So...I restarted the run again, due to having nothing much to do, and I used the newest version of DeSmuME. Unfortunately, not only am I having worse luck, but also several room transitions are delayed by ~14 frames. Anyway, I'm near the end of Chapter 3, atm.
I was just wondering why there arent many submissions... does it really take so long?
Uh...
Nope, not at all. In fact, it takes less than a day to make a video. It's just that optimizing things in a 3d game is really difficult. If it's not optimal, the run will either get rejected, or obsoleted shortly.
You should ask the TASer to upload it somewhere for you, since it's just an input file; an avi wouldn't help at all how to pull of a frame-specific trick.
I've been reviewing a lot of the rejected submissions. It seems that some judges, consistently, explain why the run is being rejected in a way I can easily understand, while other judges, consistently, do not explain why in a way I can understand.
Some examples of the two would be nice, so judges could (possibly) make their future reasons more clear.
What kind of silly thread is this? You just did the in real life equivalent of walking into a large production movie studio and asked if anyone in the room was famous.
All of those people are famous, but some people are more famous than others.
Are you suggesting any concrete emulators or is this just an unspecific rant?
Past VBA revisions, Snes9x, and just basically any old versions of emulators.
In the case of SMW or SM, it's not just a question of saving frames, but also a question of comparing to existing runs. If you're working on an improvement, and you're losing a frame - was it you, or was it the emulator? How will you find out?
Same for the final submission. If you're switching emulators, you'll need to explain how many frames were gained or lost due to the change.
This is additional work, it complicates things, and thus switching to a different version when improving runs isn't as easy as just using the same emu. This is especially true for games with highly optimized runs, where changes due to emulator differences will dwarf any actual improvements.
That should never be an excuse to start a run for a new game on an inaccurate emu, but I can understand if it's done when improving existing runs.
Yea, but since there's always a time when someone improving a run, there must be a deadline to stop using old emulators, or people would keep using them.
You should also consider that newer emulators are often less mature, less stable (as in, the run may not sync on future versions), may have unknown bugs (as in, eats your TAS and laughs at you), and sometimes lack useful secondary features (like lua-support, memory watch etc). Or sometimes TASers are simply more comfortable with the emulator they've always been using.
Actually, even when Snes9x 1.5x was considered good, people kept using Snes9x 1.43. Being comfortable isn't a (very) good reason to stick with older revisions.
Since the goal of this site is to produce entertaining runs, perfect console compatibility is a nice feature to have, but by no means required. And to address the issue you raised in the edit of the initial post: the goal of this site isn't to expedite emulator developement, either.
I agree with Warp on this:
It goes without saying that a more accurate emulator should always be preferred over a less accurate one
With the emphasis on "should" instead of "must".
The entertainment factor doesn't mean the site should use older emulators. What if someone posted a very entertaining "glitched" playaround that abuses errors that a console couldn't do due to emulation flaws?
Anyway, how about at least banning the emulators which are 2 revisions/versions behind? Like Snes9x 1.43 at least?
In other words, the reason for banning an emulator cannot be "its keypress files cannot be replicated on the console". That's an impossible demand to make for consoles with nondeterministic sources of random timing.
Alright. I changed the original reason to another one that also bothers me.
In these cases a TAS cannot be reliably replicated on the console. However, does that mean that the TAS is cheating? Not really.
An emulator which can't emulate lag correctly would not be able to sync up (relaibly) even if the games were 100% deterministic.
Also, I thought about it, and I think banning older emulators will do more good than harm since (some) people are abusing older emulator's flaws to make faster runs.
One reason why people use old emulators like Snes9x is because it lags less than newer, more accurate ones like lsnes. This creates runs that cannot be beaten with more accurate emulators (since they lag more), causing people to abuse older emulators more and the cycle repeats. This cycle hinders emulator development, so in order to break this trend, older emulators should (hopefully) be disallowed.
The category is mislabeled. This isn't "glitched", it's beating the game's random mode.
I agree. The branch should be changed to "random mode" or something else that more accurately describes the TAS. "Glitched" is not only inaccurate, but it makes it look like an April Fool's submission, and I assume you really want this published.
I have a couple questions.
- Why do you have to phone 13 numbers at the beginning? Is it necessary to gain even one secret Denjuu?
Sorry, I'm not familiar with this game.
The phone, and therefore the glitch, is trigger at intervals of 5 minutes in-game time, so I decided to recruit all the secret denjuu to reduce the amount of time I walk around in circles doing nothing.
FractalFusion wrote:
You seem to imply that, without a secret Denjuu, the fight against Bashou is 2 minutes of text and in blue. How do you know it takes 2 minutes?
Without a secret denjuu, I would be stuck with a level 5 starter with only 1 offensive attack. The 2 minutes was an estimate based on the fact that the previous run, which didn't use secret denjuu, took 1 minute+ with the snake enemy, which is at a lower level.
Since not only is the damage towards Bashou is around the same, but it also has alot higher health, it was predicted that it would take ~2x longer.
Wow, thanks!
I'm stuck on a particular part in the run. I've manipulated a boss battle to be faster than my previous WIP, but encounters horrid luck later that kills the improvement. However, my slower WIP has better luck later on, and thus becomes faster (alot) latter.
Any ideas what should I do?
rog was joking? He sounded legit.
Anyway, there should be a rule preventing people from submitting runs like this in the future, regardless if it was a joke or not.
Ringrush should be banned for the irreparable damage he has done to this site's honor.
Well, at least he cancelled it. It could've been published before RingRush cancelled the run; then it would be a mess. I'd say, let RingRush go this time, but make "cheating" like this a bannable offence from now on.
The improvements are all from stage 3. I could have saved 5 frames instead of 4 if not for those meddling bots and their pesky lag frame.
I can't get over this. I'll try to see if that 1 frame could be saved.
Edit: I did it! But it caused the rest of the run to desync, and I got horrid luck. This may take some time.
Edit 2: WIP of the first 2 stages. I also changed the first boss fight slightly, for better or for worse. Feedback would be nice. :)
