Posts for Xerophyte

1 2 3 4 5
Posted: 3/31/2010 7:27 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Since its conception as nesvideos this place has always been about stretching the limits of a video game within the rules set by that game. If the emulation used isn't accurate then you're essentially posting videos of someone playing a different game, with different rules. Imagine if, say, the Super Mario Bros speedwalks were linked to videos of someone trotting through Great Giana Sisters? Tactics like that are deceit, plain and simple; it's now clear that such deceit is at the very core of the technology used thus far to make TAS:ing possible. In light of this discovery, what choice is there? I commend Adelikat and Nach on having the moral fortitude required to make the right call, sad though it may be to make. I only hope that the site can be reopened in the future, when the TASvideos hardware team has finished designing and synthesizing proper, console-compatible hardware with complete RAM and register save states kept for each clock cycle. The bandwidth and space requirements should be no more than 3.5 GB/second or <20 TB/movie for the NES, which should be quite realizable within a few decades.
Posted: 12/4/2007 5:32 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
First, nice (and surprising!) to see Genisto on the submissions page again. Welcome back! As for the run. Erm. Lots of it was great fun, especially early on. I laughed. Or giggled embarrassingly, at least. Parts of it where just run of the mill SMW, which was less fun but still fairly watchable. On the whole I liked it, appreciate the effort involved and your posting it. I am voting yes to the question as stated. Do I think it should be published? Probably not. There's not enough tomfoolery to fill an entire hour, which in my opinion is really too long for a trick run in the first place. I also dislike that it's unclear what is required to obsolete this run and obsoleteability is a quality I think is highly desirable in published TASes. The few trick movies currently published are typically in genres where the metric for determining an improvement is considerably more straight-forward and it's always easier to envision what a later version should improve on or change for those movies than it is here.
Posted: 9/15/2007 8:02 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Mechuyael wrote:
Wait, you can fast forward in Gens? The only way I found for doing that was to use frame search. Is there some other way? When I press tab it resets the game (which has screwed me over quite a few times in the past, I need to keep reminding myself that I'm not playing/watching a NES or SNES game/run). Anyway, I'll watch this run soon-ish.
Checking the readme for my gens (9.5b), fast-forward on tab was apparently implemented in 9g. Certainly works for me, at least.
Posted: 9/14/2007 5:51 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I'm impressed, and not just due to earning the First TAS With Extensive MATLAB Use badge. I really never expected entertainment from that beyond load train; sound(y)... As for the run, technically I can't find any obvioust flaws. Which probably isn't saying much, but it's still something. I imagine many who haven't played the game would find this run rather dull and I too made more extensive use of tab than I usually do even for rpgs; however with decent speed up I personally liked seeing the poor AI get abused and slaughtered.
Posted: 8/9/2007 4:09 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Hardly the best game I've ever seen, but the movie was well done and varied enough to keep me entertained in spite of never hearing of Jewel Master prior to seeing it on the submissions page.
Posted: 8/1/2007 4:17 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Speedrun! No, it's not in any way mine, I just randomly found it after reading this topic. Presumably there's a high-quality version to be found somewhere, but I found this surprisingly watchable on youtube. Relatedly, does anyone know of any decent videos for runs of the Touhou shmups that Megamari there is semi-based on? SuperPlay! is usually pretty good about shmup vids (see the progear run, it prods heinie!) but, disappointingly, has nothing here. I presume there's a no doujin soft rule in action or somesuch.
Posted: 3/28/2007 8:08 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I can think of quite a number of rpgs & strategy games that I really enjoyed playing, back in the dark ages of the early-mid 90s, but I'm not sure that translates well into good runs in the same way FPS's and the like do. I think I'd still like seeing someone run Pools of Raidiance, Daggerfall, Darklands, UFO, Dungeon Keeper, Jagged Alliance or somesuch - but that's because I've played those games for days on end and know them fairly well. In reality an rpg or strategy game run will likely be mostly waiting, menus and running around in apparent confusion; most people would probably prefer something more actiony and easier to understand. See: current SC2 run. Naturally, runners should first run what they feel like, but all other things being equal it's probably best to go for the simpler, more instantly recognisable gametypes first. With that in mind, PC games that I believe haven't been mentioned and I think would actually make entertaining TASes: MechWarrior (2, Mercenaries) NetHack (and other roguelikes, such as for example rogue) Z I'd also like to second the recomendations on: Alone in the Dark Cannon Fodder Crusader: No Regret/Remorse Descent 1/2 Mega-lo-Mania Little Big Adventure 1/2 'course, half of these would need mouse support which I understand isn't quite there right now.
Posted: 3/25/2007 11:56 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Voting no. First, the rerecording Gens version this was made with - Test 6 - is, I think, about 2 years old. See the Genesis emulation forum for an update. Second, you should probably use the [!] rom rather than the [h2] as this indicates a hacked rom of some sort. Use of this rom for a run is against site rules as it will not accurately replicate what is possible on an actual cartridge. Third, the actual run. It's obvious you know the game pretty well and as far as playthroughs at 20% speed goes this is a pretty good one. However, movies published on this site have in common an aim for precision in every frame. There are numerous obvious small optimisations available at almost any given moment in this run. You miss shots, you hesitate and you occasionally miss-time jumps. Acceptable in speedruns, not in TAS-es. Some very clear examples, off the top of my head, include the first fight vs the 3:d and 4:th bosses on both runs, where you hit maybe at best one in every three shots and generally miss a veritable cornucopia of opportunities to damage the boss. Yes, I realise these enemies - and most others - are difficult to hit with 100% accuracy at all times, but the entire point of a TAS is to do so anyhow. Finally, the submission text is, well, to be blunt, lacking. Elaborate on stage strategies: why did you make the weapon choices you did, and when? How could a given segment be improved? If there are parts of the run that appear at a casual glance to be misstakes, explain the reasoning behind them ... and so on. Please do submit more movies but before doing so I'd advise you to read up on the capabilities of rerecording emulators and what is expected of a submission to this site for it to be accepted. Please read through the Submission Instructions, Tips, Rules and especially the very helpful Guidelines. Armed with all that, try redoing the run using an updated Gens, a correctly dumped rom and using the more advanced emulator features such as Frame Advance.
Posted: 3/25/2007 9:54 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Very torn. On one hand, the planning and route are very good and I can't fault it for speed. Besides that, it's SC2, and thus one of the best pc games ever made. On the other hand, almost none of the parts that make SC2 so great actually show. The only slightly entertaining bits are the space combats which make up, what, 1 minute out of 40? I was mostly looking forward to seeing the dialogue when I started watching, I had apparently forgotten how skippable it is. Most of the run consists of watching some very slow hyperspace travel which, frankly, gets boring pretty fast. Voting meh in the end. Good run, good game, bad game to run. Sadly.
Posted: 6/8/2006 10:27 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
To join in the thread necromancy: http://www.super-play.co.uk has a bunch of Ikaruga playthroughs along with runs of other shooters of varying age and quality (and an odd few other games, like ICO and Pang!). I recommend the Progear and DoDonPachi runs, or anything else involving the more frenzied Cave games.
Posted: 4/3/2006 8:06 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
As the guy who started that other Dick Tracy topic, I feel compelled to reply here. First - good choice, good skill and good luck! Dick Tracy is a little gem of a game, very nice to see it get properly beaten and nicer still to not have to do any work myself in order for it to happen. I eventually did get past stage one on my run, but then I pretty much got fed up with the desyncs and other limitations (*sob*, no frame advance) of whichever version of Gens I was using at the time and gave up during the Itchy fight, which absolutely refused to stop desyncing and getting me killed. Sadly, I can't really be of much gameplay help since so far your run so much better than what I acchieved that it's downright embarassing. I rewatched my only surviving version (which desyncs after about 1½ minutes) and I apparently never even learned how to shoot in the opposite direction of the jump, I stopped to shoot things in order for the screen to advance and so on; none of that here. You also do a better job of minimising the jumping you need to do than I did. All in all it looks very fluid and entertaining, please keep it up! Also: yep, the later stages tend to involve more bullets flying 'round. Although it always will look a bit like Rush 'n' Attack...
Posted: 3/26/2006 2:20 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Tentative yes. Although some of the movement is slightly sub-optimal; no jumping of ledges to start the falls with higher vertical velocity and, relatedly, often falling down shafts pressed to the wall instead of leaving some room to get a "head start" in order to pass the corners at a higher horizontal velocity. These are very small faults, though, and the run definitely feels polished and especially entertaining to me. The lack of arm pumping is merely positive to me, as I find it silly, but that's a personal opinion. I can't say anything about the route as such, having no prior experience with the hack, but from an entertainment standpoint it's not overly important.
Posted: 12/6/2005 7:30 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Very good run, on a long-cursed and delayed game. Heartily agree about the end-of-movie call: the important thing is the speed & quality of the actual run, not the size of the movie file. Also, I'm not quite sure interpersonal conflict really belongs in a run submission text, but meh.
Posted: 11/29/2005 6:30 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Ah, so that's the rom I needed... Very well played, especially for a first submission. You even remembered the pre-jumps - no one does that :p The game sometimes conspires to be boring, what with the auto-scrolling, but you do a commendable job of pulling entertainment out of it anyhow. I even laughed out loud at one point and I'm usually a dreary & frown-prone character. Clear yes vote.
Posted: 11/7/2005 10:24 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I feel compelled to vote no. Some stretches are brilliant but asa a whole it just seems too inconsistent. I realise that all the crashes are on purpose and for entertainment value and so on, the problem is that the crashes seem to come at random times and, more importantly, usually aren't entertaining. Morimoto's all-speed Gradius run, to take another movie along much similar lines, was consistent in its strategy and execution. This ... ins't, really. I think the movie would be much better if there was a unified approach to how the levels are handled instead of taking each one as it comes. For example, consider making it the goal of the movie to avoid controller input for as long as possible at the start of each stage. That'd mean getting to play as fast as possible, blowing the other players up with the nastiest powerups available and having a measurable quantity to use in comparison with other runs.
Posted: 5/29/2005 12:13 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I pretty much agree with nifboy. Good use of weapons, generally well played if perhaps imprecise at times. I'd personally prefer to see with-damage, but that's naturally up to you. My main gripe, however, is that you pretty much never do pre-jumps before long falls. When doing a fall you want to complete it quickly, which means starting the fall with as much downward velocity as you can. You just walk off the ledges; jumping off so you get some initial downward velocity is much better. See any of the Megaman movies for good examples on how this works. It's still a pretty good run and I did find it entertaining in spite of its length, but the cumulation of those small misses makes it a "meh" in the end.
Posted: 5/7/2005 1:22 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Clear yes, well played and planned. Also, "They came to Earth for one reason: Mars needs Cheerleaders" takes the prize for campiest faux 50's SF movie tagline ever
Posted: 4/24/2005 11:37 AM
(Edited: 4/24/2005 11:39 AM)
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Didn't desync in the slightest for me, without SRAM or anything. Voting no, however. Although I agree this is a very good run for such a low rerecord number, nesvideos is not a site meant for hosting runs that are good only in light of their number of rerecords. The object of the runs here is to use rerecords, slowdown and any other tools we can get our grubby hands on to come as close to the perfect run as is possible. This run doesn't use those tools to their fullest. You miss swings, hesitate before difficult jumps, don't hit the bosses as soon as they become vulnerable, etc. There's no reason to do any of these things when you can just erase any mistakes. I want to stress that I was entertained by the run, but that's beside the point. It just doesn't attain the level of precision that's required for acceptance. P.S. For comparison, the only accepted full-game GBA runs available right now are BoltR's Metroid: Zero Mission run and OgreSlayeR's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon run. The first clocks in at 35:56 with 33 662 rerecords and the second at 23:43 and 19 296 rerecords. That these runs got published relatively fast is not coincidental.
Posted: 4/22/2005 10:30 PM
Post subject: Roses & Musters, oh my!
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Tool-Assisted Speedrun may be a mouthful, but it 's what the speedrunning community has used before and it does describe what the difference is between this and a normal run. Replacing 'tool' with emu or emulator might help to make the term more specific, but no need to go beyond that in catchyness IMO. Also, is the thread long enough to start quoting the relevant bits of Joyce & Shakespeare yet?
Posted: 4/16/2005 12:05 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Good game, bad port. Pity there are no rerecording Amiga emulators around yet. Also, WIP looks very good, although I'm not sure I personally enjoy the death-as-shortcut notion very much.
Posted: 3/29/2005 2:49 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Ventuz, I had that problem, as well. T'was just a matter of finding a different rom, from a less edgy site. As for the movie; I'm by no means an expert on this game, but it at least looks like using different characters should save time. There are levels/bosses where the parasols or flight capabilities seemingly don't do much for speed, especially the boss fight with its own character select at the end. Using lighter characters and higher-damage weapons in these situations should help. Even having a slower character with more HP could be beneficial, so you can run through blocking enemies without dying. Some jumps look like they can be done slightly better, as well, but here I really can't say for sure. I tried playing the game (at normal speed, which turned out to be difficult) with a low-weight character to see how it controlled and I get the impression that jumping around is perhaps not an exact science. I do like the run & game but I'm voting Meh due to apparent improvability. Chastise me later if I'm jumping to conclusions (:
Posted: 3/23/2005 12:44 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
Voting no. The site publishes movies showcasing the fastest possible completion of a game. As your version does not beat the current record, it is clearly not as fast as possible.
Posted: 3/21/2005 7:23 PM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
You can't get everything perfect on the first pass, going back and trying to fix every error will just burn you out. I'd let it lie, were I you. 'course, I'm not you, which is probably fortunate for the quality of this run.
Posted: 3/21/2005 4:33 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
I just finished watching the SDA run and I'm seriously impressed. There may have been a number of mistakes, but they're very tiny mistakes. Three incorrect blitz inputs throughout the run, for example. The entire thing is full of little optimisations, like organising the item list during longer battle animations for fast access to important stuff later. Vanish-Doom & Joker Doom are exploited to their fullest throughout; I especially liked seeing a Moogle Charm-equipped Mog run alone and unaccosted through the entire final dungeon, his only fight being killing his statue boss in a single X-Magic'd Vanish-Doom. I guesstimate that tool-assisted luck manipulation can take 30 minutes off the speed run at most but I suppose properly abusing the sketch glitch and other route improvements can slim that down some more.
Posted: 3/14/2005 4:27 AM
Quote
Xerophyte
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 5/17/2004
Posts: 106
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
About the only possible fault I noticed was the changing of lanes to grab coins in the barrel rapids thing, it looks as if always going forward would be faster. I'm guessing this was either needed for something I don't know about or a conscious stylistic choice; the care and attention to detail here is damnably impressive for a 3-hour run, regardless of that small question. Definite yes.
1 2 3 4 5