Using a development build. This should never be done, yet I'm doing the same as the previous movie submission >:)
Fastest completion
Genre: Action
Genre: Sport
About the run
On a whim I decided to implement the GB Camera mapper into Gambatte, which this submission uses. For the meme, I decided to resync the GB Camera TAS into this new build. Interestingly, this lead to a much longer startup time, and it's due to more accurate emulation of the GB Camera registers (and hence despite this submission using GBA mode, is still slower than the published movie if not disregarding these emulation differences). I also during resyncing I noticed I somehow got a faster RTA time while losing IGT (the resync at this point wasn't quite right). Messing around, I found out that I could jump right before the goal, and that seemed to be slightly faster. This happens with both GBHawk and Gambatte, so this improvement is legit.
feos: This movie is identical to [4198] GB Game Boy Camera by ThunderAxe31 in 03:01.98 in terms of gameplay timings, but it has a certain in-game action at the very end that makes the level fade out faster. The same input for the running level also makes it end 1 frame sooner in the current movie too, so this is a legit improvement. I asked other judges whether they feel improving the fade out counts as a gameplay improvement, and no one felt it doesn't. Indeed this movie doesn't aim for in-game time after all, so improving the overall length is the goal. Extra proof is that fade out speeds up because you manipulate an enemy to move more optimally, so all in all it's good. Accepting over the current publication linked above.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/74260865280592490
Did an oops and submitted movie is missing the cycle count, here is the same movie with the cycle count saved.
EDIT: Also improved accuracy of the mapper which resulted in more lag appearing. Movie file link is corrected to reflect this.
EDIT2: Some more accuracy improvements, cycle count slightly different, link updated.
I'm not sure what did I witness, apart from dancing mario, some minutes of a shmup and another of barricade running or what ever it is called, but I'm equally impressed after watching this game for the first time through this TAS as of the game itself.
So a yes vote went in.
I guess this game was made by the developers of Pokémon Yellow and other stuffs for the gameboy. But those (loading and displaying) graphics and animations seems so smooth for a gameboy to handle. Are there other reasons for this apart from being made by professionals?
edit: a video demonstrating everything the gameboy camera has to offer (except for taking a photo)
Link to video
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I found the characters in the included games that were played to be hilarious, it may not be funny explicitly because of the TAS gameplay but the underlying game is hilarious. Also appreciated that this was originally an April Fool's submission and it was taken seriously to find an improvement. Yes vote.
I did not for this movie. Later on, I did look into that part of the movie (mostly checking how well it synced if title screen was delayed, fun fact rng is different so it desynced), and did note that there was maybe some possible improvement in terms of defeating each giant head, but I could get anything better.
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
Messing around, I found out that I could jump right before the goal, and that seemed to be slightly faster.
What is faster exactly? The timer is ticking for 855 frames in both movies, which is an indication to me that controllable gameplay is of the same length, as is the resulting in-game time itself. Note that IGT is not only counting seconds but also presumably milliseconds, every frame, so it looks like a valid metric to me.
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.
Messing around, I found out that I could jump right before the goal, and that seemed to be slightly faster.
What is faster exactly? The timer is ticking for 855 frames in both movies, which is an indication to me that controllable gameplay is of the same length.
The character exiting to the left and the screen fading out happens sooner with this jump.
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Since this is after controllable gameplay has ended, it feels uneasy to accept an improvement to loading times when otherwise loading times have become longer
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.
Since this is after controllable gameplay has ended, it feels uneasy to accept an improvement to loading times when otherwise loading times have become longer
TASVideoAgent wrote:
This happens with both GBHawk and Gambatte, so this improvement is legit.
Also, the loading times becoming longer is only at the very beginning on game boot, due to the game spamming take picture commands for some reason. GBHawk didn't bother to emulate the timing of these commands, while Gambatte does as accurately as known with current research.
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If you count the time between lag end and lag start, this movie only has it 1 frame faster because the IGT starts ticking 1 frame sooner. If you count from IGT start to lag start, the time is the same (1017 frames). If you count from fade out to lag, this movie is 1 frame longer. Since everything is fluctuating due to accuracy changes, I'd prefer to rely on something that doesn't fluctuate. I copypasted the new input starting with the first non-lag frame, and the IGT ends at the same frame as before, though lag starts 1 frame sooner with this input.
What I mean by loading times is that if you count from when the ship appears in the first level, to movie end, this run is 9 frames longer. I'm not saying this improvement is completely invalid. I'm saying a gameplay action only makes non-gameplay 1 frame shorter. If we have a consensus that this is a valid improvement, I'll accept it. If we look at our glossary definition of gameplay, this improvement is on the edge, because it doesn't improve the in-game puzzle, but it kinda improves the overall TAS puzzle.
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.
Well, I looked a bit into this, and seems I made some wrong assumptions.
The character does move to the end of the screen faster in this submission, but this doesn't actually speed up getting to the fadeout. The fadeout (from what I can find) relies on 2 things. 1. Fanfare played out (starts playing once player crosses finish line). 2. The mole reaching the finish line. That second one being relevant here, as this submission has that mole getting to the finish line 1 frame sooner. For whatever reason, the mole drops to 0 speed for a frame in the old movie. Jumping at the end avoided that drop in speed, and thus this submission ends up faster.
EDIT: Looking into it, it seems like if the player is on the ground at the finish line, the mole will drop to 0 speed for a frame. If the player is in the air, this doesn't happen. So that would directly make jumping the improvement, as that shortens waiting for the NPC.
EDIT2: On a slightly unrelated note, the several second wait at the beginning actually does affect a potential strategy. You could soft reset once you hit the finish line and the game would let you go to the actual credits. This is actually a faster strat within GBHawk, but in Gambatte it's much slower due to the wait on bootup.
What is the status with console verifying this?
It's probably not worth considering how this compares to the previous run on GBHawk, it's way behind in terms of accurate emulation of the inner workings of the camera.
Currently not possible it appears. The TAS desyncs right at the title screen, console taking less time with the picture spam compared to Gambatte for some reason. We don't know why it does, after extensive testing of the camera (using a GBC + flashcart + GB Camera cartswap setup) we couldn't find any major timing inaccuracies. Currently our best bet is just the GBA behaves differently with timing for some reason (although that doesn't make sense, that would mean that the PHI, a direct representation of the GB's clock, is faster on the GBA).
Currently not possible it appears. The TAS desyncs right at the title screen, console taking less time with the picture spam compared to Gambatte for some reason. We don't know why it does, after extensive testing of the camera (using a GBC + flashcart + GB Camera cartswap setup) we couldn't find any major timing inaccuracies. Currently our best bet is just the GBA behaves differently with timing for some reason (although that doesn't make sense, that would mean that the PHI, a direct representation of the GB's clock, is faster on the GBA).
So GBC also takes less time then Gambatte, or just GBA?
Is the amount of time enough that the reset you mentioned would be faster on console?
Currently not possible it appears. The TAS desyncs right at the title screen, console taking less time with the picture spam compared to Gambatte for some reason. We don't know why it does, after extensive testing of the camera (using a GBC + flashcart + GB Camera cartswap setup) we couldn't find any major timing inaccuracies. Currently our best bet is just the GBA behaves differently with timing for some reason (although that doesn't make sense, that would mean that the PHI, a direct representation of the GB's clock, is faster on the GBA).
So GBC also takes less time then Gambatte, or just GBA?
Is the amount of time enough that the reset you mentioned would be faster on console?
I mean the testing was done on a GBC, which Gambatte matches. GBA is potentially different, although untestable due to the inability to cartswap.
Also no, not at all. The reset was barely faster in GBHawk; console would be slower by several seconds.
