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Here's my savestate management logic:
Slot 1: always at the beginning or slightly before a level / segment. This one is always well before any of the stuff I'm TASing so I always have a way to rewind
Slot 2: the beginning of a small mini-segment I might be doing; from one solid reliable measuring point to the next (these segements can often be very small like 1 enemy or a difficult maneuver)
Slots 3-7: various logical checkpoints along the way from one measuring point to another
Slot 8: this is always the "best so far" savestate for whatever segment I'm working on. I get to the checkpoint and save to this slot. Then I redo the segment. If what I do is faster I put that in Slot 8, else I try again. Until I'm done exhausting all ideas I have. Then slot 8 becomes the beginning of the next segment and do it all over again.
Slot 9: This is the best so far for a larger scope such as an entire level, or just a general DON'T TOUCH savestate that might be something important. I rarely use this one.
Slot 0: This is my default savestate and most frequently used. This what I use pretty much every few frames. When I get to a logical place that I might want to consistently rewind to, I save to 2-7, so slot 0 is often more of a throw away / temp storage)
My segment are generally just (often arbitrary) logical checkpoint that are reliable indicators of progress. Like maybe after having to make a series of intricate jumps upwards, I have a checkpoint that is X position = 240 that is a number of pixels once I'm on horizontal ground. Or maybe when the boss HP = 0, or a black screen after a fadeout. It would be a place where there are no conditional factors that could affect measurements so comparing framecounts of different attempts is reliable. Generally Slot 2 is the beginning of a segment and Slot 8 is the end.
Of course these are ideal circumstances. I don't have a methodical personality so I have mixed results as to what I really do.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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jimsfriend wrote:
When you cancel the submission for someone, it would be helpful to duplicate your reasoning stated in the submission text as a forum post (the last post in the topic). Additionally, I think you should suggest a method for the user to get in contact with you if they have any questions, since you just prevented them from doing it in the most obvious place.
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Chamale wrote:
I must admit that I don't follow this forum as closely as I used to, so I'll ask out of curiosity: Is there a place where this site lists all of the banned users, and their reason for banning? When I notice that someone is banned, I can look through their post history and try to learn why, but sometimes it isn't obvious at all.
There isn't such a page for a very simple reason. It is usually none of your business why someone may have been banned.
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Mukki wrote:
Perhaps allowing an author, or user, to refer questionable decisions to DarkKobold (as senior judge) would be a less arbitrary way of doing this, rather than allowing a small window of opportunity every ~2 years (though I guess that this is already theoretically the case, but I question how many users feel encouraged to do this).
That was a large reason for having such a role. That and to resolve potential clashes between judges. Which I was concerned about when adding so many new judges when we traditionally only had 1-2 active. Interestingly enough we haven't had a single judge clash.
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My point which seems to have went over everyone's head is that with a few loopholes, a 1-1 high score run can reach infinite points. I used the 2nd quest and deaths, and by getting the 1up from the shell chain, I could keep dying and rack up more points.
The more subtle point I was hoping to make is that score runs have a TON more entertainment potential using the 2nd quest :)
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Warp wrote:
The only truly "shameful" TAS that has ever been on the site (that I remember of), and for a rather long time at that, was that LoZ:OoT TAS that was slower than the unassisted record. (It's a bit embarrassing to have an officially published TAS which is significantly slower than the unassisted speedrun of the same game.)
This is happened at least 4 times in our site history that I know of.
In addition to OoT, there is Majora's Mask which is CURRENTLY published and slower than an unassisted speedrun. Chrono Trigger (the 4 hour one) was beaten by 40 minutes by a regular speedrunner (due to a new trick). And Ziplock's NES Jaws was beaten by a speedrunner (until I improved it).
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It was a let down for me. When I saw the submission in queue I was like "hell yes!" and was excited. Then it ended up being just running to the right. It did a few need TASy things at the end sort of, so it isn't a terrible demonstration of TASing I guess. So I will give it a meh.
I think noah's ark would be a better bible game for tasing.
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The Dolphin emulator has been accepted for site submission for some time now. But with the publication of Mega Man 10 we officially have Wii TASing at TASVideos!
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
Does it mean it's acceptable to submit a TAS with TaoTao's version instead of the new FCEUX 2.1.5?
I only ask this because my first TAS I'm working on (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Thread #11250: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) is also suffers from this (enemy position, hidden exit and an unnamed glitch depends on CPU clock, that's why my WIP shows different result on 2.1.5 and TaoTao's patch) and I would like to take benefit of higher accuracy instead of "reworking" the same for a "possibly not accurate" version of FCEUX.
I dunno, that is a sucky situation and would like to not worry about it.
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I guess given the convo before this release announcement I should comment on it. Tao's patch was NOT applied on this release. His patch is correct and would make for a more accurate emulator. However, given the radical sync differences it would cause, I chose to avoid using it for this release. Perhaps for a future release this could be done. But given the small benefit in accuracy vs the headache of so many sync differences, I'm not too keen on the idea.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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new FCEUX released!
Some goodies for TASers in this release including fixing RAM watch to only look at actual game ram rather than the entire system bus. Also movies should load faster than in previous releases.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
Not sure if this belongs here or in the Site Suggestions, if inappropriate, a moderator can move.
This already happened in the past but now with DarkKobold's 8-hours movie we have a blatant example, of people voting without watching the movie. Unless they had access to earlier WIPs, the three people who already voted on this after only 2 hours didn't have the chance to watch it. Ok, maybe two people since DarkKobold himself is allowed to vote on his own movie. However this was just an example as it happened several other times in the past, especially with hours-long submissions.
There's nothing new in this suggestion, it has been discussed ad nausem throughout the years. The problem is that in a system that already finds every excuse in the book to discourage no votes this skews the situation even more. Only people who watch a movie all the way through get to vote? Who watches the entire movie? people who liked it, those who didn't probably didn't bother to finish.
Also it is pretty easy to gauge the entertainment value of a movie before watching the entire thing. Though in general you shouldn't judge a movie by its first few levels. Since level 1 is usually the least interesting one.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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I looked into tasing this game awhile back. It was level 9 that is the killer. That part will look like crap unless you find a way to make amazing luck happen, which I could not. I suggest you start your efforts there. Get a fast way across the lava and you will have yourself an impressive run.
