It's a reference to the Knuckles all rings run, this pic happens in the first level. How do I improve the rings anyway?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
For the rings, all I can see is that they don't look too round in my opinion (and one of them was a bit smaller, think 2 pixels). I made some small changes trying to leave the shadows untouched as much as possible...:
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I'm happy to report that everything except the console verification runs made it into the AGDQ 2016 games list. We don't yet know what days things will be scheduled on but Brain Age, the Total Control run, the Speed TAS Competition, and the Super Scribblenauts run were all accepted. I've updated the first post with this information and I've started working hard on getting everything moving in a sane direction to have all framework done by December 6th with all payload fully done the week before the marathon starts. (Seriously. I don't want to scramble again. Ever.)
Thank you to everyone who made suggestions. If you can help out with anything please let me know, there are plenty of small tasks to go around. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed to the lively Brain Age discussions - I'm quite impressed with the artwork and I already think Brain Age will be very well received.
I think it's a bit disappointing that, once again, it seems we won't be getting an actual good old (tool-assisted) speedrun of a game, running on a real console, and instead everything will again be some kind of gimmick or non-speedrun demonstration.
This is a bit funny, given that 99% of TASes are any% game completions as fast as possible.
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Warp wrote:
I think it's a bit disappointing that, once again, it seems we won't be getting an actual good old (tool-assisted) speedrun of a game, running on a real console, and instead everything will again be some kind of gimmick or non-speedrun demonstration.
This is a bit funny, given that 99% of TASes are any% game completions as fast as possible.
I generally agree with your sentiment but I suspect we will get more time during SGDQ for standard console verification and playback runs as we did this year. The feedback was at best mixed in regard to not doing console verification [at SGDQ 2015] so if we do that again we'll make sure to disclaim it better but for now I'm planning on everything for SGDQ 2016 being console verified or somewhat less of a gimmick than total control.
I have a silly idea to set up Zelda II in the background for AGDQ 2016 and play that during any technical issues that come up as a backup strat of sorts but I don't know how well that would fly... :)
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Warp wrote:
I think it's a bit disappointing that, once again, it seems we won't be getting an actual good old (tool-assisted) speedrun of a game, running on a real console, and instead everything will again be some kind of gimmick or non-speedrun demonstration.
This is a bit funny, given that 99% of TASes are any% game completions as fast as possible.
The reason for this is innovation. Hardly anybody is interested in seeing runs just being played back. Ikaruga back in SGDQ was a neat run to watch, but Twitch chat* was flooded with ResidentSleepers half the time because there's nothing extraordinary about watching a video file which you can also just do on YouTube at any time you wish. Other than the possibility of desyncs during console verification, there is very little tension involved in watching a TAS being streamed live, so a lot of less-patient people might zone out fast.
Instead, they watch TAS Blocks because they want to see truly extraordinary things happen, like watching games getting rewritten through console ports, games overwritten by other games through console ports, Twitch chat streamed through console ports, and other fun stuff like that, things that nobody has ever seen anything like it before. It's things like that that have led to great viewer reception, tech articles, attracting people to the site, etc.
Yes, it's not exactly representative of 90% of runs that are on the site, but it does probably impress and entertain the audience the best, while definitely still being tool-assisted and related to TASing endeavors.
That is my take on it at least, judging from comments and messages I've seen all over the internet during/right after the past TAS Blocks.
*Not that Twitch chat is a good representative of the overall audience, but it is one nonetheless.
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.
I'm happy to report that everything except the console verification runs made it into the AGDQ 2016 games list. We don't yet know what days things will be scheduled on but Brain Age, the Total Control run, the Speed TAS Competition, and the Super Scribblenauts run were all accepted. I've updated the first post with this information and I've started working hard on getting everything moving in a sane direction to have all framework done by December 6th with all payload fully done the week before the marathon starts. (Seriously. I don't want to scramble again. Ever.)
Thank you to everyone who made suggestions. If you can help out with anything please let me know, there are plenty of small tasks to go around. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed to the lively Brain Age discussions - I'm quite impressed with the artwork and I already think Brain Age will be very well received.
Are there any ideas about total control already? I suggest this: make SNES show some kind of a comics using input ports to feed image data. It's been proven that using some smart tricks, it's possible to display VERY realistic (if dithered) images on SNES. And if making a single picture work is too slow, there might be a bunch of simpler ones, creating animation. If it ends up being doable, maybe there's a guy on the web who will be interested in making such animation for such an event.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
Are there any ideas about total control already? I suggest this: make SNES show some kind of a comics using input ports to feed image data. It's been proven that using some smart tricks, it's possible to display VERY realistic (if dithered) images on SNES. And if making a single picture work is too slow, there might be a bunch of simpler ones, creating animation. If it ends up being doable, maybe there's a guy on the web who will be interested in making such animation for such an event.
The current plans for total control are in a bit of flux and p4plus2 as well as Masterjun have made a request to keep the payload itself a bit under wraps so that particular aspect won't be here on the forums but if someone is dedicated enough they can ask us directly and we'll fill you in. I'll be sharing details about that run as much as possible without spoiling the surprises, however.
As far as your ideas, they are all good, and in fact they more or less line up with the ideas we had for AGDQ 2015 before we developed Pokemon Plays Twitch, but ultimately the hardware limitations made streaming content or animating it in any way unbearably bad. Ilari made an image writer that was quite interesting but it took quite some time to write a single image to the screen even at the maximum rate we could sustain through the controller cables so I don't think that's a good choice. Besides, we already have artists making art for Brain Age and I don't want to conflict with that.
Overall, I think I'm the most confident about Brain Age, next is Total Control, a little less confident about Super Scribblenauts until I can get my own hardware to test with, and the least confident in the Speed TAS Competition because that bit is a huge organizational effort involving a lot of moving pieces. I'll update as best I can, however. More updates tonight, stay tuned!
Ilari made an image writer that was quite interesting but it took quite some time to write a single image to the screen even at the maximum rate we could sustain through the controller cables so I don't think that's a good choice.
Out of curiosity, did he try some form of compression? Streaming a LZ77 or LZSS decompressor* first, then having the SNES decompress this data as it is being streamed might allow a lot more effective bandwidth.
*LZ77 and LZSS decompressors are relatively small and evry fast, for a good compression ratio, which is why I mentioned these.
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marzojr wrote:
Out of curiosity, did he try some form of compression? Streaming a LZ77 or LZSS decompressor* first, then having the SNES decompress this data as it is being streamed might allow a lot more effective bandwidth.
*LZ77 and LZSS decompressors are relatively small and evry fast, for a good compression ratio, which is why I mentioned these.
You would not believe how much time we spent trying to figure out how to improve the datarate through all manner of hackery, including considering various compression methods. In the end, the burden was reading from the controller port and processing what came in in few enough clock cycles to do useful work on it. The only viable option we came up with involved hacking directly into the expansion port and feeding data in there but even that wasn't very good. At the end of the day, we *did* use "compression", although it was more like "lightweight encoding" - for the Pokemon Plays Twitch run we used the first bit of two bytes to signal whether what followed was 3 5-bit bytes or 2 7-bit bytes with an extra flag left over for signaling things RED said. I can dig up the details but long story short it gave us one extra character to play with, which was very helpful.
Ilari made an image writer that was quite interesting but it took quite some time to write a single image to the screen even at the maximum rate we could sustain through the controller cables so I don't think that's a good choice.
Can you share it? I mean, is there already a workflow to post images on the SNES screen somehow?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
The reason for this is innovation. Hardly anybody is interested in seeing runs just being played back. Ikaruga back in SGDQ was a neat run to watch, but Twitch chat* was flooded with ResidentSleepers half the time because there's nothing extraordinary about watching a video file which you can also just do on YouTube at any time you wish.
I'm not saying that all the entries should be regular TASes. I'm just saying that it would be nice if at least one of them was.
And I think the major problem with the Ikaruga TAS was that it was not played by the cute little robot on a real console in real time. I think that's what people expect and want to see.
for the Pokemon Plays Twitch run we used the first bit of two bytes to signal whether what followed was 3 5-bit bytes or 2 7-bit bytes with an extra flag left over for signaling things RED said. I can dig up the details but long story short it gave us one extra character to play with, which was very helpful.
Things like this are why I was so disappointed that the AGDQ 2015 TASBot runs never became actual submissions here - details like this are what I'm really interested in. Even for the SMB in SMW run it looked like Masterjun used some glitches that have never been seen before in any other SMW submission. For example it doesn't look like Yoshi eats anything in the last frame before the ACE begins - what triggers everything then?
for the Pokemon Plays Twitch run we used the first bit of two bytes to signal whether what followed was 3 5-bit bytes or 2 7-bit bytes with an extra flag left over for signaling things RED said. I can dig up the details but long story short it gave us one extra character to play with, which was very helpful.
Things like this are why I was so disappointed that the AGDQ 2015 TASBot runs never became actual submissions here - details like this are what I'm really interested in. Even for the SMB in SMW run it looked like Masterjun used some glitches that have never been seen before in any other SMW submission. For example it doesn't look like Yoshi eats anything in the last frame before the ACE begins - what triggers everything then?
I ran / tested a lot of the previous exploits but had no involvement in this one so even I don't know what is going on...and I've brought it up since I wanted to test a faster console-viable run (the current ace to credits run does not sync on console), but got no response other than that it's slightly slower...
So you're not the only one thinking this. However there doesn't seem to be any momentum to accept any non-fastest run unless it has some hint of nostalgia attached. Frankly the runs are too short to induce the nostalgia judge trigger. I was going to make a tierless run aggregation list that looked at runs submitted here and elsewhere - is this something I should finally find time for?
If you can help out with anything please let me know, there are plenty of small tasks to go around.
Hey dwangoAC,
I'm willing to help with the speed TAS competition. I will have some free time around AGDQ this year. I tried to PM you but you didn't seem to catch it.
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Zowayix wrote:
Things like this are why I was so disappointed that the AGDQ 2015 TASBot runs never became actual submissions here - details like this are what I'm really interested in.
This has been discussed at length in the technical / showcase tier discussion thread - trust me, I *really* want a way to submit what we do in some way but there is no current method on the site to do so and there are a couple of other annoying limitations. I am actively working on the Wiki: TASBot timeline page and I would love to have some way to link to more technical details on this kind of stuff. I am actively looking for volunteers to flesh out the timeline above with more entries. I'm still wrapped up doing administrative stuff and haven't yet started any console verification tests but hope to get to that point over the weekend.
Sorry keylie, I didn't see your PM for some reason, possibly due to switching between browsers and having one open that kept the notification from appearing. I've sent you a PM, I would love your help.
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I'm very pleased to announce that I have confirmed that a Total Control payload from Lord Tom synchronizes on my hardware as well as on my (currently borrowed) copy of SMB3.
Today I was able to borrow a copy of SMB3 from the same local collector who supplied me with my initial Pokemon Red cartridge and I used this PRG0 vs. PRG1 guide to verify what version of the cartridge I had. When I dumped the movie file I noticed that it used players 1 and 2 simultaneously but I gave away my second controller cable so I scrounged around and found my old light gun. I originally dismissed it because a light gun only has four wires (ground, clock, and two wires that go to pins usually marked as No Connection on most diagrams). Since true's NES/SNES replay device only needs ground, clock, latch, and data for player 2 I was able to make the wire work out, and in a lot of ways it is the best wiring I've found so far, likely due to better manufacturing based on its intended usage.
I was able to synchronize SMB3 all the way to [redacted] when [redacted] appeared on the screen, which made me very happy to see on my own hardware. At Lord Tom's request I'll hold off on describing the current payload although Lord Tom is welcome to post a reply here with more details as he sees fit. My current plans are to work with Lord Tom on refining a payload and for the time being I'm slating this as part 1 of a two-part total control portion of our block. If "part 2" requires substantially more time and the payload is deemed a better fit for this marathon due to timing reasons I may make the call to defer this total control to a later GDQ event, although this isn't something I'll be doing lightly or without input from others. Regardless, I'm excited to have a bit more flexibility and we'll see how this all turns out!
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TC #1: I've done some more testing and confirmed that SMB3 payloads sync on true's older NES/SNES replay device but not on his newer MultiReplay device and true is thinking it might work just out of pure luck. It's possible that the older device is too slow and doesn't get tripped up by DPCM glitches that fool the new board into thinking it's already advanced to the next frame.
TC #2: On the other hand, we're having a bit of trouble getting the glitch in [redacted] to work but we might have a workaround that might strike people as, shall we say, familiar. Like we've done this before or something. Regardless, I'm itching to try a test payload soon.
Brain Age / Scribblenauts: I received a DS screen capture device as well as the stylus control FPGA to ensure we have a backup for Brain Age and to provide something for me to do Super Scribblenauts testing with. It's going to be a lot of work to get everything installed in the DS I've allocated to this project, and the DS I'm using has a cracked hinge and case shell which I need to replace as well. I'll post updates as this work progresses.
Speed TAS Competition: Between keylie and I we've done a fair bit of research into suitable games and I've asked keylie to do some playtesting on a couple of things. We're trying to make sure that whatever we pick is the right length, can be redistributed, and will be interesting to watch, which is hard but not impossible. Updates on this topic might be a bit slow in these early stages but I'll do what I can.
That's the roundup for now - more progress is made on different things every day and it's exciting to see the plans shape up! As always, if you'd like to volunteer for something please just let me know. Thanks!
After a short break I'm ready to get back to this project. Here's what I need done soon:
Answer #18: Raelcun has agreed to be our host/donation reader during the TAS Block, so we'd like to reference him directly. I need someone to do a drawing of him. You can use this image as a reference. I'm thinking of having "Hi Raelcun!" or something similar at the bottom.
Answer #19: I'm thinking of having the "Shut up and take my money" idea here. Since we can't use Fry from Futurama, I want to use TASBot instead. I would need someone to draw TASBot holding out an arm full of money just like the meme. People will still get the joke, and we'll avoid the copyright issue. Also if we arrange the text well we could include a carat and "donation" to change the text to say "Shut up and take my ^donation money". I'm not tied to this idea, so I'm also open to other ideas for this slot too.
I'm still working on answer #14. I have the drawing finished, but because it involves so much animation it is taking me a while to finish the input. I'm planning to work on it tonight on stream.
Haven't done any drawing lately, so I might give them a try. I'm not good with real human faces though...
I did had 2 drawings from a while but was waiting to make a post when I made more, but I guess I can post them now:
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2) Stare Dad
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Organizing something as audacious as the TAS block for an AGDQ event means there are some really awesome moments and a few moments where things don't quite turn out the way they should have and I'm forced to make some tough decisions. I am sorry to report that Super Scribblenauts is no longer on the schedule for AGDQ 2016 due to time constraints based on a request from GDQ staff. They only intended to give us 1 hour of time total but never communicated this and we had to drop 15 minutes from the schedule. This isn't just happening to us, there have been a lot of difficulties with game selection being delayed this year due to staff dealing medical issues, and other people have had to make concessions as well.
I say this was a difficult choice because we had four solid runs on the schedule: Brain Age (25 minutes), Total Control (20 minutes), Super Scribblenauts (15 minutes) and the Speed TAS Competition (15 minutes). The first two are a higher priority so between Super Scribblenauts and the Speed TAS Competition I opted to allow Scribblenauts to be dropped because timing is tight to complete the full framework by my internal deadline of December 6th and one of the volunteers who was working on the scripting required has been unavailable. Meanwhile, I've made good strides on identifying potential games for the speed TAS competition with the help of keylie who has been taking on the testing work and I feel that it is the more promising of the two.
There may yet be a surprise or two in store during the 1 hour of time we have and my goal is to make sure the hour is better rehearsed with minimal setup compared to AGDQ 2015. I'll also try to make sure it isn't *too* fast, as at SGDQ 2015 I went from one game to another so fast that the tech station didn't have time to get the game name up. :)
Finally, I wanted to announce that I am now firmly committed to using BizHawk as the only acceptable emulator for the speed TAS competition as I'm looking at some esoteric choices that are only emulated well on BizHawk. I am still hopeful that we can create really clean instructions on how to run BizHawk inside of WINE for Linux competitors, however. I'm also considering positioning the speed TAS competition as a team-based event this time, specifically stating that both individual and team submissions will be welcome. There was some teamwork that happened during the Streemerz competition and I'd be silly to assume it won't happen again so I might as well officially sanction it. Thoughts?
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1) This is fine
2) Stare Dad
