Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I was just thinking about that last night, and did some experimenting with it today. To achieve the minisidejump, Turok needs to be standing still, then press a side direction for one frame, release for one frame, then the side direction button again. However, the key to this is that turok needs to be standing still (or have his movement memory address hit 0 somewhere in between those three button presses). This takes roughly 90 to 100 frames to be accomplished. So basically this might be an effective technique for starting from a dead stop, but it doesnt' look like it will be faster than just strafe running.
Oh, I've given up on trying to hex this movie. The game stores turok's velocity when he enters a door or picks up a key, and then expresses that velocity for roughly 2 frames afterwards. Which means that hexing will probably take more effort to redo than just redoing the 3 minutes of play I lost. I had to redo the swimming before the first key anyway (trying to optimize swimming is a pain in this game, but I've found that holding a direction for about 14 frames, then releasing for one frame, produces the quickest velocity underwater. However it may only show big gains when the path is straight, so underwater tunnels with lots of turning may not be much faster.
Oh, and I'm working to see if I can manipulate only boxes of explosive shells on the longhunter. Hopefully then I'll have more time to lure him towards the center, and I should be able to shave off another 2 or 3 seconds due to a combination of him dying faster, and me being nearly on top of the key at the end of the level.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I'm having major problems getting either tool to work. I understand that the TAS movie editor doesn't support saving .m64 files, so that's out. I tried Zefris' tool, and I'm getting some weird results.
I have an old movie that lasts roughly 20,000 input frames. I found I can improve a spot at around 13,000 input frames (by enough to make it worth my while), so now I have two movies. My original, with 20,000 input frames, and my new, faster movie with just under 14,000 input frames. I have opened and watched them both through with Mupen and they both work correctly, and show the correct number of frames and length of movie.
HOWEVER, when I open up my faster movie in Zefris' program (old version), it shows that I have 20,000 input frames! I've tried just erasing the "extra" frames, and hexing in what I want from the other movie, but that causes Mupen to show that the normal frames and the input frames are the same, causing playback to end waaay before it should. I don't know why my faster movie would still show 20,000 frames, since that data should now be gone from the file. Does anyone have any idea what's going on and why I'm having problems?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I've been working on this again, since from reading the submission, everyone wants to see a run. I decided not to start over, and have been working on finishing up level 2 today. However I was watching my movie and seemed to remember from my playing days that the Longhunter could be killed closer to the key, and would drop his plasma rifle nearby. So I did some testing, and shaved off another 2 seconds from the boss fight. However I've also managed to save another 6 seconds in level 2 from my work today. Problem is, I may not be able to hex them together to make a viable movie, so I may end up doing all of level 2 over again. Shit.
However I'm not giving up yet with the hexing, so we'll see over the next couple days how things go. And if anyone is experienced at making .m64 files splice together well, let me know. I could probably use some help.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Good improvement from your other submitted run, even after watching that one a month ago, this one felt so much faster with the carpet ride being skipped. Also the stop running didn't bother me at all. Definitely a yes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Why exactly? We've had tons of movies receive improved runs while the previous one was still in the submission queue, and none of them were (or needed to be) published. I don't understand why this movie would need to be any different.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
The cool glitch is definitely yes worthy, however the seemingly unoptimized lag, stray shots, and some slowing down that I noticed are in the range of no. I think they average out to a meh, with a full yes coming for a more optimized remake.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
How about not trying to integrate them per se, but just make it so they have the same GUI frontend. So you combine an NES, SNES, Genesis, and Gameboy emulator into running with the same interface, but none of the actual code is changed. Kinda like those "classic collections" of games that have 12 SNES games on 1 DVD for PS2. They're together in the same package, but still have separate engines and sets of data. I've often found that if I could just have one program to open up to play games would be great, even if the program was bloated with other code for other systems that I wasn't using at the moment.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Warp wrote:
AKA wrote:
, but since there's no real danger I don't think the punishment deserves to be that great.
"No real danger" is a very subjective thing. What if one of the clerks had a heart attack due to the stress and died? Would you still consider the thieves innocent, since if they hadn't tried to rob the store the clerk would still be alive? It's situations like this that explain why, if a death occurs during a felony, the felons are likely to be charged with murder (in the US).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
I keep hearing this 3 months figure, which i don't understand. The prior movie was posted by NESvideoagent on September 14, and this one was submitted almost exactly a month and a half later. Granted, that is a somewhat long time to go without publication, but I've certainly seen longer. and if it's possible to publish a movie without encoding it, I suppose it's not that big of a deal, but I still think it's just as easy to link to the cancelled run.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Ummm.... what? Just because we don't think it would make a good submission shouldn't keep you from trying to make a run if you think it would be interesting. And I think the general consensus is that the run wouldn't be accepted as a movie here due to the lack of entertainment value for most viewers, not because of it's perfectness (or lack thereof).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
So this is one of your other multiple runs you've been working on, huh? I've never seen this game, but I really enjoyed it. I got a very tranquil feeling from watching it, since buster seems to just float through the air with ease, not caring where the next enemy is, or what is going on. And the use of furball with the walls was very well done. Excellent movie, and certainly a yes vote.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
You probably have a hacked ROM, then, if it's not functioning like the game should. And before you ask, this isn't the place to request a working ROM. If you're not sure about whether your ROM is hacked or not, look at the symbols that come after the name. (U)! is good. The exclamation point means is a good dump. (h1) is bad. The h stands for hacked.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
The basics are: Open the movie you want information from, and copy the input below the frame you desire. Close that movie, and open the movie you'd like to splice the movie into. Paste the information from the first movie into the second movie wherever it needs to go. Save this new movie as something distinguishable from the first two movies, and play it to see if your attempt was successful. If it doesn't sync, try adding or subtracting 1 or 2 frames from the splicing point. If you have questions more advanced than this, I'm not the person to talk to, unfortunately.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
DarkKobold wrote:
Since my last movie sat in the queue for months, I managed to restart the game from scratch, and save 13 minutes, 45K frames. However, since I really like the old movie, and it was destined for publication, I'm going to make an unprecedented request: Please 'publish' that movie, and obsolete it right away. No encoding necessary, but it allows me to discuss the differences. Additionally, it makes this movie more interesting, for the reasons noted in the submission.
Generally, the "publication" process not only includes putting the movie on the front page, but also encoding the AVI for those who cannot (or chose not to) use an emulator. Your submission will not disappear once it is canceled, it will simply be moved to gruefood. If you would like to discuss that movie in contrast to your new movie, simply link to it in the submission text. This will allow for the viewer to still have quick reference to the movie that you are talking about, but will save the confusing act of "publishing" and obsoleting a movie in the same day. Unless you have any questions, will you please cancel your previous run so that A) Your current movie is more prominent, and B) The submission queue doesn't get cluttered with submissions destined to get grue'd.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Fun game to watch, and pretty short which is a great asset for this type of game. I especially enjoyed the dancing at the end of stage 5 and the dying at the end of stage 6. Voting yes.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
(823)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
ElectroSpecter wrote:
mmbossman, did you use the modified SNES9X with reset recording? I supposed I'd better put it in my signature, as Nibelung did.
And yes, Pekopon, it's probably the slowest DKC game in most regards (although vertical ascension while jumping up ropes is pretty fast).
Ah, nope, I was just using the normal v10. I'll take a look at it with the proper emulator when I get home. And a slight signature modification would be a good idea;)
