Thanks :)
And if you or anybody else knows of more "entertaining" TAS's like this please point me towards them! I want to feature more videos with this kind of humor. Or maybe somebody would want to make one from scratch just for this purpose?!
That's basically what I imagined you would be doing. As others have noted, it should be possible to find camera coordinates in RAM, export them for each frame, and then write a small program to composite the image data for that frame with the map at the correct coordinates. In fact, if you had a small example of exported frames (preferably in PNG format), a map, and some camera coordinates, I could probably whip something up using Perl and ImageMagick.
This does sound possible to achieve... I'm wondering if After Effects has some sort of DLL where you can send coordinates to continually adjust x/y position depending on which frame the video is on. I'll have to look into this!
AndyDick, I'd be interested in a brief overview of how you're currently doing this.
Also, to avoid misleading or irritating anyone, can you mention somewhere in your youtube post that the metroid run was tool-assisted?
Following with interest!
In the YouTube description this is what I already have:
An NES Atlas video featuring Lord Tom's Metroid Speed Run in 1080p.
This tool-assisted speed run was completed in 8:19.32 with the use of saves states and door glitches. For more information see: http://tasvideos.org/2032S.html
Original Atlas borrowed from realSim of VGMaps.com and can be found here:
http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/Metroid-Zebes%28Unmarked%29.png
Gameplay footage encoded by creaothceann and can be watched here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKWM1Zqz5AM
Did you mean put TAS in the title?
And the process to create these is fairly easy... yet incredibly tedious and time consuming.
I start with a map from VGMaps.com and import into Adobe After Effects. I then export raw uncompressed footage from somebody's TAS and import that into After Effects. The resolution between the map and the TAS should match up exactly (the peeps from VGmaps like to make their maps in native resolution). I then advance the footage frame-by-frame and shift the x/y coordinates in comparison to the map as the game progresses.
In the past, I was downloading the footage from youtube and with it's horrible compression it doesn't match up too good (see my Battletoads video). I also had to shrink or stretch the video to get it back to native resolution... I'm glad I export raw from emulator now! See Journey to Silius for my first example of this improved technique.
In the end you're pretty much watching a video being moved over a giant map on YouTube. Since most of these maps are larger than 1920 x 1080 I have to also shift the map to focus on the gameplay. There are times I have to adjust the color too... probably because the programs used to create the maps are different then the emulators exporting the footage.
Does that make sense? I suppose I should make a video tutorial so others can follow in my footsteps :)
Watched it; totally amazing! I'd say it should be automatable in some fashion with some hackery:
1. dump a file with camera x,y changes & corresponding frames
2. dump screenshots for every frame
3. write a program to animate it
4. synch with sound
I'm 100% unsophisticated with video stuff, but the above would definitely be possible; perhaps others know a better approach.
I'll add the NES Metroid 100% to my wishlist!
Thank you sir. I'm sure sooner or later somebody will automate this and I really hope one day that emulators will support this in-game!
Until then I guess I'll be creating frame-by-frame... and on that note check out my latest video Journey to Silius: Stage 1!
If anyone knows any other funny speed runs with this kind of entertainment or dancing please let me know ;)
You could figure how much time it takes to reach the enemy, reverse its movement pattern for that amount of time, then start the enemy from that point for your animation. But yeah, that would be a whole lot of work for something that's not very authentic...
Yes exactly what I was thinking already! And honestly I think it would be worth the extra effort as long as it looked authentic... especially if its a game where enemy paths are already predetermined regardless if the player is next to them or not (like a koopa turtle walking back and forth between two pipes). All I would need to do is "sync" it for when the player actually arrives.
What I've been wanting to do is have the off screen enemies being continually animated on the map until the player reaches their position. Seems like your tool could really help with that!
I doubt that's possible, since usually enemies don't move until they appear on-screen. And if you were to let them move from the beginning of the level/game/whatever, their movements would probably not correlate with what happens in the video when they do appear onscreen (i.e. appear onscreen with a different/wrong position).
I think it really depends on the game and how the enemies move. It won't work for a lot of games, but I bet at least some would work. As for which game... can't really think of one at the moment.
I liked the motion blur at 2:00.
Very cool. I believe much of this could be automated, though.
See for example what I did here: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/nesvpic/other.html
Examples such as "Super Mario Bros 2..." and "Rockman: Bombman... (big and long!)" are worth mentioning. Being just animated GIFs, they are without music, of course.
The automated process of mine does not know the map beforehand; it only records what was seen in the game, so it doesn't know of rooms that are never visited.
That's pretty interesting. What I've been wanting to do is have the off screen enemies being continually animated on the map until the player reaches their position. Seems like your tool could really help with that!
Very nice! Seeing how the different sectors relate to each other, and seeing how the patterns in the vertical shafts repeat, was quite nifty.
Other games I could see this working well for (just as possible ideas):
* Zelda 1 and 2
* Castlevanias
* Batman
* Blaster Master
* Legacy of the Wizard
I already did the 1st Dungeon of Zelda but it's not a speed run... I'm sure I'll do a complete speed run sooner or later though seeing as how the gameplay footage doesn't actually move too often. Unlike Metroid which moved between 1 and 8 pixels almost every frame... ugh!
Legacy of the Wizard & Castlevania would be great too! Thx for the suggestions.
Frame-by-frame? How long did it take for you to create such videos?
If I had to guess... I'd say the Metroid video took maybe 16 hours to put together. Rendering in 1080p took 2 hours and final filesize was about half a gigabyte. Definitely a labor of love and totally worth it in the end :)
Would you agree?
This is awesome! It must have been an absolute headache to put together, and I congratulate you for it.
Now, what about, say, the current Mega Man 2 run? Seeing the map jump around all over the place would be hilarious.
Yeah it was a bit of a headache shifting the footage frame-by-frame... but worth it in the end :)
Mega Man would be awesome too! I've already done two already but they're not speed runs... here's Flash Man's stage.
I've mashed up Lord Tom's Metroid Speed Run with an Atlas map. You can watch it here.
I'd love to know what you guys think! Feel free to suggest other TAS videos you'd like to see mashed up too.
EDIT: Here's all of them so far (not all speed runs):
Nevermind... just see http://youtube.com/nesatlas
