If false, EGA emulation latches hpel on vertical retrace end (like VGA does), which may have been EGA clone behavior that some games were written against.
This looks convincing enough to me, I'd say that option is fine.
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you could very easily glitch it by dragging the cursor out of the screen
If I try it in FlashPlayer the hand bounces back when I try to move it out of bounds.
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OH WOW
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eien86 wrote:
I recently completed this movie: #10017: eien86's DOS The Incredible Machine in 26:23.238 that contains the 87 puzzles of the original TIM game.
However, now I see "The even more! Incredible Machine" that expands on the former game with 70 more puzzles using new pieces.
In effect, the game is exactly the same as the original, but with more puzzles. However, it allows you to start from the puzzle #88, for players who have already completed the original.
My question is: can I TAS this game starting from puzzle #88 as Standard, since I already beaten the origin 87 in the original? Or would this be considered Alt?
There's no way the same input will sync for the identical puzzles in both games right? If there was 1 movie for the fuller version that beats all levels, it'd likely obsolete the movie of the shorter game, but at the same time it'd be unfair to require a resync.
I understand the goal but I'm having a hard time coming up with an appropriate name. Like, that name wouldn't mean much in the context of the game itself, because it's defined by another game (which is a different version).
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Spear of Destiny (1992) for DOS features copy protection mechanism which forces the player to answer some trivia questions using the game's manual on each game start-up. However, there are keywords which automatically mark the whole trivia as passed. May any of those be used in a TAS?
I don't see why not.
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This movie currently has the same (blank) branch label as [3559] A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark by adelikat & Alyosha in 01:34.56, but their goals look different, and one is unlikely to obsolete another. On the surface it may look like the difference in time measurement is just nominal, but in this case there's more to it.
A bit of historic background.
Traditional movie timing on TASVideos has always been from power on to final input. In some cases it makes sense to instead rely on in-game time (if the game has that). Real-time speedrunners on the other hand (their hobby is traditionally called RTA) usually time their records based on gameplay duration, and also sometimes use explicit in-game time.
Now when it comes to comparing 2 records (most of the time it's done to determine if the new submission is actually better optimized than the existing publication), we don't blindly compare overall movie durations. Because that can be misleading, for example if the new movie uses a more accurate emulator that causes more lag, even though pure gameplay is now shorter. Or maybe the new movie uses a different version of the game that has longer loading screens or menus.
To determine that the new movie is an improvement, we directly compare actual gameplay:
Movie Rules wrote:
Improvements must be in gameplay to warrant obsoletion. You should not be losing gameplay time compared to the published run: If you find a new timesave that's 30 seconds faster, your movie should be at least 30 seconds faster, unless there is unavoidable time loss as a result. Any time saved or lost from version differences and/or emulation accuracy is considered unavoidable, and is discounted. Your improvement movie may even be longer than the published run, but it is still considered an improvement if it improves upon gameplay.
Most of the time it's clear what "gameplay" means, if it's identical in the 2 movies barring the part that is now done faster in one of them.
If a level is now completed faster, but menuing is sloppier, that still means gameplay has been improved.
Even if gameplay itself is now a bit sloppier, but there's a new trick that compensates for that, and saves more time than is lost from sloppy play, that still counts as an improvement.
It's also possible that gameplay is the same, but menuing is now done quicker. We still accept that as an improvement if there's really no more time to save in gameplay.
Then there's also [4032] NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" by Masterjun & ais523 in 00:00.78, which doesn't even enter what is traditionally called gameplay (like the previous movie did) and triggers the ending right from the title screen. It was still considered a valid improvement, because zero gameplay time is shorter than non-zero, and whatever is left can also be improved, and it hasbeen! So again, when regular gameplay can't be improved anymore (there can't be negative amount of it), optimizing title screen inputs still counts.
Measuring gameplay duration using in-game timer has some common traits. That timer often discards loading screens and menuing, which makes it useful to measure gameplay duration indirectly (by simply looking at the value) and to compare 2 movies indirectly (the one with the shorter value is considered more optimal).
I say "indirectly" because most of the time people relying on IGT don't watch the 2 movies side by side in order to see how much frames are saved or lost in each scene (which is also what one is meant to do when TASing a game and attempting to beat an existing record). The IGT value itself is a decent initial indication, and further analysis could be done later if needed.
RTA timing is somewhat similar to just relying on IGT, but what to do if the game doesn't have one, or if it's inaccurate? Then the speedrun community of a given game decides when the timer is meant to be started and stopped. And the portion of the game that is covered by that timer quite naturally means what that community considers to be meaningful gameplay for that game. The exact entity that has to be optimized during play, and is compared when records are being compared.
Another similarity between that and relying IGT is in how the rest of the game is treated. A perfect example used to be Sonic games (I've heard it's not anymore due to pause abuse?). Meaningful gameplay is whatever is meant to be competitively (and/or collaboratively) optimized and compared. The in-game timer indicated that, and then there was the score tally that takes the longer the faster you beat the level. That score tally is not considered meaningful gameplay for Sonic and is completely disregarded.
If it wasn't disregarded, the speedrunning scene for Sonic games would have been dead long ago, because once someone finds the optimal combination of in-level time and score tally duration, it's impossible to consistently keep improving that overall duration by finding new and new tricks. New tricks would just get canceled out by longer score tally.
Now that's yet another similarity between IGT and RTA timing: portion of the game that is not covered by the timer is completely disregarded. This is why RTA runners may stay on the menu screen until they're comfortable to start the actual run.
And finally where I'm getting at with all this story.
This submission's title screen can't be completely disregarded... because it's what makes the meaningful gameplay portion of the game shorter. That screen is a part of the overall RNG manipulation and is explicitly used to get more optimal randomness in the actual game.
Normally, non-gameplay time is disregarded exactly because it doesn't affect gameplay itself.
To solve this, at some point we introduced this clause into Movie Rules:
Movie Rules wrote:
Runs that optimize In-Game Time (IGT) are only allowed in Standard if they contain faster gameplay than a real-time focused run.
It means that if IGT is shortened by using a glitch, then IGT itself is not a relevant metric anymore for optimality. If it's hacked then its value is moot.
Now that's only a limitation for the Standard class. In other classes one can do whatever with IGT and it'd be fine as a showcase in its own regard, as long as the goal is understandable.
This submission doesn't aim for IGT because this game doesn't have it. And it doesn't aim for shortest TAS time either, because it takes longer overall than [3559] A2600 Raiders of the Lost Ark by adelikat & Alyosha in 01:34.56. Instead it aims for RTA timing, but it defines it in such a way that allows for (potentially) unlimited delay on the title screen without counting it as a part of the movie, but doesn't disregard that delay entirely and instead uses it to manipulate in-game events.
So I think it can be said that this movie partially disregards the title screen time: negative implications on movie length are discarded, but positive implications on in-game duration are used.
I haven't seen such a situation before, so I feel it needs some discussion. I do not believe it can go to Standard because the goal is defined in a very tricky way. And it can't obsolete the existing publication because their conditions are not equal (and under equal conditions this one is longer).
So it could go to either Alternative or Playground depending on what everyone thinks. Note that Playground will soon be reformed one final time, which I'll soon make a thread for.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Alright so with that license you can redistribute the file as you want, as long as you keep the same license (archive.org allows that). Converters being always available is important for verification, but not critical after it's been validated. Forking them just in case would be a good idea.
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SO, FINALLY, I captured video as this run was replaying in ares, and since the frame of reset when starting the macro, to the last emulated frame of it (thankfully it was also the last frame of input, no blank frames at the end), I'm getting the overall duration of 3:07:26.833 in ares frames. 3:07:26.317 if I count from the first non-lag frame which is when the macro counts its first frame.
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What's the full workflow to TASing it? How do you grab and run the game? Does it have any kind of redistribution license?
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I removed saveram several times between sessions, but kept getting the same desyncs. Without saveram, save file removal does nothing obviously, but starting the macro at the correct moment fixed my problems.
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PancakeTurtle wrote:
EDIT: Nevermind, the desync is most definitely because File 1 already exists, please delete it before playing the macro.
How? I've never played this game, I don't know Japanese, and when I press things randomly different GZ operations happen. Removing the saveram file from host didn't help.
EDIT:
The thing that made it work past that desync point was starting the macro replay while at the title screen or at save file selection.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Made a fixed version of that PR https://github.com/TASEmulators/BizHawk/pull/4506 and I'm getting consistent deyncs:
Link to video
For the ROM, I used upstream GZ GUI patcher and applied it to the ROM used in this submission. Loaded that rom along with the SD card image created by Dolphin with just the macro present, and ran the macro by importing it from GZ menu.
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poipole807 wrote:
I want to submit a TAS of a game obtained through a game library. The thing is that this game library allows for a game to be updated at any time, and there's no version history. The author of the game hasn't been active in years so there's no threat of my game being changed, but is this still a problem? If it is, can I upload the game somewhere else for eternal preservation?
What game is it?
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SBDWolf wrote:
Secondly, I applied a sort-of-determinism fix to the Lobber EX move, the special explody purple attack. This is a bit simplified, but basically this is a move that when aimed in-between an enemy and a floor has a 50% chance to deal either 2x or 3x the normal amount of damage, depending on which collisions Unity processes first. This seems entirely random and I don't know the root reason for sure.
While libTAS *is* deterministic in this, this means that using this move on different frames and different game state would result in different outcomes, so since this move is used quite a lot throughout the game, I added this mod to make working on it a lot easier.
Thirdly, I forced a lot of perfect RNG through code edits. Cuphead is extremely high in RNG, with the odds of a perfect run estimated to be somewhere around 1 in 10^68. Some RNG is seeded on level entry, and some is generated on the fly during the level. While some on-the-fly RNG manips are possible by doing stuff like shooting bullets and spawning dust particles (which I did do here and there in places where code edits were too complex), I felt like relying on modding as the primary way to control luck was the way to go in order to avoid adding hundreds of extra hours onto the project or settling with suboptimal RNG (especially considering there's a few pieces of RNG that are something like "This boss delays his attack between 18 and 42 frames and I need it to be a very specific value 5 times in a row").
We haven't ever rejected a movie for not having frame perfect manipulation of all random events. Luck manipulation is very rarely the primary aspect of a TAS, most of the time it's routing that doesn't depend on RNG and precise execution of non-random movements. The main aspect is things that can save seconds or even minutes, which is most of the time certain tricks one needs to be aware of.
Now there are also games where better manipulation can save you minutes, and if there are a lot of such cases in a game, TASing it exponentially becomes a torture. Especially when you have to chain random events in a way that time is saved overall, even if individual random events could theoretically be manipulated to get shorter, but they could lead to other random events that got longer. Just this year I TASed (again) a game where boss patterns are random, and I can absolutely relate to the RNG hell. After a certain point I just said "fuck it, let it stay improvable, I can't bear this anymore".
So uh, yeah. The whole point of the rule is to only edit the game so it becomes TASable. Fundamentally. If everything is random, EVEN IF IT'S DETERMINISTIC, it's unTASable in practice. Because in order to manipulate things to the level of "decent", it'd already require unbearable amounts of effort. It'd be detached from reality to prefer a movie that's improvable everywhere just because it's a little bit more authentic, especially when such a movie is not even the one that's already done.
How things get obsoleted is a question that's a bit trickier, because removing the RNG mods would indeed most likely result in a slower movie unless someone has a time machine and a bot farm (otherwise it'd take decades).
I'm more concerned about porting consisting of steps that can be described in a pure text form and reliably repeated while the movie keeps syncing. If it's a program that does the patching, it's obviously more handy, but requires hosting the magic entity that makes things work.
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Uroboros wrote:
What would be the proper steps to have it considered for publication under the current rules?
Things being mentioned here is enough to make us notice them, but unrejections are going slowly because there's always not enough judges to quickly handle both current and old submissions, so things have to wait until someone claims it. I'm tempted to claim it myself but then all my other TODOs that have been waiting for months or years would have to wait even longer :(
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Spikestuff wrote:
It's not DOS, it's Windows. It's marked incorrectly on the submission because Hawk doesn't automatically classify it as Windows in the header.
There's no way to do that for PC emulators since they have no idea what software you're running. Just like for PCem we specify platform in annotations, DOSBox movies will have to be manually edited to have the Windows platform.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Ideally, the embedded movie handling is just adjusted so that first copy doesn't happen, so instead it's kept into ROM for the eventual gz deserialization, just like the SD Card importing does.
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Got it to compile on 24.04 (23.10 was running in circles), and after wiping the config it now runs in your modded m64p core, but still only black screen and silence in the Ares core. Standalone Ares same problem.
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It still can't run make itself.
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Can't get that one to build.
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Is there no way to replay this tas on emulator using upstream GZ?
EDIT:
I built the patched ROM exactly like you did in the video, but it gives black screen in any version of bizhawk, with both ares and with your patched m64p. Its size is different from what it has in your video:
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
