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As for the pipe issue:
The thing is that "1 coin more" doesn't say anything. Nobody cares if you get 40 or 70 coins in the completion of that game. They only care for what looks cool and what's difficult to accomplish. That bumping against a pipe doesn't look cool.
The only number the audience will compare is the time, so ignore all the other numeric goals and concentrate on creating a beautiful movie.
As for the ending thing:
The point is that when you end it early, the actual ending might be a little *slower* because you stop moving faster.
When you end the movie early like that, you're encouraging that kind of bastardising of the rules.
When it comes to fast completion of the game, I don't think the length of user input is the decisive factor (it should not be!!). It should be the actual completion time (a commonly agreed goal) that matters.
In Super Mario Bros's case, it is the moment you hit the hammer. It is the common goal. This is just common sense. You are competing in the time needed to complete the game, not in the time needed to control the game.
I'm not a politician. I'm just trying to make it so that people don't shoot each others in leg. I hate having to make rules, actually...
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In short, the wait time before the level is not a constant number of frames, but rounded towards the next frame number multiple of 21.
If you complete the level 3 frames faster, the wait will be 3 frames longer unless you also broke the next 21-frame boundary.
However, this doesn't change the fact that bumping against the pipe like that looks stupid.
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-ziplock- wrote:
I thought it was pretty creative to stop the movie in mid jump.
The problem with this is that it's cheating. Because dashing (B button) is stopped, it may actually result in slower completion than if that trick wasn't used.
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Particularly, I disliked how the 1-1 underground pipe entry was slower than in Mana.'s movie and how the author chose the easier path in 8-1 instead of trying to jump under the coins that hover over the pits.
Also, I wonder why Genisto didn't jump backwards towards the hovering pipe in 8-4. I recall Michael Fried saying it would be faster.
However, I must raise a hat for the excellent total time and creativity.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
I was able to manipulate where I got a random battles somewhat by switching between walking and running. But it seemed to reach a limit on how far I could do it.
That hints towards frame-based randomness - the consequence could be decided at the frame when you walk into the next square.
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As for the entertainment value of this movie (regarding coins and such), I don't think we should go too mechanical about it.
This movie aims for fast time and it gets it.
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Omega wrote:
Also, wouldn't Japanese be faster simply because the language itself is much more compact, reducing the amount of dialogue screens?
That true, but English variable width font routine requires filling into the same 8x8 tiles multiple times, whereas the Japanese version only requires writing to them only once.
It also requires more math to calculate the shifting and to do the shifting to get the letters into correct positions in the tiles.
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Locke wrote:
Why not use the translated version?
Because this game was never imported to USA.
There are only fan translations, and as a policy, I don't allow them.
Also, the Japanese version might be a little faster due to simpler text display routine :)
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Michael Fried wrote:
Luckily I didn't get any homework today so I'll probably get a lot done. I'll be able to tell you exactly how fast it will be when I'm done with 4-2 because I don't know of any ways to improve 8-1 to 8-4, so I can just check how much ahead of my old movie I am after 4-2 and subtract that from 5:03.73. As for predictions, I'll guess my run will be about a second faster than Mana's.
I hope you realize that Mana's movie, if it will be handled, is the 5:01.27 long version mentioned earlier in this thread. You're competing against that, not the one with a long intro screen wait.
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Phil wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
Phil can compile custom versions of snes9x for Windows?
I can tell him what to change and he'll make it. :)
If you tell me how to compile with Visual C++ compiler or any other compiler. I don't have any clue how to compile that source.
Just open the project file and then select Compile from some menu.
I don't know better - it's been 9 years since I last used Visual C++ of some form.
This is the code you need to change. Function FreezeBlock in snapshot.cpp:
int UnfreezeBlock (STREAM stream, char *name, uint8 *block, int size)
{
char buffer [20];
int len = 0;
int rem = 0;
int rew_len;
buffer[11] = 0;
if (READ_STREAM (buffer, 11, stream) != 11
|| strncmp (buffer, name, 3) != 0
|| buffer [3] != ':')
{
err:
REVERT_STREAM(stream, FIND_STREAM(stream)-11, 0);
return (WRONG_FORMAT);
}
if(buffer[4] == '-')
{
len = (((unsigned char)buffer[6]) << 24)
| (((unsigned char)buffer[7]) << 16)
| (((unsigned char)buffer[8]) << 8)
| (((unsigned char)buffer[9]) << 0);
}
else
{
len = atoi(buffer+4);
}
if(len <= 0) goto err;
if (len > size)
{
rem = len - size;
len = size;
}
if ((rew_len=READ_STREAM (block, len, stream)) != len)
{
REVERT_STREAM(stream, FIND_STREAM(stream)-11-rew_len, 0);
return (WRONG_FORMAT);
}
if (rem)
{
char *junk = new char [rem];
READ_STREAM (junk, rem, stream);
delete [] junk;
}
return (SUCCESS);
}
After this change, 2 hours is not a limit anymore. The limit is now 4931 hours for 1-controller movies and 994 hours for 5-controller movies.
This patch is only needed for savestate handling; not for movie watching.
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And people would of course have to use the Japanese version, because our rules rule out fan translations.
Japanese text displays a little faster than English text and as that, it's not that important anymore if nobody can read it - most audience couldn't understand it anyway.
Also, the game is much better enjoyed by playing it (the audience of the movie is those who have already played it), so anyone who watches the movie without having played the game before is just shooting oneself in a leg.
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Indeed - this movie could otherwise be accepted as a successor for Frenom's movie, but if someone beats Teriyakama's video and the difference is less than a minute, it's would be too difficult to tell which one is faster.
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xebra wrote:
Obviously you can reach the vine in 4-2 without slowing down, as Michael Fried does, yet he (must?) backtrack to take the pipe up the vine instead of climbing.
The idea of this glitch is to get Mario ahead of the normal screen scrolling position.
Michael Fried did this by using the wrapping glitch (move from screen left side to right side by using the vine as a tool).
Mana. did this when he entered the brick wall - during the first ~16 pixels of movement, the screen did not scroll. Apparently this was enough.
The same thing happened in 1-2, but there the effect was against him - it would have been beneficial to have the screen scroll ahead of Mario, because that's what triggers the warp zone texts.
