Posts for Pokota

1 2
18 19 20
31 32
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
In US 1.07 the Sardaukar Unit at least inherits the Range property from the standard Trooper Squad (just tested by setting Trooper range to 25 and when the Sardaukar showed up in Harkonnen 4 I lost range advantage). I did not think to check other stats but I think it's safe to assume that Sardaukar Troopers are just standard troopers with some code exceptions added in.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Hm... I'll play around with Trooper/Trooper Squad stats and see if that changes the Sardaukar in Mission 4 any. E: So I just found the US 1.0 and 1.07 versions. Structure Repair is crazy expensive in 1.0, and with how the CYard is set up it would bankrupt you to keep it in full repair. There's going to fun be had now.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Hmm... I have an ordos save close to the ending; I'll muck around in RAM to see what's going on with health and whatnot. Just because I don't see them as discrete units with my hacking tools doesn't mean they're not. (It does mean that I'll have to add them to my spreadsheet though. I'm hoping what's on the infopage already is accurate as that would simplify things). E: Nach, can you look in OpenDune at the house definitions for Fremen and Sardaukar? It may be a factional property rather than a unit one, which would explain why they're not in the editor (and why Super Dune 2 doesn't give Sardaukar or the Fremen a Barracks) E2: Just confirmed power checking with the bare minimum base - the UI is reporting Power I/O properly - I have a need of 60 and an output of 59, and my radar shut down as expected. Just confirmed that Sardaukar have a base HP value of 110 (not sure how to check rate of fire). Repairing appears to be in chunks of 10 HP/Time (so structural repair speed decay is not a thing) To clarify, I've been using Repair to refer specifically to the actions of the Repair Facility. I don't think I made that clear before.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Truncated wrote:
I should have posted about it I guess. I found the code for build speed, and added it to the wiki page linked in the first post. As you said, it is exactly proportional to building health. That test is very impressive. You have control over the building's health through a script or something? Perhaps you could check if Sardaukar/Fremen troopers have higher health or other stats than other house's troopers? The mentats suggest this but I haven't found anything in the source pointing to that being the case. >Base Defenses follow the same rules as Units when firing from low health - it fires one shot instead of two, and fires more slowly. I think base defenses always fire once, so low health doesn't affect that. >A Windtrap's power output is simply it's health percentage. I thought so too, until yesterday. In the source, it's obvious that power output is either 100 (if health is 51%-100%) or 50 (if health is 1%-50%). There is no inbetween, and the GUI is lying to us. The OpenDune source comments on this behavior and suggests that it's wrong. I haven't found anything to suggest that power outage affects anything other than the radar. The build speed is not affected at least. Doesn't seem like structures degrade faster either, unless degrade due to power loss happens in some other part of in the code than the usual degrade over time.
First. I wasn't aware that OpenDune is considered a perfect recreation of the original source. There are unused flags in the building/unit data that the editor I use doesn't know what they do, does OD account for those flags (or maybe they're just bit padding?). Second: I'm running Cheat Engine on the research side of things so that I can manipulate ram directly. It's how I found the build speed/structure health correlation (not exactly proud to admit it, but it is what it is). Because structure and unit starting health values are known, it's relatively easy to find the right one (and the Player's Starting CYard is pseudotrivial because it doesn't move around in RAM - unlike other units and structures) and poke it. If there's a DosBox or JPC-rr build (NOTE: I've never actually set anything up for JPC-rr) that allows RAM manipulation/viewing, please let me know so that I can start pinning down addresses to watch. I'll poke around with the Sardaukar and Fremen units - I haven't seen anything from the hacking side of things to suggest they're discrete units either. Most of what makes the Mission 4 and 7(?) Sardaukar spawns and the Palace Fremen spawn dangerous is that they come in large numbers in a small amount of time. Third: No, Base Defenses do not shoot twice, but they do shoot slower in the Yellow - much like the other single-shot units (Solo footmen, who don't live long enough to demonstrate this property, and the Atreides Sonic Tank). I was lumping Base Defenses in with other Units because it's true for both that firing patterns change at half-health. Fourth: Lack of power should cause structure decay (since this was globalized in the release builds, power doesn't visibly affect this - it's easy to check if low power decay is just being trumped by it though), a dead radar (known to be true), and failure to fire Rockets from Rocket Turrets (I don't remember if their regular shots also get nixed but I do remember the rockets got nixed). Fifth: I'm (still) testing from EUR 1.07, there may be versioning differences.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
I'll poke around in RAM with it later. It makes very little sense to do it that way however given how construction speed behaves - why generate the value correctly for factories but get it wrong for Windtraps? With that said, maybe it was done differently in an earlier revision. I do know that the radar shuts off if you allow decay past the total requirement (I rely heavily on the radar and have a tendency to say in the 76-80 range for Per Windtrap load. Plus getting a per-load of 80 is trivial given that's Radar + Refinery.) To finish, some word choice quibbling. I don't remember what the general name for f(x) = 1/x is, but it's not linear.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Better way to answer the build speed question is to demonstrate. Link to video One thing I need to check and haven't had the opportunity to check yet is if the Frigate gets delayed or if Starport deployment gets delayed because of damage to the Starport - it's not something I really use all that much, despite it being Instant Reinforcements, because I play far too defensively to win fast. On the same token, starting from Mission 5 (the first time you can build a Repair Facility) the AI is completely wrecked against defensive play by... building a Repair Facility closer to the front than your Heavy Factory and making your defense units guard it. It's tied for the Heavy Factory on AI priority (and is given higher priority than a Palace), and has the same amount of HP and is somewhat more useful at army size maintenance given it's cheaper to repair vehicles - by a fairly wide margin - than to build new ones (and a walled-off Repair Facility combined with a few carryalls means instant reinforcements at the front if we can prevent lucky shots taking out carryalls). However, it does cost an entire harvester's worth of credit to build at 700 Solaris (not too much worse than the Heavy Factory's 600).
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Truncated wrote:
Even if you can direct the Fremen, ...
Should this be "can't", or can you direct the Fremen in some versions? The one I played Fremen were always AI controlled and attacked the enemy base as soon as they spawned.
I honestly can't remember if they can be controlled or not. I generally avoid building palaces myself since you're warned by the mentat not to lose your palace. Either way, Fremen can be squished by a Harvester.
The Saboteur is the fastest foot unit ...
It doesn't matter, because any base defense will shoot it down in one hit. If there is no base defense, you have already won anyway. (The saboteur also has the habit of running into walls and blowing them up, but that's probably no problem for a TAS.) I predict Ordos Palace just isn't worth building in a speed run.
It really isn't worth building. The AI is moderately capable of sneaking one in to your base because the player can get distracted, but that's about it. Maybe this could be a reason to select the Ordos territory for the penultimate mission, since in a TAS environment you'd be able to prevent a saboteur from doing anything meaningful anyway.
Construction/Repair speed is adversely affected by structure health, and all structures decay (faster - the House Decay Factor is decay in the absence of a power outage) during insufficient power.
This is very interesting info. Do know more about how this works?
  1. How much is building/repairing speed affected? Does 50% health mean 50% building/repairing speed?
  2. Is harvester unloading speed affected?
  3. How does decay when you have power work? I have noticed it, but the hints in the game tells nothing about this.
  1. Structures are affected by health in different ways, all of which are lead to inefficiencies in production.
    • Build/Vehicle Repair speed seems to be determined by (Unit Build Time / Building Health Percentage). I'll have to test this further. All factories and the Repair Facility follow the same rules, so I'm lumping them into the same category.
    • Base Defenses follow the same rules as Units when firing from low health - it fires one shot instead of two, and fires more slowly. I don't think it's proportional to health remaining so much as it merely cuts in half once you hit half health. Will test this though. From descriptions, Base Defenses are supposed to stop functioning during an outage but I have only seen Player Rocket Turrets fail during an outage. All Regular Turrets and AI Rocket Turrets are not diminished by mere lack of power outside of outage decay.
    • A Windtrap's power output is simply it's health percentage.
    • Harvester unloading speed is unaffected by damage, though I think random credit loss is more frequent with damaged refineries/silos. Not sure though. I also do not believe that the Harvester... harvests less quickly due to damage, but this also needs to be checked. If it does, then that reduces further the value of the Harvester as cheap anti-personnel.
    • Non-production facilities such as the House of IX or the Radar Outpost do not see any other drawbacks to low health, and obviously anything not actively producing can be neglected once no longer needed.
  2. Starting with Mission 3, each house has a "Decay Factor" that determines how much weather damage (for lack of a better phrase) a house's structures take even when properly powered. Atreides takes 1 damage every time unit, Ordos take 2 and Harkonnen take 3. I have to go back and test to see if this is merely amplified during a power shortage or if shortage decay is a separate thing. My understanding was that this originally was only supposed to happen for buildings without proper concrete cover but it was accidentally made global, and I suspect it was left global to prevent the player from playing wholly defensively and merely denying the AI access to spice after the AI's local spice fields were exhausted - because upkeep still has to happen in the absence of AI attacks, the player still has to harvest spice to keep the upper hand. All lack of concrete does as of 1.07 is cause you to start the building as weak as 50% health (depending on how covered the ground was at build). One final note: Decay Factor does not bring buildings below 50%. I can't remember if Outage Decay can bring it below 50% or not but I don't think that will either.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
There's no formal control over 'Thopters, and you don't get them until the same mission that the enemy base is fortified with something that shoots them down. If we can manage to make them useful, that would pretty much clinch it for Atreides being faster despite an early-game range disadvantage. Fire time for palace specials might not matter for the first use by the player (I know the AI needs to wait out their timer before using their palace specials, otherwise the final mission would be nigh-impossible as all the Emperor would have to do is throw his death hand at you before you can get established). The construction chain is CYard -> Wind Trap (300) -> Refinery (400) -> Starport (500) -> Palace (999), and the Starport we'd want to have anyway just because we can get lots of units quickly from it. I do not see very much harm in constructing a palace if we can conserve units between pushes. With that said, the palace specials are not very impressive in the hands of a realtime player.
  • Even if you can direct the Fremen, they're still foot units and still can be taken down by harvesters - and like Sardaukar Troopers, they're not a separate unit internally, so at best they're an instant Zerg Rush.
  • The Saboteur is the fastest foot unit (same speed as the Quad, so it can outrun anything that could squish it) and instantly destroys whatever structure it enters but it is ridiculously frail at ten health (four infrantry shots, two from troopers and wheeled vehicles, and one from everything else).
  • The Death Hand is super powerful, but slow to fire at once every ten minutes and is very inaccurate (unless the Slowest Speed Accuracy Trick applies here, but that would still be outside the scope of a TAS).
Trunc: That map for Atreides 3-A has a spice bloom in the middle of a rock zone, so that needs to be looked into. Knowing this game, though, it might actually be there instead of being a seed mismatch - this was by the same company bugged CHOAM into not actually selling 'Thopters, after all. I'll concede the point about the final mission, I'd only played through on all three houses once long ago so I didn't notice much difference in base defenses. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE I JUST THOUGHT OF: Construction/Repair speed is adversely affected by structure health, and all structures decay (faster - the House Decay Factor is decay in the absence of a power outage) during insufficient power. We'll need to consider this for the pre-Starport missions.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
ReyVGM wrote:
I've only tried the PSX core/cheats, and I always use MainRAM, 2 Byte, Hex. But I assume it would happen regardless of what core or type you use.
What game and address? There are certain addresses that can't be frozen because of reasons that I don't fully understand, you might be hitting one of those. I run into this problem all the time in GBA cheating.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Following up on my previous report on the TAStudio crashes. PSX: Now more-or-less works as expected. Memory use does not return to expected levels upon closing TAStudio (remained over 1G Private Bytes and over 1G Working Set after closing TAStudio); is Garbage Collection not being run? Did not throw an out-of-memory exception. N64: Majora's Mask threw an out-of-memory exception after frame 399 when I switched from the PSX test directly to the N64 test. Upon checking from a clean program start, the exception did not occur.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Ordos would probably be the most entertaining just from it being a suboptimal character (and the fact that you get the Deviator to play around with). Here's an excel spreadsheet with all the pertinent data.
  • Fields suffixed with an asterisk are not relevant to that unit type but are still declared for whatever reason; those columns are hidden.
  • I did not hide columns for unused bit flags.
  • The Filelist, the Voice definitions, and the Music definitions have been excluded as that's an exercise in tedium to do those manually.
(Here's the ini file that the editing program spat out when I dumped the settings. It dumps everything - and I do mean everything - about the game.) More comments, most of which are relevant for 1.07 and unknown for earlier versions.
  • That freebie carryall does eventually go away even if you use the quick return bug. It sticks around long enough to complete mission 1 but not to complete mission 2 on a harvesting victory (Harkonnens have an advantage here in that destroying the base counts as a victory condition for them - I need to go back and check to see if it counts for the other houses as well).
  • Troopers automatically switch to bullet attacks if the target is in range of the bullet attack. As far as I've seen there is no difference in damage - it is purely cosmetic. NEEDS VERIFICATION.
  • Missions 2 and (I think) 7 require you to pass the copy protection before you're allowed to start them. The copy protection is, of course, based on the manual and not the game internals.
  • No point in attacking Shai-Hulud - after a worm eats three vehicles it goes away. This can be used to the player's advantage when dealing with the opponent, though be warned that worms typically don't eat enemy harvesters unless you can watch it happen. NEED VERIFICATION ON IF ENEMY HARVESTERS CAN BE EATEN DESPITE FOG OF WAR.
  • On that note - the AI builds units pretty much continually, and the harvester adds to their coffers pretty much instantaneously - it staying in the refinery doesn't mean much if you're not about to destroy the thing. Most of the time the AI is keeping their production facilites at 99% complete to facilitate Zerg Rushing. To minimize defensive needs, you'll need to remove the AI's Contruction Yards and Refinieries as early as possible.
  • The AI always gets to repair buildings for free.
  • Deviating a sonic tank that's part of a group of the same is fun, especially around buildings - since Sonic Tanks are Sonic Immune, they can't prematurely break Deviation by simply attacking each other. Deviate a S.T. in the middle of the Atreides Fortress and watch the fun begin! I actually need to go back and verify this one.
  • On that note, Deviators don't set the deviated unit to the owner's house - it sets it to Ordos control. There's no point in trying to hijack the Ordos heavy factory in the finale as it's too well protected and this means it's also worse than useless to build them.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
The layout for the final two missions are static - the penultimate mission has all of two layouts, and the only thing that changes in the final mission is which houses you're facing. You get ten minutes from start to your first Death Hand launch in any mission where you're facing them. If you select the Harkonnen territory in the penultimate missions for Ordos and Atreides, you WILL be facing a Death Hand. You WILL be facing two in the final mission either way. The Harkonnen is the only house that doesn't face this issue, so if we're abusing luck going that route is going to reduce how much manipulating needs to happen. We would not necessarily be taking the Harkonnens for their death hand so much as taking them to get early-stage offensive bonuses and to deny the Emperor a second shot at nuking us in the end. Taking down three heavily-fortified bases before Death Hand manipulation becomes a thing... It may be possible to do in a TAS environment. I do know it's not something I've seen done in realtime. If anyone could do it, though, it would be the Atreides just for how broken Sonic Tanks can get in early versions.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Yep. That's the one that N64 was throwing.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
The problem with my data dump is that I want to say the tool is only workable with 1.07 and its derivatives, so there may be data inaccuracies that I can't find. I'll start on the data dump though, since most of it will be the same across versions. Can we get someone to dump the mission maps for... Harkonnen is my bet on optimized-for-speed given the WOR facility, Death Hand, and not needing to manipulate away multiple death hands in the final mission.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
This is a game I like playing in my spare time. TAS Optimizations would be fun to see. Each house has advantages and disadvantages, most of which come in to play in the early and late game. The Atreides use less credits all-around to support their operations (most notable in the early missions due to not being forced into the WOR facility and Quad), are given access to Ornithopters and Rocket Launchers; House Weapon is the Sonic Tank which there's a known exploit related to these (on high speeds they have range comparable to Rocket Launchers, on low speeds they have range comparable to Infantry). Downsides are a lack of Troopers for early ranged superiority (and no way to get them short of capturing WOR or a Construction Yard that's building one) and, within this engine at least, a lackluster Palace Special in the Fremen, though you can at least summon them once every five minutes. The Harkonnen get the Heavy Troopers and Heavy Attack Quads in place of Light Infantry and Trikes (the Harkonnen is the only house that can't naturally build Trikes), and have access to Rocket Launchers - they command range superiority pretty much up until the House of Ix becomes available, where it falls to the Atreides. Palace Special is the Death Hand Atomic Missile, which in the context of a TAS can make Missions 8 and 9 more of a mop-up operation than anything else, but which outside of a TAS is best used as an annoyance factor. The Harkonnen are also the only house to be facing one Nuclear Strike per ten minutes in the final mission, and do not face any Nuclear Strikes in the penultimate mission, which reduces the amount of luck manipulation that would need to happen in case we hit ten minutes and can't neutralize the Imperial Palace. Downsides are that all the weaponry they get early on is expensive as shit, no natural access to 'Thopters (I think they can purchase 'Thopters from CHOAM but I don't think it's valid in an unmodded game folder due to a programming error), and the defensively-oriented Devastator as the House Weapon (great for Regular Play, TERRIBLE in a TAS since we're going cutthroat and it's at most the same speed as a Harvester if not slower). The Ordos are... interesting. The only weapon out of their reach is the standard Rocket Launcher (orderable from CHOAM, though it's expensive as shit to do so). Their House Weapon is the Deviator, which properly used can wreck base defenses (ESPECIALLY on the final missions when you're battling multiple houses as the Unit AI only checks if it's attacking its own house before reassigning orders after Deviation wears off), and they do get access to Ornithopters. The major downside is the lack of the Rocket Launcher - the Ordos middle game is a slog due to the lack of safe sniping at the enemy base. The Saboteur is something I admit to having never used, though I presume from reading its file data that it's pretty good if you can sneak it into the enemy Construction Yards, especially since you can call it once every five minutes. This note on the Dune 2 page is partially correct.
When there are many units on the map, units on the current screen move faster than those off the screen. Look at your own key units to make them move faster, and do not view enemy units so they move more slowly.
Certain units - Caryalls, Harvesters, 'Thopters, the Ordos Saboteur, I believe the Fremen, Shai-Hulud, and the Frigate, though there may be more - are specifically marked to be fully active regardless of where the screen is focused, and all other units are only granted half the usual updates when not in the main view. I know this because one of the modding tools can set this flag on any unit, and I usually mod my copy such that Infantry - but not Troopers - also get full speed all the time. The number of units in play has no bearing on this effect at all. If you'd like I can dump all the playdata info (stuff like unit and building data, Palace Recharge Times, and terrain move speed modifiers) from a clean copy of 1.07; it shouldn't be too much of a thing given all I have to do is figure out how to dump it to a text file (the modding tool is already a console TUI). There are also a few speed exploits that, because they rely on low game speed instead of high, would be outside the scope of a TAS - the Refinery converts spice to credits at the same speed regardless of game speed, Rocket Launchers and the Deviator are more accurate at low speeds (probably something to do with how the RNG gets updated), and as mentioned previously the Sonic Tank is all but castrated at low speeds.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Partial replication. I was able to obtain this crash using Octoshock running Civilization II (USA) [D25D7ECA Civilization II [SLUS-00792].cue] by opening TAStudio only and unpausing. Virtual Pad had no bearing on the crash in separate tests. Attempting to frame-advance within TAStudio yielded an unhandled exception, followed by the aforementioned crash:
See the end of this message for details on invoking 
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.TasMovie.RecordFrame(Int32 frame, IController source)
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleFrameLoopForRecordMode()
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleMovieOnFrameLoop()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.StepRunLoop_Core(Boolean force)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.FrameAdvance()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToFrame(Int32 frame)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToNextFrame()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.PlaybackBox.FrameAdvanceButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.RepeatButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
Also, I'm running into out of memory exceptions while attempting to test TAStudio within the context of crashing this within N64 while using Virtual Pad; checking with SM64 Chaos Edition shows 1013828K Private Bytes and 818108K Working Set as of frame 552. Disengaging TAStudio immediately resolves the memory issues (it drops to 444364K Private Bytes and 244180K Working Set). Majora's Mask crashes with an Out of Memory at Frame 479. Because of the crash I can't get a live number but pausing with TAStudio open and bringing it to frame 478 via frame advance shows 975260K Private Bytes and 786088K Working Set, and as soon as I try to advance out of 479 it crashes. Frame 479 every time, too. tl;dr: The issue seems to be with TAStudio, not with Virtual Pad. Partial replication under Octoshock. I've edited my bug reporting thread post to reflect this.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
I originally posted this to the dev thread but I think it's better discussed here. Basic Bot is not checking the values again every so many frames on a failed loadstate, rather once it fails to load state it just checks every frame. Is that an intended failure or an unintended failure? (My use of BB is probably an unexpected use in that I'm using more along the lines of RNG Plays X as opposed to trying to bot-find a solution Y optimized for ram value Z) EDIT: Partial replication of the issue described in Impossible to have TAStudio and Virtualpad at the same time? by phoenix1291. I was able to obtain the described crash using Octoshock running Civilization II (USA) [D25D7ECA Civilization II [SLUS-00792].cue] by opening TAStudio only and unpausing. Virtual Pad had no bearing on the crash in separate tests. I have not tested other PSX games at this time. Attempting to frame-advance Civ II within TAStudio yielded an unhandled exception, followed by the aforementioned crash:
See the end of this message for details on invoking 
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.TasMovie.RecordFrame(Int32 frame, IController source)
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleFrameLoopForRecordMode()
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.MovieSession.HandleMovieOnFrameLoop()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.StepRunLoop_Core(Boolean force)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MainForm.FrameAdvance()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToFrame(Int32 frame)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.TAStudio.GoToNextFrame()
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.PlaybackBox.FrameAdvanceButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.RepeatButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mevent)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
Also, I'm running into out of memory exceptions while attempting to test TAStudio within the context of crashing this within N64 while using Virtual Pad; checking with SM64 Chaos Edition shows 1013828K Private Bytes and 818108K Working Set as of frame 552. Disengaging TAStudio immediately resolves the memory issues (it drops to 444364K Private Bytes and 244180K Working Set). Majora's Mask crashes with an Out of Memory at Frame 479. Because of the crash I can't get a live number but pausing with TAStudio open and bringing it to frame 478 via frame advance shows 975260K Private Bytes and 786088K Working Set, and as soon as I try to advance out of 479 it crashes. Frame 479 every time, too. tl;dr: The issue seems to be with TAStudio, not with Virtual Pad. Partial replication under Octoshock. E: And yes I'm running the latest version, I just double-checked that.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
I think we're conflating Information with Intelligence again.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Just discovered Basic Bot. Is there some way to get it "playing" indefinitely, similar to RNG Plays Pokemon, without setting it to call an invalid save state? It's doable by setting a non-existing save state, but I don't like clogging my message log with "Savestate not found" warnings. EDIT and it's not checking the values again every X frames on a failed loadstate, rather once it fails to load state it just checks every frame. Is that an intended failure or an unintended failure?
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
There's a blank character in that line that's not getting written over - what character should 0x26 show up as?
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Voting yes. This is what I think TASing is all about - breaking the game into itty bitty bits and just charging to the ending with the bits.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Oh good, it's not just prelaid infrastructure. Now to figure out how to make it work. Is it documented somewhere? The wiki is decidedly unhelpful in this respect.
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
Question regarding this Dual Gameboy and Dual Gambatte that I'm reading about in the about window and paths window. Is there a way within BizHawk to link between Gameboy/GBC games at present, or is that framework just there for future use?
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
The acceptability of this game has been discussed a lot. I'll link here the discussion, if anyone wants to read it: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16084&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
The previous run was also ultimately accepted despite the port's... questionable fidelity to the arcade version. The acceptability of this game should no longer be a question provided it's the same version. If there's a versioning difference, we need to know what was changed and if it's more in line with original difficulty. (Also personally wishing for a publishable MAME run to obsolete this entire game)
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
Pokota
He/Him
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 2/5/2014
Posts: 779
So will anyone here be watching the LDS General Conference this weekend?
Adventures in Lua When did I get a vest?
1 2
18 19 20
31 32