Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Saw the WIPs and I liked what I saw so I was looking forward to the full run. Sonic Pocket Adventure was a very weird game and I was curious to see how a TAS would go about the game. Whatever happened in Secret Plant was pretty crazy. Needless to say, I was quite entertained! Thanks Memory-chan!
Solid Yes Vote!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Stovent wrote:
grassini wrote:
i can't believe this is going to be accepted
How can you tell it is going to be accepted ? The number of 'yes' votes doesn't matter this much during the judgement. (SMB PAL TAS linked below is revelant)
grassini wrote:
but i guess zelmetrario always gets a pass.
This is quite false :
SMB PALSM64 16 stars
and probalby some others I don't know.
The rules says :
Keep the number of different branches per game minimal. A run for a proposed new branch for a game should offer compelling differences relative to previously published runs of that game.
I'm considering the no door as a speed/entertaining tradeoff, and "all dungeons" is similar to "all medaillons, stones and GAnon's trials", and so not different enough to get accepted.
Btw, one of my favorite TAS due to the tricks involved and the entertaining quality
Adding onto this, This submission was rejected as well despite the franchise it came from and it utilized the same goal idea as this submission with the addition of All Dungeons.
----
My thoughts on this submission:
From a technical standpoint, it's ambitious. I'll give it that. On the entertainment side, however, it falls flat to me. It felt like everything was done at random and it dragged on longer than needed. There's also the matter of the goal itself... it's quite arbitrary. Not outrageously arbitrary, but still quite arbitrary. In any case, I have to vote No for Entertainment.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Sadly I have not tried it on the latest version of BizHawk since I don't have an easily accessible Win-64 PC to test on, but I believe it will work all the same.
Will update the post to include that. Thanks!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Since I got the confirmation to do so, here it is.
Pokémon Gen 3 Lua Script
Creator: MKDasher
Supported emulator: BizHawk
Features:
Supports all Gen 3 main games (R/S/FR/LG/E)
Currently only US and JP versions are supported. Will have to manually add support for other regions.
Easy to use interface
RNG viewer for battles, encounters, catch rate, and even Pokérus
[/left]
NOTE: On Bizhawk, go to Config / Display... Then uncheck Stretch pixels by integers only.
ALWAYS make sure to backup your progress! There is a chance that BizHawk will crash suddenly because of the script.
EDIT: There was a problem with luainterface (the pre 2.0 lua) that occasionally causes memory leaks. For those using the older BizHawk versions before 64-bit exclusivity, always backup your progress. For those using the latest versions of BizHawk, you should be fine as lone as you use kopi-lua/nLua.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
MrWint wrote:
Well, where do I start?
Unfortunately for me, I was just about to sumbit my own SMB1 PAL TAS (my version here), and HappyLee beat me to it. Mine is faster in a few places and contains a different technique for 4-2, but that doesn't matter due to the frame rules, they end up with the exact same time.
Sucks to be me I guess.
But that at least gives me the opportunity to weigh in here.
Firstly to vouch for how optimized this submission is, it's on the same level as the current NTSC TAS. I could go into detail on how I created my version using exhaustive search and literally billions of automated rerecords, but the short of it is that this is very well optimized.
More importantly, I have spent some time comparing the two versions, precisely to get some facts to the matter at hand: Is the PAL version just a "bad port"?
I feel like part of the discussion so far was based on wrong information, misconceptions, and personal biases, and it would be helpful to provide some factual basis and clear some things up.
To that end, I have disassembled the PAL version to compare it with the NTSC version (a disassembly of which already exists as a reference).
You can find both disassemblies as well as a diff here, and it is the basis for most of the claims and dispelling thereof below. They compile into the exact NTSC and PAL ROMs respectively, so they are guaranteed to be accurate.
So, is it a poor port of the NTSC version?
In general, it actually looks to be a rather well executed version of the game, more akin to a v1.1 of the NTSC version fixing some of the bugs and issues.
For example, they fixed the 1-tile gaps above the exits in water levels (code), they fixed two issues with the spring object you probably weren't even aware existed (code 1, code 2).
They were also quite thorough when adjusting the physics parameters to accomodate the FPS difference. E.g. they updated some enemy hitboxes (code) and made the floor hitboxes larger (code).
But the physics are all screwed up to accomodate for the 50fps vs. 60fps difference!
The physics are different no doubt, but they are not more screwed up than before.
All physics changes are changes to parameters, the actual physics engine is the exact same. And you need to realize the parameters for the NTSC version were chosen arbitrarily to begin with, it's not like they were fine tuned to exactly fit the SMB1 physics engine.
All the resulting differences are not inherent to one version or the other, they just turned out that way by pure chance.
For example, the floor clip shown is this run can technically be done in the NTSC version as well, the same bug in the physics engine exists, it just turns out that due to a parity issue, you can't align the subpixels in the way you'd need to. This is not something the developers planned, they just got lucky in the NTSC version and less lucky in the PAL version.
The same goes for the flag pole glitch, all you need to do is hit the pole at the right height. The fact that this isn't possible easily in NTSC is pure luck, just how the arbitrary parameters play out.
But the physics are more exploitable since you more farther each frame!
That's actually not always true, the differences can work for you or against you.
For example, wall clips are significantly harder in the PAL version. The main contributor to make the glitch work is a bug in the wall ejection logic, which pushes you into the wall instead of out. But since Mario moves more each frame in PAL, there is less time for the ejection logic to affect you, making some wall clips which are possible in NTSC straight up impossible in PAL.
But the sound doesn't even match up in the same way!
The sound timing is different, but not because the developers were lazy.
All sound timing was adjusted for the PAL version (code), so you can safely assume that the way it sounds like is the way they wanted it to sound like.
Maybe the NTSC sound timing was wrong all along, and they fixed it in the PAL version to what their vision was from the start *dramatic reveal*.
But it's a different game!
It cetainly is. But so are different language versions of games. Or v1.0 vs. v1.1 versions of games. Or the Yellow and Red version of Pokemon, and still one can obsolete the other.
Having different categories for all versions which are technically different is just not feasible, you'd end up with dozens of nearly identical runs.
The deciding factor in my opinion is whether they provide different viewing experiences.
That is why e.g. Pokemon Green is a legitimate separate category, but Yellow and Red can obsolete each other.
If you were to create a Green run using the same route as the Yellow/Red runs, it would obsolete the Yellow/Red run, not the other Green run.
It's not about the version that is used, but about what it looks like to the viewer in the end.
But the easy full flagpole glitch trivializes the game, I like the complicated setups!
I fully agree, the crazy setups is what makes the warpless run so entertaining, and a warpless PAL run would be significantly different.
However, I don't think this is much of a factor for the warped run, just because there are no such setups, except for a single level. And to compensate, the PAL version has nice tricks of its own, like the floor clip.
But won't accepting this be a slippery slope, the warpless run will be next, then other games. We'll end up with all these PAL runs!
Firstly, I doubt a PAL warpless run would actually be faster than the NTSC version. PAL has many areas where it is significantly slower than NTSC, and I don't think it can make up enough time to compensate.
More generally: There's nothing wrong with using different versions if they provide advantages, and most of the time PAL will just be slower.
This is a rare case where it isn't, and the fact that they are so close is amazing actually, e.g. a single new NTSC flag pole glitch could make NTSC faster again.
But I like the NTSC version more!
I understand, but I don't think that should be much of a factor in this decision.
SMB1 is special in the minds of many people, since it is so iconic and recognizable, and I think this blinds many people to the facts.
NTSC is the version most commonly used, by casual players and speedrunners alike, but that doesn't change the fact that there are faster official versions of this game, and they have just used a slow version all this time.
For most other games, this would be an easy decision, just use whatever version is fastest, but for SMB1 people are too fond of their childhood memories.
Whether SMB1 is "special enough" for the NTSC version to receive its own category is up for the judges to decide, but IMHO it should be clear that PAL is the main version for warped runs, and NTSC is the side category because it's a popular but slower version of the game.
PAL versions of games have a bad reputation on this site, they are treated merely as second class, poor ports, cheap knock-offs of the "original" game. This may be true some of the time, but certainly not always, and I think this is a case where the PAL version should be treated as equivalent.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Ready Steady Yeti wrote:
Fourth, the category. The category is "105%". A lot of people have questioned what this actually means. So, we have the two main categories of the game: any% and 103% as mentioned by me above. But 105% is slightly different from 103% because 105% is based off of an in-game cheat code ("TUFFER") that makes the game "harder", removing DK barrels and save barrels, and also gives you an extra 2% when absolutely everything is completed, rather than just 103%. In the speedrunning community, this has been considered to be a separate category from 103%, and 105% is not considered "more 100%ish" than 103% in any sort of way, and is thus not a replacement of 103% runs. 103% is the true "100%" category, so I'd say that 105% is like a "side-category". The fact that one of these "side-categories" was submitted before any main categories were ever submitted is definitely troubling, since there's nothing main here to compare it to.
A separate problem with this side-category is that it relies on a cheat code to be performed at all. I'm not even sure that that is allowed here on TASVideos at all, though it isn't really considered cheating in this case.
While the point about using cheat codes is normally correct, there are a few exceptions to this:
-It simply adds additional difficulty and increases completion rate considered by the game in question. (Good example of an in-game code used but qualifies is Streets of Rage 2 in which the code is used to unlock Mania difficulty, the game's hardest difficulty. DKC3 qualifies as it increases the game's difficulty and adds a 2% increase in the completion rate that the game considers.)
-Unlocks special bonus modes with its own separate goal(s) and is distinguishable from the other category(ies),for the game in question. (One great example is Ristar. The in-game cheat/password is used in the Bonus Stage TAS makes it so that only the bonus stages (normally would be used in a 100% run considered by the RTA community... this might bite me later) are played, which creates a very separate experience than the any% category.)
On the subject of RTA definitions of categories VS TAS definitions, they are not interchangeable nor were they meant to be. The RTA community's stances on what defines a category are not the end-all-be-all. The category choice for this TAS is akin to the SNES version's which was already deemed to be valid thus it applies to this TAS as well. I know it comes off as hypocritical as I used a similar example for Ristar, but I do assure you that there is a difference.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
So as for lately, I have been becoming more and more anxious and increasingly depressed... It also doesn't help matters that I might have had a hint of Autism either. I've constantly been a massive nuisance to everyone (even though unintentional) and lately finding myself thinking about just giving up and wanting to leave this world for Hell where I belong. Bad things always happened around me and it only will get worse... I feel far beyond broken nowadays. Life situations haven't improved much and "help" hasn't truly been good to me... I honestly am losing more faith and trust in everyone and everything... shutting off from the world on all sides.
...
Dark toned post, I know, but it conveys how I feel internally.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
That one was very surprising and although I am a bit late to throw in my vote, I will say that this was a very pleasant surprise and I was very much entertained. Excellent job, hellagels!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
This has not been entertaining for me in the slightest. There are so many things wrong with this submission but let's list a few.
1) The goal choice is way too arbitrary. 96-exits on its own is fine as it's considered "100%" completion for the game. Fewest presses doesn't complement the category very well and ultimately causes it to drag on for way too long. While the two listed submissions were rejected due to goal choice, they both showed well enough optimization. This submission, however, lacks it due to the heavy restrictions placed upon itself.
2) The optimization is very lacking. Super Mario World is one of the site's most heavily optimized games and thus the standards of quality are very high. This submission does not meet such standards and as I have mentioned in the point with the goal choice, the goal severely leads to very sub optimized results.
Overall, this submission hasn't entertained me at all and the suboptimal play didn't help matters either.
Voting no.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
I'm sorry, but I am unable to follow how to really do it. I've tried to Google search on Github and it's wanting me to post the link rather than upload it outright (to the wiki, i think?) and Sourceforge is confusing me. x-x
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
If only there were good alternatives that also works with Mood Avatars... Either way, I will update mine.
EDIT: Updated the default avatar. Still hoping that I can find an alternative for Mood Avatars. ^^;
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
(850)
Joined: 5/29/2009
Posts: 515
Location: Hell...
Glad to see that this is finished, ruadath! Having watched the WIPs, I've been rather impressed to see Hard Mode finally done and so much more quickly than the current movie. I've been entertained for sure!
Voting Yes!
