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I'll explain this in more detail when I wake up, but I'll try to quickly summarize my thoughts: I'm highly against publishing any TASes that require outside cheats or scripts to function properly, and I'm especially against adding a "cheat tier" to the site.
1. As Moth said, it goes against the purpose/goals of the site, where we're all about deterministic input that could logically be played back on console
2. Slippery slope. Simple as that. Accepting something like this will set a precedent where people just start submitting any cheated TASes they want and say "Well, MM9 got accepted, why can't this one?"
3. I'm going to bring up the old demo/playaround argument here: How would obsoletion be determined for cheated TASes? As far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't. There's no logical way to do it. There's inevitably going to be 1 frame runs of games that use one single cheat that sets the ending flag immediately, making the entire tier completely pointless, and even if we set huge amounts of restrictions, there's still going to be a lot of hassle involved
I'd rather these kinds of runs stick to the forums. A run doesn't need to be published to be considered "legitimate", it just needs to exist and there you go. There's no reason to bend the site rules to make one single exception, and it'll just confuse and possibly infuriate the audience. I'll always be glad that a TAS exists for any reason, but in this case I'm completely against publishing it as it breaks site rules.
I'll be watching this thread like a hawk. Try not to let the debates/arguments get out of hand, everyone.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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pdrcr wrote:
I would love to help, and I think the way I'd help the most would be with TASbot Twitter.
I'm already very active on Twitter and ran multiple accounts back when I did PR for my band (@thelooongshot @goodfightmo). Let me know what you need from me, and what resources I'd need
-dama1138 from IRC
I mean absolutely no disrespect by asking this, but... Who are you? From most of our perspectives, you're just a random, recently registered stranger asking to handle something quite important, and we'd all like to be completely sure you're the right person for the job. I'm aware you've been active on the #tasbot IRC, but if you could make yourself more active/public on the forums and our main #tasvideos IRC, that would be much appreciated. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad there are newcomers who wish to take on important tasks that help us out immensely (see: xy2_ with Brain Age), but I've always had a sketchy view of people who ask for a degree of power in their first posts.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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As far as I'm concerned, hardest difficulty will almost always obsolete easier difficulties unless hardest difficulty adds too much repetition, like in the case of Earthworm Jim 2 where hardest difficulty adds about 7 minutes of painful-to-watch repetition to the run. I doubt that would be the case here, so you're in the clear to continue on hardest. Just make sure to write out how much you're improving in the comparable sections so everyone knows it's an improvement upon submission.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Samsara wrote:
Would you like to try redoing the movie? I can provide an input file with a sample route if you'd like.
User movie #27020235245096814
Low effort fix, 49 frames faster. Sorry it took so long. Only the second sidescroller is changed, the first can still be improved but I wasn't about to redo half the movie for that.
gamerretro2, please look into the alternate route suggested by Tangent and improving the sidescrollers. I'll set this to delayed in the meantime until you come back with an improvement. If you have no intention to improve this movie, please cancel it yourself. Otherwise, I will replace the file once you post it.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Link to video
Final version of Stage 4 and preliminary drafts of Stages 5-8. Very short stages, not very fun to TAS. Boss hitboxes are a pain, lag management is even more of a pain.
EDIT: Apologies for the graphical glitches around 1:53, those aren't in the game, just me being an idiot with codecs.
EDIT2:
Link to video
I found this while working on Stage 9. Despite the fact that it looks like I'm flying over half the stage, the boss that's normally supposed to be at the end doesn't spawn until you kill the miniboss, and the miniboss is just after this part, so it's basically useless. But it's still fun to watch! I guess! Even if it's a huge disappointment...
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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http://pastebin.com/0xR8kVkH
I don't know how specific this script is to Aria of Sorrow, but it was written years ago for VBA and I'm having serious trouble converting it to LuaHawk. Could someone point me in the right direction or, maybe, if you'll be so kind,try converting it for me because I have no clue what I'm doing?
EDIT: http://pastebin.com/wKHX37Zn <--- Thanks Anty-Lemon <3
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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rhebus wrote:
Wow, this is way better than my original one (which has been lost to history unless Kriole still has a copy). Great work!
Actually, as far as I'm aware, that is your original all-in-one script. I haven't been able to convert it to BizHawk at all so far, since BizHawk's Lua implementation and RAM Search are so drastically different than VBA's and I'm not exactly knowledgeable enough in scripting and memory domains to effectively convert it. Plus I've been carried away in other projects and this is something that would require me to sit down and put in a lot of womanhours in order to still sit there and not know what I'm doing.
I guess I'll use this post as an open call to people far better at scripting than me to have a crack at updating the script, with a crosspost to the LuaHawk thread as well. I'd love to have this done not just for myself, but for everyone else interested in AoS TASing.
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Link to video
Redone, smoother stage 3, about a second and a half faster (though ~30 frames are lost due to extra lag). This was basically the result of squeezing out a ridiculous amount of frames in the earlier sections to make an earlier spinning platform cycle, and then figuring out a way to actually go through that spinning platform using a careful combination of ducking, standing, and jumping. I'm pretty proud of this.
EDIT: Stage 4 is also looking to be around a second faster than the posted version. It's gonna be great to finally move on to walking across a train.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Tangent wrote:
Maybe I misunderstood then. I'm pretty sure it was x:00 for the free pass from the temple guard and it only checked for the 2k gold for the other.
You're right, actually, you can pass as long as you have 2000 gold, no matter what the time is. Just confirmed it in-game by giving myself more than 2000 gold as I reached the guard at 10:53 (going off of the submission file). I apologize for the misunderstanding.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Tangent wrote:
Samsara wrote:
Tangent wrote:
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
And then you'd still need to wait until the top of the hour
For what?
https://youtu.be/L_FsRpOqn5M?t=2m15s
I'm assuming this is accurate, as there would be no reason to wait until the top of the hour otherwise, but I'll test it later to make absolutely sure.
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Tangent wrote:
The route change is to buy the backscratcher (1,000 gold) and get the other 1,000 from the clouds in the ninja area.
And then you'd still need to wait until the top of the hour, which takes longer than praying. If you can prove this wrong with an input file, I'd love to see it.
gamerretro2, both of the sidescrolling sections can be improved by small amounts. You can completely avoid landing on those high tree branches that stop you in place for a moment and save around a second overall. Would you like to try redoing the movie? I can provide an input file with a sample route if you'd like.
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xy2_ wrote:
gamerretro2 wrote:
i think impossible hour advance 5 minute to entering in room and my time is 10:53
Does the time advance when waiting in the village / in a room?
I looked into this. Minutes advance in real time, screen transitions advance the clock by 5 minutes. Both of the alternate methods would require one room transition and around two minutes of waiting judging from that time, and the praying takes barely under a minute. The route used in the TAS appears to be the fastest unless there's another, much quicker way to advance time by single minutes. EDIT: To elaborate, by the time the praying stops, it's just turned to 10:54, so praying is at least a minute faster than the other two options barring a route change or something else.
Thanks for the answer, gamerretro2. I'll judge accordingly when the time comes.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Any thoughts on this, gamerretro2? You should see if these are faster than praying and use them in a new file if they are. I'll hold back on judging until you come back with an answer.
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Derakon wrote:
Oh, I misunderstood when the boss actually dies. Carry on!
Oh, yeah. In case anyone else is confused, the boss has two forms: The head part I'm attacking is meant to separate from the body but I end up killing it before it can separate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8aT6_x-vnA
Here, have a 34 frame faster Stage 2, featuring a better falling bridge section and a better boss fight, and a preview of Stage 3 alongside it for actual new content.
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Derakon wrote:
Does swinging the whip while the boss is exploding cause any extra lag?
Yep, every other frame is lag when swinging the whip during the second boss's explosion, so I just scroll it offscreen. Published run does it too, likely for the same reason. Same thing happens at the falling bridge if I'm over to the right too far, it's actually half a second faster to land on the very left edge and drop down from there because moving farther to the right when on the bridge causes lag every other frame.
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It's a blast, really.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkmE2IG8Fs
Stage 2 happened. It's ridiculously laggy. There are a couple sloppy sections so I'll probably give it another shot later tonight or tomorrow.
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Art.
If you catch the very bottom of a climbable wall, you can mash B to climb up into it for some sweet upward... zipping? I can't even really tell what it is. It's not zipping because you get caught at a certain point and have to jump to continue going up, and eventually you get trapped in the wall and crushed to near death (which is why I escape and do the usual ridiculous wallclimb). I think I love this game.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CslkOUAPk-k
This is nothing more than a proof of concept at the moment, just trying out the faster RTA strategy for the first level and figuring out whether or not I actually want to tackle this.
EDIT: Saved another second off of the above video and I'm sure more can come off. I actually kinda really like TASing this, it's a janky game but it's fun to make that jankiness work. I'll give the first stage the ol' razzle dazzle and see what it ends up looking like after serious optimization/planning.
EDIT2: gfycat of the improved section. There isn't a single part of this that doesn't make sense and I love every minute of it. I love video games.
EDIT3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKZN32OHk0U
Full test of the first stage that's about 7 seconds faster than the published run, but it needs some more work. Last hit on the boss is delayed to get a better boulder pattern that saves 100 frames over my second best attempt without said pattern.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
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Video games are art.
Art.
If you catch the very bottom of a climbable wall, you can mash B to climb up into it for some sweet upward... zipping? I can't even really tell what it is. It's not zipping because you get caught at a certain point and have to jump to continue going up, and eventually you get trapped in the wall and crushed to near death (which is why I escape and do the usual ridiculous wallclimb). I think I love this game.