Okay, I was considering working on this game. Here are some notes:
- Alternating holding left and right every frame is faster than holding forwards and removes speed oscillations, which is pretty nice and TAS-looking.
- In
this video you can observe a useful/cool glitch. It is very easy to perform on pj64 or mupen-rr. However, I was unable to perform this glitch on my actual N64 OR on the playstation emulator pcsx-rr. In both of these cases, the camera physics behave noticably differently than on my N64 ROM. This leads me to two possible conclusions: (1) There are different versions of Toy Story 2, or (2) The clip is an emulation glitch.
I have obtained several roms/isos trying to check (1), and I cannot find any evidence of a version difference for the (U) version. I have tried other language versions, and they were also able to clip on mupen/pj. What would be useful is if people could try to do the clip on actual console - if someone can get it, that confirms this is a version difference. If nobody can get it...I can only assume (2) is true and this is not a true glitch.
- Which brings me right to my next major dilemma: what emulator to play this on. Here are some emulators I've tried:
1. PJ64: game runs perfectly, but no TASing capabilities. This is an obvious no, but it is just to contrast with the next emulator.
2. Mupen-rr (whatever the most recent version is): the game runs alright, but it is very, very laggy. As in, so laggy, that somewhere around 1 in every 3 frames is lag. The framerate drops far below console levels all over the place, oftentimes to half speed or slower. Unless there is some special way to fix this, I think this horrible lag alone eliminates this possibility.
The N64 version of the game would be faster all other things being equal, due to the ammount of loading time and filler screens before the game / between levels. I thought I heard someone say once that the N64 version requires 10 less pizza planet tokens to beat (N64 requiring, 30/50, PSC requiring 40/50), but I haven't verified the accuracy of this. Either way, I'd probably do 100%.
3. PCSX-rr: In some areas there are some minor graphical glitchs on Buzz, making him appear black, shadowy or blue-tinted. It is undesirable, but not really that distracting from the run. I can post a sample video if need be. The main reason why I'm hesitant to use PCSX-rr is that I can't find a good TAS input for the analogue stick like the one for mupen or the one built into PSXjin. As I did all my work on this emulator for Croc (where analogue is slower than digital due to a semi-bug in the speed system), I'm pretty comfortable with it.
4. PSXjin: This may have the same graphical glitchs as PCSX-rr. I don't know though, since I can't get the game to run past the first two screens after game startup (before the main menu). I also have the same problem with A Bug's Life, which is another game I am considering TASing. However, Croc and Croc 2 I can run perfectly fine (or at least as "perfect" as pcsx-rr), so I know I at least have a clue what I'm doing. I've tried fiddling around with psxjin's settings to try to match my pcsx-rr, but to no avail. Just to be clear: the same file I can get to run in PCSX-rr, I cannot get to run (past the first few screens) in PSXjin. If anyone has any ideas, that'd be useful.
Of the 4 choices above I'd like to do the N64 version since it has less waiting times between levels, but unless the crippling lag problem can be solved that is just impossible at the present moment. Furthermore, if the door glitch ends up being an emulation error, I am skeptical of the accuracy of gameplay emulation for the n64 version and think it would be best not to use it. I don't think the small graphical glitchs in the PSX version are a big deal, and would probably run that, but I need either a good input plugin for PCSX-rr or a way to get the game to run on PSXjin.
Also I'm not commiting to anything right now, except that if I can't resolve these issues I commit to not TASing this game ;)
Edit: Received one result of someone else testing the glitch on console (n64): did not work.
