Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Well, in this case it's more like "finding a killscreen in an endless game with a TAS", but I figure it's close enough to go here...
One A2600 game I have been testing for suitability for submission is an unreleased game named Telepathy, which was originally created by Atari to be played with an experimental "MindLink" controller (control your Atari with your mind by spastically twitching your face!) However, the existing prototype is fully playable (and thus potentially TASable in BizHawk) with a standard A2600 joystick.
The game was generally presumed to be endless when I started a test run a couple months back, mostly to determine where a potential submission would have to stop (leaving aside the question of whether a game like this could even be accepted on the grounds it is technically not a finished game). However, upon reaching the 11th level of the game, I found a certain obstacle could not be passed even with tool-assistance if it was already active when you appear on the screen it was on.
I reported this by email to another A2600 enthusiast (who runs a fan website with all kinds of information on the console and its games), and after some back and forth trial and error between us discovered that the seemingly impossible obstacle could be passed if it wasn't active (that bit requires luck manipulation), but the final section of the same 11th level was impossible to beat because you aren't given enough time on the death timer to get through it. Thus, a killscreen was discovered! :D
Details about the above discoveries for anyone interested in reading
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Although Miner 2049er got many ports back in the day (Wikipedia lists 16 different platforms it was released on, excluding modern-day rereleases!) the Colecovision version has an extra level the others don't, so that one should definitely be the preferred choice for this game.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Fearless Smurf smurfs them all! ;P
(The game is also available on the Atari 2600 but the graphics are weaker and there's even less variety in the screens, so Colecovision is definitely the preferred version here.)
MESHUGGAH wrote:
If this somehow goes to moon, I would really like to see the naked smurfette bug.
For reference to those unfamiliar with the bug, this is done either by deliberately backtracking from the last screen or holding UP+DOWN on the skull until Smurf wraps around vertically -> http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/cvsmurf.htm
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Koh1fds wrote:
Here is my list of WR nes runs that we will never know if they are real or not LUL
Maybe we could figure that out by carefully replicating the run in TAStudio and seeing if anything that would seem like cheating showed up in the process? (E.g. luck manipulation being necessary, a Lua script being necessary to replicate the run, etc.)
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Necroposting to announce I intend to produce a resynced file for this submission in BizHawk 2.3. I have several reasons I intend to do this:
1. To check if the door skip is an emulator-only glitch (not an unreasonable concern in light of what happened to morningpee's Seaquest submission). If it is, then it would render the submission invalid, and considering this is in Moons a problem here would arguably have a greater impact than the Seaquest submission (in the Vault) did.
2. To serve as a basis for an "extended" version of the movie that goes all the way to one million points. This game, like most Activision games, stops at one million, but because this game has clearly-defined levels you wouldn't need to go that far for a TAS according to the current submission rules. Nevertheless, because the one million threshold is the stopping point for other A2600 Activision submissions, I have decided to try to make such a movie file in case there is a policy change down the road. (It won't be put up for submission unless the policy actually does change, just left in my userfiles.)
I had intended to start this several months ago, but held off because there was no clear policy on resync submissions. Now that there is one, I intend to just put the final bk2 in my userfiles and have someone else use that as the basis for an updated encode.
Wish me luck!
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
So Simon Belmont II wiped out his entire clan by summoning Death himself with an altar in the middle of town that he REALLY should have just left well enough alone, all for the sake of getting back his dad's weapon? Darwin Award winner, right there... :P
Voting yes, and to anyone who is wondering what the deal with the colors in this game, it's a result of the limitations of the Spectrum itself. You watch the footage of ANY ZX Spectrum game, you'll see the same kind of things happening.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Xander wrote:
JosJuice wrote:
If the game doesn't use bounding box or some other GPU readback feature like EFB copies to RAM or EFB access from CPU (Super Mario Sunshine says hi), you can use whatever hardware, backend and enhancements you want without worrying about desyncs.
How can you tell if a game uses one of those features?
The Dolphin Wiki has the information about what games use what features, if any.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Honestly, I would rather see a run that warps to Level 8 with the glitch (and the branch labeled with something like "Level Warp Glitch") and continues from there over this. It may still end up being rejected anyway, but it would be on less shaky ground legality-wise than this one.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Well all that seems to solve the main debate nicely, it doesn't answer the question of what should be done with this particular submission. Should it just be cancelled and wait for the implementation of Nach's idea? Or maybe it would be better to set it to "delayed" instead?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Check your button assignments. The game's manual mentions that you can trigger the CONTINUE, SAVE, RETRY screen with the sub screen displayed by pressing Controller 2's A button and a direction on the control pad at the same time. You must be triggering this somehow with your button assignments.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Make sure you check your controller and hotkey configurations that there isn't a conflict first. Usually BizHawk is set up to have hotkeys override controller input, so if somehow you have the shift key assigned to the same function as the right arrow of your d-pad, the shift key will override the d-pad as long as you have it held down.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
I enjoyed the previous version of this TAS, so this improvement was an easy Yes vote for me. I imagine this version could end up in Moons instead of being put in the Vault again, mostly because the emulation issues that hurt the previous submission (done in psxjin 2.0.2) entertainment-wise aren't here now.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
It very much impresses me how big a leap this is over the previous TAS, nearly breaking the game in half with all the new glitches incorporated into it. Easy Yes vote!
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Hmmm... looks like the runner found some kind of insane combo that glitched the game into clearing the level automatically.
Here's what I see happening once the setup is complete (~20 seconds of time):
* Six across by four down blue combo drops pills down to...
* Four simultaneous clears of red and yellow columns, which also eliminates all the viruses in the rightmost column of the board regardless of color (definitely NOT usual game behavior)! This triggers one more blue pill drop to get...
* Four across blue, which somehow clears the rest of the viruses on the board and gives the stage clear message! The virus and score counters also go crazy briefly (you can see letters appearing in the score briefly as the score is counted up) as the viruses are all cleared out at once.
My first suspicion is some kind of overflow bug (similar to the effects of the endless bounce combo bug in Super Mario World), but maybe someone with more knowledge of the game can provide a better guess as to what's going on here?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Mothrayas wrote:
For Windows games, your options currently are limited to Hourglass, so you'll have to run the game in that and hope it works.
Also, because Hourglass development is pretty much dead, if the game doesn't work with the current version of Hourglass you're out of luck when it comes to TASing it.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
Mittenz wrote:
Lion Village Glitch: tonight I finally got an input file where this glitch occurs. In RTA runs, you would occasionally have one enemy death on this level count as 2.
Does anyone know why this glitch happens? And if not, would how you managed to reproduce it help figure out why it does happen?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
If this gets accepted, I would suggest a "Notable Improvement" tag considering the time savings is about 1/5th the length of the previous submission for this game.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 259
Location: Stafford, NY
the digit of Pi indexed with the number of the stage.
3.1415926535... (Digits mentioned in the submission text are underlined)
I wonder if you dig into the game code there will be a listing of pi to an arbitrary digit length somewhere... :P
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
