Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Just finished all the hexing I needed to do for World 1 and 2 (just to save overall, yes, only 15 frames), so I'm back at Flambee. EighteenSpike's recent WR's on youtube motivated me to get back to working on this.
Just finished all the hexing I needed to do for World 1 and 2 (just to save overall, yes, only 15 frames), so I'm back at Flambee. EighteenSpike's recent WR's on youtube motivated me to get back to working on this.
Yay! :D
I'll surely follow your progress. Good luck!
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Just in case I never complete this project, here's my WIP up until Flambee.
One of the biggest reasons I might not ever complete this TAS is the faulty emulation for the game. If Bizhawk was able to fix the graphical and *especially* the lag issues, then I would consider finishing it.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Very interesting to see another player trying this game out! A couple of questions/thoughts:
-How is the lag/graphical emulation on Bizhawk? Bizhawk doesn't work on my laptop so I couldn't test for myself. The lag/emulation issue was the only thing preventing me from finishing the gold gem run and making an improvement to the any% run
-Why the switch to J ROM? Faster text scrolling doesn't matter since the game pauses in-game timer during texts, and the real time frame count doesn't matter at all. Missing out on "Shake Shake!" is also a big let down.
-If you are making the switch to J ROM, there are version differences you can take advantage of. For instance in 1-01, right when you start the very first clancer that appears at 5 seconds during that Youtube video, he gives you a text bubble that you can freeze the in-game timer with, which isn't available in US (which means that you can save even more in-game time on that first level by talking to him.) That's one of the few documented thing I saw about regional differences, I'm sure there's many other undocumented ones, probably with positions of different enemies or addition/subtraction of enemies in stages.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
-How is the lag/graphical emulation on Bizhawk? Bizhawk doesn't work on my laptop so I couldn't test for myself. The lag/emulation issue was the only thing preventing me from finishing the gold gem run and making an improvement to the any% run
Seems completely okay to me, though I'm not aware of what the problem actually entails.
-Why the switch to J ROM? Faster text scrolling doesn't matter since the game pauses in-game timer during texts, and the real time frame count doesn't matter at all. Missing out on "Shake Shake!" is also a big let down.
Mistaken information on my part. I had a few vague memories of hearing how much faster (J) is, turns out I was just misremembering. Once I continue working on this after DTC6, it'll most likely be on (U).
-If you are making the switch to J ROM, there are version differences you can take advantage of. For instance in 1-01, right when you start the very first clancer that appears at 5 seconds during that Youtube video, he gives you a text bubble that you can freeze the in-game timer with, which isn't available in US (which means that you can save even more in-game time on that first level by talking to him.) That's one of the few documented thing I saw about regional differences, I'm sure there's many other undocumented ones, probably with positions of different enemies or addition/subtraction of enemies in stages.
I'll look into it further. If I find anything else like that, it might convince me to stick with (J) after all.
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Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I'll try to summarize/paste what's in my submission form about what the issues are:
"Jabo's 1.6 was used to record the run. No current [Mupen] graphics plugin emulates Mischief Makers with 100% accuracy; Jabo's gives me the advantage in world 4 by not darkening the screen at all, making it easier for me to see. So far, Rice 6.1.1 Beta 10 (and Rice 6.1.4) seem to emulate it the closest, removing the yellow/blue/green outlines in backgrounds and giving the correct darkness effect in world 4; however the ground in world 2 is not right (ground/platform/background textures do not repeat correctly.) Nitsuja's modified plugin emulates world 2 perfectly (and makes the boulder in 4-01 visible), but seems to throw world 4 out of whack (unless something's wrong with my settings; the circle in the middle should be a ray of light, not a ray of dark.) If world 4 can be made to work with Nitsuja's plugin, then encoders should use that. If not, Rice is recommended. For viewing, I recommend using Jabo's like I did, since you'll be able to see more clearly in world 4.
One more part about Mischief Makers emulation is that [the intro cutscene where Theo gets captured], 2-03, 2-08, and some of the events in 3-10 (100m dash, 200m dash, 400m dash, and hurdle) run at 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS because of too many sprites onscreen.
Lastly, the questions in 3-10's Mathfun are hidden by a black bar."
When you first load Mischief Makers in BizHawk, during the opening cutscene when Theo gets abducted, the game starts to lag in Mupen right when the stove breaks and puffs of smoke come out. Because this sprite overload is the same as later stages in world 2 and world 3, I think a quick test should be easy to deduce if the same sprite overload problem occurs in BizHawk (which I can't test because BizHawk never seems to run on my laptop.)
There's a lot of faster text-scrolling in other games where J ROM makes sense to switch to, but Mischief Makers is unique considering how both runs (in my opinion) should aim for in-game time. I think the easiest way to see if there's enemy position differences (if you have the time and want to) is to watch the Goldgem WR by Jackafur, since he uses J version, and then compare it to his AGDQ 2015 run, which uses U. Overall I feel like the best justification for using a different version ROM is when significant glitches or physics differences causes large amounts of in-game time to be saved.
Let me know when you're ready to start the run, I'll try to get my BizHawk problems fixed to co-op as this is a run I've wanted to see completed for many years, and working on this game solo can get very frustrating.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
So somehow in the last two years I completely missed that requirement.
So now I *can* run Bizhawk..... and just tried the opening cutscene sequence and there's the exact same lag and graphical problems as when I used mupen64 for my published run. I know some other 64 games have been worked on to fix emulation errors, is there any way this game's emulation errors can at least be researched?
What happens if you use the latest version of Bizhawk and use GLideN64 as the video plugin? I'm not sure about that lag, but a large number of graphical problems (including a number of problems present in Mischief Makers) have been resolved throughout it's development.
I'm not as active as I once was, but I can be reached here if I should be needed.
I am considering looking into 100% for this game but I feel like I alone wont be able to do it. Is there anyone that wants to help out with 100%?
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
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Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
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Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
In my opinion, until both the emulation and lag issues are fully fixed, it's not worth making any new runs (as much as I would like to see one/participate in making a new run)
Do you mean the lag in places like the first boss battle or the emulation being slow?
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I mean any time when there's too many sprites on screen that causes the ROM to start to run at 50% speed (regardless of which emulator is being used). I mentioned this in my submission, but you can see it in places like the intro cutscene (as soon as the oven cracks and starts smoking) two of the World 2 stages, and many of the Olympic Games in World 3. In total, the extra lag in the Any% run was around 5 minutes.
Ah I see. Yeah that sucks.
Unfortunately I dont think N64 emulation will get to that point of decent emulation for awhile.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
