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feos wrote:
What's the source of that pic, Nach?
I own four different versions of the game.
Broderbund MS-DOS
Broderbund Macintosh
Konami Game Boy
Konami SNES
The manual for the first two have it, while the manuals for the last two do not. Now I'm thinking I should test the Konami versions to see if they have this mechanic or not.
Edit:
I tested the Game Boy version a bit. So far, I couldn't get any tiles to fall on my head at all. Jumping up to hit a tile falls down immediately and hits the ground before you do from the jump.
I looked at a place in the game where normally there's automatically falling tiles by themselves to see if I could run under them. However in the Game Boy version has these areas with the tiles already on the floor.
Now I'm also noticing the Game Boy version's manual doesn't even mention anywhere you should avoid falling tiles like the manual for other versions do.
Edit:
I tested the SNES version. You get hurt by falling tiles in this version while ducking.
Edit:
I didn't feel like breaking out my CD, so I tried a site which had an MS-DOS version in DOSBox, and I see getting hit by the falling ceiling in this version causes double damage, which I don't recall from playing the game years ago. So either this version is different, or the crouching to safety from falling tiles mechanic only works in certain states of crouching, but not all of them.
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Okay, I found this in a different part of the code:
lda CharPosn
cmp #109 ;crouched (e.g. on loose floor)
Meaning there's an explicit check in the code above to see if the character is in the crouched position before processing the crushing/killing sequence. If he is crouched, the function is terminated.
Meanwhile I found this in a different part of the code:
cmp #111 ;crouching
I think there's multiple crouching positions because there's animation between starting to crouch and fully crouched. So only the crouching position represented by 109 is safe, while the other crouch states are not.
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Radiant wrote:
Nach wrote:
I recall seeing this in a manual for one of the ports. The explanation was that if the tile hits you in the head it hurts, but not if you're ducking for cover.
Huh. My headcanon is now that that's a bug and they covered for it by adding it to the manual, because of how little sense it makes. Still, the fact that it is in the manual makes it fair game for any glitchless run.
Here's the source code which handles falling floor and player interaction:
My understanding of it is that if the character is running, or is in a position other than regularly standing on the ground, they are supposed to get crushed by falling tiles.
Here's the position codes I could find so far:
1 - standing still
2 - hanging at one angle
4 - falling
5 - mid bump
6 - hanging at another angle
7 - turning
Higher numbers indicate climbing.
According to the comments, only position 0, 1, and 7 are supposed to be damaged by a falling tile. We still need to determine the meanings for position 0 and 3. Based on the comment, it is intended that position 0 is damaged by a falling tile and position 3 is not.
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Radiant wrote:
Interestingly, the sequel Prince of Persia 2 appears to run on the same engine, and does not allow the walking-on-air trick. I get the impression that they've deliberately removed it.
The engine does feel very similar. They've added a bunch of things to it though. Their trap door in the floor traps probably required they modify how the running and falling logic works.
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GMP wrote:
Nach wrote:
GMP wrote:
- Avoiding damage from a falling tile by ducking. I agree, that this doesnt belong if a run to be made under the "glitchless" branch.
I recall seeing this in a manual for one of the ports. The explanation was that if the tile hits you in the head it hurts, but not if you're ducking for cover. So it seems intentional you're supposed to not be damaged when ducking.
Interesting, I actually didn't know that. I guess that is the history behind it being allowed for RTA NMG runs as well.
Found it:
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GMP wrote:
- Avoiding damage from a falling tile by ducking. I agree, that this doesnt belong if a run to be made under the "glitchless" branch.
I recall seeing this in a manual for one of the ports. The explanation was that if the tile hits you in the head it hurts, but not if you're ducking for cover. So it seems intentional you're supposed to not be damaged when ducking.
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GMP wrote:
Its not my fault that you were confused between the two threads, don't show your frustration on me, it's not very professional.
I wasn't confused by the threads. My only confusion is that you and eien86 kept saying "we" so I assumed the both of you worked on these two runs together. If that wasn't the case, then fine.
I'm not frustrated either, nor am I trying to antagonize you, I've only tried to clarify our rules. If I hadn't made it clear, I'm sorry. Hopefully feos' post above clarifies anything I failed to regarding major skips.
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GMP wrote:
Are you saying clipping gates by running away from guards should be considered a major glitch?
Yes.
GMP wrote:
This run does use the glitch because it is a no restrictions run, and also uses all the possible major glitches. Is it clear now?
That was never in doubt.
GMP wrote:
As I said earlier I can understand why you guys feel the ruleset of my other run seem arbitrary.
I don't know anything about that other run, I didn't watch it.
GMP wrote:
Feel free to reject that run if you strongly think so, but that is not something to be discussed in this thread imo.
That other run is going to be rejected because it was made using a modified copy of the game.
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GMP wrote:
I think there is a big confusion here. The thread we are in is the submission of eien86's Any% TAS, which has no restrictions other than some standard ones like not using a cheat code.
Actually the confusion is that for some reason I was thinking you worked with eien86 on this run and were a coauthor. Sorry about that.
Yes, I am talking about this submission.
GMP wrote:
The (offtopic) discussion about my NMG submission started here when Radiant pointed out that I used "arbitrary RTA Rules", for which I clarified I used "arbitrary RTA Rules" of a specific category. For any%, RTA rules don't lay any restrictions either. I hope this clears it up.
From my perspective, Radiant posted a question here as to how we define these glitches as seen in this run as well as others. I am only describing how we normally refer to these. We don't care about what other communities are doing, we care about how we define things.
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GMP wrote:
Nach wrote:
One example is in level 5, and you described it yourself in your submission notes for that level.
To quote myself - "Level 5: This level is both heavily RNG and movement based. There is nothing special to talk about this level other than the fact that I got pretty decent RNG from the guards."
Where do I mention passing a gate using a guard? That is indeed considered a major glitch. I think you are confused between this submission and my NMG submission, which is why I mentioned earlier why are we discussing about my submission here lol.
I am talking about your submission here where you wrote:
eien86 wrote:
Level 5:
Here the door skip is employed to skip a big part of the level. This is performed by luring the guard to the left and then clipping through the door while on-guard. The rest of the level includes the normal route, optimized via the bot.
I consider this a major glitch, and that is the sort of thing we've always defined as a major glitch on TASVideos.
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GMP wrote:
I am not sure what you are talking about in the later levels. Can you point out a timestamp?
One example is in level 5, and you described it yourself in your submission notes for that level.
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GMP wrote:
Nach wrote:
Going past guards in certain places means you have completely new routes where you don't need to work around to find a way to open a gate or get an item needed to bypass the guard.
No going past the guards absolutely doesn't change the route at all. The only thing I'm need to kill guards is the sword which the prince has throughout the game. The only reason it's not done is because it is slow.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. In the first level, the prince does not start with the sword, and you have to go left and then back to get it. Going past the guard avoids that. There's two ways to do it, one is jumping through him as seen in the video. The other is to get him to follow you left, and keep doing so till you have a path to walk around him. Then suddenly in the second level you have the sword even though you didn't collect it.
In later levels where you go past the guard to push you past a gate, that absolutely changes the route.
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Radiant wrote:
For instance, turning off chompers is easily doable in real time, barely noticeable, and saves 2-3 seconds in a single spot, yet is considered a "major glitch". On the other hand, turning away from guards in mid-combat is really hard in real time (because bad RNG can get you killed), very visible because it looks funny, saves a ton of time, and is considered "not a glitch".
I'd take it further. Glitching past a chomper doesn't change the route for the level at all. You had to go past that chomper, and you go past the chomper.
Going past guards in certain places means you have completely new routes where you don't need to work around to find a way to open a gate or get an item needed to bypass the guard.
The glitches that bypass tons of level and allow completely new routes are the ones that are a major glitch, according to every definition we've ever used in the past.
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GMP wrote:
c-square wrote:
GMP wrote:
I would like to add that this game is open source now as the creator of this game, Jordan Mechner uploaded the source code of the game to GitHub
Is the version you used the one that’s on GitHub?
For all we know, we were able to extract a lot of information from that source code and apply it to this version of the game for strat hunting. There is a open source port of the game that was developed based on it called "SDLPoP"
The version that was open sourced is the Apple II version. There are many versions of Prince of Persia, and they have various similarities, but most of them also have changes to the levels (even extra levels), and changes to some of the physics and mechanics.
Regarding SDLPoP: "SDLPoP is an open-source port of Prince of Persia that runs natively on Windows and Linux. It is based on a disassembly of the DOS version, and uses SDL."
To think of it differently, SDLPoP ports a DOS version to Windows and Linux (so the levels and various mechanics found in the game should be nearly identical), and this version is open sourced and freely available. If one were to TAS that, off the top of my head, I don't see any objections as to why we wouldn't accept it.
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eien86 wrote:
- The binaries used in my submission and this one are the gold standard for RTA runs (see https://www.speedrun.com/pop1/guides). They can easily be considered the 'official' versions, as they are widely available and agreed upon by the speedrunning community.
Hacked versions are not the ones found on my official CD of the game. They are in no way official. That some other community likes to use hacked versions of a game is irrelevant. This is not those sites, this is TASVideos, and we have our own rules which strive for the highest level of authenticity.
eien86 wrote:
- The copy protection screen does not count towards the IGT, therefore they serve no purpose other than wasting time in runs.
Neither does the loading and title screen. Should we hack that out too? While we're at it, let's edit out a bunch of the transition frames too.
eien86 wrote:
- From a spectator point of view, this interruption serves no entertainment purpose, as it requires no skill.
Just because you dislike a part of the game doesn't mean you can just remove it. Also as slamo pointed out, there is skill (or using of TAS tools) in completing it as fast possible.
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eien86 wrote:
Nach wrote:
After completing the first level in the DOS version of Prince of Persia, the game asks the player to drink a potion which corresponds to a certain letter found in a particular area of the game's manual. How was this skipped?
We use (for TAS and for RTA speedrunning) a version of the game that has this screen disabled.
Using a hacked version of the game is not allowed on TASVideos. Please see this post.
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After completing the first level in the DOS version of Prince of Persia, the game asks the player to drink a potion which corresponds to a certain letter found in a particular area of the game's manual. How was this skipped?
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Mazzin wrote:
for example you can watch aruk's run from about 0:25 until 0:45 and then watch the same part in my run, if you hear no difference in the audio there, then i can't help you.
I listened to both side by side, and yes now I hear a small difference. However, I didn't notice it till you point it out. This is why it's helpful to describe something specifically.
Mazzin wrote:
How do you have unmatched gameplay? I see you say that multiple times, but I don't see it watching the runs.
i have no idea what you are looking at but it must be something else but my submitted run here... if you can point me out even 1 part in the run that is worse in my video, then i can take this request seriously.
im not claiming it is perfect, i only said it's the currently cleanest performance yet.
You'll have to elaborate on what your measurement here is, because I don't see how it's the cleanest performance yet. As for something that's worse, it's exactly what I mentioned in the next part:
Mazzin wrote:
I do too, and it's why I think in certain areas, arukAdo makes better quality decisions in the presentation of his run. For example, in the third level with the spikes coming up from the floor, he doesn't try to get to far away from the floor, so he has several near misses which look really entertaining. In this run, I just see you try to stay far away from them, and don't have any moments where I think "oh no he's about to be killed, *nail biting*, whew..., that was a close one".
you guys are fucking twisted, on one hand you only care for speed, but out of a sudden, you care for entertainment tradeoffs?! how does that fit together?
This is an auto scrolling section. There is no trade off, you are supposed to act as entertaining as possible during these sections. This is described in the sub-section of the Fashion section in the guidelines I mentioned earlier: http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html#CreateArtEvenWhenWaitingMazzin wrote:
i obviously have no playful tradeoffs in my run because there is no place where it wouldn't lose time, hence why it's a tradeoff...
If being entertaining in the auto scrolling section would somehow slow it down, then you need to describe that. No one else here made this TAS. We don't know what you did and did not test. We don't know why you made the decisions you made. We cannot read your mind. Looking at it from the outside, it looks like you took an easier approach to an auto scroller instead of trying to make it look as entertaining as possible.
Mazzin wrote:
serious any% there is no room for playing around, that's why you don't see it in my run obviously.
This line right here goes against the entire philosophy of what a TAS is all about. There is always room for playing around, you have to be able to find it and present it. You have to look at multiple equally fast options and craft the one which entertains the most. We're here for the entertainment. If it was just about a speed record, you could've just wrote down your time, and no one would ever bother to watch the video because that's not relevant to the fact of some record. Our end result is always a video because it's about producing something watchable and enjoyable to the broadest audience possible, not just some low number.
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Mazzin wrote:
but upon testing and watching runs, i only got more and more turned away from KC because the audio sounded so much worse than the original and the visuals looked more dead without the hit detection part and a lot of the color choices never made sense to me.
Can you pinpoint an example to compare between two videos where the audio sounds worse?
I agree with you that some of the color choices make no sense. A lot of CGB updates have this issue. They added color to the game, picked some pallets for different areas, but didn't go out of their way to redo the sprites and stuff to really look good.
Mazzin wrote:
but even with that color argument, i was still not willing to prefer KC over GB, since i would rather watch a black and white run than having this tortured audio and lifeless objects with wrong coloring in my next project...
I prefer the original version as well, but I think that's because I grew up with it.
Mazzin wrote:
so i now had the ultimate version of this run, unmatched gameplay, good audio, good visuals with hit detection, colors, everything!
How do you have unmatched gameplay? I see you say that multiple times, but I don't see it watching the runs.
Mazzin wrote:
what im trying to say is that i always believed in quality.
I do too, and it's why I think in certain areas, arukAdo makes better quality decisions in the presentation of his run. For example, in the third level with the spikes coming up from the floor, he doesn't try to get to far away from the floor, so he has several near misses which look really entertaining. In this run, I just see you try to stay far away from them, and don't have any moments where I think "oh no he's about to be killed, *nail biting*, whew..., that was a close one".
See http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html#Fashion for more comments on things like this.
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Mazzin wrote:
how dare you call this game rushed!
The game came out within 6 months of the Game Boy being released. The game sometimes misses out on input being pressed. It controls horribly compared to its sequel which came out two years later.
They couldn't even be bothered to flesh out a full game and instead just put in obstacle courses like the jumping section at the end of the first level.
Mazzin wrote:
the more time you invest in it the more you will come to appreciate how deeply the developpers cared for this great game and yes i call it great, because i obviously like it and you can probably tell from my list of publications and achievements that i also care alot for this game on my end.
I've been playing the game for over 30 years. How much more time should I invest?
You can see how much I care about the game (and the series) that I even have it handy. Enjoy my blurry out of focus photos of my still in mint condition games:
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EZGames69 wrote:
NOTE: I made a mistake at the 4:20 marker of the video, sorry about that.
Regardless, it's nice to have, thank you sir.
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The Castlevania Adventure in the Konami Collection has some preloading done each time a new area is loaded, instead of performing those calculations on the fly. This same technique is performed in Castlevania II and Castlevania Legends. In fact, they use this long door transition sequence to try to hide it. The better the preloading was, the better the games felt to play.
I don't think it's fair to say anything specifically was intended for the timing in the original game here. The game was rushed to be released on the new Gameboy platform, and there wasn't a lot of experience developing for it yet. You can see how the mechanics were vastly improved in the second game. That they backported some of those mechanics to the rerelease of this game shows that's probably what they wanted all along, but either didn't have enough time to do it originally, or did not have the experience required to do it initially.
Now when arukAdo first switched his TAS to the Konami Collection edition instead, I gave him hell for doing so, I don't know why you would think otherwise. But he convinced me that was the better version, both due to color and smoother yet otherwise identical play. This was the game as intended. As TiKevin83 explained, if you want to change back to the original game release, we need to understand why that would be better. I'm not sure the reasoning that you can abuse the individual loading sequences is a valid justification though. If you have clear examples where the Konami Collection is worse, and show how the port broke something intended in the game (as opposed to made the game easier to control due to no surprised unresponsiveness, or that some glitch is no longer present), then we'd certainly be open to accepting a TAS with the original.
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Mazzin wrote:
this new trick is not figured out enough to be used consistently but it works by crouching in any place at specific frames to somehow skip over seemingly random lag frames every now and then, which saves loading time and makes the game process less slow
This game is programmed horribly, barely optimized, causing various things to use more processing time than it should, and therefore at times needs to skip input processing, or delay whatever else it's doing.
My guess is that when Christopher is crouching, his sprite is smaller, and thus less work needs to be done drawing him. Any time you're not walking, I would imagine this would be the optimal position to stay in. The real question is, are you finding it faster to not crouch on certain frames where you're otherwise not moving?
On some frames, depending on what the game is doing (like whether there's animation on the screen or where in the music loop it's in), there may not be any difference to Christopher's position. But if there is a difference, my initial guess would be that crouching is always going to be the one with the processing time improvement. I would love to know if you found otherwise.
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But you also want to see what you're cycling through in the console, before you make the selection.
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Sure, but you don't want visual feedback letting you know you pushed it and what the current one is?
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