gfd
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Here's a pretty good game that you haven't heard of. You should give it a shot. (Convert the .exe with this tool to make it run on Windows Vista or later.) Here's an introduction blurb I wrote:
    Soldexus is an action adventure game created almost entirely by Patrick Ching II (aka Pneophen). It follows the example set by other adventure games (like the Castlevania series) for its layout and structure, while taking inspiration from 2D fighting games for other elements and mechanics, making for a unique mixture of exploration and technical combat. Our unlikely hero, Ian, embarks on a quest at Death's behest, to navigate through the Temple of Despair and retrieve the Soul Gem from Phobos. Things get more complicated when rivalling ninjas with guns and an attorney with magical powers get involved. Soldexus was programmed in Game Maker 6, and released during April of 2006. At the time of its release, it received notable praise for its graphics, with players citing its charming style, good usage of parallax scrolling, and especially its sprites with varying levels of transparency; the lattermost was not often seen in Game Maker games at the time. It was also known for its high difficulty, which drew ire from some players and praise from others. As of this writing, its original entry on yoyogames.com has a rating of 4.0 from 950 members, and has been played over 45 000 times.
I have a fondness for this game since playing it to full completion in my early teens. Since then, I've become very interested in (and entertained by) TASes, and want to make one of my own. I thought this game could be a good place to start — it's not terribly complex, but it has plenty of enemies (bar early Great Hall, I guess), a lot of potential for movement optimization, and some entertaining bosses. Hopefully a TAS would be entertaining enough to warrant a publication, despite the game's lack of notability. I've created a fair amount of resources about the game (don't click that if you don't want spoilers, obviously), including a full map, documentation of how every enemy is affected by every attack, and details on many techniques and behaviours in my technical handbook. Some of my more notable discoveries: I discovered the Rise bug which breaks huge parts of the game, I found a password to unlock everything from the title screen, I figured out how RNG can be manipulated, I found a copy of 1.01 and figured out how its Float bug works, and I broke the game's completion system by discovering that an Attack Upgrade instance was placed in a non-persistent room. (For gruefood, I also made a Trivia section in my handbook.) Unfortunately, it looks like an efficient TAS of this game still can't be made yet. For one, Hourglass (r81) doesn't capture audio from Game Maker games in encodes, which is basis for submission rejection. The other no-go is that it doesn't seem to be possible to press and release a key during the same frame using Hourglass, which some techniques rely on. Setting the frame rate to 60 doesn't work, because that results in a weird 2-3-1 cycle of frames per step, rather than making every step 2 frames. Hourglass' interface is also just quite inadequate for what I'd like — for example, it doesn't facilitate modifying input on previous frames, which would be very important for RNG manipulation. But I figured I'd post about this game anyway, 'cuz why not. Hopefully anyone discovering the game from this post enjoys playing it, or at least finds my research interesting. And when Hourglass does get resurrected with new builds, someone should let me know.
Post subject: Re: Soldexus
AntyMew
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Joined: 10/22/2014
Posts: 425
gfd wrote:
Unfortunately, it looks like an efficient TAS of this game still can't be made yet. For one, Hourglass (r81) doesn't capture audio from Game Maker games in encodes, which is basis for submission rejection.
I don't see why it would be. Super Monkey Ball's encode doesn't have music
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gfd
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Location: Canada
This submission of a Game Maker game was rejected for this very reason, so that's what I'm going off of.
AntyMew
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Oh, that sounds like it was because it doesn't play audio at all. If in this case it only lacks audio capture, I'd say go for it. (Then again I'm no judge) But you implied it's the same issue with all Game Maker games, so I doubt that's the case
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gfd
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Location: Canada
Nah, both these games lack audio capture, but are still audible during normal playback. FractalFusion clarifies what was meant by the rejection message for that run here.
AntyMew
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Joined: 10/22/2014
Posts: 425
Might as well post this here:
IRC wrote:
<turska> there was a hourglass run that had sound effect, but was missing music due to hourglass not having MIDI support <turska> I would've accepted it even with that, but natt hacked midi support and got music dumped so it became a moot point <adelikat> we should be strict wtih hourglass <adelikat> missing audio SHOULD be rejected <adelikat> but if there's midi support now, and the run syncs with that, and we can make a good encode, then it can be unrejected just as I stated <adelikat> if it is natt hackery that makes it possible that's still acceptable <Anty> MIDI is the problem? <turska> it was for that game IIRC, but it may or may not be that in gamemaker's case <natt> It was the problem in a very specific case and had a very specific solution; I couldn't say here, having not examined the submission. <turska> and the music was missing in that one - sound effects were still all in <adelikat> make a good encode, and we'll talk about unrejecting <adelikat> 3193S was intended to set a precedent, that I woudl like to see followed
TL;DR: You're right; unless it gets audio dumping support it doesn't get it accepted, at the least in hourglass's case. Though on the off chance MIDI support is the problem with these two Game Maker games, natt has a fix for it
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gfd
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Joined: 3/21/2013
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Location: Canada
Yeah, I fully agree with that. (Soldexus / Game Maker does actually use MIDI, but since it sounds fine during playback, that's not what the issue is here.) Regardless, I still wouldn't start working on runs of this unless the input issue was fixed.
AntyMew
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Joined: 10/22/2014
Posts: 425
gfd wrote:
that's not what the issue is here..
That's exactly why I said "on the off chance" :P
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