Posts for marzojr

marzojr
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Ideally, you should time all the possibilities and see which is fastest.
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marzojr
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Ilari wrote:
Or just Snes9x 1.43 movies. One can tell between 1.43 and 1.5x based on the .SMV header version number field.
From what I gather, bsnes is so much better in terms of accuracy that there seems to be little point.
Ilari wrote:
The reasons to use Snes9x 1.43 seem to be: * The good: 1.43 has better tools than 1.5x (esp. 1.52/1.53) * The bad: 1.43 has less lag than 1.5x (faster times / comparing with previous runs).
So one bad excuse (better tools) and a terrible excuse. Why hasn't Snex9x 1.43 been deprecated already? It stands to reason that doing so would already benefit 1.52/1.53 by encouraging further development, as opposed to forcing the developers to maintain two increasingly different versions of the emulator.
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marzojr
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natt wrote:
No point making bsnes-rr when people are still using snes9x 1.43 to record.
After having bsnes-rr done, the site could simply stop accepting movies made in snes9x -- that would take care of this issue.
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marzojr
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ElectroSpecter wrote:
Haha, I don't think I've seen that particular Robotnik glitch at the end. It's a nice touch.
It is on the published TAS of Sonic 2.
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marzojr
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Sonikkustar, Aglar.
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marzojr
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Zeupar wrote:
I'm pretty sure the first thing marzo will do once he is done with his hack is to rape it badly with tools. He is making the hack non-TAS-friendly because of that.
There is actually a slew of TAS friendly things in it -- score tallies in 1 frame, can swap characters for the next level (so optimal character can be picked), insta-shield... it is just that I am removing the obvious abuses as much as possible so that the TAS is more interesting to watch.
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marzojr
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
marzojr: if Tails and Knuckles are needed at the same time, I'm sure you know better than anyone else which hack should be used here ;)
Except that said hack won't have those impossible-to-reach rings :-p Regarding offscreen rings: when the game loads the rings in memory (it loads all of the rings in a level), it sorts them from left to right. When checking whether Sonic or Tails is grabbing a ring, the camera position is used -- both Sonic and Tails can collide with rings starting from camera X - 8 to camera X +328, regardless of Y position (this means from 8 pixels to the left of the screen to 8 pixels to the right of the screen). This ignores the camera's Y position -- meaning Tails can grab rings on the same vertical slice as the screen regardless of how far above or below the screen they are. tl;dr: The relevant address to watch is the camera X: $FFEE00 (2 bytes, unsigned); whenever Tails' X coordinate is anywhere from camera X to camera X + 320, he can grab rings.
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marzojr
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The pair in Aquatic Ruin may be possible to grab with Tails offscreen -- the pillar is a sprite, and these generally do not check collision with offscreen characters. The ones in Mystic Cave might be possible to take with Knuckles, which does not help you. Those in Oil Ocean 2 and Metropolis 2 (and those 6 more in each of these levels that you don't show) can't be taken without managing zips -- which I doubt is possible for most of them.
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marzojr
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kaizoman666 wrote:
Not really, to my knowledge. Although the glitch messes with the stack to cause the wrong jump, it does not overflow it.
A "stack buffer overrun" does not overflow the stack -- it writes (overruns) the limits of some data (a "buffer") placed in the stack; this can be used to overwrite the return location of a function to be to whatever location is possible to engineer with the input data. Anyway, I was talking about what it seemed to be from your description; if I am wrong, then I am wrong :-p
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kaizoman666 wrote:
However, in this glitch, the game is jumping to the RAM and reading it like it would ROM. By then manipulating the RAM, the glitch manages to store the right value to to $0100. This is what you would call RAM corruption, as the game was never meant to read RAM as a ROM code. EDIT: Except for one particular case at $7F8000, which was just pointed out to me.
By this description, it sounds more like a stack buffer overrun (resulting in "arbitrary" code execution) than it does generic RAM corruption. I must admit, though, that calling the category "stack buffer overrun" would not convey much to the vast majority of users...
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Here: Sonic 1 Sonic 2 Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles Sonic CD [edit: Links removed. Check the first post of the thread for updated versions.] These are emulators compiled with Upthorn's and Nitsuja's camera hack, solidity display and hitbox display. It is only safe to use them for the corresponding games (and some limited hacks of each). With 'num lock' on, the base address of objects is shown, as well as the angle on the ground. With 'scroll lock' on, camera hack is disabled; otherwise, you can scroll through objects with 'page up'/'page down' or return to Sonic with 'home'. If the selected object is offscreen, the emulator will display centered on the selected object. While rings and sprites show, only rings on the same vertical slice as Sonic (give or take) can be taken, and Tails (or Sonic) will generally not interact with sprites that are offscreen. Solidity is displayed as color overlays: green overlay means only the top is solid (ground); red overlay means all but top solid (wall/ceiling); blue overlay means all solid (ground/wall/ceiling); no overlay means not solid. Sonic and Tails have two hitboxes: the inner one is for interaction with things that can hurt Sonic, the outer one is for sprites and terrain. Sprites with red hitboxes always hurt; sprites with green hitboxes have special collision, with no main pattern; purple hitboxes are badniks; and so on.
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marzojr
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I guess I will ask Mukki to delay the publication. Again. In any case, I won't be able to resynch the run until next year due to other engagements.
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So it seems. I think it is excessive to resynch the movie for the 3 frames of improvement (I hate resynching LZ3), but will happily do it if deemed important.
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FuzZerd wrote:
should have mentioned this earlier but I think there's a one frame improvement to sy3 just before the zip possible (by standing up one frame earlier.) I guess I should have just posted here instead of trying to find you guys on mirc.
It isn't -- jumping one frame earlier gets Sonic stuck in the wall instead. And while it is possible to work with even that (since you can zip and jump, it is possible to use a trick to jump to the wall below), it ends up being 3 frames slower by the end of the zip.
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You guys mean choosing the yellow path over the teal path in this picture (warning, gigantic image)? Because, you know, the first Sonic 1 TAS already used it. Or do you mean one of the (not pictured) increasingly slower routes that come about from playing more of SBZ3?
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"Maximum on-level rings". No need for ring boxes or the CNZ slots since neither are on-level rings.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
True, but a man can hope. Maybe they save one second, but the RNG changes, and they save another unexpected second, the RNG changes again, and... who knows, it would be a neat Christmas present :D
You are right that there will likely be RNG changes. You are wrong about the consequences -- it most likely means I will simply have to manipulate all the animals in all the levels again (and may end up losing time because of that if the resulting patterns are no good). And that one of the LZ acts will probably desynch and will have to be partially replayed. I am not complaining, by the way, I am just saying :-)
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Techokami wrote:
Uh, problem. Game objectives states: Takes no damage
Ah, thanks; that was a copy/paste related error. I fixed the submission text.
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There are 2 basic cases for the universe with no cosmological constant, depending on the critical density: (1) expansion forever (slowing down) and (2) expansion followed by contraction. (1) is further subdivided into (1a) below the critical density and (1b) exactly at the critical density. Case (1a) has a space that is hyperbolic at large scales; in case (1b), space is Euclidean, and expansion asymptotically approaches a rate of zero; and case (2) has elliptical space. In none of these cases you have an "edge" to space; in fact, space is infinite right after the Big Bang in cases (1a) and (1b). In this discussion, I have been assuming the Friedmann metric. More refined models are available, but they are based on inflation and ever-increasing acceleration, so they aren't relevant to your query -- and I don't know much about them anyway.
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marzojr
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Edit: I could have sworn there was another post by Warp before this post. I will leave the reply for posterity. The General Theory of Relativity says no such thing. What it says, in fact, is that from the particle's point of view, the harder it tries to avoid falling into the singularity, the faster it will fall -- the unaccelerated trajectory is the one with the longest lapse of proper time (an outside observer is essentially irrelevant as he cannot observe the event, but he would say that the accelerated particle takes longer to reach the singularity based on the math). Any particle, no matter how much energy it has, will inevitably fall into the singularity.
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marzojr
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@Warp: Modern evidence shows that the Universe's expansion is accelerating; moreover, its geometry is "flat" in the sense that matter density is exactly equal to the critical density. If you have about an hour, and if you don't mind the religion bashing, you can view this video of a presentation by Lawrence Krauss at the Atheists Alliance International conference of 2009 where he talks about just that, and in a layman-friendly way to boot.
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Specifically, because we have been looking over those maps and I haven't seen anywhere where a zip would be useful in SYZ.
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1) It is apparently impossible to reach absolute zero; so far, we have been able to get down to near femto-Kelvins, but the absolute zero eludes us. There is some speculation that it is due to the uncertainty principle. In college, the professors just states outright that you can't reach absolute zero. 2) You can (in principle, at least) reduce or increase the "energy available for useful work" (thereafter W) without changing the total energy of a system (hereafter E) by transforming the residual energy E - W into W; this does not violate the first law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that while you can transform W into E - W, you can't do the reverse -- turn E - W into W.
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FuzZerd wrote:
I can't figure out how to zip in a useful way in SY3.
Aglar found the zip while doing this run; he was unsure if/how it might be useful, and asked me. After some poking, I did find a way to put it to use, and it turns out to be a ~10-second shortcut. But I won't spoil the surprise just yet :-)
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