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NES overclocking guide

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Posted: 1/14/2005 6:14 PM

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Blublu

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Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
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The basketball anology is pretty stupid. First of all, you already have 2 hands because it's the way the game is meant to be played. All good NES games are designed with lag in mind, even if it is a byproduct of the limitations of the hardware. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that it is analogous to playing basketball with 1 hand tied behind the back. A better anology would be either replacing the ball with a different ball that can be thrown faster and bounces higher, or perhaps changing the rules so that kicking the ball is allowed. About the Survivor comparison. That comparison is also flawed because the voting alliances in that stupid 'reality' show are more analogous to using glitches in games than cheating. Both are technically perfectly confined withing the original rules of the game. By the way, we already use glitches a LOT.

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:18 PM

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Phil

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Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec

Touch of Death, I've got a question for you. How about using Game Genie or some other device like that?

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:22 PM

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TouchOdeath

Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 46

"A better anology would be either replacing the ball with a different ball that can be thrown faster and bounces higher, or perhaps changing the rules so that kicking the ball is allowed." Are you even reading what im saying? or can you not comprehend it? And your using the survivor comparison way wrong... Re-read what I have said. Since we have more than one person confused, maybe im not explaining myself. I will highlight what is important. "Assuming dead frames are caused by lag in G.I. Joe 2, then In BoltR's rare scenario, I would agree. It should be illegal because you can't do that on the original console. As far as the other games, If overclocking doesn't have any game-changing effects to it (like Mr.BoltR has pointed out, dead frames) then it should be legal." IF OVERCLOCKING DOESN'T HAVE ANY GAME-CHANGING EFFECTS TO IT THEN IT SHOULD BE LEGAL. Thats key. Understand that overclocking DOES NOT make your run faster (accept for the real-life time). It just makes the frames go through smoother (it doesnt actually give your video less frames). This next paragraph should be highlighted. This whole paragraph is key: Overclocked consoles don't actually allow you to do things that you couldnt do with it clocked to default (and if you find a game where it does, then it should be considered illegal on that particular game) it just makes it easier for the player to execute his moves.

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:31 PM

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Phil

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Joined: 3/16/2004
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Location: America, Québec

But if it get rids of lag purpose, I don't like the idea. If it doesn't have any game-changing effects then I don't see the reason to used an overclocked NES. In other words, I am not gonna use it nor someone beat a current speedrun using it and I am pretty sure Bisqwit is thinking the same way.

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:33 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

TouchOdeath wrote:

Understand that overclocking DOES NOT make your run faster (accept for the real-life time). It just makes the frames go through smoother (it doesnt actually give your video less frames).

Um, yes it would, if it's removing dead frames. I can see why you would want to do that, since the dead frames don't really count towards anything and it might look more impressive to play at full speed all the time. But I'm pretty sure it would lead to even more accusations of cheating, based on the fact that NESes aren't commonly overclocked, and it would just look like a cheap method to shave time where you shouldn't be able to. This site is about manipulating the INPUT to the machine, not the machine itself.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:35 PM

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TouchOdeath

Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 46

Thats fine, do what you want. Its not my community(nor do I have any right to tell anyone what to do). I just think it should be legal for most games. But the whole point of doing it would be to make it easier to play, like the 3rd party programs do.

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:37 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Joined: 5/29/2004
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G'argh! We're not finding the EASIEST way to play; we're finding the BEST way to play!

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/14/2005 6:39 PM

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TouchOdeath

Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 46

The easiest way is the best way, isnt it? "But I'm pretty sure it would lead to even more accusations of cheating, based on the fact that NESes aren't commonly overclocked, and it would just look like a cheap method to shave time where you shouldn't be able to." Oh.. thats a fact.. It will lead to more accusations. No doubt about that. Just like when you started using 3rd party programs, people started accusing.

Posted: 1/14/2005 7:07 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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You're missing the point. The point is that only the input should be manipulated.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/14/2005 7:13 PM

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TouchOdeath

Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 46

I see your point, and why you say that. http://tasvideos.org/WhyAndHow.html The goal "We are creating art and providing entertainment." Thats the main purpose of this site. So.. with that said.. I dont think we should be limited with just 'manipulation of input'. But I see why you say that, and it makes sense. But I think the main purpose of this site, is one of the most important aspects of this whole conversation.

Posted: 1/18/2005 5:08 PM

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LocalH

Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138

Bag of Magic Food wrote:

You're missing the point. The point is that only the input should be manipulated.

If that's the case, what about savestates? You're not only manipulating input, you're essentially jumping around in time, from a game perspective. Anything that doesn't actually modify the game code or data should be usable. Of course, Bisqwit makes the final call, but that's why I support it.

Sonic Retro

Posted: 1/18/2005 5:11 PM

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Phil

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Joined: 3/16/2004
Posts: 2623
Location: America, Québec

LocalH wrote:

Anything that doesn't actually modify the game code or data should be usable.

And by overclocking, it does that.

Posted: 1/18/2005 5:21 PM

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Bisqwit

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Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth

I have not been following this thread, but if the question is about overclocking, I think it's suitable for something but not the content of this site. Unless your goal is to create a movie with maximum number of onscreen objects. Which is a goal better suitable for NES demo scene, not these movies.

Posted: 1/18/2005 5:37 PM

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LocalH

Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138

Phil wrote:

LocalH wrote:
Anything that doesn't actually modify the game code or data should be usable.
And by overclocking, it does that.

No, it does not. The same instructions are executed in the same order. The core game logic is untouched, since the game runs on a frame-by-frame basis anyway.

Sonic Retro

Posted: 1/18/2005 6:25 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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LocalH wrote:

If that's the case, what about savestates? You're not only manipulating input, you're essentially jumping around in time, from a game perspective.

But the purpose of that is to create the input, which can then be used in an unmodified game.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/18/2005 9:11 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1310)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

How exactly does slowdown happen in most console games? I was under the impression that it was part of the game's programming to skip frames and use them for calculation when there are too many things onscreen to animate at once normally. In which case overclocking the machine wouldn't change anything except maybe increase the framerate everywhere.

Posted: 1/18/2005 9:17 PM

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nesrocks

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the slowdown happens because of too many sprites on screen, mostly because the picture sells (nice pictures on the game box) while animations speed dont sell that much, or because it just happens so that the programmers didnt want to sacrifice the game complexity because of a little slowdown here and there.

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 1/18/2005 9:33 PM

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nitsuja

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Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

That's not what I was asking... I meant, if the NES had a higher clock speed, wouldn't the games still be programmed to go through the same slowdown at the same number of onscreen objects? I don't think these games are sophisticated enough to query the clock speed and calculate how much slowdown there needs to be based on that.

Posted: 1/18/2005 11:21 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Well, if that's true, then it would seem that overclocking is worthless.

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 1/18/2005 11:53 PM

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nesrocks

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the slowdown was not wanted by the programmers, its a hardware limitation to the ammount of sprites they put on the screen. it will always happen because all nes are the same (i think). its the same as a 3d game going slow when too many polygons are on the screen. if the game is running on a faster pc it will run at 100% speed, but on a slower pc the frame rate goes down. same thing happens on the nes, if the game was running on a faster nes or overclocked nes, it wouldnt have that slowdown.

aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios

Posted: 1/19/2005 12:23 AM

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LocalH

Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138

Slowdown is caused by the game not having enough cycles in one frame to do what it has to do in one frame. The only thing overclocking the CPU does is give you more cycles per frame (and, in the case of the NES, increases the sound pitch, since sound generation is on the CPU). The core game logic runs exactly the same. As I said before, emulators that do this should store the clock rate used in the movie. That way, they can be classified by clock rate. I'm not saying that overclocked runs should supercede standard ones, I'm saying they should be accepted separately from standard ones. Plus, especially in games like Metroid, this should decrease times by a decent margin, due to the heavy slowdown at times.

Sonic Retro

Posted: 1/19/2005 1:45 AM

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xebra

Joined: 5/3/2004
Posts: 1203

It's undoubtedly safe to assume that overclocking a console would have unpredictable side effects. People that claim merely reducing lag couldn't possibly have an effect on gameplay need to recall certain jumps in Q3 that can only be made at ~75 fps or better ... Furthermore, if LocalH is correct in that overclocking a NES changes the rate at which sound is played, then it's probably not desirable for making entertaining movies. The allure of tool assisted superplay movies is that they are familiar, yet amazing. SMB with music played a quarter octave too high isn't familiar, it's retarded.

Posted: 1/19/2005 2:43 AM

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LocalH

Joined: 10/3/2004
Posts: 138

The only way to know would be to extensively play a game with an overclocked emulator, and compare the game physics to the original non-OC'd system. As I said, slowdown is merely the system not having enough cycles to complete all it's calculation for that frame. Unlike modern games, when this happens on the NES, the game code generally waits for the sprite 0 hit (or IRQ with some newer mappers). This means that actual gameplay STOPS for those frames of lag, unlike modern PC games, which just drop frames without impacting the actual game logic. There might be games that would have issues with overclocking, but I see it no different as when we document which games' movies desync on certain emulators. There will be some games that just wouldn't be allowed because the game changes too much. But I would imagine the vast majority of games would have no problems with an overclocked CPU. Also, about the sound issue, this is an issue with hardware. I'm sure that an emulator could output audio with the proper pitch, because the CPU and sound generator could be artificially separated, while they share the same clock on hardware.

Sonic Retro

Posted: 3/22/2005 9:37 AM

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