I thought I'd make a thread for all people to display game glitches that are totally useless (so not shown in the TASes), yet produce funny/hilarious effects.
For the first one, there's a glitch in Donkey Kong Country 1 (SNES) where Donkey Kong appears to be humping a grey Donkey Kong. Here's a video of how to do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hDQLeVJh1A
I hope this starts a long thread of hilarious glitches.
[Edit by Bisqwit: Merged into existing thread "Just be funny". Your topic is not significantly different/special to warrant a new thread.]
After modifying that 1st halfloop jump to get a bigger boost, I was never able to get the 24.15 that I got earlier. All I was able to get was 24.16. this just goes to prove my point that "bigger boosts don't always mean faster time".
A little longer explanation would be that since the boost is bigger, the bike goes further to the left of the screen, to a point where it's too far and therefore loses some speed. Doing R2T and then RT is actually better than TtFT and Tt in this case, because then the bike doesn't lose speed.
That's why I wanted to know what lap time you got.
For the first half loop, I've found you can do the R2T, then jump and do a TtR. This saves about 1.5 frames by my estimation. Holding L and left the whole time, I do an 11 frame jump upon landing, then 2 frames X, advance 6 frames, then 2 frames X.
For the second half loop you can do TtF.
For the third half loop you can do TtFT.
It would help if you told me what time you got by doing those tricks in those jumps. I know it might save 1.5 frames after that first halfloop, but that's irrelevant if the lap time is .01 seconds longer.
I was wondering something about this run. Is the plan to just beat it on bronze?
The plan is to TAS it on bronze, then copy that to Silver. Hopefully, a hex-edit copy of the tracks will do it. If not, then I'll have to TAS both Bronze and Silver, and then when that's done, I'll start a new TAS from that SRAM, which will then beat the game on Gold.
So there will be like 2 TASes: one that will beat the game on Bronze and Silver, and another one that will beat it on Gold. The first will be an "intro" to the latter. The actual submission is going to be the all-gold run, but there will be a link to the TAS that got the SRAM this one started with.
Knowing that fact, I'm not going to re-do Dragster to include Nitsuja's find right now, and I am not going to try to find an even faster way to do that first lap of Zoom Zoo. The reason is that even though this is a TAS, it's only a "pre-TAS TAS". Therefore, it doesn't really need to be all that perfect, since the all-gold one will be perfect anyway. Still, I'm going to do it as perfect as possible without losing my mind. It's going to be a good quality pre-TAS, but the all-gold is going to be a little bit better and a little bit faster.
That being said, you still can post suggestions about how to improve some things, and I really appreciate those comments and suggestions. Those new ideas will come in handy for the all-gold TAS.
I died at age 0 from (can't remember the disease).
You can remember a dozen of fictional family member names but not the name of a disease?
Actually, the first two paragraphs were still written in the "Diary" window. I just copy-pasted them here. The reason of death wasn't written in the diary though.
That game is fun! On my first game, here's what happened:
I was born a boy in the town of San Juan Bautista in Paraguay's Misiones Department.
My parents have named me Estéban. My surname is Fernandez. My mother, Miranda, is 24 and my father, Roman, is 29. I have a brother, Aldo, age 1, a sister, Lucinda, age 2, a brother, Claudio, age 3 and a brother, Hector, who is 5.
I died at age 0 from (can't remember the disease).
Actually, scratch that.
After modifying that 1st halfloop jump to get a bigger boost, I was never able to get the 24.15 that I got earlier. All I was able to get was 24.16. this just goes to prove my point that "bigger boosts don't always mean faster time".
A little longer explanation would be that since the boost is bigger, the bike goes further to the left of the screen, to a point where it's too far and therefore loses some speed. Doing R2T and then RT is actually better than TtFT and Tt in this case, because then the bike doesn't lose speed.
So basically, the SMV that I linked earlier is the one that's going to be kept. As I said before though, the end of the lap might change if I can put in a trick near the end.
So yeah ... no modification.
When doing those things which loop you around the other way why didn’t you do a table top? Also why did you do a roll on the first half loop, can’t you tap backwards and do a flip like in the dragster course. Also after the first half loop you jump and do a roll trick, again why not a flip?
The first half-loop has been changed now. It's now a TtFT with a small jump doing Tt afterwards. Compared to the "old" one (which was R2T with a small RT afterwards), it gives 608 boost units instead of 536. Not a big time saver, but still saved some time. Good thought. And no, I couldn't do anything more than a simple Tt on the small jump because I didn't have enough room (the bike would bounce on the track and lose speed).
The second half loop can't be done with a tabletop. I mean, sure, I can do a Tt in it, but that would be the only trick done in there. I can't mix it with something else. Therefore, FT is better on the second half-loop (304 instead of 152).
Spider-Waffle wrote:
Then for the last half loop, maybe you could do the tap backwards and do a flip + tt + z-flip or something.
Tapping backwards doesn't work on these halfloops (except for the second one, but don't ask me why only that one works). Also, the trick done on that halfloop has now been changed. Instead of the "old" F2T, I now do a TtFT. I managed to squeeze a Tt in there.
Spider-Waffle wrote:
After the big jump about 1/3 through there’s a patch of green and blue track on a small hill, this is the color code for safe to jump. You can jump near the top of the hill and get a normal jump trick in (tt+f+t). But maybe you lose your big boost or something since your going too far to the right of the screen, how does that work exactly?
I can't do anything on that "safe jump zone". There's not enough room for anything. Not even for a simple twist. The bike would land on the uphill slope and then bounce off the track, therefore losing speed and boost.
Spider-Waffle wrote:
After the big jump near the end you can do a small jump near the top of the gold ramp and land a twist or z-flip I believe, but maybe the same problem as the last one exists here too?
I know that. I did say that "The end of the lap may change if I can insert some tricks in the last part", didn't I?
Spider-Waffle wrote:
I was thinking you might be able to save a little time by jumping when the slope of the track is increasing, like on the big jumps or the loops; just like on sonic.
Thanks for all this detailed information, spider-waffle, but I already knew all that. It's going to be helpful anyway since now I have a clear reference for stunt courses.
* UPDATE *
This time, it's a third of an update. It's about Zoom Zoo (the second track). I've now completed 1 lap, and the time I got was 24.15 seconds. A guy on the Uniracers yahoo group claims to have gotten that exact same time for a lap too, but my guess is that he got it by letting the CPU finish first (which gives a permanent speed boost, enough to warrant about a second of improvement).
Without this handicap, I'd say that he would have gotten about 25.15 instead of 24.15 seconds. Anyway. I got 24.15 on the first lap.
There's an SMV available on my webpage. I'll encode an AVI when the whole track is done.
The end of the lap may change if I can insert some tricks in the last part.
Enjoy!
The brute-force bot would need its own programming language, or something like that. It could be a language similar to C. Here's an example of what could be done for a 100 frame search, for SNES, with only a few buttons allowed instead of the whole controller:
That's not real code by the way .. I know the syntax is probably wrong and everything, it's just to give a general idea. Of course there's more to it than just that. There are conditions to validate using memory addresses and comparison values.
This could either be a programming language that the user types himself, or you could make a GUI that would allow them to do it more easily. Like ... they select what buttons to use, write how many frames to brute-force, and then some kind of list of conditions that he could choose (enter a memory address, choose between <, <=, =, >=, > and !=, and then enter a value of comparison. Of course he could add many conditions, choosing AND or OR.
Those conditions would be there only to rule out some results, so that the bot doesn't test long things if that result isn't going to be used. For example, if you REALLY don't want your character to suffer damage, then a condition would be set so that when the memory address containing the health of your character decreases, you rule out that possibility and go to the next solution.
That's how I would see it, but then that's only my personal opinion. It looks like it could be a fairly big project to do, but any TASing emulator would definitely greatly benefit from such a feature. At least I would use it.
End of babbling. Just my two cents.
EDIT: Oh and you would also need a condition to determine which of the solutions is the best. Like "when $MEMADDR$ is the highest/lowest", or something.
EDIT2: This topic should be moved in the TAS Laboratory.
By the way, guys, you can join #uniracers on IRC (same server as #nesvideos) and idle there if you want. This is where I discuss strategies and results I get. So if you want the latest news and even participate in the making of this TAS (by discussing it), that's the place to be. It's generally way easier to give information in a live chat than by replying to forum posts. :)
nitsuja wrote:
Does Tabletop+Flip+Twist give a bigger boost than Flip+Z-Flip? What about Flip+Twist+Z-Flip (which can also be done in a normal jump)?
I wonder if you held your table tops for longer if you’d get a better boost.
The boost value seems to be the same whether I hold it for 7 frames or for longer than that. Only the points given from the stunt seem to change, not the boost given.
Spider-Waffle wrote:
I think if you jump during a boost you keep the speed the whole time your in the air. So maybe it’s faster to get the flip boost and then jump and do the trick again. Or at least jump at the end.
Jumping at the end of a boost will keep the speed the whole time I'm in the air, as long as my X position in the screen (7E1509,1u) stays below 175. Most boosts take you further than that, and therefore, the speed will decrease while I'm in the air. Storing the boost definitely is better than using it every jump.
* UPDATE *
The first track has been redone, thanks to Nitrodon who has found a new combination of tricks that can be repeated over and over again. Instead of using what is called a TF (Twist/Flip), I now use what I call a TtFT (Tabletop/Flip/Twist).
This new combination of tricks allows for 1 more trick to be inserted into one jump. It means that a bigger boost is stored in memory, and therefore less jumps are necessary to gather all the boost necessary to get to the finish line.
Here's the file: Dragster in 23.56.avi (2.49 Mb)
Enjoy!
The new time, 23.56, is 0,89 seconds faster than the video posted on Youtube (link) which got a time of 24.45 on a console. This means about 53,4 frames. That's how close this dude was to perfection. He's an incredibly skilled Uniracers player, and I wouldn't want to play against him! :)
You're only Ten Minutes in. I'm sure that Inichi didn't use a lot of optimization, unless he's a human TASing machine in disquise.
Give it another twenty or thirty minutes, you're bound to make some headway.
But then if he's still slower than Inichi, he's going to have to re-do 30 or 40 minutes worth of stuff, instead of just 10 right now.
* UPDATE *
Progress has now officially started for this run. The first track is done, thank to the help of Moozooh, Nitrodon and that movie on youtube that got a 24.45 time for the track. Moozooh found the memory addresses for X position, Y position and Speed; Nitrodon found the memory address where the boost is stored. Using these addresses, I was able to get a maximum speed and maintain it while I "charged" the boost meter.
Here's the file: Dragster in 24.18.avi (1.18 Mb) [EDIT: LINK REMOVED]
Enjoy!
I'll get to work on the next track soon. It's going to be a long one though, since it has 3 laps and it's a lot more complicated than a flat track.
I don't know if this has been brought up before, but TAS Movie Editor doesn't work with movies made using Snes9x 1.51. Would it be possible to add support for those kinds of movies too?
Also, I noticed that the program will make a complicated error message box (much like the one mentionned above) when you try to save the file while the emulator still has it open. For example, let's say I watch a movie in Snes9x 1.43, and then I pause it, go to modify something using TAS Movie Editor, and then try to save it, it'll show a weird error. That's probably a read-only thing.
Hope that helps solve / manage some errors!
Continue your great work on this, it's proving to be a very useful tool!
You are saying that many non-US citizens feel inferior to the United States, so they harness their aggression on internet chatrooms/forums? I too suspected that, but I hate to think that there are people in the world who are so jealous of a single country that they spend all their free time bashing on it.
Note the "subconscious" part of the wikipedia article.
I'm not saying that everyone who bashes on USA feel inferior to the USA. I'm just saying that "haters", generally speaking, feel inferior to something/someone else and therefore finds and easy target to bash on, to channel their negative energy on. So even if they don't feel inferior to the USA, but let's say he's being bullied at school, he finds an easy target, in this case the USA, and bashes on it. Why? Because he can and the Internet is anonymous and he feels good bashing on others.
That's my theory, anyway. Let's all hug a hater.
I sincerely hope none of you take those anti-American videos seriously. These videos aren't even remotely funny. I see so many foolish assholes who rip on the United States for no good reason. It isn't like it would be difficult for someone to go to any country and find less educated people to interview, why is it always America?. I am not saying that anyone here bashes America, but people on youtube seem to do it frequently and I find it kind of insulting.
An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person. It is often subconscious, and is thought to drive afflicted individuals to overcompensate, resulting either in spectacular achievement or extreme antisocial behavior, or both.
I hate to double-post, but since the last post is more than a year old, I figured it wouldn't matter.
I've picked up interest in this game again. I feel that I've played it enough when I was young to be able to deliver a good TAS for you guys. Therefore, I re-did the first track to see if I could get that 25.07 again, and I did fairly easily. I'm quite confident that I know the game enough.
That being said, I just read something on SDA (about a year-and-a-half old). Someone claims to have gotten a 24.95 for the first track. He even says that he thinks 24.77 is possible. He describes his strategy like this:
To do a flip twist first of all you need to tap left, jump quickly 'flip' with R and twist. Immediatly after hitting the ground, repeat so that you don't get the speed boost you normally do after doing tricks. You can do this many times in a row, but it's tough to not lose speed on the left tap. This will 'store' the boost and give you a much larger one. With this larger boost, you can fly off the screen and finish before the screen can catch up and finish before the normal time it takes to finish a course.
So he's talking about "storing boosts". That's an immensely interesting thing for a TAS, isn't it? I've tried all I could tonight to replicate what he's talking about, but all I get is the same old 25.07 again.
I was wondering if some of you guys could give it a try, just in case this happens to be true. This technique would definitely push me into making this TAS come to life.
EDIT:
Holy Crap!!! http://gamesource.groups.yahoo.com/group/uniracers/message/32
This guy claims to have RECORDED a 24.68!!!
And that board seems to have some GREAT times to beat in the TAS. This is gonna be awesome!
EDIT2:
Nevermind guys ... Youtube has all the best times. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEp9T0daxlw
That's the first track in a whopping 24.45!!
Yep, that worked perfectly and it was hillarious! Poor guy, talk about being UNlucky but the blue ice story, that can't be real... Can it? Anyway, thats crazy shit!
Nope. Can't be real.
The velocity of that plastic toy can never be great enough to dive into that man's skull, mainly because of the mass of that toy (which is really low) and the air friction (which basically slows that very light plastic toy down enough). That's pure physics.