Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Version 1.11.8.2 has been released!
[EDIT]: Updated link for 1.11.8.2 that fixes mGBA savestates
Changelog:
http://tasvideos.org/Bizhawk/ReleaseHistory.html#Bizhawk11182
Downloads:
https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk/releases/tag/1.11.8.2
This is a major update for N64 because it now includes GLideN64 support!
In addition there are some big accuracy improvements to NesHawk (specifically improvements to match real console behavior on console verifications).
Also, we updated to mGBA 0.5, and as usual, numerous TAStudio fixes and improvements.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
I too tried to make a TAS of this back in 2008 and failed miserably. The technical complexity of this run is immense.
I've been eagerly awaiting an all-cups TAS for 9 years now and this was certainly worth the wait. Absolutely impressive and very awesome to watch. Huge yes from me.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
I Just want to emphasize the huge improvements in accuracy to the A2600 core, and that no one should be tasing on previous version due to how drastically better it is.
Ditto with NESHawk vs older versions of it.
Also I want to just say again, amazing work to Alyosha for doing these improvements!
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Alyosha wrote:
Clearly ~10 times of having this happen hasnt taught me anything.
I think I will only stop causing this problem when there are no more old FCEU runs left for me to convert files from. 8D
Also I want to point out that the author says Phil :)
Perhaps you could clean up the header info of your movie file? (.fm2 is just a text file you can easily modify this info yourself)
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
You can't use outside in the guardian shrines. You can cast return to the last refuge and walk from there, but it is actually slower by about 300 frames.
Not leveling the hero saves a lot of time but also the time it takes to select an action for him and for him to attack. His attacks are dwarfed by Taloon and so he really serves no purpose by the time I get the Sword of Decimation. He's left alive up to the guardian fight because I need him to get to the Zenithian castle, then I keep him around for the Radimvice fight for his Expel spell.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Samsara wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
It should be noted that 'Super' difficulty is accessed by holding down some buttons on controller 2. This seems to be the hardest difficulty, but if anyone sees any reason why this feature (I guess technically a password) should not be used now is the time to say so.
This is perfectly acceptable and maybe even preferable.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
I wasn't aware of this JP tas, I assumed any tas of that game would utilize the baloon glitch, I'm not sure if this one does or not though, I think it would save considerable time.
As for 5.5 minutes, that is EASILY accounted for in less text. Text typically scrolls at one character per frame, and the tas is all text scrolling.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
So just an update. The Sword of Decimation was in fact a good idea. And I did finish the TAS! ...Then instead of submitting, I restarted. It just really bugged me that there were some sloppy things in the early chapters I could improve and that I could improve more things based on knowing that Alena and Ragnar aren't going to be used in chapter 5.
As of right now I'm already back up to the Chapter 5 balzack fight. I saved over 2900 frames as of the beginning of chapter 5 compared to the wip I've posted here. In chapter 1 I made sure to manipulate less HP for Ragnar so I could kill him off in 1 hit in chapter 5. Also, all the level ups in that chapter are after the boss fight, so I made sure not to waste any frames trying to maximize strength or agility. Any delay frames I used were to avoid stat ups, and to lower HP.
The big time saver is chapter 2. In the previous versions I get into a metal babble fight to make the tournament faster. The reason that was a good idea is that those levels I would get anyway in chapter 5, at most it costs me 1 level up by the end of the TAS. Knowing that I won't use Alena, this time I avoid the metal babble fight. It saves about 30 seconds, plus it makes the TAS more interesting since Alena goes into it even more under-leveled.
Also, in general the delay frames are far less this time, by the end of my previous TAS I had really refined my bot scripts and luck manipulation techniques, so I was able to apply those techniques this time around.
It is grueling going through the TAS yet again, but I'm glad I did, it looks a lot more polished this time around! This game deserves the highest quality TAS even if it is an insane amount of work :)
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
thommy3 wrote:
Wow, it's crazy how fast you get these improvements out. Great work.
I've a question though, is an emulator passing all those above tests perfect in the sense that it behaves like real hardware?
Or is it just that he passes all pubished test roms but there might still be differences to real hardware because maybe those roms didn't cover every hardware aspect?
In the case of NES test roms, they most definitely test edge cases that are beyond anything games utilize, for instance certain undocumented opcodes. The nes test in general are very well established and the hardware is very well understood. Passing all tests would generally mean high "game compatibility" as well as very accurately emulating the hardware. I air quote game compatibility because in reality the nes also has a insane number of cart types to support and that generally dwarfs the core emulation in terms of developer effort.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
feos wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
I'm not sure what the rules are regarding this, are runs from dev builds submittable?
They are required to sync on official releases, with exceptions for things like Dolphin. This might get delayed until the new release as well, but having it published as is is up to a judge and the authors if its optimal.
In this case though, we have an unusual situation, where the official release has known emulation issues, compared to the dev build.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Also, from the looks of it, it seems you are attempting to read a SNES address.
The address you have is from system bus, but memory is set to WRAM space by default.
You either need to set the memory domain to the bus, or convert your address to WRAM.
I think you chop off the 7E to convert from bus to WRAM? I'm not 100% sure of that though.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
So I've made progress, I just finished the Bakor fight.
I have an idea and a decision to make which is the main reason I'm posting. I'm puttiing it first to make sure people see it, then I'll put my status update:
Now that I have the final key, I have an option. I was looking for better weapons for Taloon to turn him into more of a beast. And I noticed he can equip the Sword of Decimation. It is cursed but the downside is no defense, but I need no defense in a TAS. Compared to the Sword of Malice it has an additional +75 damage, which translates roughly to +75 to my critical hits (and +150 after building power). And there is one conveniently in the town of Konenbur behind a final key door.
It isn't that far out of the way, but it also only saves time in boss fights, which are going very quickly anyway. If it pays off, I won't really know it without basically TASing the rest of the game twice, which I lack the sanity to do, this TAS is killing me!
I want it to be faster though, because I think there's a lot of entertainment value here. Using a cursed weapon as a legitimate technique is hilarious. Also, Taloon would be killing the most powerful bosses in just one attack round while the Hero becomes completely useless for fighting. He's just there to hold the pretty weapons and armor and get all the credit, while Taloon saves the world :)
I'm not sure if I should go this route or not though, it could very well be slower over all :(
Ok, here my status update:
The decision to just do a Hero, Taloon duo is paying off big time. Taloon is a beast. I gave Ragnar's Sword of Malice to Taloon. After building power, his critical hits are 200+ damage! I defeated Balack in one set of Merchant Reinforcements. Also another innovation is that I'm manipulating taloon to cover the enemies mouth to stop spell attacks which he can do in addition to his regular attack. This replaces the slower method of wasting taloon's action to trip the enemy. Bakor with 1000hp went down in just two rounds. I"m saving a lot of time in the fights and a lot more by not having to level up Alena and Ragnar.
I also saved some time by getting the Zenithian Shield on my way to Gardenbur since it was near by.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Wow, nice work!
Yeah, for meaningful input we need the computer peripheral set up. If you are interested in learning that process in bizhawk this is a great opportunity, if you are hoping to learn more parts of the system.
If not, I can do that part, peripherals are a lot more involved and require some situational awareness
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
TheAxeMan wrote:
That's actually pretty good progress. Would you have done anything differently in the first three chapters if you knew Alena and Ragnar were staying down in favor of Taloon? Fewer levelup stats?
Honestly yeah, lower HP on Alena for sure, she was hard to kill off :)
And certainly I spent extra frames manipulating better stats for them, that is now unnecessary.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
So this has been grueling and slow going but I just finished the Keeleon fight with a radical new strategy.
Something I missed last time around is that when a character builds power, that 2x damage is also applied if you score a s critical hit.
This let do some savings in the lighthouse fight as hector was able to build power then attack and do a 1 hit kill. Same number of turns for him but only 1 damage animation (so saves a second or so).
However, the big implication here is that this makes Taloon a wrecking ball. He can build power then summon reinforcements for three 2x critical hit attacks in one round! With this in mind I actually kill off even Alena, and I plan to kill off Ragnar as well. I think the optimal strat is to have a duo of the Hero for getting Zenithian equipment and return/outside spells and Taloon for massive attacks. This was minimally useful for Keeleon but should become massively useful as he levels up.
At the end of the Keeleon fight, I am 11,013 frames ahead of my published movie.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3650)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4758
Location: Tennessee
Ideally you would create a fork of bizhawk on github, make this change and do a pull request.
If all of that is well outside your comfort zone, work with me and we will find a way to get this change integrated.
And btw, I'm really impressed with the work you've done with atariHawk, and I'm really glad you have. Good Atari emulation is something I find valuable.
