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I do try to keep the Release History page up to date with pending releases.
I plan on getting the 1.5.1 release out in a few days, whenever the bug reports slow down. This will purely be a bug fix release, no new features.
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There's an inherent misconception in this question. Both are inaccurate compared to a real N64, but getting "closer" to the real time doesn't mean that it is more accurate. It simply means that the randomly different amount of time mupen64plus gets due to inaccuracy happens to be closer than mupen's randomly different amount of time due to inaccuracy.
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You are a bit confused here.
What is needed is to go from .bkm (which is all frames) to only input frames. While there is no lua script for that yet, it would not be hard to make.
The opposite already exists, going from input frames to all frames, for mupen conversions, this page describes how to do that.
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Also, to those coming from mupen, a big difference you will notice is that BizHawk records every frame, not just input frames.
This will cause issues with comparing to old movies unfortunately. However, to get the TAS experience you are used to, I recommend going to Config -> Enable -> Frame Advance - Skip Lag Frames.
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MOD EDIT: Thread title changed, as Mupen-RR is no longer deprecated.
With the release of BizHawk 1.5.0, N64 is now supported and we finally have an alternative to mupen!
HUGE thanks to micro500 who did the porting of mupen64plus into BizHawk for this project.
For those intruiged and/or new to Bizhawk, here are some major reasons to upgrade immediately to Bizhawk:
*Better core, including the pause glitch in Oot fixed, and many games are now TASable such as DK64 and Rayman 2
*Doesn't crash all the time
*Reset Recording
*Integrated Ram Watch/Search/Memory Viewing tools
*Lua support
*Sync stable movie recording (note: There may be core determinacy issues in mupen64plus, but at least the movie/savestate system isn't the culprit)
*Automatic saving/loading of plugin settings (no longer will the viewer have to set up the emulator before playing the movie)
*Much better and more stable encoding
*More hotkeys, tools, friendlier UI
*And most importantly: An active development crew (as opposed to mupen which has been basically untouched for 8 years)
The main point of this thread, is to get users to use BizHawk and "peer review" the N64 core, and have a discussion on officially deprecating (and one day banning) mupen for submission to TASVideos.
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BizHawk 1.5.0 Released!
This release features new cores:
N64 (using mupen64plus)
Saturn (using yabause 9.2)
There's a lot of other fixes, and new features, so I recommend reading the
full release notes.
Windows binary
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You should vote yes. We are asking for your opinions on entertainment value, not if it breaks the rules. To be blunt, no one is asking you if it breaks the rules, that's what the judges are for.
However, if you have a reason it breaks the rules, or some other objection, the judge would prefer you mention it. Judges are supposed to read all comments. In theory, commenting is sufficient to bring it to their attention, and it will be weighted accordingly.
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Also, for the record, it is easy to set up bizhawk to do it in a per game basis (using the game database it already has). Are there any games in which the performance core is just as good as the compatibility core? If so, we could have a system of performance, compatibility, accuracy depending on the needs of the game. However, we would need some good users to compile a list of games and what cores they are best suited for.
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Bizhawk doesn't use the accuracy core, it uses the compatibility core by default, performance isn't allowed for movie recording. Performance core is an option in the SNES settings (when in non-movie mode)
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That's your misconception right there. It isn't emulating a 20 year old game, it is emulating the hardware from which the game runs, via software. The hardware requirements to emulate other hardware requires many orders of magnitude more power than the original hardware. Bsnes is insanely accurate, and that is a tradeoff with speed. However, bsnes is also written with accuracy and code clarity being more important than speed, and has no tradeoffs there. Also, bsnes is written rather insanely where even low hanging fruit for speed optimizations were not taken.
The SNES scene is such that you have poor accuracy or a very slow near perfect emulation written by an insane man (I mean that both positively and negatively).
It is what it is. With Bizhawk, we chose accuracy over speed. But not really. We chose the SNES emulator that comes with a core separated and already made into a .dll, so it was super easy to integrate compared to something like SNES9x. (Very much so actually, had we chosen SNES9x for integration it probably still wouldn't be done). But currently, I find all SNES emulators less than ideal for TASVideos use.
Also, with your machine, I wouldn't use bsnes, it just won't be fast enough. If you were to TAS, I would reluctantly recommend snes9x 1.51 instead. Unfortunately. However, newer CPUs run bsnes significantly faster.
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That is exactly right. It is kind of a limited form of judge status, that is basically obsolete now. It was made back when we did a mass unrejection for the tier system.
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To be clear, you are requesting the act of emulating unplugging/plugging in a controller, and subsequently recording this act into movies.
Not a UI feature of enabling/disabling controllers (similar to what most emulators have)
This emulation would be on a per core basis, and the movie format would have to be modified in some way to accommodate this. In addition, we will have to restructure the input system to have a concept of what devices are plugged in (a restructuring we will have to do eventually anyway, for things like zapper support).
While I like this idea and would like to see it happen in theory, it is certainly no small task to implement. I am glad we at least have a good test case though, should anyone ever think about taking on the task.
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Try clearing your cache and cookies, then go tot he home wiki page, and log in. Assuming you have succesfully logged in. Go directly to the submit page
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When uppercutting both Honda 2, and Super Macho Man they will raise their guard a few frames before the punch lands. If they successfully do this, the punch will do less damage. Therefore, the trick is to find ways to prevent them from doing this, and thus do max damage with as many uppercuts as possible.
With macho, it is pretty easy to always do this by tapping up at the right time during the punch, it will cause him to raise his guard in response to you pressing up, and dropping it in response to you letting go. With the right timing, you can do this so that he doesn't have time to react to the actual uppercut in time.
The discovery with Honda 2 is that there is actually a timing by which we can do this exact maneuver. Prior to this, the only known way to do max damage was to hit him during his eyebrow shake (which was only a few opportunities during a TAS/Speedrun attempt).
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Actually, technically it isn't a new mechanic. It was a known mechanic that is exploited on Super Macho Man, that has been discovered to work on Honda II.
In hindsight, I'm surprised we never at least stumbled upon it by accident many years ago, let alone at least try it.
I'm most surprised that it is such a large improvement as a result. Such a significant improvement hasn't happened in almost 8 years in this game :o Also, you can expect I'll have a submission in the upcoming weeks ^_^
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In the case of SNES9x 1.43, pretty much every game is missing lag that should be there. Therefore any run done on 1.51 or later, or bsnes-based emulators will be longer in realtime.
(At least with Super Metroid, aiming for in-game time makes these emulator differences inconsequential)
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The default setting in Bizhawk is to have the FM Chip enabled (which Dega does not emulate). By turning it off, you can get the sound one would expect from dega.
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So I watched this movie and am very impressed!
Optimization is very high quality, including good spread gun optimization (which is often hard to understand and very difficult to optimize). The glitch in level 8 was very surprising. It would be a lot harder to pull off in 2p mode but may be possible to save time on the published movie.
Also, this movie does a great job of being as entertaining as possible. For instance, stage 4 showing off the glitch of falling through the elevator just to show it off, and also playing around with enemies without causing lag (a hard balance to achieve in that level). Getting different weapons in level 8 just to show them off, since he will be dying later in the level anyway, he could do this without costing time.
I'm not usually too fond of slower 1p movies, but this TAS made me a believer. Big yes vote.
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Nearly all of my TASes follow this rule. There have been occasions where I've lengthened the completion of the game to shorten the movie, but it was on a scale of mere frames. As for making some kind of rule, I don't think you can, there are several valid opinions there.