Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I experienced the same bug in Elasto Mania as abyrvalg (welcome!), actually.
nitsuja wrote:
What other options did you set besides the framerate (such as sound or multithreading options)?
Lex wrote:
Geoffrey The Fly (Nifflas MMF game) works and syncs if set to 47 fps (Yes, 47. That's the fps the game reported when it was initially set to 60 and 50.) and the "Disable DirectSound Creation" setting is enabled.
That was the only non-default setting I ended up using.
Also, there's an issue with the "Stop Running" button not closing the process completely. With Geoffrey The Fly, at least, every time I ran it, I ended up with another instance of "Geoffrey The Fly.exe" running even after pressing the "Stop Running" button. The "stopped" processes seemed to be frozen.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1976
Location: Making an escape
Sweet sweetness! This is most excellent.
Did a brief test of Eternal Daughter. It kills Gar and gets out of the opening village in around 15 seconds. It seems stable enough for a complete run, although there are several really annoying quirks I've encountered.
First, any threading mode that permits sound will lock the game up. Most modes will lock right at startup, and the furthest I've gotten has been selecting a new game before it messes up.
Second is a really annoying graphical bug that results from loading between rooms. If I'm in room A and I load a state from room B, then the screen will be locked onto displaying the last frame from room A until I blindly change the scenery, whether it be into room A or room C.
Third, I don't get what the deal with stale savestates is, but it appears I'll have to watch my entire run again in fast forward every time I wish to pick up where I left off.
Overall though, it syncs fine if I disable threading multithreading and plays smoothly enough. I'm quite excited!
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I've done some tests on a few games that I do have installed (I have a lot more of "oldies" no one here heard of, heh):
DX-Ball 2 seems to work but needs mouse input before I can do proper tests.
3D Spins crashes (requires keyboard input only IIRC, but is still a 3D game though so no surprise)
WinBrick series also crashes.
Old DOS games can't work on it (e.g. Hocus Pocus, Xatax, Fox Ranger).
Rayman 1 just crashes (I used an extended install, which is everything needed on the HD except the movies, but I have an install with the movies as well)
Other arkanoid type games (Superball Arcade series) don't even start.
And then, Hardwood Hearts (for my own entertainment) ended up freezing and crashing my computer.
Long way away from Marble Blast Gold (although that did run in the background but nothing launched) but yeah, that's just the tests I've done...
Nonetheless, very good updates, can't wait for more. Best of luck!
Sweet sweetness! This is most excellent.
Did a brief test of Eternal Daughter. It kills Gar and gets out of the opening village in around 15 seconds. It seems stable enough for a complete run, although there are several really annoying quirks I've encountered.
First, any threading mode that permits sound will lock the game up.
I think it runs with default settings as long as you choose "Disable DirectSound Creation", which actually does permit sound, it just doesn't play it through your speakers (yet) but it will still let you record sound to AVI. However, this particular game plays its music through low-level MIDI calls that I don't support recording yet, so an AVI would have SFX but not music, which is the main reason this game isn't on the list of supported games.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Second is a really annoying graphical bug that results from loading between rooms. If I'm in room A and I load a state from room B, then the screen will be locked onto displaying the last frame from room A until I blindly change the scenery, whether it be into room A or room C.
EDIT: You're describing a different problem than I thought you were. Refreshing works for this game already. This is harder to fix since it has to do with the game unloading or reinitializing something in-between rooms that isn't stored in the savestates, and I'm not sure what it is yet.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
Third, I don't get what the deal with stale savestates is, but it appears I'll have to watch my entire run again in fast forward every time I wish to pick up where I left off.
Yes, that's a known drawback: savestates are never saved to disk and they become invalid as soon as the game stops running. It's being punted on until later because it's still possible to make TASes without it (actually it's a good idea to watch the run every once in a while to make sure it syncs), and because it's a really difficult problem to solve (there are some doubts about whether it's even possible, but I'll try doing it eventually).
Lex wrote:
Also, there's an issue with the "Stop Running" button not closing the process completely. With Geoffrey The Fly, at least, every time I ran it, I ended up with another instance of "Geoffrey The Fly.exe" running even after pressing the "Stop Running" button. The "stopped" processes seemed to be frozen.
I guess you're using Windows 7? I'm not able to test that OS at the moment and it probably wouldn't be hard to fix this if I could, but it seems like they disabled the ability to force-stop other processes in that OS (i.e. TerminateProcess doesn't work even if the application calling it has permission to use it on the target application). "Stop Running" should work anyway under normal circumstances because it actually asks the game process to kill itself first, but if you hit Stop before the first frame or after the last frame the game renders then it won't get that request either. Note that if you close the Hourglass program, that's guaranteed to always cleanup any game processes it started (even if you force-terminate Hourglass it won't leave anything extra running).
abyrvalg wrote:
This leads to inability to select "save replay" option for example, and makes it harder to pick odd-numbered levels (however, this is possible to do, as there is an even number of positions in that menu). I fiddled with options a bit, but can't seem to resolve that problem. Is there any fix for that?
Oh, I didn't know about this. It doesn't sound hard to fix, I probably just have to remove some incorrect hack I made in the input message generation code and I already have some idea of what it is.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
nitsuja wrote:
Lex wrote:
Also, there's an issue with the "Stop Running" button not closing the process completely. With Geoffrey The Fly, at least, every time I ran it, I ended up with another instance of "Geoffrey The Fly.exe" running even after pressing the "Stop Running" button. The "stopped" processes seemed to be frozen.
I guess you're using Windows 7? I'm not able to test that OS at the moment and it probably wouldn't be hard to fix this if I could, but it seems like they disabled the ability to force-stop other processes in that OS (i.e. TerminateProcess doesn't work even if the application calling it has permission to use it on the target application). "Stop Running" should work anyway under normal circumstances because it actually asks the game process to kill itself first, but if you hit Stop before the first frame or after the last frame the game renders then it won't get that request either. Note that if you close the Hourglass program, that's guaranteed to always cleanup any game processes it started (even if you force-terminate Hourglass it won't leave anything extra running).
I'm using Windows Vista 64. Yes, I cleaned up the processes by reopening Hourglass a few times, but doing that resets the Hourglass configuration which is an inconvenience. The settings should really be stored per-game in the .wtf files, shouldn't they? As it is now, "Disable DirectSound Creation" resets every time the program is restarted.
Also, I know I'm able to kill processes in this OS. Process Explorer can do it.
Also, even if I click "Stop Running" in the middle of the game while it's rendering frames, it freezes the process and doesn't unload it.
For the record, Nitsuja, you are an amazing pioneer respected and loved by all. Keep exploring please! :D
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1976
Location: Making an escape
Nitsuja: Thanks for the response. I now understand the issues I am having. I can also get music out of the emulator, and sound effects out of the AVI I just made.
Also, thank you for your efforts. I'm sorry I can't help out as anything more than feedback that you seem to already have. I wish I could be of more help.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
There's a new version, it's only a small update but it should have less freezing problems with DirectSound (though it's still better in most games to disable it while TASing), and it might sync better and should be able to capture AVIs in Geoffrey the Fly (which wants to run at 47.6 FPS so I still recommend setting 48 or 50 for it). Sync may have changed for some games, mainly MMF games.
It's a known issue that whatever controls the music streaming source position in Geoffrey the Fly and Perfect Cherry Blossom doesn't reset properly when loading a savestate. (Maybe something in bass.dll is hiding from the savestate code, or maybe it's using KUSER_SHARED_DATA directly, or maybe I have a simple bug somewhere.)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1976
Location: Making an escape
Oh sweet, sound! I think I'll have it disabled when recording a movie, though, since it seems to do weird things if I load states between songs; I even got the game to crash doing that.
Still has the screen issue, but in any event I think I'm poised to continue on. Just need to do some research.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
I like this and I have a question:
Normally, you have to hold a button, then press the "Frame Advance" key so that the game "realize" that the button is pressed.
In IWBTG you have to press Shift to jump and there is my problem. If I hold Shift and try to press the Frame Advance key but it doesn't go to the next key.
thanks for help
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
Normally, you have to hold a button, then press the "Frame Advance" key so that the game "realize" that the button is pressed.
In IWBTG you have to press Shift to jump and there is my problem. If I hold Shift and try to press the Frame Advance key but it doesn't go to the next key.
I'll fix this in the next version (EDIT: it's fixed now), but in the meantime you can remap Shift to work around it. In the menu, choose "Input > Configure Game Input...", then click on the row for Shift (it's near the middle of the first page), then click the "Reassign..." button at the bottom-left, and press whatever key you want to use instead of Shift. (Try using a letter key, or a joypad button if you have a pad plugged in.)
I've got this working great with Ninja Senki! And with that, I've got my first real TAS project on my hands. It might take me a year, but I love this game and I'm going to get it done :D
Nitsuja, you are amazing.
Given that people (like me! OMG!) might actually start making TASes with this, a new subforum seems appropriate, as someone else mentioned. Even if TASes made with Hourglass can't be published for a while yet, it would still be nice to have per-game WIP discussion topics.
EDIT: WOO! I've finished levels one and two, and gotten a (terrible) encode up on Youtube! Check it out!
nitsuja, or anyone, suggestions for which encoding option to choose would be very welcome. I just started at the top until I found one that worked, and then converted it to mpg with TPMGEnc.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
TAS looks nice, and so does the game! thanks for the download
I haven't tried anymore, but I was using an already saved game so that maybe was the problem with Rotate Gear
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I've just created two new forums to handle the large amount of discussion this is causing.
This thread, as you can tell, is now in the forum to track tool development (I suggest starting a new thread to track current Hourglass development). There's also a forum for discussing specific Windows games, which I'll be moving threads to shortly.
Have fun.
Super Meat Boy runs in hourglass. But the USB controller inputs aren't recorded, and it wont accept keyboard inputs through Hourglass. Also save states crash and it can't be run with multi-threads disabled.
Here's a test run of the first two levels, frame advancing only. I couldn't get the sound to dump at all.
Link to video
I can't seem to get this to work at all with my old Game Maker games. Any thoughts? Also, I'm sure everyone and their mother wants to try it, but I'd also be interested in IWBTG. We should form a team where each of us does a section and someone merges the parts together.
I couldnt get Lyle in Cube Sector working. Everytime I open it up, It freezes on frame 0. But it advances only by 1 frame when I click on the Hourglass window. Frame Advance doesnt work either.
I can't seem to get this to work at all with my old Game Maker games. Any thoughts?
Which games, exactly? If I can get them, I can try adding support for them (by fixing bugs or adding missing implementations).
Sonikkustar wrote:
I couldnt get Lyle in Cube Sector working. Everytime I open it up, It freezes on frame 0. But it advances only by 1 frame when I click on the Hourglass window. Frame Advance doesnt work either.
What version of Hourglass are you using, what options have you tried changing, are you sure "Paused" isn't checked, what version of Lyle are you running, is it a fresh download, what OS are you on, and can I see your log file (hourglasslog.txt)?
What version of Hourglass are you using, what options have you tried changing, are you sure "Paused" isn't checked, what version of Lyle are you running, is it a fresh download, what OS are you on, and can I see your log file (hourglasslog.txt)?
Oddly enough, When I tried it again just now, It works flawlessly. I was using Hourglass r11. I dont remember the settigns I canged and Im definitely sure Pause was unchecked.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Ooh! The StickMan one is a full run. :o There's one part that seems suboptimal (though admittedly I'm no expert on the game), but the rest is totally awesome. Wouldn't this mark the first full "submittable" run made with Hourglass?
Hmm. I was only able to get Hourglass to run StickMan (and subsequently play the movie) after enabling "Allow loading any custom/installed DLLs". That info should be in the movie file. If safety/security is your goal, just use a warning like "Warning: This input file specifies 'Allow loading any custom/installed DLLs'. Play at your own risk."
