To be fair, b-frames can be used with AVI, but stable output is not guaranteed.
Although what I suppose marioguy actually wants to say is that we should offer encodes in two flavors: highly compressed H.264/Vorbis/MKV and hardware device-compatible… uhh… XviD/MP3/AVI (I mean, if we were to offer more-compatible versions of a video, why not alleviate other problems people have asked about before)? Or something. There's no way to please both parties with a single option.
Okay, after watching it, I can say I was impressed by some of the strategies. As for the rest… Call me spoiled, but for a TAS with so much action, there is paradoxically little action (referring to the line quoted after me in the submission message). However, all things considered, this is a very optimized and entertaining TAS, so yes vote is heading your way. You guys did really well.
On another note, this TAS is going to be a codec poison. I hope the publishers will take this into consideration.
Just so you know, hotarubi is working on a best ending run, and he's saved ~30 seconds in first two stages.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe80f-0tQqY&fmt=18
(Sorry Flygon, it seems you don't get to upload this one.)
Shinryuu, replace the Nicovideo link in your submission message with this one: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm7956924
It's the same video, except it doesn't require registration to watch.
if beginners can't find the FAQ page, how do you plan to make them spot the new section ?
As much as I would like to support Raiscan, this is really the stumbling block. Now instead of pointing newbies to the FAQ, we're going to do so with the beginner section. Which essentially doubles the funtionality of the FAQ et al.
If you look at any niche community that revolves around something technical (and whether you want it or not, TASing is technical), pretty much all of them have FAQs intended to educate inexperienced users and share the context. RTFM'ing is one of the two feasible ways to deal with lack of experience, the second being ad hoc education using forums or chats ("ask a question, receive an answer"). Remember how you learned anything in your life, and you'll find it to be considerably close to truth. Anything else is going to be redundant, because it'll be a copy of existing functionality with basically identical problems.
However, it doesn't mean we can't make RTFM'ing (read: self-education) more accessible. There have been many discussions on creating video/flash/whatever tutorials. This is the way it should develop in my opinion. Furthermore, I believe using flash is much better than video because it allows for greater interactivity and ease of use, as well as the possibility of seamlessly embedding it into the FAQ.
[EDIT]
Further elaborating on the idea of interactive tutorials, we can make them even more educational if we base them around problem solving (which serves a double purpose since problem solving is the key element of TASing).
Example: give a newbie an emulator and a certain lua script for, say, Mega Man 1. The script will load particular sections of the game and have hardwired goals assigned between checkpoints (for instance, a sequence of jumps or a boss fight) as well as a number of frames for optimal solution. The player will then have to come up with a path within a certain threshold of the optimal solution. The script will also assign score points for overshooting the threshold. After all challenges are passed, a sum of the points from all checkpoints in a form of per-task statistics can then be used to measure your e-penis determine and increase a newbie user's TASing capability in a concise and user-friendly way.
Well, 120 frames is negligible, no-one's going to scold you for not using password in this case. In such case, not using a password beats the otherwise any day.
Nope, the Japanese version also allows you to skip the map screens between the levels, saving major time. Add ~22 seconds to get a corresponding US ROM time.
Is there a specific reason that we are doing translations for this game and not others?
There is no reason to not do translations for other jp-only games, either, except lack of volunteers. Besides, this game is relatively cutscene-heavy, so it's double-warranted.
Well, at least for the intro cutscenes, Shiny can do this himself because he's German. As for the rest of them, I suppose we need volunteers…
[EDIT] Eh, got me beat.
We are on the brink of having a current gen TASable emulator available
Sorry to burst your bubble, but GBA and NDS also were current-gen by the time they became TASable. (I hope you aren't going to argue that handhelds can't be counted as current-gen; in a sense, Wii can't be, either.)
I'm not sure I'm going to watch a Shining Force 2 run, but I believe it's ok to speed up the cursor. It's just a cursor. We've allowed things worse than that.
Balore fight was yum. Otherwise, your movie seems to lose to zggzdydp's, while klmz's page suggests that either kind of run (glitched and unglitched) can be pushed several seconds lower. No idea how, though, I'm far behind klmz on Castlevania knowledge.
Also, am I the only one who noticed that you uploaded an incomplete movie to Microstorage? Watching runs in emulators surely seems old-fashioned these days. :P
Anyway, I'm really glad that you're back on the warpless run, it's so overdue it's not even funny. On the other hand, by now you have accumulated so much new tricks and strategies you're going to improve the published movie by hours!
I don't understand how anyone could snake at those speeds and never hit the sides.
I suppose it's not easy for them either. What you see in a YouTube video is one successful attempt where everything connects; left behind the scenes is a thousand of failed attempts where they hit a side at least once and lose precious time.
Yeah, but that's how the game is designed. I'm talking about taking a game beyond what the developers intended just to make it as truly difficult as possible.
I was just illustrating that some developers actually had a similar idea of making a game impossible in mind, and implemented it into their games as well.
