Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Okay, I fixed two frames of lag. Apparently the game will lag just because the player wasn't holding a button on a certain frame.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Just for kicks, I made the corresponding movie for the Japanese version of Adventures of Lolo 2: http://www.filespace.org/BagOfMagicFood/Adventures_of_Lolo_2_J.fcm
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Skilled player (1826)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I'm reviving a topic that's been dead for a while now... So, now that there is a Lolo 1, a Lolo 2 and a Lolo 2 pro levels run, why not make a Lolo 3 run as well? I'm just pretty much wondering if anyone would be interested in seeing a full run of this game. For those who don't know, this is by far the longest Lolo game, a full run would probably be at least about an hour in length. I've made a WIP too, to show off what it would look like. I know about the twitching glitch, but since it takes a lot longer to make a run while walking like that, I just settled with normal walking. It's exactly as fast, anyway. Here's what I got so far: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/381/Adventures%20of%20Lolo%203%20%28U%29.fcm Perhaps everyone has had enough of Lolo games right now, but if there is some interest in this, perhaps I'll continue. :) Any comments are welcome. By the way, have you been working on this run yourself lately, Bag of Magic Food? You posted a few short WIPs before, but since you haven't been updating this in quite some time, I figured you gave this up.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Yeah, I gave it up. You watched Windeu's run, right?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Skilled player (1826)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
You watched Windeu's run, right?
Actually no, but now that you mentioned it, I found it in through the Search function. I'll take a look at it right now. But after reading Baxters comments about it, it doesn't seem to be that good... but I guess I'll just have to reinstall famtasia and watch this. Thanks for the tip. I did watch the speedrun down at SDA though, which was pretty nice in spite of two deaths. EDIT: While watching windeu's run I noticed that 2-3 could be done faster. By grabbing the top left heart last. 2-3 was improved by 46 frames, yay.
Skilled player (1410)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
Well... you played it better than the submitted speedrun, but there are also quite a few things that can be improved in your wip. Look at the compairison I made with Bags wip in this thread... it shows all of the frame times of all of our wips. I believe I timed at the first frame the screen was totally black after finishing a level.
Player (206)
Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712
Yeah, don't forget to use the trick to skip the rainbow egg scene. And my tests showed that the fastest order for 4-7 really is 4-5-6-7. I haven't tested 9-12 yet, though.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Skilled player (1826)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Could you post the WIPs you made with famtasia, the ones you've timed, Baxter and Bag? If you still have them, that is... Other than that, I'm still revising all levels to see if I can find the improvements you're talking about Baxter... If you don't have a WIP available, could you please explain what levels that can be improved? As I said, I know that 2-3 can be improved, but I'm still working with the other ones. Thanks in advance. Bag: What is this trick to skip the rainbow egg scene? I don't think I've heard of it...
Player (21)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Hey guys. I did some experimenting yesterday and today. First thing: A while back I was impressed how Windeu's Lolo 3 .fmv walkthrough manages to run in FCEU for at least a few levels. I figured maybe the mechanics of deterministic properties of this game would make it easy to completely convert, so I tried my hand at that. Big mistake! This game has so many little lag spots that I had to insert about 100 bubbles to make it all the way to the end. I didn't want to quit after making it partway through, so I finished this last night: windeu-lolo3.fcm I had to redo the Medusa fight due to her teleport destination apparently being affected by prior events, so I played crappily there and copypasted it, but all the other fixes were done just by inserting bubbles with nesmock. At the very least this might help for anyone who needs a reference for the later levels and doesn't want to open Famtasia. Next time I have a whim to dedicate time to converting a whole .fmv, I promise I'll instead do a published movie that people have a desire to watch. Second, I've been wanting to test my theory that something like a Lolo game could work well with a coordinated copypasting effort, much like the full runs of Super Mario World and Super Demo World were handled. I wrote a program that automates concatenation of .fcm files through calls to nesmock. I figured a good candidate to demonstrate it on would naturally be the enormous puzzle world of Lolo 3. Alas, another bad idea! Even within FCEU past this game changes the way lag bubbles appear later depending on how earlier levels are completed. Here is the end result, a full game demo based on pieces from Food's twitch run, Randil's run, and Windeu's walkthrough: combined.fcm And, here is an explanation of my proposed tool and the format used to build it.
# Sample nescat input clips list file.
# Usage: ./nescat <clips file> <output file>
#
# Tells which .fcm files and the range of frames to concatenate into one movie
#
# requires a list of entries in this format:
#    <movie file> <start_frame> <end_frame>
#
# <end_frame> is actually the first frame _after_ the last frame in a clip.
# It's done this way so that the number of frames added by each entry can be
# calculated by subtracting <end_frame> minus <start_frame>.
#
# Also, this makes your frame of reference the same for both start points
# and endpoints. For instance, if the <end_frame> of your first clip is when
# the screen touches black. Your <start_frame> frame for the second clip should
# also be when the screen touches black, not one frame more or less.
#
# Use -1 for <end_frame> as an indicator to read a clip all the way to the end.

bomf.fcm		   0		 2625	# Food's twitchy 1-1 through 1-3

randil.fcm		   2618     13929	# Randil's 1-4 through 3-3

windeu-lolo3.fcm  14860 	42940	# Uses Windeu's walkthrough for the rest
windeu-lolo3.fcm  42939		42940	#    account for 1 frame of lag on 4-3
windeu-lolo3.fcm  42940		63943
windeu-lolo3.fcm  63944		66994	#    account for 1 frame less lag on 6-2   
windeu-lolo3.fcm  66991		69700	#	 account for 3 frames of lag on 6-3
windeu-lolo3.fcm  69701		70465	#	 account for 1 frame less lag on 6-4
windeu-lolo3.fcm  70466		77531	#	 additional disjoint 1 frame less lag on 6-4
windeu-lolo3.fcm  77530		82014
windeu-lolo3.fcm  82030		82047	#    account for 16 frames less lag on 7-4
windeu-lolo3.fcm  82060	   117524	#    account for 13 more frames reduced lag
windeu-lolo3.fcm  117523   117721   #    account for 1 frame of lag on 9-5

skull.fcm		  	   0   	  166	# boss battle from save-state
skull.fcm		  	 165	  493	#	 gosh, even this one has an unexplained desync

windeu-lolo3.fcm  118202	130924	# Windeu's resumed an extra 20 frames later, maybe I
									# press start/select at some point?
windeu-lolo3.fcm  130925	154464	# 	 account for 1 frame of lag on 10-5
windeu-lolo3.fcm  154465	155751	# 	 remove the formerly lag-masked press of the A button
windeu-lolo3.fcm  155752	156961	#	 account for 1 less frame of lag on 12-2
windeu-lolo3.fcm  156960	160952	#	 and 1 more frame too 
windeu-lolo3.fcm  160950	162721	#	 account for 2 less frames of lag on 12-4
windeu-lolo3.fcm  162722	164856	#	 another 1 less frame
windeu-lolo3.fcm  164857	174580	#	 1 frame less lag on 12-5
windeu-lolo3.fcm  174578	174994	#	 2 frames of lag on 13-3
windeu-lolo3.fcm  174996	179533	#	 then 2 frames less lag
windeu-lolo3.fcm  179532	197895	#	 1 frame of lag on 13-5
windeu-lolo3.fcm  197894	207000	#	 1 frame of lag on 13-10
windeu-lolo3.fcm  206999	225697	#	 1 frame of lag on 14-2
windeu-lolo3.fcm  225698	229395	#	 2 frames less lag on 15-3
windeu-lolo3.fcm  229394	230506	#	 lag, so pause to get the second shot off on 15-4
windeu-lolo3.fcm  230505	237350	#	 another 1 frame of lag
windeu-lolo3.fcm  237348	237542	#	 1 frame of lag on 16-1
windeu-lolo3.fcm  237541	251174	#	 and another
windeu-lolo3.fcm  251172	254281	#	 1 frame of lag on 16-5
windeu-lolo3.fcm  254279	265115	#	 2 frames of lag on 17-1
windeu-lolo3.fcm  265116	280100	#	 1 frame less lag on ?-?
windeu-lolo3.fcm  280099		-1	#	 1 frame of lag on 17-8
bomf.fcm (bubbles inserted with nesmock to avoid desyncs after power-on randil.fcm (same one he posted above) windeu-lolo3.fcm skull.fcm As you can see about 30 desync points resulted as a consequence of changing earlier parts of the run. This amounts to about one third of the levels, and playing levels again is generally much easier than trying to fix the desync points with nesmock anyway. Lolo games are relatively easy to re-play through once puzzles' strategies are known, so a tool like this might not help much here. Any idea of other long games--that maybe aren't unfriendly with randomness or lag--for which this tool might be of good use?
Skilled player (1826)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I'm really not a programmer myself, but this seems pretty interesting. If it weren't for the lag, I agree that it would be a great idea to paste together several .fcm's into a full game run, if it weren't for all the lag. That way everyone could contribute to the full run, pretty much like we did with Lolo 2. What I wish for now is an "easy-to-use" program that can be used to glue together several fcm's. How did you glue together these fcm's, hanzou? As far as I know there's is not such a program available for download anywhere, I've heard rumors of a tool that Genisto made some time ago, but I never got my hands on it. Anyway, good job with gluing together all our fcm's hanzou! :) If the program you used for this is fairly easy to use, do you think you could post a link to it, please? PS: Thanks for converting windeu's run to fcm. Now I can watch it in (at least in my opinion) the more stable FCEU instead of Famtasia. :)
Player (21)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
The code for nescat is only 160 lines. It hasn't been written to be easy to use, but it's probably less cumbersome than hex-editing movies directly. You use Windows, right? This morning I wrote a readme.txt and tweaked some things to get nescat to run standalone under Windows XP. You can download the bundle here.
Skilled player (1826)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Yeah, I'm using XP pro. And I'm sorry for being a total noob with this, but the .exe-files aren't working for me. When I try to open them normally they close immediately. So I tried running them in command prompt, but nesmock.exe doesn't work with command prompt at all (all it said was nesmock: invalid parameters), and nescat.exe seems to work, but all command prompt prints out when I open it is first the location of the .exe-file, then it says "<clips file><output file>". Help please! :)
Player (21)
Joined: 10/14/2005
Posts: 317
Yup, sorry no GUI for the time being. ^^ Take a look at the example in readme.txt.
Active player (286)
Joined: 3/4/2006
Posts: 341
I'm reviving this topic. I finished a run of this game a couple days ago. It's nearly 13 minutes faster than windeu's run. I've decided not to submit this version due to several known improvements. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/666779019/Lolo3-nitrodon.fcm
Joined: 6/30/2008
Posts: 9
Baxter,if you think you are capable,you can play Adventures of Lolo 3(J).I think this game is the most difficult I ever played!!!
Joined: 12/25/2007
Posts: 86
Location: Muhos, Finland
dlzm wrote:
Baxter,if you think you are capable,you can play Adventures of Lolo 3(J).I think this game is the most difficult I ever played!!!
Acualy jap version of adv of lolo 3 was adventures of lolo 2 >_>
<small>Big signature cleared by admin; read <A>forum rules</a>.</small> <small>-Me:..and big sig. was just small picure(two row's), It dont even lag my 3660's web browser >_></small>
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 91
L337 wrote:
dlzm wrote:
Baxter,if you think you are capable,you can play Adventures of Lolo 3(J).I think this game is the most difficult I ever played!!!
Acualy jap version of adv of lolo 3 was adventures of lolo 2 >_>
Well... The Adventures of Lolo 2 (J) looks like The Adventures of Lolo 3 (U) as far as the overworld and plot are concerned, but the rooms/puzzles aren't the same. Even the tutorial puzzles are more difficult than the North American version. Even though there are some overlaps here and there, you can play the 3 (U) and 2 (J) The Adventures of Lolo games and feel like you're playing 5 different games due to the largely different puzzles.
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Healblade wrote:
L337 wrote:
dlzm wrote:
Baxter,if you think you are capable,you can play Adventures of Lolo 3(J).I think this game is the most difficult I ever played!!!
Acualy jap version of adv of lolo 3 was adventures of lolo 2 >_>
Well... The Adventures of Lolo 2 (J) looks like The Adventures of Lolo 3 (U) as far as the overworld and plot are concerned, but the rooms/puzzles aren't the same. Even the tutorial puzzles are more difficult than the North American version. Even though there are some overlaps here and there, you can play the 3 (U) and 2 (J) The Adventures of Lolo games and feel like you're playing 5 different games due to the largely different puzzles.
Adventures of Lolo 2 (Japanese) was Adventures of Lolo 3 (western) but with different puzzles. Has anyone still started TASing that game, Lolo2j that is?
Joined: 2/28/2009
Posts: 99
Myself and a few other speedrunners who have been steadily playing through Lolo 2J would be incredibly interested in any TAS activity on the game, if that's any motivation - there's some interest in doing actual speedruns of it. It's the best logic-centric puzzle game I've ever played for sure so any TAS activity would be very exciting to see.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3809)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2828
Location: US
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62554681489154971 I found my first improvement in lolo 3. It is over half way through the run in level 11-4. I saved one step. You can fast forward to frame 129692 in the above movie to see it. The levels might be a bit more linear then the first two games but still I'm quite amazed how optimized Nitrodon had made this on his first try. I found not a single frame improvement until now. EDIT: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62570344549002605 saved a few more steps in the same level
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3809)
Joined: 11/30/2014
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62617407404729199 Finished my first pass through the game. the only other place I save time so far is in 17-3 where I saved 3 steps (bringing the total saved to 6 steps overall.) Unfortunately some desyncs in enemy respawning cost 4 frames towards the end of the game. I'm not entirely sure why, I didn't change anything from 11-4 onward and suddenly got desyncs starting at 17-3 (before I improved it.) it's unfortunate but not really sure what I can do about it, I'll try to clean it up as I go over everything again. At this point I think I can narrow down which levels have a realistic chance of being improved, so the second pass should be a bit faster.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3809)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2828
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simple images http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/62662224531128082 I found a pretty big improvement today in 6-3. It is about 6.5 steps faster. Up until now all the improvements have just been optimized block pushing (basically sokobon style) but this is an actual strategy improvement. The picture above basically illustrates what's different. Lolo's eggs can be shot through chests, and can skirt trees half way through as long as it's only one tree (they can't go through 2 trees right next to each other.) Taking advantage of the level geometry I realized I could shoot the rocky while he is still blocking the medusa. this takes some steps to set up but is faster overall. I don't recall such strategies being used very often in Lolo games (maybe I'm just not remembering) so I wonder if this type of trick is more widely applicable.