Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
Since Rolan's Curse have 2-players capabilities, and BizHawk can emulate them, why not making a TAS of it? The idea is to making a 2-players glitchless any% run. I wonder how would be the result. Here is a gameplay: Link to video
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
It's about a week since I stared using heavy brute force on Contra: The Alien Wars, and it seems it's going to take still a lot. So in the meanwhile I started working on Rolan's Curse. It seems pretty easy so far: I discovered that the RNG is very simple because it only depends from the frame count, wich is only delayed by lag. So the luck manipulation here is elementary at most, just forcing you from time to time to wait before killing an enemy, or before entering to the next area, if this makes the enemy kill smoother. Therefore, the most important tasks for TASing this game are route planning and lag management. While analyzing, I managed to improve the current record by 1 frame, tough it's still a rough attempt. Here is the movie if you're interested: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1539012064/thunderaxe31-rolanscurse.vbm About the 2-players run: it's going good. I'll begin posting WIP movies soon. One last thing, here are the RAM watches:
SystemID GB
FFAA	b	u	0	System Bus	Temp Att
FFAB	b	u	0	System Bus	Perm Att
FFA7	b	u	0	System Bus	Perm HP
FFA8	b	u	0	System Bus	Temp HP
FFA9	b	u	0	System Bus	Left HP
C23E	w	u	0	System Bus	Boss HP
C0A3	w	u	0	System Bus	Random
C0A5	w	u	0	System Bus	Random?
C0A7	w	u	0	System Bus	Random?
C0A9	w	u	0	System Bus	Random?
C0AB	w	u	0	System Bus	Random?
Note that only the first of the five random values is confirmed to determine the enemy drops. Edit: The item drop is not as simple as I initially thought. There must be some additional requirement other than the random value at C0A3, maybe a kill counter?
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
New trick discovered: if you have to wait more than 13 frames for the right moment to kill the enemy for its drop, and you have enough spare health left, you can walk into it to save walking time. Thanks to this, I already managed to improve the current record by 21 more frames, for a total of 22. Here is the movie file: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/698388924/thunderaxe31-rolanscurse_walkintrick.vbm Note that this is an unrefined run; I'll try to improve it seriously before submitting it. Edit: So I submitted my improvement of the current published run. I've included all the tricks I know and the possible improvements in the submission text.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
Good news. The 2-players run is going great and seems very promising to me. I have done a test run up to chapter 1 completion and discovered some new stuff: 1) I confirm that killing enemies influences the item dropping, but I still don't know the details. 2) Room 6 initial enemy spawning is affected by how many enemies are spawned in the precedent area in the moment you proceed. I'll show this in the 2-players run. And some new 2-players exclusive tricks: 1) When you enter a room aftern too much frames later the other player, both games will stuck for many seconds in order to sync. This can be avoided by unplugging the game link connection before the any player enter that room first. Just remember to reconnect the game link before entering to a new chapter area. 1) Every item can be get by both players if they pick it up in the same time. Right now I'm going to restart from scratch in order to optimize the route. I'll post the first WIP on youtube when I'll killl the first boss as fast I can.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
MarbleousDave
He/Him
Player (13)
Joined: 9/12/2009
Posts: 1559
2 Player Co-Op TASes on Game Boy is best to encode in 3D.
Post subject: 2 players TAS test!
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
PikachuMan wrote:
2 Player Co-Op TASes on Game Boy is best to encode in 3D.
I'm not entirely sure about what do you mean but... Here is how I think it's best to encode it: Link to video Note that this is just a bad test. I had no clue the Wand of Uzi would deal half damage to bosses.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Editor, Expert player (2328)
Joined: 5/15/2007
Posts: 3930
Location: Germany
First off, I'm not familiar with the game. But I think this looks pretty neat, especially the parts where your two guys walk in different places. Makes me very curious about 2-player; too bad there doesn't seem to be GBA support yet.
Post subject: Re: 2 players TAS test!
Player (152)
Joined: 5/25/2015
Posts: 49
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
PikachuMan wrote:
2 Player Co-Op TASes on Game Boy is best to encode in 3D.
I'm not entirely sure about what do you mean
Just ignore that troll.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3809)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2828
Location: US
This looks pretty cool. I hope there are some interesting strategies to let the players split up bit more.
Post subject: My first reverse-engineering script!
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
I've just created a script for Rolan's Curse that does display on screen various enemy data: attack, HP left, item drop. Also, It does display an exclamative mark when the drop can happen. You can download it from there: User movie #56303559949576175 Have a screenshot: Edit: Now also works in 2 players mode. Edit 2: Now also works with GBHawk core. Also displays current ATT and HP values.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Post subject: I challenge you!
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1353)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
Uhm, about 4 mounths since last post. So, the current publication was made before that GB BIOS emulation was introduced, I wanted to try to improve it... And I failed, no matter what. I wish that someone else could improve it in my place... I resynced the movie on BizHawk 2.3.2, download it from here: Movie #56195387747101377 Use it as a base if you want to improve the currently published movie, no need to give me credit.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"