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eternaljwh wrote:
Does the RNG run during dialogue?
Yes. By skipping the dialogue, the luck will change. Therefore, I couldn't have done exactly what I did afterward. A copy/paste of later input would likely fail.
... Of course, I could also point out that I should have got a Warted/Feather Body before fighting the yetis (poor planning). And the fact the RNG has only 256 states when entering a new place, which I can eventually match up given how much time would be saved.
Hmm... I'll just see if I can't keep going. Talking about it can help push me to do things.
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I just wanted to hear even one person say what's on their mind, and I got just that. Thanks.
I could bring up a point about subtitles that don't exactly relate or inform the viewer, but those can be ignored. If used properly, they can be considered to enhance what is there.
Turning a "why is he doing that" into "Holy crud that IS close" is definitely one good point for subtitles.
I wonder if I should test out subtitles in my Dungeon Magic run... No, not an entirely new submission for zero-frame improvement! That would be silly.
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Whoops, uploaded the wrong file! I renamed it incorrectly, it's not even mine!This is where I stopped.
I try to notice when things aren't getting done, and well... Things aren't getting done. This is where I stopped, currently dealing with luck manipulation. As I already listed up there in the previous post, it's around 3 seconds faster.
I'm considering submitting what I do have -- the complete bird run -- with a change in what I do while the final boss slowly disintegrates. Mostly standing there in non-TASlike form isn't the most entertaining thing I could do, so of course I feel I should change that.
... Though, when I think back on the fact I failed to skip a dialogue...
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Of course! Fibbonaci Sequence! Or a binary representation of pi! Or... Perhaps I should use a balanced ternary representation of the Golden Ratio. A digit that represents -1 for left, 0 for don't move, and +1 for right. Hmm, how about e? Dang, I don't have enough frames for all these irrational numbers... I'll keep some of these sequences in mind when I'm stuck for ideas again.
Dromiceius wrote:
Fantastic. The last boss seems to have more than 255 HP, but reading enemy HP as words (with the same offset as the coordinates) doesn't fix him. Weird.
Memory address 04C3 is the player's VENOM stat. It follows that 04C0, 04C1, and 04C2 are enemies' VENOM stat. It's useless, since I don't use the VEN spell at all. Besides, they regenerate too quick for mere poison to kill, which is stuck at a max of 20 damage every so often.
In any case, I have to first chip down the POW-SH of enemies, at addresses 04DC, 04DD, and 04DE, before I get at their HP using the LIGHTNING spell. Additionally, once Abadon's HP hits a certain mark, he instantly regenerates to 255 health and stays there, waiting for the ULTIMATE POTION to mangle him. It's at that point where the potion has an effect of winning the game.
Other than the odd glitch for not properly detecting when things should be on screen (Finding the appropriate addresses for "do I exist" is going to take a bit of effort), the script seems to be working great!
I do have one question... How big of an effect did my subtitles have for judging the run? If I were to submit without any subtitles, I feel it would be viewed in a different light, based off the comments here. Regardless, I did make a significant time improvement, and if it is entertaining enough without subtitle aid, then there should be no question.
I don't mean to start up a whole new debate about whether subtitles (something that isn't really part of the game itself) should allow an otherwise mediocre-in-entertainment run to be published, but it is a question that has bugged me. I have no complaints about this run being published, I just want to hear opinions.
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Dromiceius wrote:
If someone has coordinates for the three enemies, we can slap HP overlays on their sprites. That's always nifty.
I don't have the addresses for position relative to the screen, but I did find some for absolute positions of characters and screen:
!0094 Screen X (2-byte)
!0096 Screen Y (2-byte)
04AF . 04B3 Player X (first is low byte, second is high byte)
04B7 . 04BB Player Y
Again, the three addresses prior to each of the player's are the enemies'.
These numbers seem to act a little odd in the CAVE, but nothing is wrong here. The game "invisibly" resets the position of the player while switching modes from horizontal scrolling to vertical and back again, so nothing should break. Except the bridge I walk over.
As for the wobbling... I was lacking in the idea department. Any ideas on what to do when you only have one axis of free movement and uninteresting music in the background? I did it more or less as "proof" that this is indeed a TAS, as if it's needed in the first place. No normal player can maintain wobbling at that speed all that well, can they? Again, lacking in ideas...
Besides, I had to make the final boss wobble, too! Who else can say that they succeeded in making an enemy wobble?
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I should reply in my own submission at least once...
Hey, thanks for creating an encode, nineko! I'll also throw in a thanks for the Dungeon Magic one, too, since I haven't thanked you for that yet.
Derakon wrote:
I think one of the big problems with this run is that Paul's health and current mana are only visible when the game is paused. This makes it much harder to track how close he comes to death, which is a big part of the TAS, judging by how much of the subtitles are dedicated to it. I'm thinking a Lua script that keeps those values onscreen all the time (which would also be helpful for tracking regeneration) would be helpful entertainment-wise.
Perhaps I should request such a Lua script.
Addresses for the stats are as follows, reading off my Memory Watch:
Health: 04BF (0 to 255)
Venom: 04C3 (0 to 20)
FIR-SH: 04DB (0 to 255)
POW-SH: 04DF (0 to 255)
Enemies take up the three addresses prior to the listed player's addresses. For clarity, the health of enemies may take up addresses 04BC, 04BD, and 04BE. Reason for choosing to list POW-SH, since that's the shield I target with my only attack spell.
Food: 0053 (0 to 255)
Water: 0054 (0 to 255)
Mana: !004B (2-byte)
Max mana: !004D (2-byte)
Main timer: 005A (counts from 59 down to 0. Other timers advance at 0)
Speed timer: 04E7 (for both FLEET FOOT and IRON BOOTS)
Weight timer: 04EB (FEATHERLITE and IRON BOOTS)
Fly timer: 06CB
Game time: !004F (2-byte; In seconds, from game start)
However, I'm fine with one that just displays health and mana. If I'm making a big deal about it, the viewers should see them. But in case you can find room to show the other stats, go all out, I say!
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I seem to have encountered a problem involving subtitles. Namely, subtitles from an earlier movie are not getting properly cleared when playing a new movie. The only workaround I've noticed is to completely close down FCEUX then run it again from scratch.
This problem became quite pronounced when subtitling my Magician movie. Often, I want to run the game while fixing up subtitles in WordPad to see how it would look. The changes didn't show correctly until after I restart FCEUX.
For whatever reason, I have two versions of my Magician movie, where the only difference is the subtitles. I ran the old version first, with its first message at frame 550. Then I played the submitted version where it doesn't have the same messages. The same message from the old movie showed up while playing the new movie, at the same frame. I think that shouldn't happen, since there isn't a subtitle at frame 550 in the new movie. Closing FCEUX, re-opening it, then playing the new movie first thing does not have this oddity.
Now, I make a test movie, test1. I put down a few subtitles, at frames 50, 150, 250, and 350. Restart FCEUX, then play it. They show properly. I edit the movie file, then play it again without restart. The edits: Messages are inserted at frames 10, 100, and 400, and the message at 250 is removed. I do not see the added messages at 10 or 400, but 100 shows fine. I still see the message at 250, despite the fact I removed it from the fc2 file.
At this point, it's simply a matter of convenience -- The workaround is to close the FCEUX emulation completely then start it up again. All problems involving subtitles go away when I do this. Then again, it appears to be a bug, and should be brought to your attention.
As for why I didn't bring this up earlier, like around the time I submitted my Magician run, when I ran into the problem... That would be a mistake on my part. Laziness, perhaps?
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You know, when I started watching this, it all seemed relatively normal, but then, suddenly and without warning, you saved the game. Repeatedly. Now, I know that there are parts of the game where one needs to save once in case they lose, but for this run, you needed to save many, many times just to begin. This proves just how difficult it is to do this run!
However confusing the run actually is, you did something. I can tell, because there's this dramatic music playing, so you've got to be doing something good in a heroic manner!
Now, few runs can truly say they altered the story itself, but this has been one of the most dramatic alterations of the story that one can get. Let the viewer fill in the blanks in this glitched out run, and we've got an awesome new story that would never have otherwise been told.
Seeing as I watched the run on YouTube and noticed how crazy the run is, I thought I should share my thoughts. I'm not sure how well my humor will translate to someone not native to the language I use, but I felt like writing this out while watching this TAS.
By the way, this may only be a formality at this point, but I say "yes".
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Don't forget that I want to record over individual buttons as opposed to between players and their 8-button chunks. I may want to control what I do with up or down without needing to remember what I did with left or right. Sometimes I come up with an optimal firing pattern, and want to later record over it without needing to keep track of when to shoot so I can dance without worry.
Nice to see you've been wanting to add multi-track recording for some time now. A lot of good progress has been made so far, and I await with anticipation of what's to come. Compliments are always nice to hear, right?
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One possible problem that comes up and screams in our face: What about loading savestates out of order?
Suppose I save on state 1 and begin, did stuff, saved to state 9 then reloaded 1. Now I find that the new stuff I did on reload wasn't all that great and continued on my merry way through 9. But wait! I found a neat technique that could really come in handy for 1! I jump back to 1. What's the state of the input after 1? What about when I re-load 9, what's the input look like prior to and after that load?
Okay, continuing on from 9 (my master plan at 1 failed), I split of on two different paths, saved on 2 and 3. They have equal time thus far, but their states are wildly different. I do stuff on 2, decide I don't like what 2 is doing so far, and switch over to 3. Should the input after 3 carry over from 2, even though the two could very well fail to relate? How would one go about saving multiple paths without any unexpected interfered input between them?
If this is going to be an option built-in to FCEUX, this idea looks like it would fit in well with the read-only switch, making it three-state instead of binary. Maybe four states if you want to pack in a "no movie" state.
- In one case, you have read+write (which feels like write-only, since only your input is used after the loadstate)
- In the second, you have read-only (input file only)
- And the third option, possibly this XOR idea of mine, if we can work out the kinks (which takes both your input and the file's input at once. XOR the two).
Just throwing out problems and ideas. Just my further thoughts on this, in case they have any importance.
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I think I'll just stick my current lua code here. Seems like a good a spot as any.
EDIT:(2) Displays status of all players when you select all players
EDIT:(3) Less processor intensive when rewinding while unpaused. Also more robust.
EDIT:(4) Added frame insertion/deletion, minimal comments. I now remember I added a pair of poorly implemented movie.rerecordcounting functions...
EDIT:(5) Fixed display when inserting frames. Fixed implementation of freezing the record count when rewinding. Then cleaned up a bunch of code and added more thorough comments.
EDIT:(6)Old, Multitrack.lua | New, Multitrack2.lua
Removed the code stuff and such in this post and now point to the latest, cutting edge script instead. Please use Multitrack2.lua, however. They should be packaged with FCEUX anyway, but just in case...
------
Old post. Just pretend this is the only thing written for some of the posts that follows:
------
Basically, I want to record one player without interfering with what I recorded with the other player. Scratch that -- I want to record one button without interfering with the other 15 buttons.
If this feature is already available on FCEUX, I clearly haven't explored it enough to find out, so I ask someone to point me to it. If not, then I ask whether it's likely possible to make a Lua script that can do this now.
I'm thinking that the input of frames after a savestate should be saved, and that attempting to make input will XOR with the saved input for that frame. Wouldn't have to worry about which player is getting recorded at the time, since an XOR with zeroes doesn't change the value.
Thing is, my two-player Salamander run should go a bit more smoothly when I don't have to rely on using a text editor and running the movie with each edit to see what happens. With fairly free movement, individual buttons on a player are often used separately, especially when I want to dance around. Not sure if this will make me get right back into it, but I think it will be one push that helps.
The TASEdit feature looks promising, but it's currently incomplete, and isn't suited for my needs now. I can wait, but I'm asking for a possible solution now.
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Mostly the same run, with input required to show the whole ending and added subtitles.
So, uh... Thought I'd play around with subtitles and see how it looks. Seems I talked less about the run and more about other things, but I do have some stuff related to the run itself. Thought I should ask about it before I submit. I've decided not to run the game once more for any%.
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I think it went faster this time. Still using the good ending route, by the way.
A few notes:
I save twice in this run. The only reason for these saves is so the item selection is on the POUCH OF COINS, saving a few frames from actually scrolling all the way to the needed item. My first save is not in a place of common sense.
There are several points where I intentionally delay in order to trick the 60-frame timer into extending time such as my FLEET FOOT. Stuff like "I can go now and have 10 frames of FLEET FOOT or delay 10 frames and get 60 frames of FLEET FOOT".
I rather generously spent mana on plenty of FLEET FOOT and a few extra JUMPs. Then the fire demon showed his face, and I found that I slightly overspent my mana. Just slightly. Rather than FLEET FOOT my way across the flame bridge, I had to trick the 60-frame timer into giving me a little more time so I don't melt in a puddle of flesh, plus another two JUMPs on top of that. I wanted to show I had nothing left by attempting to cast one more LIGHTNING and displaying the related message of no mana.
Paul's health hit critical a few times. Very critical. The final battle ended at 4 health left, on brink of starvation and death by poison, but as the final boss vanishes, everything is all nice and dandy, as though Paul is in no imminent danger. There are other points, but they should be obvious when I start "risking my life" with the unknown spell.
The run is fairly optimal, but I'm pretty sure one can still find improvements. I may want to run through it once more for any% instead of "best ending". Or not, and just submit this one only. I don't think there's enough variety to publish both, if there's a good reason to publish at all.
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Xkeeper wrote:
BOMF was basically saying to ignore the rejection and make the run anyway, and I agree :P Meh.
I basically got that idea already. I just had to make fun of what was said! It seemed perfect at the time. With you also chipping in, I should continue then.
In any case, I should try to speed up my run a bit, and see how it fares. Very needed entertainment at all the points where I'm not constrained to walking right is desired, correct? Hopefully, dancing my cursor around in the chests and other spots helped in that respect.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Ignore the audience and keep submitting! That's the only way to win!
So basically, the audience (by not being an author of the run, you are part of it, correct?) is telling me to ignore itself. But if I do that, then I would have followed exactly what they say and hence, failed to ignore them. And since I didn't ignore them, I will have taken their advice to ignore them, but...
... Okay, now I know I'm in trouble, when I can neither listen or ignore the audience!
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Hmm, so this has already been attempted. That's all I need to know. Thanks for pointing me to your attempts, and now I see what you did. I will make an effort to search harder next time, so I don't blindly make a thread without seeing what's already done.
Our goals and routes are different, by the way. You aim to win, while I go for the "best" ending, hence, I'm slower in that respect as I get everything that involves raising mana. You hunt down various chests for mana potions while I skip everything but the required items, ignoring yummy food from within the same chests. The way we played is certainly different, but since our goals were different to begin with, it's hard to compare who is faster.
Lastly, my final battle was played at 50% speed, not frame advance. So my final battle is obviously less than optimal. I didn't want to bother, since the run already had some potential improvements to make. I suggest watching what I did and see what I did different, but then again, your single post has a point.
I don't exactly see much of a future for this thread now, as all that needs to be said is done now. The lack of audience approval is certainly a factor.
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Magician. A game where you, amazingly enough, get a bunch of spells to help you through each situation. It's got elements of a puzzles sort of game, where you need to figure out the right spells. There's also some fighting, which of course you use spells to do the fighting.
Meet Paul: A guy who can starve to death five minutes after a grand meal. Quite the metabolism, there. He also feels more experienced doing trivial tasks, such as entering a store or delivering a letter.
Out of curiosity, I felt like TASing this game. This is the result.
Not a whole lot to see early on. Mostly just walking. Later on, there's still a lot of walking, but at least you see more interesting scenes.
Possible improvements involves using FLEET FOOT, not learning FEATHERLITE (never used), not learning POW SHIELD (apparently optional), and trying out VEGETABLES to see if +1 health/second instead of -2 health/second (hunger issues) lets me avoid using an unknown spell at one point.
Here's what my memory watch looks like:
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There's a post on GameFAQs by Scared0o0Rabbit talking about a bug. I'll copy it here:
I've known about this glitch for like 10 years, so I'm surprised no one has submitted it before now. It involved putting enough items in your bag so that when you exit your bag the bag won't be showing on your inventory. The earliest point you can do this is with 17 items. If you transfer all 17 of your items into your bag and scroll down once, then exit your bag you'll be in a part of your inventory that has no items. From this point you can scroll up to see your items or... down. If you scroll down you'll find piles of items that you don't actually have. It's then possible to 'move' these items up into your actual inventory. Doing this trick you can get items you're not supposed to have yet as well as armor and weapons that are better than you can find early in the game. Take care when doing this trick because sometimes your party members will die or even disappear totally. If the main character dies doing this trick, then the game will be broken and you'll have to reset it.
Basically:
- Put at least 17 items in bag
- Have no more than 3 items in main inventory (bag included)
- Go into bag and scroll down
- Exit out of bag
- Scroll down and enjoy
Let's see... Scroll down past the end of your inventory, sometimes affects party members or main character, broken game... This is sounding an awful lot like the Pokémon Yellow run all over again, just without the save corruption, but definitely has the memory corruption by inventory overflow.
I myself don't have much interest in this, but since the bug is posted, and since the bug likely allows rampant and unchecked devastation of the game's sanity, I thought it might be of some interest for those who have time digging into the game's memory, and want to see if a normally long game can be beaten in a few minutes this way.
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I sent the files over, so I won't likely need further suggestions. Letting everyone here know that my files are now in someone else's hands. Hopefully, this will help to fix the bug that somehow appeared, seeing the actual result directly, rather than reading me type about it.
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Opening it myself using Notepad is an idea. Why I never thought of that after doing it to copy parts of my other runs... Using Notepad, I saw whitespace. Lots and lots of whitespace. Apparently, the whitespace is between the header and the movie input.
As for sending it, that might be a little tricky. Scratch that, putting it in a zip file might be good -- I'm sure it can compress megabytes of unchanging information really good. And indeed, 22MB of movie file is turned into 24 KB.
I'll see about sending it over, somehow. What would you suggest how I should send it? I have an idea myself, but I'd like to wait on that for a bit.
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Hmm... I've crashed into a few issues with 2.1.0:
While saving and loading states repeatedly trying to optimize some game, the load/save states take several seconds to finish, and each new one lengthened the time dramatically. A later look at the movie file, and I've got something that takes up about 22 MB. For something less than 2 minutes of gameplay, it sure takes up a lot of space all of a sudden. I have a backup copy of the movie file, so it's not like I lost anything with a ballooned up file I can no longer use (with any speed).
The related save-states are also hit with this size increase. I know it needs to keep entire movie files for bullet-proof rerecording, but these aren't small in the least. A few MB isn't a typical size, as far as I know.
The origin of the movie file is from version 2.0.2, copied over to continue in 2.1.0 . Whether or not this has anything to do with it, it's a mess. I suppose one question to ask is what's in that 22 MB, when the original file is certainly less than 0.2 MB.
Moving "another window" (such as Notepad) around the FCEUX screen sometimes causes part of the FCEUX screen to paint itself into "another window". It sticks with "another window" for a while as I move it around a bit. It clears itself back to normal after a while.
For lack of better words at the time, I refer to the same window as "another window" using quote marks, as I don't keep moving new ones around.
Memory watch puts the reported value of the first address into an unusual spot, that is, about two lines above where it should be. Irritating, but nothing major.
Just stuff I observed. Seems I'm going to keep using 2.0.2 for a while. I'm not sure how I can really give any support, other than say whatever is bugging me, in order to call attention to whatever the problem might be. I recognize that there is progress, and appreciate the time put into this.
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klmz wrote:
I just wonder if your new flying method can be ported to other forms...
"New flying method"? You mean the repeated tackles I make in the air? I recall testing that out with the dino. It's slower than normal dashing, as I recall. Unless you're on ice, in which case, you've got really slow acceleration when trying to dash, but it's still instant speed when you tackle. I have recently tested this repeated tackling as a fish, and it's slower there, too.
Not that it matters for the most part, since jumping still beats out all other methods in terms of speed in general.
I restarted the run. Here's what I've got so far:
I don't see much of a reason to post the new run, yet. I'll upload it on request, though.
Ocean of Origin: I started the jellyfish dialogue sooner, enough to get over the 4-frame rule that dialogue has. I also went through the darn jellyfish before bashing it up. For some reason, I can't take contact damage for a while. Additionally, I make jumps out of the water, which do speed things up.
I'm not sure how I lost that frame in transition between these areas, though.
Cave of Guidance: I spent two frames manipulating that jellyfish to move out of the way so that I can have a straight swim, by waiting at that intro box. No manipulation would mean I would have to take a larger detour around the jellyfish than my old run, due to a different RNG value for finishing the first stage at a different time.
Inside the cave, even though I swim up only one pixel instead of four, I'm still too high to bite the crystal without first stopping my dash. I've searched a few possible starting RNG values, but I just can't maintain a straight dash the whole way through. And though I manage to get to the crystal one frame earlier (according to the game's frame counter), it doesn't beat the 4-frame rule. Somehow, I lose two frames overall...
Cave of Temptation: A little manipulation later (1 frame), and that jellyfish moves out of the way, and the eels hold still. I dash so neatly between the eels! Much cleaner than bashing one to stop my dash.
I'm tempted to follow the same route here, that is, manipulate up the same three flashing meat as before, rather than bash one of those gray zinichthys in the next cave. Different RNG values, but that won't stop me.
I took a little time to figure out the chances of flashing meat drops, through cheats and observation. This is what I can come up with on the more important enemies:
Chapter 1:
Jellyfish - 1/32 (+50)
Green Sea Slugs - 1/16 (+100)
Gray Zinichthy - 1/128 (+300)
Reddish crawlies (either kind) - 1/32 (+200)
Chapter 2:
Blue larvae - 1/32 (+100)
Chapter 3:
Big shell crawly - 1/128 (+2000) (I may want to revisit as a bird)
Tyrasaurus - 1/64 (+1000)
I apologize for destroying the self-esteem of all the other regular enemies, but they're not important in this TAS. This should give me an idea on how hard it is to manipulate the flashy meats. If I find the RNG unforgiving, I'll know if there won't be a drop within a reasonable time. Remind me to thank Dromiceius.
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Cheezwizz wrote:
Maybe there will have to be two anyway, since it seems they play differently?
Take a look at the first two chapters and the first half of 3. They are identical up until halfway through 3. This does not make for a very good reason to split up the runs for a bird and a dino.
A playaround might be an idea, though, since it can play differently right from the start. Show every Red Crystal form, play around in every area, show a few quirks of the game, become a mammal, and just be plain silly. There's certainly a few things I did not present in my v1 bird run.
As for whether a goofy playaround would be published here, that's a good question. It would have to be darned entertaining throughout the hour or so of gameplay, which I somewhat doubt I can do. I can still submit such a run, anyway, if I ever get one done.
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Itstoearly wrote:
If it helps, I enjoyed your WIPs and I fully support the completion of this run!
Somehow, it did. Reminded me that, yes, there exists interest in this TAS. Well, here's what I've done:
Dino, Chapter 5, stops at start of Bolbox dialogue
At the point I stopped the dino movie, it was 1459 frames ahead of the bird run, or roughly 24 1/3 seconds. However, I calculate I need a total of 99 extra hits against all of Bolbox's baddies with 8 strength instead of 12. Assuming each hit requires a third of a second, this would mean that the battle will take 33 seconds longer, most likely putting the dino run at few seconds slower than the bird run by the end.
I have finally reached the conclusion that I desire: The bird wins out. Not by a lot of seconds, but it wins. Besides, there's some stuff I forgot as a bird, like skipping the "become mammal" dialogue, so it wins out a little more. And you know how much I prefer the bird, given what I said before.
But I'll say it again anyway. Go birdie!!
I have regained interest in TASing this game. Seems I'll mess around with trying to beat my old times on each and every stage.
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After frame 8400, I'm testing out Force. But I suggest starting at 8000, since that's where I stopped the last WIP.
It's fun! Imagine the sort of tricks on your eyes I can play with it! After the movie ends, you get to see what Force normally looks like. But we don't want plain, boring Force, do we?
That big, bunch of nothing happening at the end is... Well, I just haven't figured out what to fill it with, yet. I'm sure I can give that fireball a mind of its own though, rather than keep that "I'm blowing up" pattern continuously.