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That's really great that you located the RNG code! Awhile back, I briefly tried to find out how the RNG worked, but was only able to find the FF94 RAM address (I couldn't find out where in the ROM it was being used). I'm just curious, now - what ROM offset is the starting point of that code?
I think this is a major step towards understanding the manipulation in the game. Not that I've done any TASing of OoA/S, but it seems to me that the most useful thing right now would be to "look ahead" in the RNG to sweep out what value would be most useful for a particular room or series of rooms. Any kind of pre-planning would significantly help with the effort of manipulation.
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Seems like the game judges using some kind of modern art rubric. "Wow, he only used two colors! He deserves the highest art rating!"
This is a fantastic display of artistic skill, compounded further by the compelling medium chosen to showcase this piece. As such, I can only express my true appreciation of this TAS by voting "Meh".
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The first version of the '-3 stage ending' Super Mario Bros. TAS generated a lot of controversy over this subject in the submission topic. In that run, there's no visual indication that the game was actually completed, and there was a lot of discussion over whether that constituted "beating the game". It's actually a very interesting read and is almost exactly what you're describing here.
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That was actually a lot more fun to watch than I expected. You certainly stayed active during all of the "waiting for the timer to run down" levels, and I'm pretty sure you managed to cover every single wall glitch in existence. I was really surprised with some of the ways you managed to scale walls vertically, and most of the other highlights you pointed out in the submission text were nice, too (the dancing at the end of 8-3 was great, by the way).
I think this would serve as a good concept demo since the goal is unusual and you have to abuse glitches to make it possible. It's also good that the sequence of "waste time" levels is broken up by some standard "race to the finish"-type levels - it really improves the pacing of the run.
This gets a Yes vote from me. However, I think a pure "glitchfest" run might be even more entertaining since you could show off even more glitches... something to consider, I guess.
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I'm with Comicalflop on this one. This game has some incredible potential to have really funny and imaginative solutions to levels, and my favorite levels so far have been the ones where you wrote unusual objects (UBOAT and WAVE were great for this).
However, I'm not really sure what the goal of the TAS is right now. It's kind of hard to pin down because some levels sacrifice time for the sake of entertainment, but there are other levels where you're clearly aiming for speed above all else ('CAT' x3 in 1-4, using 2-letter solutions for 1-9 and 1-10). I think speed has its place, but it seems like we miss out on some funny solutions in favor of getting certain levels done quickly.
Here's an idea I had: Make the Puzzle levels focus entirely on entertainment, but aim for speed during the Action levels. Since (presumably) this TAS is going to alternate between sets of puzzle and action worlds, it would be a good way to avoid monotony and keep the viewer refreshed for the next series of levels. If the viewer gets to watch 10 "entertainment-focused" puzzle levels, then 10 "speed-focused" action levels and so on, they don't get too much of one type at once. Something like this might be the only way to keep a 200+ level TAS interesting throughout.
(On a side note, were you aware that 1-2 can be completed without writing anything, as shown in this Youtube video?)
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If you're interested in LttP glitching and haven't seen these already, there's a great Glitch FAQ on GameFAQs with a bunch of fun things to try with U+D. There's also a (GBA version only) "Minimalist" walkthrough that shows how to U+D glitch your way up to and through the Palace of the Four Swords with only 3 hearts and minimal equipment (I mentioned this one in my earlier post). These FAQs are really interesting and show just how much a game can be broken using a single glitch.
I personally think the GBA one would make a great TAS if done right. It would pretty much be some item collecting followed by a nice boss rush through the Palace of Four Swords. I would love to make it myself if I actually had any skill at TASing LttP.
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I've had a lot of fun with L+R/U+D glitches on my GBA SP, specifically with Zelda: A Link to the Past. The D-pad is just flexible enough to allow both buttons to be pressed at once, and I've never damaged anything despite using the glitches many times. In LttP specifically, you can:
-Skip straight to the end of the game (one of the published movies here does this)
-Complete dungeons and collect items while it's still raining, i.e. never finishing the initial Zelda rescue
-Finish the Palace of Four Swords (GBA version exclusive dungeon) with only 3 hearts
Plus other "quests" you can do with the U+D glitches. So, it's definitely possible to mess around with multiple directions on console.
Another thing I did once was take apart an old Gameboy Color and sand down the piece of plastic preventing you from pressing multiple directions at once. I did this specifically to try out some of the U+D glitches in Zelda: Link's Awakening. Obviously this wouldn't count for a console speedrun because I've modified the system, but it's still fun to try out.
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A few years ago, Bisqwit implemented an automatic screenshot feature for submissions (see threads here and here). The screenshots would be added to the bottom of the submission text and could be removed if desired. Somewhere around late 2008/early 2009, the feature was disabled. Why was this done? Did Bisqwit lack the resources to continue, or was the feature deemed unnecessary? I can't find any threads/posts on the forum discussing (or even acknowledging) the change.
Personally, I liked the automatic screenshots because they served as a preview to the movie/game itself. Sure, the selection algorithm wasn't perfect, and sure, these screenshots were almost never actually used as the final movie screenshot (this movie being at least one notable exception), but they still served a nice purpose that I've been missing since they were disabled. Should we consider re-implementing this feature?
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It's a real shame that you have to make so many useless shots to decrease the RATE meter, but I suppose it ends up being somewhat interesting as an optimization puzzle.
I noticed that the cursor position is retained between boards - did this ever save time on any board? i.e. did you ever put the cursor in a sub-optimal position in the last shot on board x so that you could have a better starting shot for board x+1?
Ironically, I enjoyed your zero-friction movie a little more because there was a lot more of "chaotic-bouncing-that-somehow-pockets-all-the-balls". But, the challenge of optimizing every board and setting up the perfect sequence of shots still makes this a great watch. The VANQUISH glitch was interesting too, although I would like to know exactly what causes it...
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I really enjoyed this TAS. There was always something going on, whether it was gem collecting or flying rapidly from area to area. It was also really funny to see all the times you went out of bounds to skip entire sections of levels (and entire levels themselves, I suppose). This TAS seems to have a lot of "you shouldn't be able to do that" moments, which made it entertaining throughout. Yes vote from me.
I have to add, some of the random cutscenes being quickly canceled were hilarious because they made no sense or just looked ridiculous without the proper context. Two that come to mind were 1) Moneybags raising his arms to the sky (in celebration?) and 2) some kind of pelican lighting a fire while staring at the camera. What a strange game :)
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I think one major reason this isn't done very often is that you can (usually) only add TAS capabilities to one game at a time. As I understand it, even implementing savestates that don't desync would be a lot of work, something that most people aren't willing to put into just one game. If somebody is going to go to the effort of adding TAS capabilities to one particular game, why not put that effort into an emulator instead, which can potentially open up TASes for many games at once? I think that for this to happen, you either need somebody who's highly-motivated towards the project, or the backing of a group/community who are all working on the project at once.
Now, this doesn't necessarily stop anybody from trying (I myself have experimented with external input/replay generation for certain PC games), but I do think the motivation will be lower, which is why we haven't really seen any projects like this so far.
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I enjoyed this movie because it was a lot like watching somebody solve a bunch of puzzles. Knowing that a bot created most of the input added some entertainment as well. Certain stages (e.g. 52) had some unexpectedly clever shots that pocketed all the balls at once. This gets a yes vote from me.
I only have a couple of questions:
1. On stage 43, why did you suicide twice? I couldn't see any obvious reason for it.
2. What exactly is going on when a (very) slowly-moving ball hits another and they both stop? Shouldn't one or both of them keep moving because of the frictionless setting?
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This hack seems really well-done, especially for being restricted to the NES. I love how the hack creator even put in custom text for the Kings at the end of each world if you finish as Magic Mario. "Hey there! Would you mind performing at my kid's birthday party?" Also, that's one creepy ghost at the end of world 4.
The TAS was excellent, too, and I'm actually quite surprised that you saved that much time over the previous version since I remember it looking quite optimized when I first watched it. For some reason, I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing Mario rapidly jump to keep p-meter :) It was also funny seeing you rapidly shift between Magic Mario and Raccoon Mario or Fire Mario for various purposes. I really liked the dancing at the end of world 8-3, too.
Yes vote, of course.
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mklip2001 wrote:
It would be neat to see more accurate comparisons between the two movies in each stage.
Ask and ye shall receive.
(The times are the number of frames saved in EightBitGuy's version compared to this submission)
World 1 - 126 frames saved
1-1: A (3), B (1)
1-2: A (-4), B (-2)
1-3: A (27), B (11)
1-4: A (24), B (43)
1-5: A (-2), B (3)
1-6: A (-1), B (4)
1-MM (8)
1-DK (11)
World 2 - 324 frames saved
2-1: A (24), B (23)
2-2: A (12), B (-34)
2-3: A (3), B (7)
2-4: A (5), B (6)
2-5: A (2), B (16)
2-6: A (91), B (89)
2-MM (80)
2-DK (0)
World 3 - 7 frames saved
3-1: A (1), B (13)
3-2: A (1), B (1)
3-3: A (-20), B (8)
3-4: A (-39), B (45)
3-5: A (19), B (0)
3-6: A (-5), B (4)
3-MM (-24)
3-DK (3)
World 4 - 1715 frames saved
4-1: A (-28), B (0)
4-2: A (21), B (296)
4-3: A (189), B (49)
4-4: A (480), B (4)
4-5: A (8), B (444)
4-6: A (124), B (88)
4-MM (54)
4-DK (-14)
World 5 - 2555 frames saved
5-1: A (35), B (3)
5-2: A (20), B (1240)
5-3: A (-42), B (164)
5-4: A (20), B (102)
5-5: A (287), B (59)
5-6: A (16), B (-2)
5-MM (246)
5-DK (407)
World 6 - 1091 frames saved
6-1: A (0), B (14)
6-2: A (0), B (-2)
6-3: A (796), B (18)
6-4: A (20), B (19)
6-5: A (149), B (-2)
6-6: A (8), B (3)
6-MM (116)
6-DK (-48)
Final DK (174)
In addition, EightBitGuy saved 3352 frames in out-of-level optimizations. I didn't check, but I would assume that practically all of it is due to the A/B/Start/Select after each world.
One other note to EightBitGuy. I believe that 4-2a can be improved by using key-climbing to hop over the wall instead of sending the key on the conveyor belts - you may want to look into this if you haven't already.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and cancel this for obvious reasons. Hopefully I'll see the new version of the TAS on the workbench soon!
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I probably would have done another 100% run instead of the recent any% improvement, except for the fact that the first 100% run was judged to be way too long to be enjoyable. Granted, the original time of 1:50 can probably be brought down to 1:40 or 1:35 (at least) with new tricks, but it's still a questionably long time when people have trouble sitting through the 45 minute any% version.
I would certainly like to see/work on a 100% run in the future, it's just that I don't see a way that such a run would actually be published at TASVideos.
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Wow, I had no idea somebody else was working on an improvement movie... I really wish we had been in touch before I submitted this, as it would have saved me a lot of work. But, I can't complain when a great game gets an even greater TAS. That'll teach me not to advertise my intentions more clearly :)
I really enjoyed watching your version, EightBitGuy! It was actually very interesting seeing levels where you had the same ideas I did, and practically every level seems to be visibly faster in some way. I was quite surprised that you were able to accomplish some things I had judged impossible, such as the somersault in 4-3a and climbing the lower ropes without the monkey in 5-2b. I hope I'm not sounding arrogant by saying this, but I hope you'll be able to incorporate some of the tricks in my submission into your TAS (assuming you didn't already know about them already). I will happily vote yes on your final movie when you end up submitting it.
At this point, my only regret is that I didn't know about EightBitGuy's improvement sooner. I'm going to leave this submission on the workbench for another day (just in case), and then cancel it if there are no objections/other comments.
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It was a tough choice, but I really had to vote for Nach. He's just so much better on this site than Nach, Nach, and Nach. Nach vs. Nach, of course, is no contest at all (no offense to Nach). So, Nach takes the prize.
Congratulations, Nach!
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Wow, I go away for a week, and come back to find this TAS already submitted and published! This is an extremely impressive run - the level of precision throughout, the constant application of glitches and tricks... it was very fun to watch. I was really surprised that you found a way to skip the 3rd ocarina song, as that was one of the big timesavers I puzzled about for a long time when working on my version, but there were so many other clever skips too!
The only question I have is, did you try pegasus boots-glitching directly into the front entrance of dungeon 8? As I remember, the dragon head only blocks the entrance by a few pixels, so it seems like you might be able to glitch through...
Otherwise, I'm really happy to see this finished. I'll add my yes vote to the submission, though I suppose it doesn't matter much since it's already published :)
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Out of all the posts here, I agree with Mukki's post the most.
I think it's one thing to remove runs that break the rules of publication (e.g. Top Gear), since it helps maintain the standard of movie publication at TASVideos in general.
It's another thing entirely to take somebody's TAS and say "this can be obsoleted by a lot, so we're going to remove it until the new run comes along." I think it's pretty disrespectful to the TASer to simply remove their work from the site just because a TAS made now could do better. Even putting a "this can be obsoleted by a lot" tag on the movie just enforces an idea that TASVideos is a site that only cares about getting better and better movies instead of really appreciating a current author's contribution to the site. "Hey, we appreciate your work in the past, but we really don't like your movie anymore and are going to tell viewers that it's not very good".
If you're going to argue that only TASes with "large improvement potential" would be removed, where do you draw the line? From what I've heard, Ocarina of Time seems to be improvable by over an hour, but as far as I can tell, it's the only run on this site with such a large known improvement. If you're going to try and implement unpublishing, you'd have to lower the bar a bit, but how far would you go? Is 20 minutes on a 2-hour movie enough to unpublish? What about 10 minutes? What if there's a new route that you could take in the TAS to save only 5 minutes, but it looks much better (i.e. more entertaining)? I just see this whole business as getting too close to a system where only the most current, up-to-date TASes have a place on this site. I don't think we should even start on this road at all except for currently-published TASes that violate the rules of the site.
For an example of what I'm talking about with obsoletion "potential", let's go through my 3 currently published TASes:
-Link's Awakening DX any% in 1:09:49 - Based on Swordless Link's progress, this one has about 5 minutes of improvements.
-Super Demo World 100% 2:08:02 - Since I finished it right after a lot of new tricks were discovered, there are probably 5-10 minutes of improvements here.
-Mario vs. Donkey Kong any% in 44:52 - I'm working on the improvement right now, and I would estimate the total time saved as about 2 minutes.
Would any of those TASes be candidates for unpublication? I would guess that they would not be... but what if, say, a new trick was discovered in Link's Awakening that saved 10-20 more minutes?
What has changed? Obviously, the same movie is currently published in both cases. The only thing that's changed is your perception of the current movie's quality. It's somehow become "unpublishable" simply because of discoveries made after its initial publication. The mentality of "this movie was okay in 2007, but its not okay now" is just wrong, in my opinion, and makes TASVideos seem like some kind of soulless machine that churns out new things and throws out the old. It's a bad path to go down.
One more point I'd like to make is that unpublication seems to favor high-profile TASes because they get a lot of attention, both internal to this site and external. I think unpublication would naturally happen more often for popular games, which means that players are getting punushed simply because they chose a popular game to TAS.
In summary, I guess my point is that everything you're trying to accomplish with unpublication is already covered internally with the publish-obsolete system, and the latter benefits both the site as a whole and its authors by maintaining their content, even if it's improvable.
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For fun, I decided to watch all 5 of these and then cast my vote in this thread. Note: I have never played any of these games before, nor do I follow progress/updates of these games on the TASVideos forums.
Consider my opinion that of a casual, mostly uninformed watcher :)
Mega Man 2: I liked the constant clever setups to enter walls, especially taking damage beforehand to be able to glitch through spikes. "Dying" on the same frame as the boss was also a really funny touch. Overall, a really well-polished TAS of a very watchable game.
Chrono Trigger: This one was really confusing, but I sort of expected that based on some of the comments in the submission thread. The random movements and dancing around while waiting for scripted events were great, and some of those events being glitched up (e.g. courtroom scene) made me laugh. The glitched text and graphics added to the whole atmosphere of the game being torn to pieces.
Crusader of Centy: This was a fun, colorful game to watch. For once, the story was mostly intact, and actually added a lot to the TAS. The run has extremely good pacing - as the character gets more animal companions (abilities), the TASer gets more clever with speed boosts and attacks and the character gets around/kills things faster and faster.
Castlevania - Aria of Sorrow: This one had a lot of fast-paced enemy slaying, and even better, there were a lot of different attack techniques used (too often a TASer is forced to use the same attack over and over in other games). The wobbling/shuffling used (presumably) to increase movement speed was fun to watch. This run also had a nice sense of progression because the character kept picking up new abilities, and especially the movement-enhancing ones were quite visibly utilized as the run went on.
Castlevania - Symphony of the Night: The wall-climb glitches were interesting, although ultimately somewhat uninteresting to watch because they take so long to execute. Otherwise, the damage-boosting techniques were highly amusing (the player is hit so hard, they keep flying backwards through multiple rooms!) and the action was good, though not quite as fun to watch as in Aria of Sorrow.
So, given all that, my top 3 would consist of Mega Man 2, Crusader of Centy, and Castlevania - Aria of Sorrow. Since I can only pick one, I'm giving the vote to Castlevania AoS. Of the TASes on this list, it would be the one I'd be most likely to watch again in the future (and I probably will).
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The other day, I was thinking about TASes and what thought process goes into choosing the game. For me, the games I've chosen to TAS have fallen into the following criteria:
1. It should preferably be a game I've played extensively beforehand, as this gives me a lot of background on what's possible, what potential tricks are there to exploit, etc. I also have trouble getting interested in TASing games that I personally haven't played much before - if I haven't played the game yet, why should I be all that excited about doing a TAS of it?
2. It shouldn't be overly complicated to TAS, or else I'll just get bogged down in mechanics instead of making significant progress. 3D games especially make me think twice before wanting to TAS them.
3. No TAS of the game currently exists. I have found that I get a bit frustrated if I am constantly having to measure myself up to someone else's time (even worse, if I can't beat the other person's time while trying to improve their version of the run).
Unfortunately, (1) and (3) really limit me because most of the games I've played are on newer, non-TAS capable platforms, and most of those that aren't have already been TASed. Though, I do make exceptions to (3) if I really like the game and/or see big improvements to be made over the previous TAS.
For the rest of you, how do you pick your games? For those of you who complete a lot of TASes (e.g. adelikat), have you actually played through each of those games, or did you become interested in some of them because of something else?
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Finally got around to watching this. I really wish the spin limits weren't in the game, but you certainly made the best of it from what I can see.
I really liked that you were able to jump off the spiked poles/blocks in Native Fortress and Slippery Climb - that really made those level really fun to watch. I also found it really funny whenever you would suicide to save time, since it broke up the segments of death-defying jumping. I can just imagine Cortex saying "Poor Crash, his exploits finally caught up to him and he slipped into a pit."
Between this and Crash 2, some of my favorite games from childhood have now been TASed. Any plans for Crash 3? :)
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This movie was hilarious! I've already watched it three times and am planning to show it to some friends when I get the chance. I'm really curious about how you set up some of those glitches. One question - I don't really follow sports at all, but the fact that you set up a "Brazil vs. Argentina" matchup hints to me that there's a real-life rivalry there. Is this the case, or did you just randomly pick a couple of teams?
By the way, I was having troubles with the movie desyncing because the "clean fastrom setting" option was turned off (I wasn't allowed to change the setting, either). I ended up having to hex-edit the setting into the movie file directly. Does anybody know what happened?
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Derakon wrote:
My counter-opinion is that King's Bounty is perhaps the best example we have of two very important aspects of TASing:
* Doing unexpected things
* Manipulating the game into doing things for you.
I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. While those aspects are certainly present in the King's Bounty TAS, the whole thing is over so quickly that it's not very interesting aside from it being a neat concept. Other TASes do the same kind of thing, but have a lot of interesting gameplay and variety to balance it. Sure, King's Bounty is the most extreme in terms of its execution, but I don't see how that necessarily translates into being a good star candidate.
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The thing I liked most about this run is how often you glitched through corners just to show off! I remember back when that glitch hadn't been discovered yet - among other things, it really sets this version of the TAS apart from those before it. I'm very impressed and happy to give this a yes vote.
