Post by Bladegash

Posted: 3/21/2005 4:22 PM
(Edited: 4/3/2005 12:45 AM)

Post subject: Important note about making movies with VBA

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Bisqwit

Editor, Active player (296)

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

I do not recommend anyone starting making VBA movies seriously before the issues with its movie file format and recording stability (*) are correctly addressed. See http://tasvideos.org/forum/t/1868 and http://tasvideos.org/forum/p/28521#28521 for details. If you do, you risk having to recreate the movie from beginning eventually. *) Stability has two parts: movies should not desync; movies must be properly playable back on all platforms supported by VBA.

Posted: 3/21/2005 4:52 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Active player (278)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

I thought of another issue about starting movies. A lot of Game Boy games also have support for Super Game Boy and/or Game Boy Color. But the timing is different for different systems, so you probably couldn't use a movie file made with one system on another system. Should movie authors be forced to use whichever Game Boy has better colors or whichever Game Boy has less loading time? Should they be forced into anything at all, or should they get a choice? I just don't want to see someone go to the trouble of submitting a game only to start an argument like, "Hey, why didn't you use Super Game Boy for this? I wanted to see the pretty colors!" "Well, I didn't want to add some useless seconds of waiting to load those colors!" "Wait! You could have played it on Game Boy Color, too!" "But that's still slower than Game Boy." "No! Super Game Boy is better! It has nice borders for me to look at!"

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

Posted: 3/21/2005 4:57 PM

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Bisqwit

Editor, Active player (296)

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

I think people should use the highest setting supported by the game, but not higher. That is, if the game supports full CGB colours, it should be ran in CGB mode. If it supports SGB but not CGB, then it should be ran in SGB mode and not the monochrome GB and not CGB.

Posted: 3/21/2005 4:59 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Of course, GBC will default down to GB if GBC isn't supported, just as GBA will default down to GBC if it's not an Advance game. But since SGB isn't included in that little hierarchy, I could see many confused people saying, "But I thought I DID choose the highest setting!" And then there's the troublesome SGB2 option. I think what it does is when the game has support for both Super Game Boy and Game Boy Color, it'll first load the game in SGB mode, get the initial border, and leave it on. Then it'll reload the game in GBC mode, but with that border still on. But since it's not actually running the SGB game anymore, the border won't change when it's supposed to in games that have more than one border. If the game is just for Super Game Boy, it'll default to that, and if the game is just for Game Boy Color, it'll default to that; otherwise it'll default to Game Boy or Game Boy Advance as usual. So SGB2 is another choice that will affect timing, and possibly unnecessarily for people who don't turn the border on. Luckily, turning the border on or off doesn't seem to affect the emulation; it just shows or hides the border that's already loaded. So at the very least, the kind of Game Boy used should be stored in the movie file. (With save-state-based movies, this wasn't an issue.)

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

Posted: 3/22/2005 8:42 PM

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BillBull

Former player

Joined: 5/22/2004
Posts: 462

My suggestion: if the rom ends with .gb, then a movie should be made with Game Boy, .gbc would be Game Boy Color, and .gba would be Game Boy Advance.

Posted: 3/22/2005 9:51 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Is there anything wrong with just leaving the emulator setting on "Automatic" and border on "automatic border" instead?

Posted: 3/22/2005 10:24 PM

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ventuz

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Player (123)

Joined: 10/4/2004
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nitsuja wrote:

Is there anything wrong with just leaving the emulator setting on "Automatic" and border on "automatic border" instead?

some game has both SGB and GBC build in (i think dragon warrior monster is one of them, any games that has old GB shaped cart with "GBC" label), does automatic pick up SGB or GBC randomly (would be desync) or it would use the best setting (GBC)?

Posted: 3/22/2005 11:06 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

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Active player (278)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

Ah, I forgot about Automatic. But it seems to do the same things as SGB2--it'll take the border from SGB, then play in GBC, or whatever the highest setting is. And Automatic Border should be fine, except that you can turn on Border at the same time to override it, which seems pretty silly to me. Activating one should deactivate the other, right? So let's see if I missed anything... Color choice doesn't affect emulation, so... Does anybody know anything about the Printer option? I assume it has to do with a real Game Boy Printer type of hardware, although I have absolutely no experience with it.

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

Posted: 4/2/2005 12:16 PM

Post subject: Re: Important note about making movies with VBA

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Bisqwit

Editor, Active player (296)

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

Bisqwit wrote:

I do not recommend anyone starting making VBA movies seriously before the issues with its movie file format and recording stability (*) are correctly addressed.

I believe these points are now addressed. I'm taking off the announcement status of this topic.

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