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ALAKTORN wrote:
Nach wrote:
ALAKTORN wrote:
but if there’s an official controller that allows for the run to be played on real hardware
How do you even define official controller?
an official controller is something Nintendo endorsed, there should be some kind of Nintendo seal of approval on said controller’s box, I’d imagine?
Which almost all the third party controllers are.
ALAKTORN wrote:
Nach wrote:
What about that for many people back in the day, they never used an "official" controller?
how is that relevant?
If the standard way to play the game is with a non first party controller, then you can't fault the TASer for doing the same.
If Masterjun wants to use this, he has my blessing:
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ALAKTORN wrote:
but if there’s an official controller that allows for the run to be played on real hardware
How do you even define official controller?
What about that for many people back in the day, they never used an "official" controller?
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This IS possible to replicate on a real SNES.
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
In fact, that's part of normal every day usage. Who here hasn't had someone turn on the washing machine or something else and have their power go out, and end up losing power to their console or computer? This happens normally, why should I not be allowed to use it to my advantage?
The exact same logic could be used to allow bending cartridge pins, cutting
connections, ejecting discs and using cheat devices.
Exact same logic?
I've owned several consoles for more than two decades, and can't recall bending pins on any of them. Nor do I recall anyone mentioning an issue like that. How common is this?
Since when is cutting a connection normal?
Ejecting disks mid-game where the console doesn't prevent it is normal.
Using cheat devices is normal, but directly modifies the game.
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
The console maker placed a reset button on the console, that button is fair game.
The console maker also put a power cord on the console. By your logic it's fair game to abuse it. Just pull the plug whenever you want to corrupt something.
In fact, that's part of normal every day usage. Who here hasn't had someone turn on the washing machine or something else and have their power go out, and end up losing power to their console or computer? This happens normally, why should I not be allowed to use it to my advantage?
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ais523 wrote:
FWIW, with the SMW submission, I'd like it to mention an official controller that's capable of the input possible. I'm happy if it's not the normal joypad, so long as it's something that Nintendo released that's capable of providing that input.
You might be interested to know that the mouse is capable of really bizarre input, getting precise input as a human with it though is another matter.
Why though does it have to be something released by Nintendo? Nintendo released 3 controllers for the system. ASCIIWare released 3. Hudson released 2. The other companies out there released dozens of devices that did all kinds of crazythings.
I'm personally familiar with 17 different SNES controllers, and I'm sure there's plenty more that I've never seen.
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Warp wrote:
In my opinion, speedrunning should be about playing the game, not about trying to corrupt it by abusing things that the console might support but does not constitute any form of gameplay. There's a reason why in most consoles there's a warning when you are saving, along the lines of "saving, please do not turn off the console or remove the game cartridge."
Resetting during saving is not playing the game, plain and simple. It's messing with the hardware.
Messing with the hardware? Excuse me?
Messing with the hardware would be opening up the console, rewiring it, soldering on things and so on. It's messing with the game. The console maker placed a reset button on the console, that button is fair game.
Listening to a "please do not turn off message" is the same as "please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", or RPG characters that tell you to go away, but react if you pester them enough. TASing is about not doing what is expected of you, all within the framework provided. If a game stated please never push the "X button", would it be cheating to do so?
Buttons on the console and standard controller ports are what are intended to be used to manipulate the game, using them to the maximum is what TASing is all about. Sometimes that means pressing things they asked you not to press, as well as pressing things they didn't expect you to press.
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Ilari wrote:
Nach wrote:
I agree with Warp that smashing the console, or anything else modifying the console itself is wrong. But manipulating the input to a black box is fair game.
I also would say that exploits that can't be defended against (like bus-master DMA or address conflicts) are also wrong.
Very dubious:
- Mapping stuff onto normally open bus that the game nevertheless uses for some reason.
- Mapping stuff onto normally open bus and then making game somehow use it (reading / executing).
Both of these can be technically defended against (by not using open bus addresses and not having bugs causing memory reads / executes from wrong address).
Those types of things though are more akin to placing a cheating device between the cart and the console. Sure, there's lots of ways to screw with the input to the console. But there are standard input ports, and what is sent to them should be fare game. I'm less inclined to allow screwing with special input ports which don't have official applications in the wild, or in ways intentionally designed to be considered modifying the game itself.
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boct1584 wrote:
Those who don't understand point 2, it's like this, if I understood the discussion in the new SMW submission properly.
The SNES's controller ports can read 16 bytes of data at once, but the controllers themselves only transmit 12 bytes (4 face buttons, Start and Select, L and R, 4 directions, each taking 1 byte.) Since the controller ports can read more than the controllers can transmit, that means the 4 "blank" bytes can be used for other purposes; in the case of the recent glitched SMW submission, in combination with memory corruption, they help brute-force the game into running the ending sequence.
The problem with this logic is that there isn't just one SNES controller. The SNES has a Super Scope, a mouse, and dozens of third party add-ons, some licensed, some not. These different controllers are all equally valid, even though a game may not have been designed with some of them in mind. These other controllers do take advantage of different input bits than the standard controller, and it is perfectly legal to make your own controller.
I agree with Warp that smashing the console, or anything else modifying the console itself is wrong. But manipulating the input to a black box is fair game. And before someone says games should only be played with their official controllers, some people only play their favorite consoles with custom controllers. I personally only play on my SNES with an asciiPad, the controller is more comfortable and has some other nice features.
Things like u+d and l+r at once are only blocked with a "specific controller", it is not a limitation of the console itself. Even on those controllers, you could if you so desired just press the contacts directly too.
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I think I enumerated all the versions that existed.
As for that alternate demo, it's not that rare, it was part of many shareware collections back in the day. You can also get all 10 levels of it individually with the Adept Software release, among others.
Edit:
Apparently Adept Software also allows you to download early prerelease versions which are rather different.
As for the name of the monsters, from the manual:
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The game came in a 10 level demo version (if I'm not mistaken, they made more than one), a 35 full level version from Software Creations, a 100 level version from Impulse Software, and finally a 100 level version from Adept Software with a bunch of add-ons. The latter version is available for free and is the one which should be TAS'd.
Of the levels that exist within all of them, the various versions made minor tweaks and changes to a bunch of them.
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Okay, Motherayas, April Fools was over a while ago.
Like you actually expect us to believe you beat that level flawlessly, even though you got hit >30 times.
...Invulnerability code.
This is not SMB Piranha Plants.
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Mothrayas wrote:
boct1584 wrote:
Not sure why, but the encode is automatically playing as soon as I load Page 1. Kind of irritating, since I've already watched the SMV.
I noticed this happen with other embedded YouTube videos on the forums too lately. I don't know what causes it.
Sorry about this. Seems we had a slight bug in the embed code, but it wasn't noticed till Google just deployed a new version of their YouTube API. Fixed in SVN.
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The encoders site now supports videos up to 64GB in size.
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The original is:
-------------------------Container--------------------------
File: Super Metroid (J,U).SFC
---------------------Internal ROM Info----------------------
Name: Super Metroid Company: Nintendo
Header: None Bank: LoROM
Interleaved: None ROM: 24 Mb
Type: Normal SRAM: 64 Kb
Expansion: None Battery: Present
Country: Japan Video: NTSC
ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM) Revision: 1.0
Checksum: Good 0xF8DF Game Code: None
---------------------------Hashes---------------------------
CRC32: D63ED5F8
MD5: 21F3E98DF4780EE1C667B84E57D88675
RIPEMD: 4C6D54292395D35394AA2DD38ABAAA80C6D38396
SHA-1: DA957F0D63D14CB441D215462904C4FA8519C613
SHA-256: 12B77C4BC9C1832CEE8881244659065EE1D84C70C3D29E6EAF92E6798CC2CA72
SHA-512: 16B36ACD953A544941530AF694CD2EA2E7573C4177AA72C0DAC15DA1FA104855
693EB45609A4225676385070D248F5BE1F31B610D4947E3F69E93287E2FA74A7
Tiger: D3B49C50C560F1663BFE3137609EDD814649BD286FB52F55
Whirlpool: CB3DFE4FC9151E3884AE6C6F5D8013417C6244386E61EDC5DC087C868E854D8A
2EEDB1735DF0C3BF752EE7BD50F3C4EFC8DD823FFEA6E3A92EE558B0D7F2CB77
--------------------------Database--------------------------
Name: Super Metroid
Country: Japan & USA Revision: 1.0
Port 1: Gamepad Port 2: Gamepad
Genre 1: Platform Adventure Genre 2: Shooter
However this game is patched, and if you hard patch it, obviously you'll have different hashes.
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The best part about the research paper is that he seems to be aware of some TASVideos inside jokes, and references them. He gives a mathematical explanation as to why some games are not eligible even for the vault.
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Master of Puppets wrote:
Don't think it can't be compared to Lua/BisqBot
BisqBot made it several worlds into SMB, this bot only made it to 1-3.
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While it's true that his is more generic, the presentation on Ars isn't about that, but about botting a game in general, and in that sense, it pails in comparison to what we have achieved.
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If a run can be converted from a deprecated emulator to non-deprecated, then it is as if the run has been made with the non-deprecated. Ensure the published encode uses the non-deprecated emulator, and that a non-deprecated movie file is available.
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Your points were discussed together with adelikat and myself on IRC two weeks ago, you were there at the time, not sure why you don't remember this. Not being firm on these point will just have a continual stream of nice looking but badly emulated runs continuing to be made.
We are rejecting all of Snes9x 1.4x, unless it was asked prior to the cut off date for a continuance, or it is clear that it was done well before then. We came up with a continuance system to allow for exceptions, and to explicitly make it clear that runs were made before hand. If, and only if, there's enough evidence to show a run was primarily made before the cut off, then we can be lenient.
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I'm sorry, I was away for a week.
Mothrayas: Thanks for holding down the fort.
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GuidMorrow wrote:
Where do I find a setting that does a piece check after finishing the download?
Every torrent client is different, but the good ones should have some kind of option.
In qBittorrent for example, Settings->Advanced->Force recheck upon completion.
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