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As far as I know, one of the Chicken Invaders game supports multiple players (4?), but I can't think of any TAS exclusive trick that doesn't possible to replicate unassisted.
Of course if one would destroy the waves with 4 players, I would be entertained, but simply 2 players won't make big differences when the enemies come from multiple sides.
edit: I would also suggest a maximum score run (first bloods and combos) instead of pure tricks run, since it would greatly resemblence a normal unassisted run
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feos wrote:
The thing is, there doesn't seem to be an fds ROM of this game.
http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=2289
This is a Family Computer game, not a Family Computer Disk System one. Just change FDS 1 to 0 in the header so TASVideoAgent probably switches it back to NES.
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MUGG wrote:
How can they soft reset the game when only one input button is transmitted at a time?
The bot parses commands from IRC channel. Because of the lags (and programmer proclaimed suboptimal code) the bot was feeding input as soon as it finished processing. AFAIK the soft reset combo was submitted individually (multiple users, different buttons).
Explanation for the "start button not working" is probably he tried to implement helding instead presses, so the start button got stuck unless someone sent it again which would work for that frame and held it for the next ones again -> making it unusable again. Later he changed this mechanic.
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creaothceann wrote:
If you're using an editor then of course the results would be different. I guess the editor could be changed so that the rerecord counter is only increased when the TAS file is saved. But of course that's up to the author.
I'm glad that you didn't take my comment as something negative, I can't express myself correctly. Well while I know my TAS style isn't the common one (even in TASEditor, since I don't use branches, patterns etc), I was referring to the "evolution" of a TAS from a simple test run that goes into a crazy short TAS.
Like platformer games, where you can skip walls, push movement speed over the limit, many different objects to abuse... the huge number of factors greatly increases the number of tests "should be" done (to understand game engine). So I guess using the TASEditor branches (something like feos did #3773: feos's NES James Bond Jr. in 18:29.84) could be used in a way that you literally make a new branch everytime you start a new rerecord since this way all of your progress will be saved.
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creaothceann wrote:
MESHUGGAH wrote:
...bruteforce 1 scene for 64721378 times and find a trick that obsoletes the previous strategy, all those rerecords for that small frame range gets "wasted", and viewer will see "lol 482194128k rerecords for going right".
No rerecords are wasted. Obviously they were required for the author to arrive at the final solution.
I think you don't see the difference between rerecords counter (that changes everytime I draw something in TASEditor) and number of tests done that requires changing the locations and numbers of different buttons. Probably for really, REALLY basic games it's considered to be "small wastes" but in a more complex game where you have subpixels and you need to be fast and RNG changes (==> jumps changes, enemies changes, route changes ==> strategy changes ==> starting all over from RNG changes, jumps changes, enemy....), it's a huge waste. And I didn't even mentioned lag frames. edit: and 3D games, randomly generated levels, "unremanipulatable" situations (specific conditions required can't be reimplemented because of substantial changes beforehand).
Few examples with huge wastes (emphasis on RNG change because of delay or improvements): NES Trojan, NES Streemerz, NES Rygar, NES Widget, NES Metroid, NES Rod Land, NES Kirby's Adventures...
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As usual, it's greatly depends on the game. If you bruteforce 1 scene for 64721378 times and find a trick that obsoletes the previous strategy, all those rerecords for that small frame range gets "wasted", and viewer will see "lol 482194128k rerecords for going right".
edit: didn't even mentioned entertainment hex edits.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Warp wrote:
(Btw, what's with the screen glitches in the video? Is it a problem with the emulation?)
Yea it's a problem with the emulator. The actual game does not have this issue.
I'm not 100% sure that it's an emulation problem. Numerous youtube videos shows even more crazy graphics and physics glitch on real console.
Link to videoLink to video
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Obvious yes vote. Could you wrote how many in-game frame takes the smallest in-game time unit? You wrote in-game frames in the subtitles but in-game time unit in the table. edit: handsome Spikestuff added frame times to submission text.
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Spikestuff wrote:
I'll let Moth decide if this run should go up... because trying to make each round 99 frames will take a lot of time.
Welcome to the world of TASing. BTW it shouldn't be that much hard judging by your sub text. I guess you don't know any RNG values (since you only wrote "problems" intead factors), it should be a good idea to first understand which actions changes the AI to avoid losing frames.
xxNKxx wrote:
When start round, at freeze time (10-11 frames before end freeze time), press actions buttons can change luck
A very good place to start your investigation.
Waiting for SpikeStuff and xxNKxx's PSX Tekken 2.
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According to Wiki: ReverseEngineering, VisualBoyAdvance (and probably BizHawk) has these features, so I guess you want a more powerful solution like the IDA Debugger (the NES Battletoads scientist team also used this).
There's also a script that logs each newly executed code (IIRC written for fceux but shouldn't be a huge thing to rename a few functions) located somewhere in the Tool-assisted laboratory, but I can't remember what was it's name/a link to that post.
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If you know the positions of objects, test out which point is it (common ones are center, bottom left + top right / top left + bottom right). Most of the time the "hitbox" size is separated from "objects" properties because it's either hard-coded (probably you can find it in the ROM) or its calculated according to the objects size.
With disassembling, you could get the information how the game processes these objects and you could trace log a frame where you get a hit (collision hit) and see how does it decides the hit check.
Or goofing with memory values and make a simple lua script to draw a gui.box with values you think are close to your original position. Once you know 1 object's "hitbox" parameter, you can use the same offset (probably) for other ones too.
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I've gathered some articles to Wiki: Meshuggah/Media. Wiki: SiteHistory should contain it (according to TODO).
Also a few milestones should be added and reorganize it into a humanly readible page like first "executes arbitrary code" (edit:) TASes and SDA marathon appearances.
Aaaand this won't be me.
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The "easier" way is using branches as TASeditor suggested. The other way (what I use) is comparing movies in different instances (N emulator for N movies) with frame advance delay and background input.
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Masterjun... made 6 movies, each of them required very different techniques and "approaches" to understand how to improve those TASes. Definitetly will vote for him.
edit: vote casted for the god
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Lord Tom wrote:
I'm impressed to hear you're 4 seconds ahead as of the ice beam, I was aware of an maybe 1-2 seconds improvement for the whole run based on making the low % and 100% so wherever you end up it'll be bigger than I expected.
I don't noted which techniques made a lot of improvements, but fundamental ones are X subpos and Y pos optimizing and a lot of tricky lag removement tricks.
Lord Tom wrote:
I may be confused/misunderstanding, but I don't think the delay after killing Kraid is even close to 24 seconds. Watching on YT, it seems there's about 5s from when K takes the last hit until the reset can occur, then about another 7 to get moving again afterwards (which wouldn't be decreased using early reset-->enter password).
Sorry, I totally forgot that. The delay timer's unit is only 10 frames, so 24 delay (for example at kraid) is 240 frames (249 at worst delay) = 4 second and not 24 as I mentioned. It looks so much longer when I frame advance =)
Lord Tom wrote:
Finally, does OoB just mean "out of bounds??"
Yes, whenever Samus is not on the screen.
Lord Tom wrote:
Anyways, great work & looking forward to the final product!
Thank you! Well, I'm still improving up until to Kraid, I'm nearly tested all possible paths, so currently I reset the game 159 frames faster, I need 3 frames to improve it with 9 frames (delay timer).
Also since it looks like I will have to do even more tests for the rest of the TAS even after 110k rerecords, I think I will eventually release my WIPs, since I already "fuck up" the TAS with random sound effects and music. Would like to know what others think about that, so wait until I tear apart Kraid.
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