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moozooh wrote:
we could at least not ignore the possibility to publish a more potentially entertaining movie at hand.
Certainly so. And I think one of the main differences with this game is that some people see the fastest run more entertaining, some see this "multi aspect" run more entertaining. This type of disagreement has not been seen with the previous movies published under "entertainment" runs, due to their nature (fighting games would simply do the same combo over and over again for a fastest completion time, Tecmo Super Bowl would kick one field goal and then run out the clock). And while publishing this movie might open up the possibility of other controversial submissions (playaround SM64, Super Metroid, Ocarina of Time), I don't necessarily think this would be a bad thing. As tossed around in this thread, this may be a stepping stone to an effort to better organize TASvideos into different categories depending on the goals of the authors.
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moozooh wrote:
Entertainment can't be unbiased, and shouldn't be in the first place. It shows exactly what it shows: people's opinions.
Individual entertainment can't be unbiased, but the collection of scores can. Suppose you give 100 Sylvester Stallone fans the movies "Rocky" and "Cliffhanger" to watch. They may very well rate them nearly the same due to being Stallone fans. Give those same two movies to a neutral crowd, and they will likely have more discerning tastes (ie more will think a "classic" like Rocky is more entertaining than Cliffhanger).
A similar phenomenon probably occurred with Sleepz movie due to it being starred. More casual viewers, who are more naive to the methods of TASing, saw his movie, thought "Wow, that guy kicked that games ass! I'm totally entertained!" (ie the initial wow factor of any TAS), and voted highly. More discerning members who have more experience, may have also been as entertained, but because they understand the techniques better. This leads to a more accurate rating of what it is that's entertaining them (ie entertaining antics of the character vs the idea of a TAS in general).
And yes, Stallone is a weird reference, but you get the point. And Cliffhanger was a pretty horrible movie
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moozooh wrote:
Also, if you track the history of RCR runs, you might notice that the current published run, while much faster than the previous, has much lower entertainment rating.
This is not an entirely accurate way of evaluating a prior movie's (true) entertainment. Due to Sleepz movie being "recommended", it probably attracted more "casual" voters than the typical run. And because it went unobsoleted for three and a half years, it managed to accumulate more casual high entertainment votes. I'm not saying that Sleepz run was better or worse. I personally have no opinion on which movie is better, due to this game not entertaining me much no matter who authors the run. However, the statistics on this site are far from unbiased and scientific representations of the "actual" values for entertainment and technical prowess.
adelikat wrote:
... a place on TASvideos because it shows things that can be done with tool assistance that don't have an opportunity to be explored in a movie that aims for fastest time or other time-based goals.
This is exactly what makes the Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct runs belong on this site (I can't vouch for SF, haven't watched them as much). And roughly 75% of the voters seem to agree. I don't share the same view (as much), but I think that 3/4 of the audience finding this entertaining is enough to warrant a publication. I don't think this run will bring the death of this site due to people just submitting playarounds (although it may increase some), however I also believe that this site has members who are smart enough to judge a good playaround from a bad playaround. And I will continue to believe this until I'm proven wrong (along with believing this should be published despite not finding it very entertaining).
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I actually really like the image that already exists for Buster Busts Loose. While it's not the most colorful action shot, seeing that "Jump!" warning when he's stretched out with only his toes connecting him to the ground is pretty funny. It's actually one of those screen shots that makes me usually smile when I see it.
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One of the biggest problems I was running into during my run was the jumping aspect- when the perfect frame was to get the highest up on a ladder, or on a climbable wall, for starters. Boss hitpoints would also be an appropriate useage of memory watching, as would x/y coordinates for floor switches or platforms. Granted, there aren't as many uses as other games, but I could find a few helpful applications for them.
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Decent enough movie, although I didn't listen to it with the sound on. Some of the acrobatics were really fun to watch, and it's a good improvement.
EDIT: I vote for screen shot 11.
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I knew that those were common binary values, but I didn't really think about them being used like that, thanks nitsujrehtona. Another question: I was able to play around a little bit with the memory tool and found a value for my z coordinate. However, I also found another 7 or 8 values that seemed to behave in the exact same way. Is it common for multiple memory addresses to code for the same variable, or do you think that each one has some sort of specific purpose, and I just didn't do enough testing to discover it?
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The last minute looks eerily similar to vomit on the screen, however the majority of the rest of the movie was decent. I too don't see what the appeal of this game in general is, and I never understood why Sleepz movie was starred.
However, with that being said, I was mildly entertained, however there's no way this should obsolete the current movie. A playaround should aim for being as entertaining as possible, while still being somewhat concerned about how much time the viewer is going to be spending watching it. If the same amount of entertainment can be squeezed into a shorter movie, that one would obviously be better (everything else being equal). This movie does waste time at points, without providing a corresponding entertainment boost.
I vote meh.
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The RAM watcher lets you see values that you have chosen to be important to you, but first you have to search for those.
Say you're looking for the X-coordinate of a character. Start a search, and search for all addresses greater than 0 (most games won't have negative coordinates). You'll get a bunch of results. Now, move the character one or two steps to the right, and search for addresses that have increased from the last entry. The list should shrink dramatically. Repeat this as necessary until you find a few addresses that you can monitor on your own, and watch them to see if they coordinate with what you're character is doing on screen. Play around with it for a while and see if this helps.
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Overall, I found this to be a fairly dull choice of game, due to lack of variety in gameplay. Enter a door, leave, stroll right, jump some, open a door, fight a boss, Ghandi shows up, long points tally screen. Repeat as necessary.
Other than a pretty boring game, the level of execution wasn't too bad, but there were some things I noticed that stood out. First, many of the bosses didn't seem to be optimized enough, especially the boss around minute 9 or 10 where the character just stood there and spammed with his sword (or knife?). There was a lot of boss vulnerability time that I think could have been used to deal damage faster.
Also, I really liked the damage boosting, but I think there could have been more of it in spots, both to speed through the levels faster, and make the tally screen go faster due to finishing with less hearts.
Overall, I was sort of entertained, so I'll vote meh, but unfortunately the lack of optimization makes me lean towards the "no" side more.
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Searching I'm good with, it's a matter of knowing exactly how a FPS would affect what I'm looking for. I found an address that determines whether Turok is moving or not (a simple 1 or 0), and thought I had found an address for speed, but it wasn't quite fitting right for me. Strafing left had a value of 128, right was 256, backwards was 1024, and forwards was 2056 (suspicious, huh?). The funny thing was, when buttons are pressed together, the values simply add together. So that means strafing to the right and forwards was 128 units faster than strafing to the left and forwards, which I don't actually think occurs. Also, when I added rotation into the mix, the value jumped up to 800,000 something, so since I'd be doing a lot of strafing with aiming, that value is basically worthless.
Probably one of the most helpful addresses I could find would be a simple z coordinate to show my height when I'm jumping. Boss HP will be easy for me to do now that I've fooled around with the tool some (they were always pretty easy w/ the other games I've done), so I'll take a look at that also. I start school up again early next week, so I may have some class time to work on this or just dick around with some memory watching before I actually decide to redo the first 10 minutes. I just watched my WIP again tonite, and although it seems pretty good, I also notice some small details that showed my inexperience with TASing in general when I made it. Although I'm still pretty inexperienced with 3D games.
So all in all, LSpiro's tool looks to be easy to use, however finding useful addresses may not be as simple (possibly because what I want to know may not be just in one address). I'll see what I can do, though.
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Actually, after downloading L-Spiro's tool, it looks to be a ton more user friendly than Gocha's tool, so I'll play around with it and see about picking this up again. If you have any helpful hints about trying to find addresses in a 3D game, a PM still works:)
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If you would give me some pointers on memory watching Turok's speed I would be much, MUCH more inclined to finish this. I am not competent at all with programming languages (as evidenced by just getting Gocha's memory watcher for SNES9x to work thanks in large part to Randil), so I haven't even tried working with L-spiros tool. It's just a hunch that I wouldn't understand much of what he's talking about. But if you'd like to give me some pointers about how to work it, and if possible find addresses for horizontal and vertical speed, I would love to finish this movie off. It's my marathon, and I'm perennially stuck on mile 9 for months now, because I just don't have the patience to trial and error every single different angle to jump at a wall, how long to hold jump, etc. I'm very willing to make it as optimal as possible, but it felt like I was not working really hard, and not very smart. PM me if you're interested or need to know more information. It is good to see some more interest in this though:)
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Why call for a lock? This topic hasn't become the flame war like other topics have been, hell no one had even posted in it for 10 days before you. Just because it may have outlived it's usefulness for you doesn't mean that everyone else is done thinking about it or wanting to discuss it.
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This was on my to-do list, but I'm glad to see you're cutting your teeth on it. One thing I would highly, HIGHLY recommend is using a RAM watcher to make sure that the shots you're giving to bosses actually count (you can't always go by audio cues, and it will help you figure out for sure whether he is invulnerable in the air). I only played around for a tiny bit with this game so I can't offer any help with the weapon specifics (another handy use for RAM watching-- seeing how much damage each gun deals per shot), but I'll be happy to watch a couple WIPs and maybe help you figure out a few memory addresses if you'd like.
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moozooh wrote:
mmbossman wrote:
However, how can you call this a no damage run when you die at least twice to do the warping to the bosses? I always figured that if a character died, they must have taken damage somewhere.
OHKO deaths like those by crushing or falling into endless pits usually don't count in cases with no-damage runs, because the nullify the life gauge rather than decrementing it.
That's understandable, but I'm still having trouble figuring out how a damage taking run can exist when one hit kills the hero (assuming, of course, that the damage taking run is played on the same difficulty setting as AnS's movie.)
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Great movie, Ans, and it looks like a great old classic. And it was really interesting to find out about how sneaky Konami used to be with their games. However, how can you call this a no damage run when you die at least twice to do the warping to the bosses? I always figured that if a character died, they must have taken damage somewhere. And if another movie used the same difficulty setting, how could they make a damage taking run if one hit kills you? Other than that, great improvement, and I'm sure whoever voted no meant to vote yes. ;) Oh, and I also really enjoyed the movement syncing to the music in the last level, that was pretty sweet.
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Does anyone know how Phil got the option of doing 6 laps in his run? I've played around with it and can't figure out which option determines the number of laps (changing the difficulty keeps the length at 3 laps)
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The 3 places I took damage in my run saved 155 frames (~2.5 seconds), so if it's used at least once more somewhere throughout the run, it's reasonable to expect 3-4 seconds total saved. It's my personal belief that taking damage leads to one more level of optimization, especially with this game, since you get only one hit to work with (no matter how many hearts a character has). However, it's up to Randil whether the 3-4 seconds saved is made up for by the style a no damage run receives.
