Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
I'm uploading an H264 AVI of the WIP. Its like 277 megs. I used Rice video plugin on the OpenGL mode to make it past the castle takeoff scene. It flickers at certain spots, but it doesn't look like itll be a problem. Ill edit this post when I get the time to after its done uploading.
Edit: Here you go guys:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4M5ROAOK
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
Bisqwit wrote:
So far, I have liked all the high-quality Portal speedruns I've seen on Youtube. It is pretty amazing. Makes me want to see what it could be on tool-assisted.
EDIT: But this is the first time I see portal entry/placement glitches being used in these speedruns.
Yeah... There were a few people that discovered how to do the glitches. I mainly figured out how to use them effectively. I also found a few glitches of my own. I attempted to go for the highest gameplay quality I could for my segments (no misplaced portals, no movement messups, etc), and, obviously, the lowest time.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
I've been working on my Portal Speedrun for a few weeks now. I'm almost done, and just seeing what you guys think of it so far. Its a highly segmented run, but I only tried to segment it when needed because you cannot shoot a portal the second you load from a save, so it can be a waste of time in certain situations. Links a go-go.
SDA Topic:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=pcgames;action=display;num=1192048369
My Speedrun on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/profile_video_blog?user=Transgenic86
The videos were uploaded on a per map basis. I will make a full video and upload it when the run is complete. If you have any questions or better optimizations, please feel free to comment. Thanks!
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
Catastrophe wrote:
Of your last three, the first one fits...
Thanks. It takes alot of work to do these. Throwing the rocks had nothing to do with anything; i just had time to spare since i had to wait for Alyx's dialog. That area is completely walled off until she finishes her dialog :(.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
qFox wrote:
Ok like, wow.
At about halfway I totally had no idea what was going on. Was playback even at fullspeed there? If the entire TAS is like that I don't think I'll watch it since it's fast and I don't have a clue what's going on...
Not to say it's not a nice effort! It is
I had made a 'better' version of that, but it was slower because I had some spots that i need to revise. I can make it clearer by just keeping the crosshair as still as possible, which can be hard at times. I need to spend the weekend rerunning it and trying to make some improvements. What makes it so hard is that, its sort of like Mario 64 BLJing, but you have to exponentially gain speed per backwards jump (unlike how you have stairs to do that on in Mario). It can gain a huge amount of speed, but it becomes difficult to control, because playing the game at a slow speed, you cannot do anything faster than normal, other than moving the mouse. Its still hard to control player movements (like strafing), because its just as slow as normal.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
TNSe wrote:
To give you a more direct answer:
Does not make a run a TAS:
- Physics glitches
- AutoHotKey scripts (See this as a controller with auto-fire)
- Other glitches (Out of Bounds)
- Input recording and playback.
Does make a run a TAS:
- Slowing down the game in order to allow a human to perform complex operations. Playback needs to happen at full speed.
- Making programs to alter or edit player input (hex editing, rerecording). Playback still needs to stay in sync.
- Making a program ('bot') that plays the game.
Just for the sake of discussion, AutoHotkey can perform well more than just pressing a button repeatedly. It can do sequences of keystrokes and other things. Im really aware of its possibilities, but they are definitely greater than a turbo controller. Anyway, out of that TAS list, i can easily perform the first one. The others work take alot of work.
Edit: I think sometime next week, ill try doing the first chapter of my speedrun TAS style and see if you guys think it seems to meet the requirements. I think thatll be fun to see a modern game TASed for once.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
curtmack wrote:
By definition, yes, your HL2 run would qualify as a TAS. As for whether or not Bisqwit would accept it is another matter - in addition to meeting basic requirements of quality, getting through the submission process, etc., Bisqwit also has to add a new section (for games that are TASable because of internal tools), and depending on how many games are likely to be TASed this way, it might not be worth the trouble.
The other thing to consider is that not everyone on this forum has HL2 and, as such, would have to wait for somebody to encode the run before they could even vote. (That's another issue - how feasible is it to encode an HL2 demo file to .avi format? I know nothing about it)
Very very simple, but time consuming. Theres a command, startmovie, that you put in console and itll take a demo and output it to BMP's of each frame. You use a program, VideoMach or others, to take the bitmaps and the audio and make it into an AVI. Here is a guide for Counter-Strike Source, but the commands and steps equally apply to any Half-Life game:
http://www.gotgames.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=1593
This is how the Half-Life 2 Done Quick team made an ultra quality version of their run.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
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Location: East Petersburg, PA
TNSe wrote:
As far as I can see with a FPS game, a TAS would need to qualify through 1 of the 3 methods:
1: The GAME itself needs to implement a system for RECORDING player input, SAVING the game state at any time, and RESUMING recording from the saved state.
2: An outside program allows for EDITING or CREATION of player input on demo files.
3: A program (BOT) is made to play the game by a player chosen path.
For 1, slowdown of the game (as a player still plays) would be very handy.
Is that 'qualify' for this site? Because then I dont know what it would be qualifying for... or do you just mean for it to be a TAS in general. Eh, thats probably what you mean. Blarg.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
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Location: East Petersburg, PA
Ah, i understand. I dont seem to know of a community that would accept it then. I did find, however, a command that you can put into console to cause the game to run at whatever speed you want it to. The only thing is that sv_cheats 1 has to be enabled:
host_framerate
Its default is 0, but try a value like .001 and the game is instantly TASable.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
Bisqwit wrote:
I think the minimal requirement...
...What does "going Out Of Bounds" mean? Does it refer to game code corruption, or just abusing wall clipping (i.e. collision detection)?
It is basically going outside the encompassed level space. 3D level creaters usually put a box around the outside of their map. This area is not supposed to be an area the player is allowed to go. Sometimes there are ways of getting in and out to this space. It could use wall clipping as you stated, or just movement means that the designer didnt predict. This is something that is not allowed by speeddemosarchive.com (SDA).
Its funny, but, their also may be a bit of game code 'corruption' (not really corruption, but errors that the game tells you in its system console) when you try one of the other kinds of glitches that have been found for this game. I didnt think about it until i reread what you wrote.
AutoHotkey is what you describe it as. Here is a better description given from AutoHotkey.com:
AutoHotkey is a free, open-source utility for Windows. With it, you can:
* Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
* Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
* Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing "btw" can automatically produce "by the way".
* Create custom data-entry forms, user interfaces, and menu bars. See GUI for details.
* Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
* Respond to signals from hand-held remote controls via the WinLIRC client script.
* Run existing AutoIt v2 scripts and enhance them with new capabilities.
* Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don't have AutoHotkey installed.
Basically, if you think about this utility, instead of slowing down the game so you can put in commands, you can just make the commands faster which in turn ends with the same result. Instead of slowing down the game to per frame speed, you can just have the input run at per frame speed (may not actually be per frame, but this is just a concept statement).
Basically, why im posting this is because the run so far falls on the line of TAS and speedrun at the same time.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
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I have a question about TASes. Ive been watching them for years, and they are all from emulated games. Can a TAS be of a non-emulated game if you use excessive savestates and tools (such as AutoHotkey or other input manipulators)? I've been working on a speedrun route for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and a few physics glitches require AutoHotkey scripts and going Out of Bounds. I know the FAQ states:
This site is a collection of tool-assisted speedrun movies of games that have been recorded using an emulator and other tools.
But, the 'other tools' isnt well defined. Obviously, as most know, Source engine based games have built in demo recording feature, which i dont see why couldnt be considered a tool that legitimately records input from a user. Like with emulators and roms, these demos are based on a certain version of the game to play them. There are ways to save older versions of a game if this ever becomes a problem. Would it be ever possible to submit a work in this fashion to this site?
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
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Location: East Petersburg, PA
I loved this game back in the day... and the original Vigilante 8 too. Isnt this the one with the UFO in it? I know theres one with an uber destruction UFO. :-P
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Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
Sorry for intruding, but where can i find the info on the deku stick+slingshot text skipping thing? I try to read this thread often, and i backtracked a bit but didnt find anything on it, previous of the last page...
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Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
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Hmm. It seems i've "been told" to keep hush hush.
Edit: To Demonstrate
Please do not post any more detailed descriptions of map exploits.
If you have any further findings, please send them directly to the mapper, Dustin Diamond. I have forwarded your observations to date.
Valve didn't make Strand, it's a custom map. And CAMP1 isn't an official map pack, it's a custom pack made by members of the community that has been kindly advertised by Valve.
Thank you
Rosie the Riveter
Moderator
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
To Comical: I read a few of the threads in here and on SDA, so i like to get both sides of the picture. I also read and helped with the Half-Life 2 DQ run, and i generally like to lurk around in forums instead of posting since most of the time i have nothing interesting or new to say. I like to watch alot of TAS's and other speedruns, but i really think that any avid speedrun fan will throughly enjoy someone completely taking the OoT speedrunning to the next, and probably final, level. I wish i had the time or effort to speedrun myself, but ive only ever been able to help out with minimal things on some SDA runs. I hope to someday do my Counter-Strike: Condition Zero run which i started over a year ago, but i really would have to get a determined fanbase to do it. I really respect your desire to work with Guano on this. I've seen almost all of Guano's WIPs of any of the OoT stuff so far, and I believe this will put TASing of N64 games to the max. Hopefully, the SM64 people will respect it.
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
Joined: 4/18/2006
Posts: 179
Location: East Petersburg, PA
All i have to say is... thats really awesome that someone figured out the random item that would make this whole thing work out. Acryte, this run will be the best... possibly beating the already super glitchy Mario 64 16 star run. History is in the making. Guano, you going to be doing it or someone else?
"I think we can put our differences behind us... for science, you monster."
