Well it is an epic day! We have Virtual Boy rerecording! To watch the movie you need the
VBjin emulator.
Streaming links:
(removed)
The platform
Virtual Boy Wario Land is one of the few releases for the Virtual Boy platform. Arguably Nintendo's biggest flop the Virtual Boy sold it as a "Virtual reality" experience using goggles that sent separate video streams to each eye to create a parallax effect. Unfortunately the seizure inducing red monochrome, the awkward interface, and lack of a virtual reality experience resulted in a less than positve consumer response
The game & movie
Virtual Boy Wario Land was a platformer released for the Virtual Boy system in 1995. The main objective of the game is to traverse the 14 levels. Each level has a key you must find in order to open up the next level. There are treasures hidden along the way. This TASes gets no treasures and thus achieves the "bad ending".
This game offers a rich variety of movements and power-ups that give great TASing possibilities.
Significant Moves:
Running using the L or R buttons: the same speed as Barging
Barging: A nice move that is faster than walking, but causes Wario to bounce off walls and enemies
Bull Barging: With the bull upgrade, barging is significantly faster
Flying: Slow speed but very useful
Fly bull barging: When you have the bull and eagle upgrades, you can fly at bull barging speed, very useful
Tricks:
Alternating L and R quickly stops momentum, this can be used for quick turn arounds
While Bull charge flying, tapping the jump button allows him to do a jumping bull charge. This can be exploited to do a double jump and reach areas that shouldn't be possible (such as getting the key early in Level 13).
Faster swimming - This makes the swimming level look drunk. When swimming, Wario has a pushing forward, pulling back pattern. Hitting into things at the peak of the forward momentum can cancel out the pulling back momentum. The result is drunk, but it saves time. Eh, I hope that made sense.
Frame rule:
Level 13 is the biggest frame rule in TAS history, 1500 frames! That is the interval that the clock is on that gives the key. I get there about 600 frames into the frame rule and thus have 900 to kill. The result is rather unelegant time killing.
Categories
Emulator used: VBjin
Bad ending (any%)
Genre: platform
Suggested Screenshots
Thanks
paul_t for putting together VBjin
sgrunt for his awesome encode
Enjoy!
Baxter: Accepting this first Virtual Boy TAS, it got a good viewer response.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
sgrunt wrote:
Spinal wrote:
@SatoshiLyish: I like your effort, but I don't feel it's working. For a still scene with 2 frames it works fine, but in a movie it just looks as if everything is "jiggling" and it doesn't give me a 3D-effect at all.
The best solution would be to alternate every frame, but to use both sets of frames for 120fps video.
Too bad the average monitor isn't going to be able to display video that quickly.
I'm pretty sure anyone with a CRT monitor manufactured post-1998 can run at 120Hz.
CRT are pretty average.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Your mileage varies from CRT to CRT.
There is a lotta crap, but you'll find the occasional gem, I'm lucky to have two bloody brilliant CRT monitors on me... shame I lack the desk room to hold one of them.
The best solution would be to alternate every frame, but to use both sets of frames for 120fps video.
Too bad the average monitor isn't going to be able to display video that quickly.
Well, before I made that sample clip I was testing all the different frame rates..alternating at every frame looked the worst..I also tried doubling the frame rate to 100hz (my CRT can go up to 120hz if I bump down the resolution) and applying the filter..I'm not sure how to describe it. Its not very 3D like, but the jitter isn't too bad either (aside from the background of course). I could upload the clip if you like, but because of the high frame rates its a rather large file for just one level. (speaking of which, I was going to ask you what you use for mp4 containers and x264 compression..surely that'll help with my file sizes)
Spinal wrote:
@SatoshiLyish: I like your effort, but I don't feel it's working. For a still scene with 2 frames it works fine, but in a movie it just looks as if everything is "jiggling" and it doesn't give me a 3D-effect at all.
Yeah, I have noticed the effect looks best when Wario stops to pick up a key or go through a door..a lower alternating frame rate helps with this, but it isn't a huge improvement. If everything works out with the new plugin I'm working on, it should fix that.
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
SatoshiLyish wrote:
sgrunt wrote:
The best solution would be to alternate every frame, but to use both sets of frames for 120fps video.
Too bad the average monitor isn't going to be able to display video that quickly.
Well, before I made that sample clip I was testing all the different frame rates..alternating at every frame looked the worst..I also tried doubling the frame rate to 100hz (my CRT can go up to 120hz if I bump down the resolution) and applying the filter..I'm not sure how to describe it. Its not very 3D like, but the jitter isn't too bad either (aside from the background of course). I could upload the clip if you like, but because of the high frame rates its a rather large file for just one level. (speaking of which, I was going to ask you what you use for mp4 containers and x264 compression..surely that'll help with my file sizes)
We actually have a guide for that sort of thing, you can find it here. It's impossible to make a decently sized file running at 100fps, but you can make a manageable one.
If you have a very very powerful computer, you could also give this script a try (Adjust crf value to 20, for filesize sake), but it is extremely slow and I wouldn't suggest it for a 100fps VirtualBoy video.
I think that the faint illusion of depth in the two-frame gif animations comes from the frames alternating slowly enough (so as for the brain to perceive it as an animation). I believe that if they alternated so fast that you couldn't see the animation, you would simply see two superimposed images, and since there's no visible animation between them, it might be that there's no depth perception either. You could as well alpha-blend the two images together into a single still image.
I have to admit, though, that I haven't tried this nor seen any actual examples of the two frames alternating really fast (like at 60 or 120 fps), so this is just pure guessing.
Virtual Boy Wario Land is one of the few releases for the Virtual Boy platform. Arguably Nintendo's biggest flop the Virtual Boy sold it as a "Virtual reality" experience using goggles that sent separate video streams to each eye to create a parallax effect. Unfortunately the seizure inducing red monochrome, the awkward interface, and lack of a virtual reality experience resulted in a less than positve consumer response
