Post subject: Project M 3.6 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl ROM Hack
DyllonStej
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I figured that, since Project M is a rather large and popular ROM Hack of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I would make a page for it. As some of you already know, I primarily make Tool Assisted Speedruns/Superplays of Project M, and occasionally Melee. Link to video Earlier this year, I made a TAS of Project M's Subspace Emissary mode, given that the 3.6 version of the hack made the story mode finally work. It wasn't a "true" TAS, given that I purposely avoided taking damage for showing that it was possible, and I'm thinking of re-doing it. I was just wondering if Project M is somehow exempt from being on TASVideos for some reason, and if it is, I'll just delete this thread.
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Don't delete this. Project M is the most popular Brawl hack there is, so it definitely has a chance. However, I don't think doing a SE run is a good idea since there is no real difference in that mode for PM. Maybe Classic or All-Star, but not the Adventure mode. A SE run should be done on regular/unmodified Brawl, but the tweaked gameplay certainly looks more interesting.
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DyllonStej
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The funny and somewhat ironic thing about Project M is that, despite the fact that it was built to make the game flow and feel faster, it fixes and patches quite a few speedy exploits that certain characters can do. I'm specifically talking about Pit and his glide, which can skip over a fight trigger in normal Brawl's SSE. His glide and recovery in general has been severely toned down in Project M, making that impossible, from what I know.
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I would definitely be much more interested in seeing a full run of the SE in pm than in Brawl. It's something I've wanted to see done ever since the SE was re-enabled back in 3.5 or whenever it was. I've considered doing it myself a few times, but nothing ever came of it, as it seemed way too intimidating to me.
Post subject: Re: Project M 3.6 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl ROM Hack
Noxxa
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DyllonStej wrote:
I was just wondering if Project M is somehow exempt from being on TASVideos for some reason, and if it is, I'll just delete this thread.
It's not. Project M is a popular hack with a strong following, it will provide different enough content from regular Brawl (even if the stages and bosses are the same, it's clear that the player's motions aren't), and it'll certainly be entertaining to watch. I am quite looking forward to seeing an optimized TAS of it.
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.
Post subject: Re: Project M 3.6 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl ROM Hack
DyllonStej
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Mothrayas wrote:
I am quite looking forward to seeing an optimized TAS of it.
Thanks for the confirmation. I've already been making progress in the TAS, though it is definitely taking its time to do. I'm currently on the 2nd battle, where Mario, Kirby, Peach, and Zelda take on a horde of enemies. I've chosen Peach, as I was able to RNG Abuse a Stitch Face at the perfect time, to effectively kill enemies in one hit. I'll post my Works in Progress from time to time here, I guess.
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DyllonStej
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Link to video This is what I've gotten done since I started. Kirby's battle with Mario was simple enough, and I made sure to fastfall when inhaling to have Mario die earlier. Peach's section was full of RNG abuse at the beginning, though the right combination allowed me to get a Stitch Face right where I wanted. I actually managed to have the Stitch Face last right up until the end, and I'm pretty happy about that.
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Nice work! It's looking great so far! Someone posted in the Dolphin Development thread that you can avoid a lot of desyncs by playing the input file before loading a savestate. I don't know the technical details about it, but whenever you work on the tas, just play the .dtm file before you load your first savestate for that day. I had lots of problems with desyncs in Goldeneye Wii until i heard about that solution.
DyllonStej
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I just defeated the first boss, Petey Piranha, using Kirby's aerial Side-B move to do very large amounts of damage. I think it's his most damaging move in terms of damage per frame, especially in Petey Piranha's case. I had to "lose" a frame to make Petey drop stickers that will save time later instead of a useless CD that doesn't do anything relevant to the TAS.
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Looks great so far I love it.
DyllonStej
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I've recently just TASed Pit's first section with the Primid fight, and everything seems to be going very well. I abused RNG to get a Super Mushroom near the end of the fight so I could quickly run through most of the level. I had to "waste" a few frames in the final enemy fight of the stage to get Sticker drops, and I'm sure that they will be helpful later on.
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Post subject: shoutouts to DyllonStej
Noxxa
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DyllonStej finished his Project M Subspace Emissary TAS earlier today. Link to video It won't be submitted here (as it's actually a series of save-anchored DTMs, due to desync issues), but still a great watch either way.
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.
DyllonStej
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Just out of curiosity, would this have been good enough to be submitted to Moons or elsewhere, if I didn't encounter the numerous desync issues?
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Noxxa
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DyllonStej wrote:
Just out of curiosity, would this have been good enough to be submitted to Moons or elsewhere, if I didn't encounter the numerous desync issues?
If it would be a single movie file that starts from power-on, and ideally done on a patched ISO (I don't know enough yet about the Gecko + SD Card method but I think it could be made to fit in the rules), then I would say yes for sure.
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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Hey DyllonStej, how familiar are you with the Project M competitive scene and with Project M's physics? I haven't seen your movie in its entirety, but there's a lot of movement tricks with almost every character that were missed (like for instance, doing simple wavedashing as Squirtle 12 minutes in rather than doing shellshift-into-reverse-aerial rush-into-waveland), and overall movement optimization was not as sharp as it could have been (like for instance every time you ran off a ledge, you fastfell onto the ground and started dashing again, rather than use a waveland to shift your falling momentum towards where you want to start dashing). If this is your first TAS, I can understand the habit of TASing until you get the first finished result, rather than doing sections over and over to achieve frame-perfection (I was certainly guilty of this when I started in 2006) but I'd be happy to see a Version 2 where everything is frame tight (and the end input file is suitable for submission).
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DyllonStej
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The reason why I didn't waveland for several characters was because it literally didn't matter whether you wavelanded or landed and dashed - trust me, I tested for the ones that did or didn't matter. With characters like Captain Falcon, even a purely horizontal wavedash only ties with landing and dashing for long distances, except for the spare part where I found it beats it by a single frame. I also tested all of Squirtle's movement options, and the simple wavedashing trumped the rest of them. If you can find better testing that proves it otherwise, please tell me. In other news, I've toyed with the idea of doing a "Project M All Event Matches" TAS, only to find that one particular event (Donkey Kong vs. many Diddy Kongs) always crashes the game and/or emulator, regardless of whether Project M was used as an ISO or the SD + Gecko method. Today, I finally figured out why: It only crashes on Hard Mode. Easy Mode or Normal Mode doesn't crash the event, so an All Event Matches TAS would have to be performed on Normal instead of Hard. I don't know how this would change things in terms of submissions, but I'm just messaging to tell the news of that.
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DyllonStej wrote:
In other news, I've toyed with the idea of doing a "Project M All Event Matches" TAS, only to find that one particular event (Donkey Kong vs. many Diddy Kongs) always crashes the game and/or emulator, regardless of whether Project M was used as an ISO or the SD + Gecko method. Today, I finally figured out why: It only crashes on Hard Mode. Easy Mode or Normal Mode doesn't crash the event, so an All Event Matches TAS would have to be performed on Normal instead of Hard. I don't know how this would change things in terms of submissions, but I'm just messaging to tell the news of that.
Or you do everything on hard, except for that one event.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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Over the last couple of weeks, some Project M speedrunners have discussed the possibility of using Project M's debug mode to speedrun The Subspace Emissary faster. This includes things like switching to any character in the game (Invalidating the character limitations of a level) and bypassing the camera lock to skip autoscrollers. With this in mind, I've begun work on a new TAS of the game. A key difference is that I'm trying to make a TAS that's publishable on TASVideos, through using a patched Brawl ISO and starting the game from console boot-up. I've run into several issues, however. Obviously, the Wii's Real Time Clock needs to start at the same time after every boot up, which means Dolphin revisions before 5.0-266 are effectively impossible to work with. Using Dolphin 5.0-266, while functional, still has a large host of problems in keeping the .dtm file in sync. Even when I've turned off all Graphics hacks, Dual Core, Idle Skipping, and other miscellaneous things, either the emulator itself is reading inputs from the file incorrectly by one frame, loads things in different times when recording inputs vs. playing the same inputs back, or records the inputs themselves one frame off. Saving and loading a savestate while the movie is being played back only fixes it for a short period of time before the desyncs occur again. I'm either going to try all of this again on another revision that might record inputs better, or continue putting up with the fact that I have to fix every minute desync by playing progressively longer and longer progress from boot-up. If anyone can help me with this, I'd greatly appreciate it.
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If it's a hack, you can do whatever is entertaining, and removing these limitations might be good but could also make the TAS repetitive if the same strat is enabled over and over because of you having all the options available.
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
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I will do my best to make the run as non-repetitive as I can. A good part about that is the fact that the ability to switch to any character isn't as cut-and-dry as it seems. While Project M's Debug Mode allows character switching, it comes at a tradeoff of extra loading time. The most optimal characters to switch to from a specified character are the ones 1 step or 10 steps away from him/her in the character rotation, as they only require one "switch" with the options that the Debug Mode has. The more you have to switch characters, the longer of a wait there is for the character to load, which reduces the potential time saved. In my testing so far, the first fight in the game (Kirby/Mario vs. Mario/Kirby) is still faster to beat with Kirby inhaling Mario and falling off of the edge of the stage than any other character, when taking into account the extra loading time for other characters to be used.
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Post subject: Skyworld Fight Skip
DyllonStej
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Link to video I had previously thought that the majority of fight skips possible in Brawl were impossible in Project M, due to the nerfing of several characters' recoveries. I neglected to consider the use of outside help, like with the Green Shell item. I found a way to bypass the last fight in Skyworld, using the aforementioned item to help me get high enough. After uploading the unoptimized video, I found a better method of gaining height that also allowed me to bring the Green Shell with me to the end of the level, allowing me to do a small damage boost that saves about 10 frames. The new route (In comparison to the video's route) saves 56 frames in total, while the fight skip itself saves about 12 entire seconds. With this in mind, I'll keep an eye out for any other potential fight skips that can be done in this manner, given that it's practically an infinite recovery.
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After doing the third level (Sea of Clouds), I'm now finding it painfully obvious that Sonic is the most heavily favored character to use, due to his running speed not only being faster than any other character in the game, but also being higher than that of his Brawl counterpart (4 versus 3.5). His speed makes practically any loading penalty negated, which worries me in regards to the run's entertainment value or variety. While I could take an alternate route, by not choosing Sonic for every level under the "Speed/Entertainment Tradeoff", the reasons for choosing a different character would be arbitrarily decided on a level-per-level basis and often fake at times, and also wouldn't make sense from the viewers' persepctive, either. I'm at a loss as whether to continue doing this or to stop now.
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DyllonStej wrote:
While I could take an alternate route, by not choosing Sonic for every level under the "Speed/Entertainment Tradeoff", the reasons for choosing a different character would be arbitrarily decided on a level-per-level basis and often fake at times, and also wouldn't make sense from the viewers' perspective, either. I'm at a loss as whether to continue doing this or to stop now.
I would say if you can get a full run to sync on the version of Dolphin you're currently using (ideally, have someone else try to play it back successfully first before you submit it), then keep going with it. It would be a shame if a run of something this notable ended up going into the Vault, but you might end up being stuck with that happening - good or bad goal choices have made or broken many different submissions in the past. In other words, only keep going with the run if you're sure it would qualify for the Vault upon submission. Otherwise, you might end up doing a lot of work for nothing because you can't get it into Moons on the entertainment factor alone.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
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yeah, i think hacks don't qualify for vault so it's really important to make it varied and entertaining, but then again, we don't have a brawl SSE submission, so you might consider TASing the actual game instead if you want to Vault the run.
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
DyllonStej
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After some consideration, I believe limiting the character selection to only characters originally choosable (With the exception of horde-battle only sections like the 2nd Midair Stadium section or filler sections like the dash across the Halberd in Sea of Clouds) can open up the variety alongside allowing the optimization/timesave of the Debug Mode to show through at the same time. That does mean I have to re-do Sea of Clouds with Sheik, but it's better than going through the entire run all over again.
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