Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
I haven't watched the full run yet, but I had a quick question:
Why use an exit mouse after Lilliput Steps? Can't you deathwarp back to Twoson instead with Paula and save the exit mouse for another dungeon?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
feos wrote:
Ah, the post isn't talking about custom game submissions, it's talking about the downsides of using "anything goes" to introduce verifiable, stable, usable game-specific tas frameworks.
Ah, I should've read your post better then. My bad.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
What games other than Celeste have similar TAS tools currently? It would be good to have a list somewhere to have more reference points.
Currently, the site's prospects for Windows / PC TASing do not look great, other than libTAS perhaps. In the absence of any good submittable general PC TASing tool, we need to look outward more.
Obviously, given the problems mentioned in the thread already, allowing any *.* rando file to be submitted is not gonna happen, but in the case of a game like Celeste, where the source code of the tools is openly available, there should be a way to get it on the site.
We should try to define some kind of process by which game-specific TAS tools can be vetted, similar to how emulators are vetted currently. I'm not sure what the exact requirements should be, but I expect they wouldn't stray too far from what is already required of emulators (open source, only keypresses in files, etc.).
I completely agree with dwangoAC's points on the matter. We would absolutely be richer for having games like Celeste published on the site. Going forward, there will be even more games with TAS tools developed specifically for them, and the site should not be left in the dust while we guffaw about having added rerecording support for the Oric-1 to Bizhawk.
"Memory wrote:
As a judge, I'm not downloading any submissions files that I do not know if I can trust. Period. Having some sort of workflow for accepting new TAS frameworks, sure go ahead. Having me have to guess as to whether I'm about to download a virus? No thanks.
In fairness, vulnerabilities can exist for regular emulator movie files too.
feos wrote:
We already know what happens.
1000 submissions of cat pictures
100 submissions of clearly illegal pictures
[...]
I seriously don't think there will be that many custom game submissions that they couldn't be handled one at a time.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
It's easy to quickly dismiss Billy Joel Bob's first Super Mario Bros. submission to the site if it has 40 rerecords, but beyond that, the rerecord count is pretty worthless.
Often, I end up playing ahead in the TAS to route out the upcoming parts or to explore some glitches, which causes a lot of rerecords. If I do the same exploration stuff outside of the TAS file, these rerecords simply disappear.
Consequently, a TAS should be judged purely on its own merit - the gameplay as it appears on the screen. Any surrounding factors are incidental and hugely variable and unreliable.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
Warp wrote:
Memory wrote:
You nay not know something is an emulator bug until after you made it for instance. Not a fan of outright removal.
It would be a bit embarrassing to have runs that rely on faulty emulation. But I suppose these cases can be dealt with a big warning in the description of the TAS.
Put a big /!\ Warning tag next to them I'd say. Let people know the movies are not up to standard without just making 'em disappear.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
Challenger wrote:
Cool find! Looks definitely useful for a new 96-exit TAS.
I should announce here as well, there is a 96-exit TAS in progress already. I'm currently at Butter Bridge 2. Thankfully for me, this new trick won't improve Gnarly. It would suck to line up every frame rule again!
So far, 58/96 exits have been done, and improvement is of 1 minute and 37.8 seconds. Rerecord count is around 627k.
Yo that's hella dope my man
I'm so looking forward to the final TAS
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
Spikestuff wrote:
Emphasis mine.
EZGames69 wrote:
Melli's Retro land is a game on the homebrew Uzebox console based off of the Mario Bros. series.
Get the facts straight.
It's based of The Great Giana Sisters which itself is a knockoff of Super Mario Bros..
You don't skip the game where where the clone is based on and jump what the original is knocking off.
Yo, what's with the needless rudeness?
Giana Sisters is hardly the most popular game on the planet, so not knowing about it, it's entirely reasonable (and not incorrect) to conclude that this game is a knockoff of Super Mario Bros. instead.
TAS's pretty boring though. Not much you can do about it, sadly. I think I saw one instance where you actually had to slow down to clear a jump. Considering how other Uzebox games got vaulted, I don't see why this one can't be, though.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
DrD2k9 wrote:
feos wrote:
...this game features significant gameplay difference, so beating it the second time showcases more of what it has to offer. Even if the levels are the same, main mechanic is still different.
(Emphasis mine)
This makes the most sense to me for requiring the 2nd playthrough.
Another thing I should mention about this is that if you just go to the second boss again without getting the jetpack first, the boss doesn't appear and you just get booted back to the hub again.
The only way to get the "To be continued" message is to actually start from the beginning, with the jetpack.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
Holy hell, the sheer amount of optimization in the run is astounding. I would've never expected there to be so many improvements left in the run. This is what it means to really max out a game.
Yes vote, natch.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
Personally, I would prefer keeping both categories published, as they're radically different. You could argue that since the version choice significantly affects the way the run plays out, they count as two separate games.
As for the run, Yes vote. It's nice to see an improvement to the run, however small it is.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
This is a short demonstration of what tricks would be feasible if the game had faster character switching.
Link to video
The character switch timer is at $32 in RAM. I simply swapped out the bytes in the ROM that are written into the timer address. I might continue with this if there's any more interesting tricks to show. Sadly, I don't get to use screen wrapping with Grant in the video.
//Edit: While going through the game, I also noticed another minor improvement to the current Grant run:
With the right subpixel position, you get automatically pushed through the corner by the wall. You don't need to do the climbing animation. This should save a couple of frames whereever it's used.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
I found something interesting.
Link to video
Unfortunately, you get stuck at this point, since you can't get to the key. I'll go through the game and see if it can be made useful somewhere.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
So I learned of this game in this year's AGDQ. I'm quite happy to finally see a TAS arriving. The action was pretty smooth, which highly contrasts the game's innate jankyness. The tricks were pretty cool to see, too.
The game itself is pretty goofy, in particular with the voice acting, making for a highly entertaining run overall.
Voting yes.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player
(1440)
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 2132
It's pretty amazing that this glitch exists, but I think it outstays its welcome pretty fast. In every stage, there's hardly any meaningful gameplay other than to die as fast as possible, without any interesting tricks or surprises to be seen. The novelty wears off pretty fast, and most of the run ends up being comprised of death animations and stage transitions.
I hadn't seen a full playthrough of the game before, so after a while, I found myself being more interested in what the next stage looks like rather than what actually happens in it. Even for just 7 minutes, it drags on. I'd like to see this run published just for novelty's sake, but I wouldn't want to see it replace the full TAS of the game, because that run shows off far more gameplay.
I'm honestly not sure what to vote on this run. I wanna vote Yes, because I think the glitch is extremely cool, but I also wanna vote No, because of how dull it makes the game overall. I'll be abstaining from voting for this reason.
With the right subpixel position, you get automatically pushed through the corner by the wall. You don't need to do the climbing animation. This should save a couple of frames whereever it's used.