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I was entertained, so I give a yes vote.
As far as I can see, you can manipulate the position and type of powerups. Also you can manipulate the actions of other tanks. So..
-Did you tried to distribute the killings between the 2 players to minimize the loss at score calculations? (1 tank difference means costs 9 frames loss, so it's better if you can lower the number of tanks killed by 1 tank one of the players) I'm not sure is it possible to do it, but since most of the time one of the tanks does nothing, I think it is.
-Sometimes I see that you actually don't know where the item will spawn and you don't/can't pick up the item earlier. For example at stage 39, you could easily pick up the grenade earlier, kill all tanks you did as in the movie and spawn the next tanks 3 frames earlier (except the "next" one since he killed with a bullet not with grenade)
And I would also like to see a list of how many frames you trade off for entertainment.
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xxNKxx wrote:
And I have many lag frames and not sure my main strategy is best
someone like MESHUGGAH easy beat me in future
No need to worry, I don't plan obsoleting long (10 minutes longer) TASes.
xxNKxx wrote:
I'm a noob gamer only, I don't know make script, search Ram,etc. When I come to TAS, I just target to Vault only, because I know what can I do.
Than all you need to do is learning these stuffs. Nobody borned with these skills or got that experience instantly once he started an emulator.
For making LUA scripts (that makes your TASing easier and comfortable and better) you should start with tweaking others basic lua scripts (FCEUX comes with a lot of samples, also some movies published with their lua script too). Or just read Wiki: LuaScripting.
For searching memory, there's a good list of articles on TASVideos like Wiki: MemorySearch and Wiki: RamSearch. Believe me, you want to learn these to understand the physics and rules of various games to come up with improvements using observations instead of trying to test way too many possible routes.
Making vault TASes is good since you learn different games and also get some world records. But don't call yourself a noob just because they are in the vault.
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DarkKobold wrote:
"PPS: This movie kind of proves total domination of TASEditor over old-style methods. Ask MESHUGGAH!" - Consider this question asked!
I aggree with AnS that using TASEditor people could become lazy or forget to test different things (and I would say the latter happened to us), but this doesn't reflects TASEditor itself but TASers.
In my "hard" projects like Battletoads and Kirby's Adventures, viewing the state of multiple frames (lag frames, memory observation, "future" check) helps a lot to optimize both little parts and they overall impact on the movie (I'm mostly referring to checking multiple routes much more comfortable and the ability to easily fix the input throughout the whole project). You can do the same with traditional tasing... by wasting a lot of time and I even do it with TASEditor.
AnS wrote:
And the quality of TASing directly depends on the number of tests.
You mean the optimization level directly depends on the number of tests which can be improved (the optimization level, not the number of tests) by making additional tools (lua scripts) that helps you what type of tests should be done.
AnS wrote:
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work well, because with more comfort people only become more lazy. We lower our own limit of patience accordingly with the new (lowered) level of difficulties. That's why I'm not even sure if there's any point in further development.
Tools are invented to help a man to reach his goal either faster or more comfortable. This doesn't means that anyone who uses such a tool will become more lazy. I could say many examples from real life that absolutely doesn't changed people at all.
Back on topic, I did checked different RNGs for Boss 1, but everytime I got the very same pattern (with different values of course). Now it looks like it has 3 specific conditions it requires to be met. Just to make a pure comparison to the TAS made without TASEditor, it used a much faster Boss 1 fight and it's 13 frames slower than our TAS with that specific Boss 1 fight (and I think it's now even more faster). I can't count how many hours I spent on rerolling the RNG to good values. Now try to do the same without TASEditor. (Warning: Attempting it can harm your health).
feos: I was kidnapped to the beach. Checking your movie.
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Well, this game is a bit... slow.... I think. Even with turbo mode (the playing speed) with TASEditor opened was... nothing special.
However, I thought I should check your TAS and left a scene faster by holding left earlier than you at frame 26272 and it's leaved the screen 2 frames earlier (26337: lag). It was intentional to delay that 2 frame ? Maybe you did it for luck manipulation purposes? edit: you only mention "1 frame delay" in your submission text.
I'm sorry but I wasn't entertained by this movie even in double speed, so I vote no for "entertainment".
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Judging from the submission text, you made really good efforts for your 1st TAS. Let me ask you, did you used TASEditor? It saves a lot of time in making TASes and also easier to handle various tasks like optimizating or implementing frame perfect strategies easily.
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xxNKxx wrote:
I watched this, I thought it have something new for me can learn, but it don't have. All differents here must kill enemies then can do it, the things/ways I knew before but I didn't it because I want make a pacifish run. All you here knew, a pacifist never can faster with a any% run.
Ok, I'm agree here's faster my run. I'm a newbie in frames war, can't make best in each frame. I need learn more than. I just feel sad if my run will become to obsolete by this, it's not fair play, better if my run get beat by other pacifist run. Ok, I vote Meh
Please read my comparison text and my posts in this thread. I've also detailed which parts would be copy pasted (that means it would be faster than your movie).
The reason I say this game shouldn't have a pacifist version is the small amount of enemies (and projectiles) that really too easy to avoid, just like I avoided a few in this run.
The way I optimized is I checked the memory for the "Foreground Camera X" position (0x0068) and the "Player position" (0x0357) and checked whenever I couldn't go forward because of invisible lag frame, I just made a 1 frame delay (of course I always had to recheck different routes and compare their time).
Here's a lua script that based on feos' lua script "template":
fgcamxlast = memory.readbyte(0x68)
xlast = memory.readbyte(0x357)
function info()
fgcamx = memory.readbyte(0x68)
x = memory.readbyte(0x357)
gui.text(10,10, string.format("FG Cam X: (%2d) %2d", fgcamxlast, fgcamx))
gui.text(10,20, string.format("X: (%2d) %2d", x, xlast))
if (fgcamx == fgcamxlast) then gui.text (130,10,"!!!!"); end
if (x <= xlast) then gui.text (130,20,"!!!!"); end
fgcamxlast = fgcamx
xlast = x
end
emu.registerafter(info);
All it does that shows the "!!!!" string whenever the camera (or the player) isn't increases. Now you learned something.
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I love how my TASes becomes precedents.
Let me share my opinion again so forum users can read it too:
- accept this movie for vault
- obsolete N?K's pacifist run (detail the judgement with the missing comparable any% movie and the optimization level)
- don't accept pacifist branch for this game again (doesn't serves enough entertainment, distinction (if I would recreate the pacifist with this movie) and challange to make it pacifist)
And the publishing text should contain "This movie abuses a glitch that skips the moon tier and directly goes to the vault." Ok I'm just kidding, but anything above is the deal.
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NitroGenesis wrote:
I liked the part where this shitty game got a moon. Seriously?
Voting yes for publication, no for moon.
I have no idea why this game is considered to be moon worthy.
Also I don't think the game should be "hard" in terms of adapting the pacifist branch. I would be interested in how does "accepting pacifist runs" are judged generally, mostly because the maximum enemies on screen is something like 5 or 6 (if I count the super mini enemies that's very easy to avoid). But I'm not a judge.
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got4n wrote:
First to vote in, well, me too I optimised weapons taking in first level, but don't forgive it"s a pacifist run so you should not kill enemies......... It'll be a Meh for me.
Did you read the submission text? I thought it's clear that my run is not pacifist and I even wrote the comparison that this movie would be even faster if it would be translated (I'm pretty sure most of the parts could be copy pasted) to make it pacifist (would lose more than 1 second) what would make it much slower time because of too many objects/enemies which makes more lags.
Also I had a lot of trouble about getting the best routes because the character's height is taller than 2 "tiles" so enemies would hit my head. Not talking about super laggy enemies and tanks and other idiot enemies that isn't possible to remove/manipulate away.
Also I tried to play with death as many times as possible without sacrificing time.
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Thanks for the answers feos and AnS. Here's just a demonstration about what I want to achieve: http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArK9PGq1pEbUdERRZlowX2FqM2RlNi10azdVSnlnOFE
A little intro: This is a reference sheet which lists specific techniques that were already proved to be faster for specific games. The purpose of this sheet is to help TASers maintaining their efforts made on a specific game and what else they could throw in.
For example, you save the sheet and rename it for your TAS project. When you observed your possibilities, you check what techniques could work and just simply change the color of the row if you couldn't use it or write information for yourself.
Since there's already a bunch of useful pages for this reason (Wiki: TasingGuide), I want to generalize the techniques and provide a link from TASVideos Wiki pages for the appropriate techniques (however I'm stuck at making links that jumps to the specific headers within a Wiki page)
I will rewrite some technique names and information texts... So... what do you think?
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So... Masterjun learned the game, made researches/debugs and used/created his own tools to find improvements what he did because this emulator had the possibility to use this RNG while the earlier one that p4wn3r used can't recreate the very same game state at that given time. He TASed the game's every parts but couldn't find anything else that could be improved, probably because it's already a highly optimized route to finsh the game so fast.
Now look at the rules. According to Wiki: MovieRules, p4wn3r's movie is acceptable. But Wiki: EmulatorResources prefers BizHawk/lsnes (this movie) and also accepts p4wn3r's movie.
So the difference in the two movie is that one of them could be made faster because the emulator was different.
The way I see is now that someone made the previous movie with the fastest possible route (as far as we know it and the author made many researches) that possible on that emulator which still accepted, later someone improved it but that was only possible because the newer, preferred emulator's timing difference (and the author made many researches).
If there will be no core changes done in the near future, I would say (and I'm not a judge) : accept this movie and add p4wn3r as author and Masterjun as co-author. Why?
Everybody's dream is console verificating everything and sometime we will need to leave VBA and use a probably better emulation. However Masterjun tried to come up with new things but couldn't improve it, just had 2 frame advantage cause of different timing. It's basically doesn't improves the earlier movie.
This judgement should respect p4wn3r's efforts he made on the game (the fastest possible run on the still accepted emulator) and proves people that it's likely to be possible on a real console since Masterjun made enough efforts to make it as fast as possible on the newer emulator without losing/gaining time.
I also think that just adding only p4wn3r as coauthor to this movie is a good idea, since we are making speed run records too, so if someone faster (in real time, days months etc), he wins and Masterjun did it. Of course, if this movie would be faster than anything else besides emulator timing, p4wn3r (edit:)wouldn't be added as co-author (or author for my opinion).
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Masterjun wrote:
Well since the last "positioning trick" is not only positioning yourself, it is positioning the camera too (X and Y position), which is quite a hard thing to do. (And trust me, that was really a hard thing to do, since I did that run myself)
Thank you for detailing, so it is a complex/hard thing to do indeed. Sorry.
Masterjun wrote:
Doing a run with only the goal of doing the same stuff as the previous movie in mind is not as hard.
Hmm... let me rephrase myself: What was the hardest thing you had to do (or very time consuming because of the complexity) that you think you should redeem co-authorship for this movie? Maybe Im wrong, but I think that the original creator even gia could do this if they would tried to TAS it on the same emulators you did.
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Masterjun wrote:
If the person really did all the hard stuff by himself, I would have no problem with seeing my run obsoleted.
This is my problem edit: "the hard stuff". I can't argue much with this example (since all I did what I wrote in the example but had no idea which positions I need to change in the end), but could you tell me which part of this run was hard? If you say the last trick, then I'm apologize in advance, since I really didn't wasted any time to understand why would it be really hard to make that positioning trick.
Now please tell me what do you think it was hard to do within this submission compared to the previous submission that made an improvement. Yes, I've read that you made many efforts and couldn't make an improvement (and I can understand and believe if there wouldn't be any possible way to improve it), however I would like to know the difficulty in implementing the same strategy (maybe there are too many factors to easily change various parts or you need to do indirect manipulations?)
I have to repeat myself, that I'm still not defending p4wn3r's or Masterjun's side or even part of any secret staff of TASVideos, and still appreciate that Masterjun still didn't forgive up after these posts.
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AnS wrote:
Could you show more details of this Rygar example?
When a level/scene changes, the game flags frames as lag frames and loads the next level/scene. If you press an input before this load, you can be 1 frame faster.
As my uploaded WIP shows, I can jump earlier by pressing an input before the lag frames. The last non-lag frame before the 1st frame of a level. This trick could work on games where you need to press actions 2 frames long or where game logic isn't fully loaded once the game started.
AnS wrote:
MESHUGGAH wrote:
try to press various buttons at any non-lag frames on different controllers
This is the most generic technique, and it works in any game. :D
I don't think that many people know that you can change the PPU clock by doing this. Prove me wrong.
AnS wrote:
Yes, it would be useful to collect all this stuff in one place. Usually people come up with those mini-tricks naturally, by struggling with Input when trying to squeeze more frames from an already very optimized movie.
Sorry if I'm not clear enough, I try to express it as much as I can. So what I want is to make a database with techniques and tricks detailed with examples in one place.
- this way newcomers can see what you need to observe and how to adapt it into various games
- using these informations to make a check list (you filter what techniques you want to use for a game and remove things you already optimized and generate a link or a code that inserting back will continue on what you need to do in order to impove a movie) about what you want to optimize. It's might be only me, but I used to write super lengthy txt files and keep 30 movies to make sure comparing every possible routes.
Just imagine the CommonTricks page organized in to various categories (per platforms, per strategies) with explanation and examples. This should (at least me) help others to both learn and make higher (if possible) quality movies.
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FractalFusion wrote:
This isn't a submission where someone simply ran the FCM-to-FM2-to-BKM converter and threw it into a submission in 5 minutes, an action which probably doesn't even merit any mention whatsoever.
Let me explain you how converting movies are done with the example of [1945] SNES Super Mario World "game end glitch" by Masterjun in 02:36.40 (the obsoloted one).
1. As far as I saw, FCEUX and snes9x has "bigger" loading times compared to BizHawk (nes and snes (two different) core), so just add enough empty frames to easily use the previous input (to start the level at 1st frame, move in the level at first frame, so you will need to use this everytime the game loads something)
2. Because the emulation is different, the RNG cycle is also different so all you need to do is to read and reimplement the strategy (rolling the RNG until a specific value got by fishes bouncing).
3. When you are done, i think there's another tricky place that depends on very specific subposition which only should be a problem if you get a random lag-frame or it's misplaced, this time you need to reoptimize your sub pos.
If someone would do this and submit this movie and say "I made enough attempts but it's can't be improved" and of course will yield in a slower time because of the longer loading times, should this movie would be accepted if there wouldn't be the new published TAS ([2380] SNES Super Mario World "game end glitch" by Masterjun in 01:39.74)?
I would really like to get an answer and not be avoided. Thank you.
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feos wrote:
I would like that info base to be connected to the Guide I made:
http://tasvideos.org/TasingGuide.html
And especially with this page:
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/CommonTricks.html
Though, the latter speaks mostly about the logics of what you do to games, while you seem to mean different input applications, like what kinds of input should be tested.
It was just an example of a category. As the topic implies, I'm talking about all techniques on all games that could be used to further abuse games and dynamically changing it to newbie friendly (bigger details and examples) or TASer friendly (check listing what you have done and use link generation to save your project, for example "build generators" for various MMORPGs) format/view. I miss a lot of tricks I abuse nearly in every game in these pages (even only from this list I could spot 3 things that common page doesn't includes).
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feos wrote:
Because if the effort was huge enough, you would need to accept the slower movie because it is way closer to being ran on console. But it presents no improvements in real time, though no misoptimization losses either, so it can not just obsolete the less accurate movie. This is why I suggest adding co-authors.
I still don't understand your logic. Please someone prove me, how hard is to resync the Pokémon TAS. I only tested Super Mario World which I could resync even without any TASing experience on that game and I hardly believe that resyncing Pokémon is harder in any way. Also "efforts" shouldn't count in adding co-authors.
"And once again, only VERY accurate emulator movies must be considered wanted to make off of VERY inaccurate emulator movies." - would you care to write these emulator "pairs"?
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So I suppose you heard about my crazy optimzing attempts on NES (@ FCEUX using AnS' great TASEditor). For 2 reasons I already had an idea on making a "cheat sheet"(concise set of notes used for quick reference) about techniques and strategies that could be implemented in to various games on different platforms.
However, I think it should be interactive in a way that you can filter what values you want to know about. For example only NES techniques from this "database" (if this could be supported) or a specific category like "Input techniques".
Let me show you an example for just "Input techniques" page if you would read the compact view:
Input related techniques
Pre-input processing: try to start your input before the last non-lag frame (works in NES Rygar)
CPU clock / PPU clock / Memory / RNG change influencing: try to press various buttons at any non-lag frames on different controllers (works in NES Kirby, NES Battletoads...)
Spotting special frames: try to press input at frames when the game either doesn't suspects an input like the very first frame of a level or different buttons in the menu (works in NES Battletoads)
Different patterns: try to test your patterns with different timings to reduce lag frames, change RNG or get different (sub)pixel positions (works in NES Kirby)
Delaying input: try to delay "crucial" actions to get different results that could remove lag frames, abuse a frame perfect glitch or helps you to change the RNG without losing time (works in NES Kirby)
Being slower is faster: try to lengthen various inputs that could leads to a faster time (works in NES Excite bike)
Okay, I must admit this wasn't the best example as I can't really think an idea thoroughly in short time and I could write a lot more, but I would really like to get feedback about would you be interested in, who could contribute for it, and how should it be made (I vote for generating content like using filter on movies insted making multiple wiki pages).
edit: of course my goal is to make a reference page that when I want to make a TAS in the future, I check the categories I want to optimize so I don't need to track every little things I already tried to test and keeping multiple movies for this solely reason. I think this should be a very good resource for every TASers (even super godlikes through first timers) for both learning and making TASes as highly optimized as possible.
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If anyone interested, I made an overlay of the 2 different endings (had to trim the glitched one a bit). I used Spikestuff's encodes. edit: thanks feos for noticing, video is now unlisted
Link to video
As you can see, in the glitched one, nearly all of the pallettes are one of kirby's graphic frame. And as the youtube comment says on Spikestuff's encode, kirby has "THE END" "power up" in the end.
Also it gets a bit off sync around ~50 sec.
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I already said, I don't care, switch the ending. So I would also like to people stop posting examples which are exactly not true. How comes the previous submission (MUGG's run where he suddenly goes under water and starts the credits) is "vastly different" than this one?
I understand that not everyone can figure out TH EN, yes it really requires so high intelligent that only 10 people knows that this game is ended. When I first generated the scrambled endings (I think someone else did it too) without knowing anything about the game (and still don't know anything about it), I instantly realised that: nice, I glitched it up.
Please just say "I don't like this ending" or don't even try to post something intelligent.
edit: " As for garbled graphics, I think I've seen this trick used too much, so I've become apathetic to it." - and I saw TASes too much, so I've become apathetic to it.
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If anyone wants to make this discussion worthwhile, a rule-maker (have no idea who makes the rules on TASvideos atm) should detail why a specific emulator should be counted as "should be avoided". Sure, there are a lot of emulators that has big flaws (FCEUX, VBA), but this doesn't means that BizHawk or lsnes is the holy grail. They are improved vastly, and has way more better test results.
However just because emulator X "is more accurate" shouldn't be a reason and I don't even want to hear or read this expression again at least in this thread. Your question is right, why would I say that you shouldn't use more accurate versions?
This is the same reason I stopped a few of my TASes (Indiana Jones, Rygar, Battletoads on BizHawk). As you know, as long as there will be timing issues in these emulators, they will have a very big impact on the way people TAS it.
A short list that used to be abused by TASers in games that's very emulator sensitive:
- RNG manipulation: without any statistics, there are games that uses RNG depending on sounds, CPU cycle time, specific subroutine that doesn't rolls on lag frames
- Mid-frame resets: requires correct CPU cycle/PPU clock
- Resets: requires "somewhat" correct CPU cycle/PPU clock
- Lag frame removing: requires situations that can be impossible to do with different emulator timings
- Timed events: this isn't a big thing, but if there's something that you need to do super frame-perfect, a new emulator could make a lag frame there (I'm referring mostly laggy NES games which there's a lot of them), therefore it won't work, while in a newer emulator it could work.
- Memory corruption: if the game loads a specific value later/earlier, some values could be changed too (we are talking about CPU clock dependent things).
I think you know what I mean, of course there are more techniques that should fit in to this list.
This means, that everytime an emulator will get an improvement that will act more likely like the original console, these things will have to be resynced. This means that if an emulator with even slight core changes will get as many resyncs as versions it had.
First thing the rule maker should decide is when we should move on to the next emulator. He need to understand that the number of emulator (version) switching (which emulator should be accepted) should be minimalized as possible. Of course if there's no core changes, a newer version can be used (since it will be syncable).
Second thing is the reasons you want to change an emulator. In my opinion, changing an emulator just because it has better sounds or graphics shouldn't be a reason. I hardly can think of anyone who would resync super laggy games just because in one of the levels a star is now brighter.
Third thing is who will sacrifice enough time to observe every submissions that uses the techniques I've listed to understand is there any improvement that doesn't happened just because the emulator behaves differently.
Also ideas like "if slower than look this" - "if faster than look this" should be avoided, as I said, just because an emulator loads faster, it could have more lag frames and be slower in total time and vica-versa (emulator loads slower but has fewer lag frames and faster tota time).
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Looks like I'm the only one (and maybe GhostSonic) who can interpret the meaning of various informations from solely the encode. Pretty sure that other people thought "TH EN" is something like "Thaumaturge encapsulations" so yes it's pretty hard to understand this is really the end since who thought that a TAS will end the game after it's started?
Sarcasm off, I don't care about it, so if that's the only problem, switch the ending.
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Slowking wrote:
Guess I'm the only one who thinks that if you can't tell that the game has ended, it hasn't actually ended. At least the last part of the credits or some kind of "the end" should be visible.
Yes, you are the only one. Next time read the submission text or read the next post after your's for more clarification.
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I love the diagram p4wn3r, and I'm glad that actually someone understanded my point and didn't forgot. I don't think I need to say anything besides that on the case.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
