Posts for andymac

1 2
6 7 8
25 26
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I didn't want to forget this nice little slip I made: (13:26:56) mike89: you know whose freeways really suck (13:26:58) mike89: tasmania (13:27:41) mike89: 100km/h, one lane, winding roads (13:27:52) mike89: maybe I'm a bit scarred cause I was only learning at the time (13:27:54) mike89: but holy shit (13:28:06) mike89: not to mention -gravel- on main roads! (13:28:40) andymac: wow, tas must be pretty shit
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Change your keyboard setup. ALL keyboards HAVE to have a key limit that is above the square root of the keys. That means at least 10 keys at a time for a shitty 88 key laptop keyboard (not 3 or 4), that's just how keyboards work. Most designers make special changes to their keyboard setup to allow for most if not all of the cobinations of the arrow keys. In some kyboards, left shift is on it's own completely different rail. In my experience, you should be able to press any combination of Z,X,C (but not V) Try pressing G. Also, if you still have trouble, try moving your most commonly used keys to WASD, since this is where a lot of modern games put their arrow keys, so modern designers have compensated this by putting these keys on rails with few other keys on them. Again, if you STILL have trouble, try using two keyboards at once. I suggested this once to someone who was trying to TAS a 2 player game with shitty keyboards. But in all seriousness, there are a number of good reasons NOT to have a TAS input plugin for Snes9x. For example, it's annoying, hacky, and is always in front of your work. Snes9x is not plugin based like Mupen 64. It's generally a bad idea to TAS with a mouse anyway, it makes completing the TAS a lot slower (theres a reason that there's not a GUI for everything, it gets TASers into good habits of not having to move their hands too much, which creastes speedier TASes), and finally noone wants to model their emulator around Mupen64, because Mupen64 is one of the hackiest, most innacurate accepted emulators on the site, while Snes9x is in line with an emulator like Gens, which never crashes, and is extrememly easy and simple to use.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I thought I might post this here, I did an any% real time playthrough today, and I got a reasonable time. This is the fourth time I have completed SMW2. The first time, was casual, over the course of a few months, the second time I did 6:36, the third: 3:50, and now I just got 3:23. I think this is a reasonably good time. Has anyone here gotten better times? http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1255803692/YIsemifastrun.smv
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
The reason that all buttons press on the last frame is that Mupen is trying to read past the EOF. Add some null frames to the EOF to rectify this. Don't worry, it won't increase the length of the movie unless you change the VI count in the header. Also, try decreasing the VI count by 1 or 2, this might eliminate the need for Mupen to read an extra frame at the end anyway (and will decrease the length of the movie) EDIT: fixed M64: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/536713513/SM64fixd.m64
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
No, there is no interest for making Iphone or droid apps for TASing, here are a number of issues:
IRC wrote:
(21:04:44) Brushy: TASing on a smartphone? (21:04:50) Brushy: Sure... (21:05:45) Brushy: I mean, the screens are small and most of them don't have enough keys to do frame advance + A + down + right at the same time. (21:07:14) andymac: auto hold? (21:07:53) Brushy: Not too comfy IMO. (21:08:14) ais523: you could do it JPC-RR-style, where you press a key to turn it on or off (21:10:00) andymac: A lot of actual emulators have little or no interest to keep them updated (21:10:15) andymac: I don't think there's much interest to make an Iphone app for it. (21:10:58) Ilari: And besides, I don't think iphone app store allows emulators (and only way to run apps not in there is to jailbreak the phone). (21:11:08) andymac: yeah, too many loops (21:11:14) andymac: too many difficulties (21:11:19) andymac: not worth it at all (21:12:00) Brushy: I agree. (21:12:51) andymac: plus, I bet you the emulators on the Iphone are innacurate as hell (21:14:03) Ilari: And also, to really TAS with them, one would have to have the emulator be sync-compatible with some GPC emulator... (21:17:00) Ilari: Not to mention that smartphones don't have a lot of processing power, one would be limited to relatively "primitive" emulators (something like up to 16-bit generation)...
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
The ejection velocity is one pixel per frame. Asking that question is like asking why is water wet? The reason that it is 4 pixels is due to the fact that the programmers made it so, when they made the collision system for blocks. I know 4 games with a similar collision detection systems and all of them have different walljumping velocities. Super mario bros. 3 and Super mario world need 3 pixels, Tiny toon adventures requires 4, Super mario bros. requires 2. apart from that, all of these games have the same walljumping requirements, but it seems that the speed required is arbitrary. That reminds me, Tiny toon adventures had a "jump through blocks" velocity of 4, and a walljumping velocity of 4 too. Maybe yoshi's island has the same system. I think it would be worth a try to see if you can jump through a block in SMW2.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I think it's time for all of you guys to put Christmas hats on your avatars. My flying toaster has had it's on all year round!
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I managed to walljump twice on the same wall, and elevate about 5(?) blocks: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/309207451/walljump2.smv Does not use <><or><>< that I'm aware of. fast forward to 10500 EDIT: a bit of a tutorial for Baxter, who asked for it. Forgive me if I covered stuff everyone already knew or takes for granted. I tried to write it so that n00bs with a little background knowledge can understand. (best case scenario) Technical details and conditions for a walljump. Basically, to do a walljump, you must lodge yourself at least 4 pixels into the wall, and approximately at a 16 pixel boundary. Vertical positioning is the easiest part of a walljump, so I'll tackle that first. You don't need to be precise at all, in fact, if you don't have the right vertical position first try, you are extremely unlucky! Try jumping slightly higher or lower, an you will get it soon enough with maybe one or two more tries. Yoshi will warp automatically to the nearest 16 pixel boundary above his feet when he snags a wall, so sometimes, you can gain a little bit extra height, this can be useful when you jump twice on the same wall, because then you might be able to elevate an extra block for each jump. Horizontal positioning is much more difficult, you should try optimising your horizontal position before your vertical. You have to move 4 pixels into the wall. There is no 2D Mario or Yoshi game in existence (maybe New SMB or Yoshi's story) that detects collisions more accurately than single pixels. You might have a low subpixel value and your enemy might have a high one, but you will still collide if the pixels in your hitbox do, even though you might be a good 200 subpixels away. What does this have to do with walljumping? For a walljump, you must go into the wall at least 4 pixels, but isn't 4 pixels a speed of 1024, and the highest we can achieve is low 800s? This is true, but because the game doesn't care about collisions more precise than a pixel, we can trick the game into thinking we have a higher speed for one frame. Of course, in the long run, all the gains and losses cancel out, but if we were to put all our fish in one basket, we can achieve a speed of 4 pixels for one frame only, which is all we really need. let's say out x pixel position is 0, but we have a high subpixel position, say the best case scenario of 0xFF. let's say that on this frame we also have the highest speed which (correct me if I'm wrong) is 765 + 56 = 821 = 0x335. This is good. It means we have a speed of 3 pixels, and 0x35 subpixels. The next frame we shall have a subpixel position of 0x34 and a pixel position of 4. Great! we have just traveled 4 pixels in one frame. In summary: in order to do a walljump: you must have a reasonable vertical position, and must travel at least 4 pixels into the wall, to do this, on the frame before you snag the wall, you must have a high subpixel value (or low subpixel if you're traveling to the left) and a speed of more than 3 pixels per frame. Some ways to do this: There is no trial and error involved in walljumping. You don't just jump at a wall until you get a result. There is a process involved to get you closer and closer to the snag. In general, if you TAS something and you don't have a process to get to the final outcome, then you are doing it wrong. (I thought I might mention this because the guy who found it on the E version basically did just this, also it's conforting to know that if you follow some steps, there is a guarantee of an outcome at the end.) I won't go into any detail about vertical positioning, since it's just too easy. Jump higher and lower until you get a result. Horizontal positioning is difficult. If you know how to be precise, then this should be really easy, and you should be able to find your own methods that work. let's say we have an average speed of 760, and we're in the air, so it stays at that value. Just before the wall press <>>, so that your x velocity goes 760, 704, 760, 0. If it goes 760, 704, 760, 816, 0, then you pressed <>> too early If it goes 760, 704, 0, you pressed it too late. Remember the frame that you started to press <>> on (call it X), also remeber the frame that your x velocity turned to 0. Turn back time a good 30 or so frames. and lose just enough subpixels so that your velocity now goes 760, 704, 760, 816, 0 when you press <>> on frame X. You should now snag the wall. If you didn't snag the wall, you probably need to be more precise. Doing a double walljump. So you know how to be precise? Well then this is basically the same as a single walljump. Accelerate away from the wall after the first jump, and then start a flutter back. Turn around so that after you accelerate from the flutter, you hit the wall so that you *just* hit it with a velocity of 816 or 821 or whatever. Walljumping a second time is easy, making it optimal is hard. Here are some considerations: Try to make the shortest flutter possible, because you can't accelerate past 375 or whatever it is during a flutter. Don't go further away from the wall than you need to, because you will waste time coming back to the wall. Try to optimise your position during acceleration/decelleration (generally through the use of null input), as this usually the fastest way to get a precise enough position. Try to elevate as many blocks as possible in a single jump, so that you can elevate higher walls with less jumps, or shorter walls quicker. In my video I managed 4. 5 should definitely be possible. 6 is impossible, because you can't jump that high anyway. If this wall of text wasn't enough to explain walljumping, PM me, and I'll make a video tutorial.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Game: Super Demo World (Super Mario World hack) Category: 120 exit (100%) System: SNES Author: andymac (or andyfaceMcGee on youtube) Progress: Water World 2 secret exit (video shows up to Desert Castle secret) 50 second improvement over [1135] SNES Super Demo World: The Legend Continues "all 120 exits" by Chef Stef in 2:08:01.68 SMV: current progress is always at my googlecode page in the trunk. Discussion: SMW topic Video: Link to video
Measure once. Cut twice.
Post subject: Walljump! it's possible
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I managed to do a wall jump on the U version of the game. It works exactly the same way as in SMW and SMB3, except with 16 times more precision. You need a speed of at least 3 pixels per frame +1 subpixel. (769) I did it in this video with 818. how it works? lodge yourself at least 3 pixels into the wall, and approximately at the 16 pixel vertical boundary (it doesn't really matter, you don't need to be too precise vertically) If you would hit the wall normally at frame x, slow dow JUST enough so that you'll hit the wall at frame X+1. The higher the speed, the more likely you are to snag the wall. don't even think about trying a walljump with a speed of 769, because you only have a 1/769 chance of it happening. Fast forward to frame 17100. My TAS keyboard setup doesn't lend itself nicely to real-time playing. everything before 17100 is major fail. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/622110559/walljump.smv EDIT: BTW, If I learned anything here, it's that this game is shit hard to TAS. I think these guys deserve a big hand.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Personally, I think there are more than a few formatting problems with the site. Whether or not they are ever integrated is completely up to whoever suggests it (after asking our overlords of course)
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I distinctly remember a list like this, however, I think it has been replaced by the "problematic" pages in question. I remember there was NES A-K and L-Z, and the rest were all full lists. There was definitely such a list in the past.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
TASLabo forums I found this forum a few minutes ago, and it appears to be an imitation of the TASvideos forum, but in Japanese. It seems that a lot of Japanese TASers have already signed up there, but I just wanted people to know that there is in fact a Japanese forum. Maybe we could put a link to this on the website somewhere?
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Mister wrote:
Water World 2: I CAN FLY!! \o/
\o/ indeed. Very impressed. I didn't even think of that strategy for desert castle, and I knew about second-frame walljumps, and how they make the screen scroll, I just jumped on the yellow block to get a bit extra height so that I could do one less walljump before the door and didn't think anything else of it. :P Anyway, it's a good thing too that I'll redo, because I did this a few days before you discovered the 44 frame walljump.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
This is why I am afraid of the site staff... EDIT: whoops about six posts too late
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
-Right click on the address you want to change and click "modify selected" -click on the "script lock" tab, and click "use script to apply lock" -Right next to where it says 1, underneath "scripted lock" write something like this
VOID Lock ( MHS_ADDRESS aAddress, INT iItemsize ){

	extern int target = { "", aAddress };
	extern int base = { "", 0x40001C };
	target = base;

}
The above code will copy a short integer at 0x40001C (an example, chose whatever you like) to whatever you right clicked on in step 1 (if you have other data types like a float, or a long, replace "int" with "float" or "long" or whatever. -Click "ok" -Right click on the address and "lock selected" If you need extra support, open MHS and then press F1, then go to either modifying values -> locking modifications or scripting.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Why don't I encode? Well, yeah sure, everyone makes the occasional encode for YT or whatever, but why I don't encode is because it's so complicated. If encoding consisted of "download program x and drag and drop a video onto it with set parameters y, ten hours later you have a good quality encode", then I'd do it. The tools to encode are pretty complicated, and I just can't be fucked learning when someone else can (and will!) make a high quality encode for me when it's necessary. As for YT and everyday use, I just make a base encode with a ridiculously high bitrate, and proceed to upload, it's the simplest thing ever.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1431966319/SDW.smv Here's a WIP of my SDW 120 TAS that I was doing before, I picked it up again, and now I'm up to where ISM was when he made his WIP. This run beats ISM by ~ 1120 frames, and beats ChefStef by over 50 seconds, through two new big shortcuts and a few minor improvements elsewhere. I'm not too sure about a lot of the new yoshi glitches. Instead of trying to explain them to me, I can figure that out myself, could someone tell me what setups are needed to use these glitches? So far I have seen no real opportunities to use any of these glitches, but if I'm wrong, I don't want to have to redo large portions of the run, so I'll ask now, when it's still relatively early. Where I'm at, I can easily go back and get a yoshi at the mushroom house thing without too much backtracking.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I think we really really need something like this. MUGG has been pushing for a way for runs that have arbitrary goal choice to be included in the site, and I think this is definitely a way to do this. For example, with HappyLee's SMB low% run, we already have enough runs for SMB, but the run itself is still of a high standard. I really think that we need a place to show some of the runs that didn't make the cut for whatever reason, while still maintaining reasonable entertainment value.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
This run does not beat all existing records
gia's pokemon yellow comments wrote:
Yes, the three games can be finished with this exact same route. Yellow is the slowest for the simple fact that it has ONE extra tile on its map which means you have to walk one extra step. Red and Blue lack this step. Out of the two, Red is the fastest because its first name choice for the protagonist is Red which has one less letter than Blue for Pokemon Blue. The name gets printed three times, for a total of 3 frames advantage for the red version.
Therefore this run should at least be faster than 2:06.58
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
It's a common misconception that it will be possible to create images in "thin air" using current, or even near future technology. Except for one device, but that only produces monochromatic white light, and achieves this by creating balls of white plasma in the air through the use of infra red lasers. It is possible to create 3D shapes in other media, other than air, by using certain materials that are exited by specific frequencies of infra red. When the beams cross, the material can have the capacity to emit visible light at that point. However, you won't be able to put your hand through it because there will be something in the way. If the atmosphere was made up of of one of these materials, it would be possible to make one of these holograms in air. These images are "real" and are no illusion. There are also swept volume displays, which are available today, where a film is rapidly swept through the viewing volume while a projector projects onto the film, which means that we see a 3d image. The image isn't truly 3D, because it only really exists at one 2D slice at any one time, but because we can only process so many images in a second, we see 3D. Probably the most common form of "3D" is where an image is shown differently at many different angles, so we see it as 3D, because each eye sees a different image. An example of this is a hologram. It's not truly 3D, because you have to have some sort of screen behind the image, so the image doesn't really exist in 3D space, it's just an illusion generated by seeing various angles of a screen.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Have I posted here yet? No? My channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/andyfaceMcGee Mostly mario TASes at the time of writing. My YT channel is usually behind my TASing progress by a few weeks. For up to date progress view my googlecode trunk: http://code.google.com/p/andymac-tas/source/browse/#svn/trunk
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Thanks for that address. I found that if I go past some fireballs, I can change that address and then affect the renzor fight
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
yeah, I found that they will always fire at the same frame after the start of the fight, so if I delay the entrance to the fight, I get the exact same fight scenario. When I say I would need to lose a second or more, I mean in the fight given that they fire at that specific frame. I backtracked until I found a place where something I did would affect the fight and I found that I would need to go back all the way to the entrance of the level, and then they would fire at different frames. Now I'm wondering if there is a way to manipulate them without losing any time.
Measure once. Cut twice.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (619)
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
Does anyone know anything about randomness in SMW? I was TASing Super Demo world, and I got some really bad luck with the renzor, which would add a second minimum to the time, and nothing I seem to do affects the fireballs at all.
Measure once. Cut twice.
1 2
6 7 8
25 26