Does that mean face select is also usable?
It's an Arterios command, but I was worried it might trigger the Konami code.
By the way, the game is Tenchi wo Kurau 2(US Destiny of an Emperor 2)
ということは面セレクトも使用可能ですか？
アルテリオスのコマンドであるのですがコナミコマンドに引っ掛かりそうだったので
ちなみにゲームは天地を喰らう2です
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6587
Location: The land down under.
Ok, so this may be an interesting case and something that may need an audible.
In certain Windows 3.1 titles-- like Myst, it's possible to break the audio by doing an Alt+F4 after a needed sound plays (Myst's case flipping the lever), then exiting the confirmation to quit menu.
It'll bring up this warning, and then no sound would play afterwards:
In Myst's case this seems like it does nothing, so this question is more in general to other titles.
Would exploiting the sound by using Windows itself be against the rules?
Since it's technically abusing a function within Windows and not the game itself.
Edit: For a comparison context that happened on Discord when I brought this up initially.
DrD2k9 believed that this would be related to Ruffle and no mouse bounds, however I don't believe in that correlation as with native Flash you're able to adjust the window sizing to click what was originally off-screen elements.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Strong for yourself and also others.
Edit: For a comparison context that happened on Discord when I brought this up initially.
DrD2k9 believed that this would be related to Ruffle and no mouse bounds, however I don't believe in that correlation as with native Flash you're able to adjust the window sizing to click what was originally off-screen elements.
I agree that the Ruffle example wasn’t the best analogy. It was just the first thing that came to my mind.
I added the following thoughts in Discord, but feel including them here is appropriate.
Maybe a better way to describe my distaste for the sound bug in the Myst example is that it’s using a different program (something else within windows) to glitch the game and not using an in-game glitch. I feel that allowing such could open the door to arguments for allowing other unrelated external programs (within the TASed environment) to be used to manipulate games in a TAS setting. I realize this is a type of slippery-slope argument, but it’s nonetheless my concern.
Hypothetical example: some other program in windows prevents the main TASed game from using audio which then allows faster gameplay. We decide to allow it. Someone else subsequently submits a TAS that uses a secondary emulated program (i.e. cheat engine) that is unrelated the the main game being TASed to manipulate memory in the main TASed game to yield otherwise impossible gameplay of the main game.
Bottom line: I don’t like the idea of a secondary program (unrelated to the main game being TASed) affecting the results of the TAS.
This is definitely a situation I think needs to be a consensus decision and not just one or two people’s perspectives.
I subscribe to Dr's opinion, plus my two cents:
If you submit this movie without the trick, then somebody else obsoletes it only by using it, I'd not accept the latter as it does not constitute a gameplay improvement.
Yeah that looks like interfering with the program we're TASing from the outside environment, basically breaking the sandbox. At this point you're not TASing the game but the whole Windows OS, and making some programs within it cause problems in other programs within it.
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.
TL;DR: I made a TAS that uses a few mods, primarily to control RNG and some Unity quirkiness, and I'm considering submitting it to TASVideos, so I wanted to inquire on whether this'd be okay before doing so.
Hi, I made a full-game TAS of Cuphead ( https://youtu.be/YYuafcehOSE ). I was considering submitting it to TASVideos but there's a few things with it that make me unsure it'd be eligible.
First of all, this was done on libTAS on an unofficial build the game, since there is no official Linux release of the game. This also includes a few minor mods to the game's code, viewable here - https://github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.macOStoLinux
I believe this and of itself has precedent from this: https://tasvideos.org/7822S
But moreover, I implemented a few more mods into this TAS to make working on it easier.
First, I edited the game's loading routine to allow the game to flawlessly sync through loading screens. (changing an async to a synchronous call basically).
Secondly, I applied a sort-of-determinism fix to the Lobber EX move, the special explody purple attack. This is a bit simplified, but basically this is a move that when aimed in-between an enemy and a floor has a 50% chance to deal either 2x or 3x the normal amount of damage, depending on which collisions Unity processes first. This seems entirely random and I don't know the root reason for sure.
While libTAS *is* deterministic in this, this means that using this move on different frames and different game state would result in different outcomes, so since this move is used quite a lot throughout the game, I added this mod to make working on it a lot easier.
Thirdly, I forced a lot of perfect RNG through code edits. Cuphead is extremely high in RNG, with the odds of a perfect run estimated to be somewhere around 1 in 10^68. Some RNG is seeded on level entry, and some is generated on the fly during the level. While some on-the-fly RNG manips are possible by doing stuff like shooting bullets and spawning dust particles (which I did do here and there in places where code edits were too complex), I felt like relying on modding as the primary way to control luck was the way to go in order to avoid adding hundreds of extra hours onto the project or settling with suboptimal RNG (especially considering there's a few pieces of RNG that are something like "This boss delays his attack between 18 and 42 frames and I need it to be a very specific value 5 times in a row").
Finally, this technically prints debug information far out of bounds, and draws fully-transparent hitbox outlines. I used this stuff to help create the TAS, but realized a little too late that removing these mods caused desyncs related to other hitbox-processing-order shenanigans, so I found this solution that kept sync. This technically kept the mods running while not having any visible effects on screen.
I am aware that ROM Hacks are allowed on the website ( https://tasvideos.org/Movierules#RomHacks ), but I'm not sure if this kind of "convenience modding" is favored or has precedents. This TAS already took me about 200 hours to make as-is due to how complex this game is and how difficult working around Unity's quirks is, so I feel like if I hadn't made things easier to work on this TAS may not have been completed to the same level of quality. But, I completely understand if it wouldn't be accepted on the site, just figured I'd check in in regards to its eligibility. Thanks!
Secondly, I applied a sort-of-determinism fix to the Lobber EX move, the special explody purple attack. This is a bit simplified, but basically this is a move that when aimed in-between an enemy and a floor has a 50% chance to deal either 2x or 3x the normal amount of damage, depending on which collisions Unity processes first. This seems entirely random and I don't know the root reason for sure.
While libTAS *is* deterministic in this, this means that using this move on different frames and different game state would result in different outcomes, so since this move is used quite a lot throughout the game, I added this mod to make working on it a lot easier.
Thirdly, I forced a lot of perfect RNG through code edits. Cuphead is extremely high in RNG, with the odds of a perfect run estimated to be somewhere around 1 in 10^68. Some RNG is seeded on level entry, and some is generated on the fly during the level. While some on-the-fly RNG manips are possible by doing stuff like shooting bullets and spawning dust particles (which I did do here and there in places where code edits were too complex), I felt like relying on modding as the primary way to control luck was the way to go in order to avoid adding hundreds of extra hours onto the project or settling with suboptimal RNG (especially considering there's a few pieces of RNG that are something like "This boss delays his attack between 18 and 42 frames and I need it to be a very specific value 5 times in a row").
We haven't ever rejected a movie for not having frame perfect manipulation of all random events. Luck manipulation is very rarely the primary aspect of a TAS, most of the time it's routing that doesn't depend on RNG and precise execution of non-random movements. The main aspect is things that can save seconds or even minutes, which is most of the time certain tricks one needs to be aware of.
Now there are also games where better manipulation can save you minutes, and if there are a lot of such cases in a game, TASing it exponentially becomes a torture. Especially when you have to chain random events in a way that time is saved overall, even if individual random events could theoretically be manipulated to get shorter, but they could lead to other random events that got longer. Just this year I TASed (again) a game where boss patterns are random, and I can absolutely relate to the RNG hell. After a certain point I just said "fuck it, let it stay improvable, I can't bear this anymore".
So uh, yeah. The whole point of the rule is to only edit the game so it becomes TASable. Fundamentally. If everything is random, EVEN IF IT'S DETERMINISTIC, it's unTASable in practice. Because in order to manipulate things to the level of "decent", it'd already require unbearable amounts of effort. It'd be detached from reality to prefer a movie that's improvable everywhere just because it's a little bit more authentic, especially when such a movie is not even the one that's already done.
How things get obsoleted is a question that's a bit trickier, because removing the RNG mods would indeed most likely result in a slower movie unless someone has a time machine and a bot farm (otherwise it'd take decades).
I'm more concerned about porting consisting of steps that can be described in a pure text form and reliably repeated while the movie keeps syncing. If it's a program that does the patching, it's obviously more handy, but requires hosting the magic entity that makes things work.
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.
I want to submit a TAS of a game obtained through a game library. The thing is that this game library allows for a game to be updated at any time, and there's no version history. The author of the game hasn't been active in years so there's no threat of my game being changed, but is this still a problem? If it is, can I upload the game somewhere else for eternal preservation?
I want to submit a TAS of a game obtained through a game library. The thing is that this game library allows for a game to be updated at any time, and there's no version history. The author of the game hasn't been active in years so there's no threat of my game being changed, but is this still a problem? If it is, can I upload the game somewhere else for eternal preservation?
What game is it?
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.
I want to submit a TAS of a game obtained through a game library. The thing is that this game library allows for a game to be updated at any time, and there's no version history. The author of the game hasn't been active in years so there's no threat of my game being changed, but is this still a problem? If it is, can I upload the game somewhere else for eternal preservation?
What's the full workflow to TASing it? How do you grab and run the game? Does it have any kind of redistribution license?
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.
I contribute to BizHawk as Linux/cross-platform lead, testing and automation lead, and UI designer. This year, I'm experimenting with streaming BizHawk development on Twitch. nope
Links to find me elsewhere and to some of my side projects are on my personal site. I will respond on Discord faster than to PMs on this site.
Hey look buddy, I'm an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like "What is software," because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems. For instance, how am I gonna stop some high-wattage thread-ripping monster of a CPU dead in its tracks? The answer: use code. And if that don't work? Use more code.
What's the full workflow to TASing it? How do you grab and run the game? Does it have any kind of redistribution license?
The .sb3 file can just be downloaded by going to the project's editor and hitting File > Save As... . From there, the best option would be the TurboWarp Project Packager (https://github.com/TurboWarp/packager), which converts projects into Electron applications, and then running that in libTAS. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten this working so far as it complains about not being able to connect to socket.
If that is truly impossible right now, the best workflow for running the game would probably be to convert it to a .sb2 file (as of right now, there's https://github.com/RexScratch/sb3tosb2/releases/tag/v1.0, and I will try to document and check the script to see if it's converting the file without compatibility issues), and then converting that to a standalone SWF using https://amys.website/scratch/. From there, the SWF file can be loaded with Ruffle + libTAS as usual.
I should mention a couple of things with the standalone SWF converter: there is source code attached, but the website has a chance of going down so that's not good. This might also be unnecessary if importing projects works while TASing (though to be honest it probably doesn't).
There's also technically the option of just remaking the whole game within the TAS (with Scratch 2 Offline Editor + Ruffle + libTAS)...
Alright so with that license you can redistribute the file as you want, as long as you keep the same license (archive.org allows that). Converters being always available is important for verification, but not critical after it's been validated. Forking them just in case would be a good idea.
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.
Spear of Destiny (1992) for DOS features copy protection mechanism which forces the player to answer some trivia questions using the game's manual on each game start-up. However, there are keywords which automatically mark the whole trivia as passed. May any of those be used in a TAS?
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Spear of Destiny (1992) for DOS features copy protection mechanism which forces the player to answer some trivia questions using the game's manual on each game start-up. However, there are keywords which automatically mark the whole trivia as passed. May any of those be used in a TAS?
I don't see why not.
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.
I recently completed this movie: #10017: eien86's DOS The Incredible Machine in 26:23.238 that contains the 87 puzzles of the original TIM game.
However, now I see "The even more! Incredible Machine" that expands on the former game with 70 more puzzles using new pieces.
In effect, the game is exactly the same as the original, but with more puzzles. However, it allows you to start from the puzzle #88, for players who have already completed the original.
My question is: can I TAS this game starting from puzzle #88 as Standard, since I already beaten the origin 87 in the original? Or would this be considered Alt?
I recently completed this movie: #10017: eien86's DOS The Incredible Machine in 26:23.238 that contains the 87 puzzles of the original TIM game.
However, now I see "The even more! Incredible Machine" that expands on the former game with 70 more puzzles using new pieces.
In effect, the game is exactly the same as the original, but with more puzzles. However, it allows you to start from the puzzle #88, for players who have already completed the original.
My question is: can I TAS this game starting from puzzle #88 as Standard, since I already beaten the origin 87 in the original? Or would this be considered Alt?
There's no way the same input will sync for the identical puzzles in both games right? If there was 1 movie for the fuller version that beats all levels, it'd likely obsolete the movie of the shorter game, but at the same time it'd be unfair to require a resync.
I understand the goal but I'm having a hard time coming up with an appropriate name. Like, that name wouldn't mean much in the context of the game itself, because it's defined by another game (which is a different version).
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.
There's no way the same input will sync for the identical puzzles in both games right? If there was 1 movie for the fuller version that beats all levels, it'd likely obsolete the movie of the shorter game, but at the same time it'd be unfair to require a resync.
I understand the goal but I'm having a hard time coming up with an appropriate name. Like, that name wouldn't mean much in the context of the game itself, because it's defined by another game (which is a different version).
Lol, I just made a quick attempt at copying the solutions of the first game onto the newer one and it DOES seem to sync. So maybe it's not gonna take too much effort to make a full game solution.
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.
This is probably fine, but I'm just doing my due diligence.
I was trying to run Commander Keen 5 in BizHawk and encountered some pretty bad stuttering. Apparently this is a known issue even on many real hardware setups. There is a .conf setting that was added in DOSBox-X that fixes this. My .conf file for the movie would only contain this:
[video]
ega per scanline hpel=false
The setting is explained here. The game runs perfectly with this .conf file on the 1994 preset with the Video Card Type set to EGA. I'm in way over my head on the technical aspects of this, is this setting okay to use for a submission? Even the documentation for it seems unsure what the correct behavior should be. It doesn't seem to have any effect on the gameplay other than making the game not run like garbage. The only alternative fix I found was to set the cycle count very low, to the point where loading times take a while and the game even lags when you pick up a bonus.
If false, EGA emulation latches hpel on vertical retrace end (like VGA does), which may have been EGA clone behavior that some games were written against.
This looks convincing enough to me, I'd say that option is fine.
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.
In Myst's case this seems like it does nothing, so this question is more in general to other titles.
Would exploiting the sound by using Windows itself be against the rules?
Since it's technically abusing a function within Windows and not the game itself.
Edit: For a comparison context that happened on Discord when I brought this up initially.
DrD2k9 believed that this would be related to Ruffle and no mouse bounds, however I don't believe in that correlation as with native Flash you're able to adjust the window sizing to click what was originally off-screen elements.
