The real winner of dwangoAC's SGDQ 2015 TAS race. kazioman is a fraud
Original SGDQ 2015 TAS Race submission by Noxxa: https://www.youtube.com/embed/FgHM-2Hurj0
Submission file (.fm2): userfiles/info/24544199640776782
In-game ending frame (which was the TAS race timing point): 18637
Movie length: 18541
In-game time: 3:44.86

Improvements

v2

Samsara added a few strategies Noxxa missed in the race and saved 149 frames. .fm2: userfiles/info/24543583458375795
In-game time: 3:42.36
Ending frame: 18488
Movie length: 18392

v3

adelikat reran the game in BizHawk/NESHawk, improving the run by 12 frames in the process. Noxxa added a few more improvements, saving 19 frames more. Samsara put the rest of the game together when the improvements were leading into desyncs.
In-game time: 3:41.88
Ending frame: 18457
Movie length: 18361

v4

Implemented improved strats in two rooms by Really_Tall, as well as an 1 frame improvement found by Tompa. 60 frames saved in total. Resynced by Samsara again.
In-game time: 3:40.90
Ending frame: 18397
Movie length: 18301

v5

Further improvements in overall optimization implemented by Samsara, saving 23 more frames.
In-game time: 3:40.52
Ending frame: 18374
Movie length: 18278

v6

Aglar redid a fair chunk of the movie, saving an additional 48 frames.
In-game time: 3:39.72
Ending frame: 18326
Movie length: 18230

Other comments

Thanks to:
  • dwangoAC for organising the SGDQ 2015 TAS race
  • Games Done Quick LLC, for organising the GDQ events and SGDQ 2015 in particular enabling this TAS race
  • MrPodunkian for developing this game, and Faux Game Co. for porting it to NES
  • kaizoman666 for his movie showcased on the GDQ stream which showed a negaroom strat for v3
  • Dragonfangs for pointing out above negaroom strat
  • Tompa for finding a 1-frame improvement for v4
Frame war-a-go-go
Screenshot suggestion: any ideas?

Noxxa: Updated with a 149-frame improvement thanks to Samsara.

Nach: Judging.
Noxxa: Updated with a new BizHawk version by adelikat with improvements from the rest, saving 31 frames in total.

Nach: No longer judging due to emulator switch.
Noxxa: Updated with another 60-frame improvement, with input from Really_Tall and an added 1-frame improvement by Tompa.

ars4326: Judging!
Noxxa: Updated yet again with a 23-frame improvement thanks to Samsara.
ars4326: Updating one mo' time with Aglar's 48 frame improvement!

ars4326: Hello, everyone. What can be said: When a group of highly dedicated, skilled TASers get together, good things (usually) happen. Dr. Tary might not eat humble pie, but his optimized trek escaping the space station was entertaining and very, very well polished. Outstanding job, gentlemen!
Accepting for publication to Moons!
fsvgm777: Processing.


TASVideoAgent
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Spikestuff
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stares I'll just take first reply if there is indeed a frame war going on so I can mark each one. Original 05:08.51 Samsara 05:06.03 adelikat/Samsara 05:05.51 Really_Tall 05:04.62 - Desync Samsara 05:04.71 - Desync Tompa/Samsara 05:04.51 Samsara 05:04.13 Aglar 05:03.33
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+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
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This might be known as I know IRC discussion is hot hot hot, but I believe one improvement is to enter the clown room @ 3:34 earlier, to start his walking pattern sooner.
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As noted elsewhere we are aware that the auto-judging script did not properly handle .fm2 submissions under certain as-of-yet unknown circumstances, and I can confirm that Mothrays submitted this run prior to the deadline (as in, the initial file posted in this submission, which based on the potential for a frame war may get replaced at some point). It is unfortunate that this mistake happened and that Mothrayas was not properly recognized; I will attempt to amend this mistake as best as possible via whatever communication means I can muster.
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Fortranm
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If you press UP next to the wall on the left before entering the screen with the goal of level 1, you can go to level 1-2 transition a little earlier. Is this the phantom door you talked about?
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Yeah, I did it in my run and apparently nobody else did or something. (start at about 1:21) I'm really interested in fixing my run up but I'm not sure if I'll aim for actually optimizing it down at lot... who knows ;)
Post subject: Re: #4783: Mothrayas's NES Streemerz "Streeeeemerz Mode" in 05:08.51
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
Frame war-a-go-go
Working on it. Let's go, gentlemen.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: #4783: Mothrayas's NES Streemerz "Streeeeemerz Mode" in 05:08.51
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Samsara wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
Frame war-a-go-go
Working on it. Let's go, gentlemen.
I approve, but someone needs to make a game resources page for this game, please. :)
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
Samsara
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User movie #24543583458375795 150 149 frame improvement, working off of Moth's file. Shortlist: *Phantom door *Minor strategy changes *Blechy's clown room suggestion 002C = 1 at frame 18488 In-game time: 3:42.36 Didn't want to make a new submission since it's still mostly Moth's input.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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The room strat shown by Kaizoman at around 2:45 in the race is ~20 frames faster than what's in Mothrayas's movie. I tried to edit it in myself but kept getting additional lag frames all over the rest of the run, I'm a bit unfamiliar with FCEUX so I might be doing something wrong. I'll leave it up to someone who knows what they're doing to add it instead :). Link to video Everything else I managed to learn doing my run is already in there or has been improved upon.
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Dragonfangs wrote:
but kept getting additional lag frames all over the rest of the run
The game is designed for 50 fps. When run on NTSC, it simply idles every 6th frame. Best sync is acquired on NTSC when adding/removing frames in increments of 6.
Samsara
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User movie #24566371468387760 Shortlist: *adelikat's improvement was used as a base *Mothrayas added kaizoman's negazone room strat and partially resynced *I resynced the rest from there
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Samsara wrote:
*Mothrayas added kaizoman's negazone room strat and partially resynced
Since it's already collaborative, won't it be good to co-author kaizoman? For competitions and final movies they end up with, we use to co-author anyone without whom it wouldn't be as fast.
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feos wrote:
Samsara wrote:
*Mothrayas added kaizoman's negazone room strat and partially resynced
Since it's already collaborative, won't it be good to co-author kaizoman? For competitions and final movies they end up with, we use to co-author anyone without whom it wouldn't be as fast.
My position on coauthorship for runs like these is to coauthor only all players who have had input in the run. I don't think kaizoman is the only one who used this strat either (he just had a conveniently accessible video since the SGDQ stream played it back), should I credit everyone in the TAS race who went through this room in that particular way? Should I credit Dragonfangs too since he actually told us about the room strat? Should I credit SGDQ and dwangoAC too for showcasing kaizoman's run on the stream? I don't know, there's just too much of a slippery slope here. This v3 run probably would in fact probably have been a solo adelikat run had it not been for the negazone room improvement, even though the v2 run by me and Samsara was heavily used as a reference point. I'm in fact only credited for my negazone room input (and lag clowns room input, and a couple other rooms) and Samsara for resyncing the rest. So yeah, I maintain to only coauthor the players who have had input in the run. You could arguably create a very long author list otherwise.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Link to video I found two small improvements, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting them to sync. If someone else could sync them I'd appreciate it.
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Leave it to me. I've already resynced the movie twice, might as well go for it again. Could you post the input file?
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/24574709056881534 The room after the first improvement needs to be re-optimised since you enter it at a different speed. Also, I've messed with the input after my improvements to try and make it sync, just to warn you.
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User movie #24577673766739189 This isn't finished, but I'm uploading it in case someone wants to redo everything from ~frame 8500 on and try to save the 10 frames that were mysteriously lost even with the exact same strats. It shouldn't be more than 3 frames lost over the entire run, not 10 frames lost in less than a minute.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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User movie #24590446665668671 I optimised my improvements a bit more, and did my best to make it sync nicely. I had to add around a dozen frames to get it to work, so someone with more experience at syncing runs should be able to do a better job :P
Samsara
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User movie #24592874817851446 Finished, syncs. I almost don't want to touch this file anymore.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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I found another 1-frame improvement in the beginning (around the frame 3000), but it seems if you save this frame a certain black screen transition will be 1 frame longer, and I don't know how to fix that. I'll tell you if I find more improvements. EDIT: Well, I'd like to put here the file of the improvement, but Bizhawk just disappeared with it (and I did save it before closing Bizhawk). I'm terrible to learn to use new emulators, where should Bizhawk saved movies go?
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Due to TAStudio producing high amounts of "re-records", it probably makes more sense to change the term to "input edits" or similar in encodes for editor based TASes.
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TASeditor wrote:
Due to TAStudio producing high amounts of "re-records", it probably makes more sense to change the term to "input edits" or similar in encodes for editor based TASes.
Firstly, as I already said (a few times), unless you have 50 combos with 100 presses, all of which you put manually one by one each time, you don't produce high amounts of rerecords just from using tastudio or taseditor. Secondly, no one is blaming you if you end up having 1000 more rerecords than after regular tasing. Thirdly, if you do edit the hell out of your input, you get valid rerecord count no matter how high it is. MESHUGGAH did that, his numbers were insane. Fourthly, your suggestion to call tastudio rerecords NOT rerecords (but input edits which is the same thing) sounds silly. Lastly, stop spreading this rumor about tastudio/taseditor producing high amounts of fake rerecords. If fceux had a bug in counting rerecords and their amount looked too little, it doesn't mean anything.
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Samsara
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feos wrote:
...you don't produce high amounts of rerecords just from using tastudio... [snip] Lastly, stop spreading this rumor about tastudio producing high amounts of fake rerecords.
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warmCabin wrote:
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feos you completely missed my point. The term "re-recording" for movie editors is not appropriate, because there's no recording, there's editing. It's just a better name for it. I also have high amounts of "rerecords" with TAS Editor/TAStudio and I didn't say those were invalid "re-records", I just said it's not the right term.
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