berserker is middle of the road
Blitz is weakest and fastest
These differences are actually pretty important and have to be taken into account throughout the run.
To be honest, I'm not sure if there is a more optimal combination then Bullova and Berserker. Picking the highest damage combination SEEMS right, but it's not proven.
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Bobthefloater wrote:
So you're basically the equivalent of the people watching these runs, telling the organisers (I would say 'us' if I was one of 'them') what you (and viewers as a whole) would find entertaining.
People should consider absolutely every word you have said.
(BTW, searching 'executes arbitrary code' gives no 3D games, i.e. we cannot do an ACE for a 3D game yet; but it would be cool if we could.)
Maybe there is a way to poll the broader GDQ audience and ask what TAS THEY want to see? It might help guide GDQ content, if it's possible to reach enough people to ask.
boct1584 wrote:
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The life bars only show the bottom ~200 health. The players start with closer to 300, so even though all hits do damage as normal, they don't show up on the life bars until they get below that point.
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Cool run. Out of curiousity, how did you make such smooth looking movements? Did you just edit by hand until it looked right, or did you have a script or other tool to help you out?
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Wow N64 is seeing a lot of advancements recently, which is good to see. I'm also surprised how 2 completely different approaches have both been very successful, pretty interesting to watch.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/32365328650776056
Levels 1-4 done.
I pretty happy with the way things are going. It's still mostly just banging enemies heads against the ground, but it's much smoother and faster now. I'm well over 1 minute ahead of the old run.
An important mechanic that Phil and Genisto obviously didn't know about is that once you beat a boss, any remaining enemies on screen instantly drop to 1 hp. This means if you can keep the normal enemies off of you, you can focus all attacks on the boss then finish off any remaining ones with a single attack. This really speeds things up.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/32305894701843977
Somehow I had some motivation to work on this game, so I figured I would at least get level 1 done so I would have a WIP to show.
Currently I am slightly ahead of Dooty's old WIP despite the bsnes core adding about 30 frames to menuing.
For anyone wanting to see the arcade version, sorry but there is just no way I'm going to touch it. I am TASing this purely to obsolete the old run.
It should be noted that 'Super' difficulty is accessed by holding down some buttons on controller 2. This seems to be the hardest difficulty, but if anyone sees any reason why this feature (I guess technically a password) should not be used now is the time to say so.
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I think it's also worth mentioning that not every game uses the DPCM channel, and those that don't also don't need to use the controller read routine that enables this kind of glitch (of course this needs to be investigated in a case by case basis.)
Battletoads for example, another game with a notible game end glitch, does not enable the DPCM channel and only polls the controller once per frame.
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Wow that's impressive, Marathonman must have done an incredible amount of work to get that multi-threading to work out.
Looking at the related cen64 forum thread, it looks like some accuracy was sacrificed though? I'm not sure of the details, still impressive either way.
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Oh I had forgotten about that improvement. I also tried to find some frames but without success. Glad those 2 frames weren't left behind! (and the extra one too.)
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Warp wrote:
So, I ask once again: Who is the target audience of tool-assisted speedruns? How do you define "speedrun"?
In general I don't think there is a target audience, after all we do this as an enjoyable hobby, we aren't selling anything. I don't see the need to use formal business terms or come up with a definition to what we do. Even in the context of GDQ's, it's more important that preparers and presenters are themselves interested and fascinated by what they are doing, more then trying to cater to some 'target audience.' That earnest interest shows through in the presentation.
Samsara wrote:
Trust me, I'd really rather not see a flood of "EVERY GAME IN 00:02" hitting the site and replacing all of the actually fairly unique GEG runs we already have published, and I think the consensus is the same with almost everyone else as well.
I guess I'm in the minority here, but I would definitely be interested in any and all such runs. (But I think the total number would be rather small anyway in this case.)
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Wow 37 second improvement that's great Zakem66!
I've always been curious how much my first TAS could be improved, but did not have the motiviation to take another look at it. I guess the answer is it could be improved quite a bit!
Also yeah I am a guy.
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ody wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
Down to just 2 tests...
The results of your efforts are quite impressive.
Thanks!
So at this point I think the core itself is in pretty good shape. There are still some things I would like to clean up but for now I'll take a break from the code and move on to other forms of testing.
I have taken jlun2's advice and started looking at console verified runs. SMB3 is the most obvious choice for me since it uses the DMC channel and that had a major timing change in my recent improvements. The game end glitch run still syncs as it did on 1.11.6 (you have to remove one frame at the beginning though.) Then I remembered something True had wrote from the warpless run console attempt:
True wrote:
Edit: The run went well. It desynced after 2-1, just as PRG1 did on emulator. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I need SMB3 PRG0 or a donor to continue, but it may verify yet. I'll see what I can do.
Edit 2: I ran PRG0 SMB3 on console. It desycned as PRG1 did on console and emulator. This might (or might not?) be a helpful test in improving emulation.
I tried this on 1.11.6 and realized it desynced in a different spot, in 1-4. This was an excellent test point, so I tried the run on the current version and it instead de-synced after 2-1, just as True describes. This is defintely an improvement, as it behaves just as console does now. I think this is a good sign.
Over the next few days I'll re-test some of the longer runs, but they are already highly likely to sync since they were made on the much less accurate fceux to begin with. I'll also see if I can learn anything from other runs that failed to sync, if they desync in the same manner, this seems like a good path forward.
______________________________
Also, if anyone wants to download and test the current version, I am definitely in need of new test cases. So if you see something not quite right, or a game that doesn't work , I could really use a report about it.
Update on syncs:
SMB 2 warpless syncs. But I encountered an interesting timing issue. I originally deleted a frame at the begining of the movie, since an early vsync allows input a frame earlier. However it turns out that this thorugh the run off all the way at frame 50000. When i didn't remove the frame it synced just fine. This is strange since I would not expect this to be the case in general. It could just be that the run syncs on console through astounding luck. Anyway, that it syncs is good confirmation.
I also tried looking at some failed syncs. Looking at Punch out was first on my list. Adelikat's run syncs all the way through, even though it desyncs on console. I'll try looking into this a bit to see what's going on.
