Posted: 4/3/2007 2:40 AM
Post subject: Idea: Reference Movies
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CtrlAltDestroy
Active player (325)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Here is a feature that I think TAS emulators should have, and it might even revolutionize TASing. The idea is that an emulator can load two different movie files at once and emulate two different playing sessions at once, similar to the dual-encoding emulators. The second movie, called the reference movie, would open for read-only and would advance along with the main movie. The second movie could be shown side-by-side with the main movie, or you could flip between them. (Better yet, if you could get the screen to refresh fast enough to not be seizure-inducing, draw the reference movie on every other frame during frame advance. :P ... nah, just joking.) The idea is to visibly see how your current playthrough compares with another movie without the hassle of running 2 different emulators at once or taking tons of checkpoints for your spreadsheet. Instead, you could just... well... see how well you're doing. If you take a savestate, a savestate for the reference movie is also taken. When a state is loaded, the reference movie is also rewound to the corresponding state. Also, when you reach a checkpoint, you can increase or decrease an offset value for the reference movie, so that the reference movie can catch up to you if you improved, or you can catch up to it if you're doing worse (maybe you changed your route or something and picked up an extra item in the room that the other movie didn't?) Input Display would show both the current movie's input and the reference movie's input, allowing for visible copying of complex tricks without hex editing or splicing. Perhaps even a "copy input from reference movie" feature could be added. Anyway, It's just something I thought of today. Any thoughts?
Posted: 4/3/2007 2:58 AM
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
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The reason I wouldn't want this idea is that I wouldn't be able to monitor the memory from both emulators, like this (snapshot from November, I think).
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Posted: 4/3/2007 3:07 AM
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mmbossman
Experienced player (822)
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
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I like it, I like it a lot. I'm one of those who takes tons of checkpoints for my spreadsheet, and it gets annoying pretty quickly. I'm no programmer so I have no idea how realistic it is, but if it is, I'll be one of the first to adopt it. What a great idea!
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Posted: 4/3/2007 3:27 AM
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Xkeeper
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
It'd be easier to just run another emulator in the background, like dual running, but set that movie to read only (so that it still responds to load-states). You'd have to spend a bit of time configuring them first, so that your states were on the right frames; but after that... Making an emulator run 2 games at once for this seems silly :P
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Posted: 4/3/2007 3:37 AM
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Dromiceius
Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332
The second movie could be shown side-by-side with the main movie, or you could flip between them. (Better yet, if you could get the screen to refresh fast enough to not be seizure-inducing, draw the reference movie on every other frame during frame advance. :P ... nah, just joking.)
I'd say, render simultaneously, with both movies overlapping. Red tint for one movie, blue tint on the other. The overlapping parts look normal. Perhaps with an added tweak to the alpha channel on the background movie to give it a "ghost" effect. Would be neat to look at, if not incredibly useful as well. :)
Posted: 4/3/2007 5:17 AM
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Twelvepack
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Really like this idea. Wish I had the technical expertice to make something like this happen.
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Posted: 4/6/2007 2:26 PM
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
What's wrong with just showing the two movies side-by-side? Why must they be superimposed? I imagine that superimposing them is only going to be very confusing.
Posted: 4/7/2007 7:13 PM
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CtrlAltDestroy
Active player (325)
Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786
Superimposing them would indeed be confusing, as most of the time the character in a game never leaves the center of the screen. I'd much rather be able to switch between them in the same screen, kinda like quickly switching between savestate images.
Posted: 4/7/2007 7:47 PM
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laughing_gas
Former player
Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp
Watching them side by side would be really useful, at least for me.
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