A common smaller one is a single CPU instruction, but actually, these instructions are built up by microinstructions, so one could use these as steps too.
Only perhaps the newest consoles. Certainly not the oldest ones. Dividing opcodes into microinstructions is a modern invention. Back then there weren't even pipelines or caches, much less "microinstructions". Each machine opcode took an exact amount of clock cycles to execute, so a clock cycle is the unit of time in older processor (in way, in modern ones too, although it's a bit more complicated).
I was thinking of the SNES when writing this, and it certainly isn't one of the newest consoles. Each opcode does not take the same time to perform, and for a given opcode the time is still not constant, and depends on various processor mode flags, whether page boundaries are crossed and what the lower bytes of the direct page base address is, the memory bank being accessed, and so on.
The work done for each opcode can be broken up into several small steps, which are reused between different opcodes, and how long each of these takes and what they do are well understood and implemented with the correct timing in bsnes. Perhaps this isn't as advanced as normal microinstructions, but the point is that it makes sense to be able to perform smaller steps than one instruction. As you say, the cycle is the smallest time unit you need (when you just care about a single processor, in reality there are several ones running at different rates, so the smallest time between relevant changes for the system as a whole may be much smaller), but there are many cycles per instruction.
I couldn't find the document I used when doing SNES programming myself, but here is another one which contains some information about this:
http://www.romhacking.net/docs/%5B117%5D65816info.txt
Actually, it seems that romhacking.net uses stupid referer checking, so here is a copy: http://folk.uio.no/sigurdkn/65816info.txt
And here is a relevant excerpt:
My conscious mind has to be nested outside of reality and I must be able to keep knowledge when rewinding or else you couldn't really call it "having TAS tools in real life".
yeah, just like in games, we are not the character that we control on the screen, even though we might sometimes think so when we say things like "I died" in a game. so too in reality, our body is just a character that the soul controls outside of this 'reality'. if reality is fiction, TASing could be possible...
ElectroSpecter wrote:
How would frame advance work in real life? There are obviously more than 60 "frames" per second in real life, but the question is, are there infinitely many? I honestly don't know the answer, as I have never studied physics in great detail.
at least this many frames: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKR4atl8h-I
i think reality seems to run slower than 2D projected things like games or movies on a screen. maybe because reality is 3D, although the third dimension is just a perception.
criticaluser wrote:
You can't rewind, but If we consider the wormhole theory that it should let us travel in time (again theoretically)
i've used save states in dreams sometimes. if precognition was possible, you might be able to use saves states (sort of) like in this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435705/
i've also heard that some drugs can make your brain speed up so that everything goes in slow motion, but why not then use this kind of drugs in sports where you could take advantage of slow motion?
If I was the architect, I'd make frame advance in real life work neither based on arbitrary time units (0.01 seconds has been proposed) nor in Planck time, but exactly as it is with TASing on an emulator: always advance to the next moment where new input is accepted. This just happens to coincide with the rate at which the screen updates for most emulators/games.
In real life the time between moments where new input gets accepted would probably be variable. I don't know how the human brain exactly works, but the time span before new conscious input gets accepted would probably at least depend on the nature of your last command, your physical shape and on the number and nature of subconscious tasks that are running at any given moment in time. Also, it seems like chains of commands that are often repeated get stored as subcoscious routines (auto-generated input macros? :D). When calling them, you don't have to execute each step manually or wait till the "act" has finished, but get additional input frames during the execution.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Derakon wrote:
So in other words, the first thing you'd do in a real-life TAS is train to optimize the process of TASing? ;)
You could wait a long time until most of TASvideos movies have been whittled down by frame wars until improvements are almost inconceivable; take all of the input files back into the present and begin submitting one maybe once a week, and all of the other users will hail you as a prodigy and then scratch their heads wondering what to do next.
So in other words, the first thing you'd do in a real-life TAS is train to optimize the process of TASing? ;)
1) Gather knowledge by abusing save states.
2) Learn useful skills in a very short time using frame advance.
3) Fooling around, setting myself arbitrary goals.
In fact, that's the way I plan to live my actual life anyway, except that those steps are a lot more overlapping (and minus the TASing part). I'll probably never get done with 1 and 2 though.. Seems like I'll have to delay step 3 to my next incarnation again. Meh. ^^
Joined: 8/31/2004
Posts: 298
Location: Falun, Sweden
Mister Epic wrote:
I would be able to tell a friend "I've TASed your wife yesterday."
I almost fell of my chair as I read that X-D
Another interesting thing is, would you recognize if someone else TAS'd the world, and it wasn't you? Take those streetmagicans for example, maybe they're on to something.
Bein' away for like five years, and not a single new post in the ZSNES forum... :'-(
Joined: 3/11/2011
Posts: 1
Location: United States
Well I would rerecord every single mistake I make on tests, once I die, I make a savestate to when I was born, rerecord everytime I get a disease and find out what caused it, then just prevent it, etc etc
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
You could wait a long time until most of TASvideos movies have been whittled down by frame wars until improvements are almost inconceivable; take all of the input files back into the present and begin submitting one maybe once a week, and all of the other users will hail you as a prodigy and then scratch their heads wondering what to do next.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The prospect of using TAS tools "in real life" doesn't really make sense. That would imply that the character in the game itself (the character being you, and the game being life) would have control.
In a TAS, the controlling entity is completely separate from the game itself, and the characters in the game are completely oblivious to him or her. Even though the characters operate based on input, and it's possible for them to break the fourth wall, it's impossible for them to discern between normal playing and TASing.
So for this to work even as a thought experiment, you'd have to be god, and, at the same time, you would have to exist as a character in the game who is oblivious to god. Since you cannot be two entities at the same time, the premise itself is impossible.
Yes, you're absolutely right, but then it ceases to be anything resembling a TAS as we know it.
And another problem with that is that it's physically impossible under any theory of time travel (that I know of). You couldn't possibly know what had happened during a timeline that never existed, and even if you did, it would mean you'd have actually experienced it. That would mean you'd have to be physically altered during every save state so as to retain the information from previous save states. Doing this too often would result in aging (part of your life will be "lost" to everything else in the universe except you, so you'd suddenly jump to a state where you're older).
Of course, you could just say that the time traveler is separate from the timeline itself and can freely go to whenever he pleases. That's not what happens to characters in a TAS, however.
Derakon wrote:
We can assume that's one of the tools used to make this a valid thought experiment.
i would do a lot of things... but i would try to make the world a better place. stop wars and poverty, by giving a few trillions to poor countries. maybe money would have to be removed all together so that poverty, wars and corruption can't happen again: http://www.thevenusproject.com/en/a-new-social-design/resource-based-economy
then i would use my TAS powers to find out more about how the universe works
diggidoyo wrote:
I'd probably desync and end up jumping into and banging on a wall for the rest of my life.
maybe that's what has happened with some so called mentally ill people who bang their heads on walls. actually they just got a desync.
it would require a very advanced emulator to run the universe, so desyncs might happen easily.
And another problem with that is that it's physically impossible under any theory of time travel (that I know of).
I'm not so sure of that. The equations of General Relativity seem to show that in certain circumstances odd things can happen. For example, the math seems to show that if you put two rotating black holes close enough to each other, there's an 8-shaped path around them that if you traversed it, you would end up in your own past. (An ergosphere is a region around a rotating black hole, outside of its event horizon, where weird things happen...) I assume that it's currently unknown if this results in a real time travel or if something else kicks in, but I also assume that it would be a rather infeasible way of doing it anyways.
Also in quantum mechanics time (like everything else) becomes a complicated subject. For example there are situations where decisions made in the future seem to affect quantum effects in the past (see for example the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment). It seems that time doesn't work at quantum levels in the same way as in everyday life. ("Most people think time is like a river, that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you - they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm.")
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
And another problem with that is that it's physically impossible under any theory of time travel (that I know of).
I'm not so sure of that. The equations of General Relativity seem to show that in certain circumstances odd things can happen. For example, the math seems to show that if you put two rotating black holes close enough to each other, there's an 8-shaped path around them that if you traversed it, you would end up in your own past. (An ergosphere is a region around a rotating black hole, outside of its event horizon, where weird things happen...) I assume that it's currently unknown if this results in a real time travel or if something else kicks in, but I also assume that it would be a rather infeasible way of doing it anyways.
That sounds really interesting. I guess it's like you say, though: rather infeasible. You might be able to get to your own past, but the question is whether you can remain in one piece.
But another thing I was alluding to when I said that it wasn't possible, is that, well, in your own past there should be a you. Another you that is. And the universe you came from would lose you permanently (from the time at which you left, of course). I sincerely doubt you'd be able to return to your original universe.
Still, massively interesting prospect. I hope we can actually test this someday.
Ignoring, for the sake of arguement, the effects of savestates on memory, and all the confusing theoretical and paradoxical physics associated with time travel, I can tell you:
If I had TAS tools in real life, I'd have spent the last 10 years experiencing the breakup with my first girlfriend over and over, because I was certain that I could make her stay if I just did everything right (and this certainty was completely misguided).
I'd be up ten mental years worth of pointless self-inflicted misery, down all of the emotional growth and maturity that I gained as a result of the breakup and later events, never known true emotional or physical intimacy, an insecure and immature snivelling mess of a boy.
All in all, I'd say TAS tools in real life are just a terrible idea.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
For example, the math seems to show that if you put two rotating black holes close enough to each other, there's an 8-shaped path around them that if you traversed it, you would end up in your own past.
yeah, that was actually one of the parts of the time machine which john titor used to travel back in time: "Two magnetic housing units for dual micro singularities". for the other parts you need, you can read here (in the part: Titor's time machine): http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6345407
but we don't even have PS2 TASing yet, so i don't think real life TASing is gonna happen any time soon (even if time travel would become possible). although according to john titor they would make black holes in CERN which could allow time travel soon.
upthorn wrote:
If I had TAS tools in real life, I'd have spent the last 10 years experiencing the breakup with my first girlfriend over and over,
experiencing a breakup for 10 years is something one can do without actual save states though. i guess the mind is kind of a TAS tool where everything is possible. the mind is the only thing that can travel back in time.
because I was certain that I could make her stay if I just did everything right (and this certainty was completely misguided).
but in TASing we're supposed to make the impossible possible, so i have to keep trying.
For example, the math seems to show that if you put two rotating black holes close enough to each other, there's an 8-shaped path around them that if you traversed it, you would end up in your own past.
yeah, that was actually one of the parts of the time machine which john titor used to travel back in time: "Two magnetic housing units for dual micro singularities". for the other parts you need, you can read here (in the part: Titor's time machine): http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6345407
Hey, I was being serious.
but we don't even have PS2 TASing yet, so i don't think real life TASing is gonna happen any time soon (even if time travel would become possible). although according to john titor they would make black holes in CERN which could allow time travel soon.
Yes, he said they would make them in 2001. Didn't happen.
Yes, he said they would make them in 2001. Didn't happen.
yeah, but he didn't mean it would happen at the same time in our timeline. in his timeline it happened 2001, but our timeline was altered, for example by the fact that he was here, while that never happened in his timeline. if for example i travelled back 50 million years and altered some minor thing, like moving a rock, it would create a completely different future, but travelling to just year 2000 from 2036 doesn't create that big of a difference between the timelines.
If I had TAS tools in real life, I'd have spent the last 10 years experiencing the breakup with my first girlfriend over and over,
experiencing a breakup for 10 years is something one can do without actual save states though. i guess the mind is kind of a TAS tool where everything is possible. the mind is the only thing that can travel back in time.
Ah, but what I am saying is that if our minds had the ability to go back in time and actually change the way we did things, it would be so much harder to accept failure and move on, I think we'd all get stuck forever at one point or another, where success was simply impossible.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Yes, he said they would make them in 2001. Didn't happen.
yeah, but he didn't mean it would happen at the same time in our timeline. in his timeline it happened 2001, but our timeline was altered, for example by the fact that he was here, while that never happened in his timeline. if for example i travelled back 50 million years and altered some minor thing, like moving a rock, it would create a completely different future, but travelling to just year 2000 from 2036 doesn't create that big of a difference between the timelines.
Research at Cern being delayed by (at least) 10 years, an entire civil war in the US being delayed by (at least) 5 years, four Olympics proceeding normally instead of being cancelled, and so on, seem like a huge amount of change in an extremely short time caused by one person traveling 36 years to the past and doing nothing of much importance.
