Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Spikestuff wrote:
Warepire wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Warepire wrote:
In the normal levels the masks slows you down when you enter the invincibility mode. These masks are the ones you do not seem to need to collect in warproom 1: (Should cut out 2 invincibility modes that are not useful)
> The mask in level 1
> The mark after the bear section of level 4
I grabbed the 2 masks well for damage abuse for the both of them, level 1 I know cannot be taken out but level 4's one that's a simple to skip if I have to skip.
Can you point out exactly where this damage abuse occurred? Because I cannot see any necessary damage abuse.
all the way at Dingodile
I needed extra to go through other stuff along the way
Unless you don't need masks to get to dingodile then get 2 when you get to him.... hmmmmmm
Grabbing the mask in level 1 puts you in invincible mode at the end of level 3, this section looks like it would be faster to do with slide-spin and slide-jump instead. If you skip the mask in level 1 you will still have 2 masks at the end of this level.
Considering the first time you become invincible during the bear section of level 4, which is a rather easy part of that section, you may even be able to spend a mask in this section of level 3 and still be able to get the required 2 masks for Dingodile, if spending a mask would be faster.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Spikestuff wrote:
Warepire wrote:
I see you have not corrected my suggestions for improvement on warproom 1, nor commented on why it would not be faster to do as I suggested in case it would be slower.
What I'm doing is completing the whole game before polishing it up but I have to stop now while I wait for help on N.Gin
Ok.
Spikestuff wrote:
Warepire wrote:
In the normal levels the masks slows you down when you enter the invincibility mode. These masks are the ones you do not seem to need to collect in warproom 1: (Should cut out 2 invincibility modes that are not useful)
> The mask in level 1
> The mark after the bear section of level 4
I grabbed the 2 masks well for damage abuse for the both of them, level 1 I know cannot be taken out but level 4's one that's a simple to skip if I have to skip.
Can you point out exactly where this damage abuse occurred? Because I cannot see any necessary damage abuse.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I see you have not corrected my suggestions for improvement on warproom 1, nor commented on why it would not be faster to do as I suggested in case it would be slower.
I will first of all again urge that you shall do some shenanigans / other entertaining stuff like for example ducking to the beat of the music while you wait for platforms to come in range. If it's a long platform ride, this can be applied also when standing on the platform. (Like you did in the second half of level 10)
For the swimming levels there might be a possibility that a combination of spinning and fast-swimming can be faster than just fast-swimming, since spinning adds more speed (3-4) for a short period of time compared to the fast-swim that only lets you use a speed of 2.
In the normal levels the masks slows you down when you enter the invincibility mode. These masks are the ones you do not seem to need to collect in warproom 1: (Should cut out 2 invincibility modes that are not useful)
> The mask in level 1
> The mark after the bear section of level 4
For level 7 I will again suggest that you shoot down all the planes (and bombs) for entertainment since this is an autoscroller. (Since this is rather tricky in real time, specially in the later levels where you get the super-fast moving planes)
I'm afraid I cannot really help you with the N.Gin fight. The best help would be some kind of aimbot written in LUA but that is way above my head. My best advice I can give you when he moves fast is shoot where he is going to be and don't follow him around.
Really impressive work so far though, you are over 10 seconds ahead of your last submission =)
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Here are a couple:
> Bully, though the Wii version may produce a more interesting TAS.
> The Crash Bandicoot games
> Oni
> No One Lives Forever (maybe, don't know how many of the glitches in the PC version that got carried over in the port)
> Tekken 5 playaround and Devil Inside minigame
> Total Overdose
> Rumble Racing (I am sure something fun can be done with this game)
> Hurdy Gurdy
> the Jak And Dexter games
> Midnight Club
> the Prince Of Persia games
> the Sly games
> Twisted Metal Black
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I must agree with AngerFist here. If the PCSX2-team shall get the emulator sync-stable they need to know enough people are interested in it to make the work worth it. Or if one of us gets enough involved with the project to do it ourselves. (Like sgrunt and nitsuja did with Dolphin on various occasions)
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
amaurea wrote:
Warepire wrote:
When I tested the feasibility of this I copied Gambatte's CPU core and allowed for input before I entered an opcode execution, I did not set up sound or graphics. (For those who are unaware: Gambatte is a GameBoy emulator, it has a 4 MHz CPU, most opcodes take 4-8 cycles to execute). This means I let the emulator poll for input up to 1 million times per emulated second, when you step through the game to figure out when to enter input, this becomes really really slow and monotone, it could take hours to TAS a single frame even for the simplest of games. This is for the GameBoy, now consider if this was done on say the Nintendo64 which has a ~90 MHz CPU, of course most CPU instructions take a bit longer to execute than on the GameBoy, but in general you will most likely be polling for input 5-10 million times per emulated second (there are of course exceptions like Super Mario 64).
I don't think SmashManiac wanted this to be done by opcode-stepping through whole frames. Rather, one would probably use frame-stepping normally, and when one needs higher resolution, one would set a breakpoint based on the position of the instruction counter or for reads/writes of an address, and then possibly do some opcode-stepping before providing the input. This is probably what was done for the subframe chrono trigger TAS, demonstrating that this is practical.
That would make a lot more sense actually, I stand corrected.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
SmashManiac wrote:
I would like to revive this thread because of recent progress in console verification.
Basically I see 2 types of input:
- Passive: the input is ignored unless it is done at the exact moment the hardware attempts to read it. Examples includes buttons on NES controllers and turned-on microphones.
- Active: the input causes an interrupt or changes the overall state of the hardware. Examples include hard resets, disc swapping and connecting/disconnecting a USB controller.
Thanks to console verification bots, it has been proven that even in cases of passive input, such input can be read multiple times per frame, preventing potentially useful scenarios to TASers. They are also easily detectable and can prevent desyncs. In my opinion, this is how all emulators used for TASing should read and record passive input as well.
Active input is a bit more complex since emulators aren't perfect simulators. On this regard, I believe input should be allowed at the precision the emulator guarantees proper emulation of a given set of operations. For these moments, emulators should be able in theory to allow inserting breakpoints in the emulation process (not just CPU-bound operations) and insert active input immediately after a break occurs.
By adding such features in emulators, it would then be possible for example to extend the left+right concept to even more varied directional inputs and corrupt save data through hard reset at the exact block required to perform a specific trick.
I've had this idea myself a few times but I had to dismiss it.
Polled input is rather simple, you ask for input every time the game asks for input.
Interrupt-driven input becomes unfeasible really really fast, basically you want to allow input between every CPU opcode execution, and hard resets at any time, even mid-opcode. I am quite sure there are games that use both methods of input depending on where in the execution it is.
When I tested the feasibility of this I copied Gambatte's CPU core and allowed for input before I entered an opcode execution, I did not set up sound or graphics. (For those who are unaware: Gambatte is a GameBoy emulator, it has a 4 MHz CPU, most opcodes take 4-8 cycles to execute). This means I let the emulator poll for input up to 1 million times per emulated second, when you step through the game to figure out when to enter input, this becomes really really slow and monotone, it could take hours to TAS a single frame even for the simplest of games. This is for the GameBoy, now consider if this was done on say the Nintendo64 which has a ~90 MHz CPU, of course most CPU instructions take a bit longer to execute than on the GameBoy, but in general you will most likely be polling for input 5-10 million times per emulated second (there are of course exceptions like Super Mario 64).
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Cool! I will have to check this out a little later.
I have not looked at the code for your rr-port so I don't know if you already thought of / did this.
One thing that crossed my mind with the games that use the RTC chips is that it may be possible to enslave that clock to something internal in the SNES and make the RTC "start time" a setting. Thus allowing us to choose the optimal clock state (the movie files would have have to be extended to carry this setting).
IF there are any "important" games that use the RTC that is...
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Congratulations to your first TAS, please do not be discouraged by the remaining part of my message, you show good skill at TASing and the run looks really well made.
I will have to echo the previous posters and say that a 100% run would be a lot more interesting than one that reaches the end as fast as possible.
I also looked at some gameplay videos from the PSX and N64 versions of the games and they look more interesting than the GBA version, I think this game shall be done on one of those instead.
Voting no for goal choice and version choice.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Despite almost nothing happening and the music being horrible I somehow liked seeing this crappy programming effort called a game being brutally vandalized. I wish you could save the world more times by doing absolutely nothing of significance.
Yes vote.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I have been following the WIPs of this game and checked some real time speed runs (partially). To me this is impressive work, the luck manipulation causes many segments of run right / left for justice, but the other segments are worth the wait, like the segment Sir VG took a screen shot of above.
I vote yes.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
I think I posted this in another thread about nicknames but here it is:
I play a lot of Tekken since Tekken 3 was somewhat new and I've been playing in local tournaments ever since Tekken 4 was released. I didn't really have a nickname and used my first name in the beginning but as time went on I got rather brutal in the game and my name has a kind of "kindness" ringing with it, this was about the same time as the Underworld movie had it's premiere in the cinemas here, which I saw, and I still love that movie. Anyway, I thought the Vampire Lycan Hybrid was really awesome, but the name was too long, so I shortened it to Werepire, and then changed it to Warepire because it is more comfortable to type.
There you go, that is the nail-biting, hair-raising, spine-chilling story of how I got my nickname.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Just link the improved run in a reply this submission and someone with the rights will update your submission with it.
(And I mean a little more clearly than the post above)
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
sudgy wrote:
A game that would be incredibly hard to make a TAS for (but would still be possible) is NetHack. It would be interesting to make one for it, but the amount of luck manipulation would be very hard to do. And deciding what role to be or where the line is in between getting through fast and getting things for surviving. And if they wanted to, manipulate the luck to get potions of gain level or wraiths, get teleportitis, teleport control, and an easy means of level teleport and teleport to the few necessary places and beat it quickly! Also, doing some conducts would be cool too.
