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Haha... Wonder where MahaTma is. Busy with his own life I guess?
Anyway, I've got another question, which probably most people here would probably be more familiar than I am. Can the binary number system denote all integers? And is there some form of reasoning behind it?
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kileran wrote:
2) AC cant do electrolysis, can it?
I doubt so, even if it is chemically feasible, the fact that the anode/cathode keeps swapping will affect the way ions migrate around. It should significantly lower the effciency of the reaction
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Found some time over the weekend to try and redo the run... and I am damn glad the way it turns out! Found my first glitch... you can throw a paper plane over the cell boundaries if you jump over just in time before the plane turns around (see the first cell). Woot! It was only a minor time saver in this stage, but experimenting it later, I reckon it can save another 5 seconds for the rest of the game.
Respect to Zer0, manipulating the enemies in the first cell to bump the first guy out of the page took me quite a while... don't know how he actually figured it out. That is a very cool glitch actually; if you can bump the enemy deep enough into the page, you can instant KO him... Will probably use it in more often later in some fights!
For people who intend to do this run also, I figured that you can save a lot of life (which is super important for paper planes!) by not scissors kicking every enemy, but instead grapple kicking them. The damage dealt is the same, but Sketch doesn't lose life doing this. It may even be a few frames faster than scissors kicking... since you can grapple a fallen enemy approximately 3-4 frames before they are vulnerable to normal hits. I used this to kill Strigil fast before he could teleport even once in the sewer. I think that was the major time saver for this stage. The only problem is the way the game detects grapples. If I am not wrong, it must first detect the player walking against the enemy for 1 frame, before pushing forward punch. This means that it isn't the best attack to start off a fight, so i stick to scissors kicking as a lead-in.
The last thing I did differently was picking up a knife and not potion. This was because I would lose less life with this new fighting style, and the knife allows me to save time of puching the crate. Heck, this game suffers from lag when there is an explosion, but I doubt it will slow the run as much as NES game.
Here's the WIP, done in 1:25 (& 42 frames) as when the screen first turns totally black. This compares with Zer0's run of 1:30 (& 18 frames).
Any comments? This is my first time doing a TAS and I ran most of it in frame advance... anything doesn't look good enough? Off to study now... hope the wait wouldn't be too long for the next WIP.
PS: By the way, if I intended to change just a portion in between the run, does it mean I need to redo everything after it?
EDIT: ARGH typo... Zer0's time was 1:30
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OMG, my comp lags bad running 4 FCEUs at a go... so much so that when I hit unpause, not all emulators respond to it (at most 3 would). Seems like I can't watch the newest WIP yet... my lost :( Gotta wait for an encoded version
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Dromisceius wrote:
It's simple- ASM isn't for idiots. :D
Romhacking.net has all sorts of guides, ranging from beginner to advanced, for whichever processor(s) you're trying to learn.
Going there to take a look now... will check out the guides to see how it goes. Hope it's not as crazy as it sounds o.O
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Hey, I intend to learn some ASM to play around with some basic hacking... since there are so many coders around here, anyone can point me to a good website/tutorial where I can get more information? Hmmm, and are there any recommended tools that would be useful to me?
Any help is appreciated :) thanks
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kirbymuncher wrote:
Is this a good game or am I just a little insane? Would anyone make/watch a run for this game?
Hmmm, would there be enough variation battle after battle to keep the viewer interested? I played this game before, and I personally don't think it works well with the idea of TAS. That is unless you can manipulate the cards to allow you to whoop the opponent in like 3 turns battle after battle... in different fashion each time. That would be a masterpiece in my opinion.
Maybe I am jumping into conclusions too quickly. Why not make a demo card battle first and see how it goes? BTW anyone who knows this game well enough to give an estimate of the least number of battles to go through?
kirbymuncher wrote:
The only problem is that most of the game seems to be menus. At the start, you have to go through a step-by-step game that is not the fastest it could be, but you have to do what the professor says or nothing happens. It's very annoying.
Try to see if there are any exploits possible to maybe break the game during the tutorial, eg hitting start/select or maybe browsing through other options etc??? Maybe in doing so you may also find a glitch of sorts to skip games... who knows LOL!
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Dromiceius wrote:
I'm more or less prepared to record an audio commentary to accompany any run, explaining the plot, characters and most of all, tricks and strategy.
Wow... that's a cool idea man! Reminds me of all those director cut DVDs that I have, would really make appreciating the run much better, since like watching the run with the commentary beats constantly referring back to the submission. Heck, I am just a lazy bum, but I salute your dedication to enriching TASes ;3
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Phil wrote:
I don't think many people own the cartridge either
I know I shouldn't be advocating this, but well there are many *ahem* sources available to get dumps of SNES games... can't say the exact same for PS isos, while there are sources, the file sizes aren't exactly very friendly for downloading.
Well, or maybe I am just biased against PS re-recording at this point... Though I would wish to see Vagrant Story TASed (heard from gamefaqs some jap dude ran the whole game on the console in under 1:20 zomg!)
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Phil wrote:
Plus, text is understandable.
Hmmm, TASers try to skip texts so much and so quickly that I usually don't understand the plot unless I had played it myself... so to me I don't really thing it may be that bad an issue.
But the thing is that if it's the PS version that is going to be used, then wouldn't it mean all the WIPs have to be coded into video format since most will not own the game? The same problem may arise after submission, meaning everybody who intends to give the run a watch would have to download few hundred mb of video (maybe more for such a massive game?)... don't know about others but I will be turned off. Heck, as much as I wish for a nicer more polished version of the game to be done, some issues just may not work out so nicely. My call is that go ahead with the SNES version, after all there are so many uncertainties with PS re-recording and stuff, who knows, fans of this game may never see it being done!
LOL, this is starting to sound like it belongs to the PS re-recording thread haha
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Hyena wrote:
I love the card glitch in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. The glitched run of that dropped my jaw. First you skip the entire game, then you kill Dracula during a cutscene and gain over a dozen levels immediately.
Oh yea, that glitch! It's one of my favourites too :P To add on to that, I like the glitch that allows warping to dracula fast... and screwing up the second last room. Awesome :)
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Kyrsimys: You sound like you actually know Inuktitut! Where did you actually go to learn it, and why did you even decide to learn it? One of the most unlikely choices to occur to me... no offence though
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Zurecco wrote:
I still think that we should have a dragon theme link next to the 'view this page in hiragana'. It would take you to "Elder Drake Bisqwit's Fire-Breathing Lair of Dragon-Assisted Speedruns", and every link is dictated by the voice from Hexen. Also, "gruefood" would be changed to "food" while "workbench/published" would be "incubating/hatched dragons".
Friggin' SWEET!
Hmmm, if it's possible to do this, then why not include an option to revert to single column layout if some of you still heavily oppose it? I guess this has been brought up before, but was just wondering...
But anyway, themes would be cool! In that case we could have like different ranks eg. Dragon slayer or stuff like that too LOL. And posts can be changed with like, I dunno, exp bars?? To take the idea even further, maybe we could have festive themes like halloween and stuff... WOOT!
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Hmmm, isn't this like the predecessor of FFT? Interesting, but wouldn't TASing this game may be boring since waiting for turns tend to slow the pace a lot. It plenty and fun to play by yourself and all, but for the viewer, I'm not sure if it works better than the standard action/adventure genres. Conceptually-wise, you could look for some ideas in the FFTA thread... they should share similar ideas.
What about trying the TAS Ogre Battle? It's similar in the class levelling system and stuff. The main thing is that different is that it is like a RTS. Rather than doing another 'tactics' type game, why not try this out instead? Try both games out normally first, I think there are quite interesting elements in Ogre Battle that are worth exploring.
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Ersatz wrote:
I figure we should make a thread about all the tools you wish you had access to while making a TAS.
just to get the ball rolling... These are a few ideas that have been floating around in my mind.
Dopesheet:
Anyone ever thought of creating a dopesheet plug-in for any emulators? So that you can view all of your save states on a timeline and edit them in the same window? Maybe even slide the savestate ahead or back however many frames needed?
SpriteInfo Display:
Select a sprite on screen to display the assotiated memory adresses and values?
Zoom in and out:
Can there be a tool that allows you to zoom in or out of the given frame? so that you can see more of the level? That way anyone who is anyone can controll the character when it has gone outside of the screen?
Also it would be sweet to have an emulator that wasn't just an emulator but more a "TASstudio" maybe even name it "TAStudio PRO" as a catchy title. :D
The dopesheet idea sounds cool... the timeline part may be useful for keeping track of all the savestates especially for RPG TAS. The part on sliding the savestates back a few frames may not be feasible, cos it may screw up the way the game may randomise the rest of the level, hence destroying the subsequent save states.
Hmmm, as for the Zoom in/out feature, well, its hard to make it applicable for every game. From my understanding, the game map have to first be made, either by disassembling the game altogether, or by taking screenshots everytime the screen moves to the next panel. Then with the map in place, the emulator must find the memory addresses for the x/y-coordinates, then scale it back onto the map. The problem is that each game works differently, not only the memory addresses, but the way the maps are stored and stuff. So I guess its hard to program a feature that could do all these for every game :S With that said, nitsuja must have had a hell of a time with his sonic advance 2 run!
But if you're talking like dream/ideal tools, well that would be great! In that case, I wish that the emulator had bots that could automatically test for standard glitches like collision abuse and stuff... YAY! Maybe then we can see more cool wall walkings in games :P
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Bisqwit wrote:
xoinx wrote:
Hmmm, I was just wondering is there a way to merge assimilate the forum into the site nicely. In that case, when selecting a particular submission/movie, the discussion can take place there, rather than a discussion in the forum which links to the site...
Just my 2 cents... because I realised that ever since I registered with the forum, I hardly refer back to the Front Page.
I've considered that too, but in my opinion, it seems to contain too big obstacles.
1. Assume submission discussions are carried out on the submission page.
- It is not smart to duplicate the discussion forums, possibly in a way that uses two completely different user interfaces. The rest of the forums should also be merged into the site.
2. There's not enough room for everything on the screen. The forums already take a lot of room on the page, and without radical redesigns, it wouldn't fit into the nesvideos site layout.
3. People oppose redesigns.
1) I don't have much expertise in this, so I probably can't comment. But I can understand how painful it is to allow duplicated content in different interface. But actually the colour scheme and interface of the forum already suits the site... is there a need to change it? Maybe just using iframes to allow the user to see comments together with the submission? But frames are not very browser friendly... so it isn't the best solution I guess.
2) What about the tabbed interface introduced? It could be under one of those tabs in the published video page. This tabs can also be introduced to the front & submission pages for the viewer to swtich between the main page as well as the rest of the forum discussions... would this be more feasible?
3) LOL, I still remember the hoo-ha after the forum page was changed to the double column layout. But I guess after a while, when people get used to it, it should be alright, just like the forum now :)
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Hmmm, I was just wondering is there a way to merge assimilate the forum into the site nicely. In that case, when selecting a particular submission/movie, the discussion can take place there, rather than a discussion in the forum which links to the site...
Just my 2 cents... because I realised that ever since I registered with the forum, I hardly refer back to the Front Page.
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hanzou wrote:
OgreSlayeR wrote:
Maybe you could find a way to grab the heart container in Sting Cameleon's stage with the boomerang, and without beating Launch Octopus.
By any chance, is this your current plan, or can the jump be made without ice, is it more time-efficient to just do Launch Octopus first?
WOAH! That was super cool... omg, can't wait for this to be featured in the movie, unless an even better way exists?!?
EDIT: Oh, just read OgreSlayeR's post... too bad then, for a moment I was hoping this would be nice...
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Well, I'll probably be quite busy till early December, so won't be able to post any WIPs till then. Should be checking in on the forum daily though, so if anybody intends to try this game out, post here and I should be able to give some comments... otherwise, then it'll probably have to wait.
I've got a rough idea on how to go about doing it. Still a lot of testing needs to be done... since the last time I played this game fully was in 1996 :S I am not sure if this game has any glitches though
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Hmmm, there is a game which this might work out in fine... it's the game that FODA was searching for a day or 2 ago called Kwirk for GB. I think for a puzzle game like this, it may be possible, but it would require lots of route planning.
Just wondering, in terms of palindromic, does it just mean key presses or timing too? If it is both, it must a one hell of a crazy game to allow this; then would converting the movie file pose a problem too, since it can't be just flipped right? If its just key presses, then it would be hell to make 2 runs of the same games isn't it?
Bah, being the pragmatist that I am, I think this idea isn't too feasible. Anyone who accomplishes it ought to be put in top spot of the TAS Hall of Fame. Wait a minute... would it still be considered a TAS? Maybe it should be a TAP (Tool-Assisted Palindromic-Run) Hall of Fame LOL
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Hmmm, don't know if this is called bumping a topic, but well, I have just rewatched Zer0's run of this game, and I noticed that there are many intended exploits in this game not taken advantage of.
For starters, route-wise i am not sure if it is the most efficient one. Although the game is relatively linear, but there are many hidden items all over the map (to be uncovered by Roadkill) which may allow the stages to be done quicker. Every weapon is useful, since destroying objects will cause Sketch health, and health can mean 'paper plane'. So the route can actually still be improved...
In terms of execution, the strategy for Mongoria (the woman in green) isn't optimised, in fact the run takes probably 10 times longer to kill her than needed. If Roadkill (the rat) is in possession whenever facing her, just dropping it in front of her can instant K.O. her! I am surprised that this wasn't used, because it was quite even hinted in the game (when Alicia talks to Sketch). I reckon using this can save at least 15 seconds, since she pops up quite often in later stages.
Another place where it can be done better was in stage 2, in the room with the green fluid. 2 things could have been improved:
- Speed, Roadkill can once again come in handy, since it would zap the slimeballs when it is in contact with them... also because he can find a health potion, which may or may not be of use since the stage is ending.
- Entertainment, now I know 3 things about this green slimeballs. Firstly, you can only have 2 of these in the room at 1 time, meaning anything more and they won't spawn. But if there is less than 2, then they will spawn after a fixed time. Which means kill them as fast as possible to save time. But there is a second thing about them... that is that they are stupid (perhaps on par with Golden Axe critters LOL). They would at all cost try to lauch an attack towards Sketcg, even if there is another enemy between them. Meaning, it's possible to exploit and make them kill each other for the fun of it, and not lose out in overall speed. One other thing to note is that grappling these slimeballs can morph them into some other enemy, which may or may not be useful to know.
I may need backing here, but movement may/may not be optimised. I have a feeling that rolling around may be actually faster than jumping or normal running, but well there aren't too many cases that require a lot of moving... so maybe it doesn't matter much.
I get this feeling that there are many more other things to optimise in this run... but at first glance I spotted these immediately. I hate to see such a great game go down like this, anybody care to try re-running it? I am quite busy at the moment... maybe I will get back at this after my exams are done
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atr O_ci ty o.O yowzeeh...
Hmmm, I personally liked the "100 CDs" Rockman & Forte (JPN) in 48:27 by vsmk3 (?). All the moves showcased were totally unexpected for me. To think that the game makers wanted to increase replayability by introducing CD that they claim requires playing through on both character to obtain fully... I guess this is what TASVideos does best; making game makers eat their word :)
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OMG, this game is FUN! Hmmm, tried only the medium difficulty ones... and took a good 10 minutes to solve each puzzle, wonder what hard mode is like?!? Wouldn't really want to see this as a TAS, but it sure is a good brain teaser :)