I'm currently doing my first full time attack, and I think I might actually stick it out and finish this one. :P
Don't you just love it after spending so long scratching your head trying to find a quick way through a certain part in a game, and you finally do it? I just spent over 30 minutes and probably 200 rerecords on a single part in my movie. I finally got it done right, and I was so happy when I finally did it. :P
Making these time attack movies seems to be almost more fun than actually playing the games. When I watched some of the videos on this site, I was like "Ah, look how easy that looks!". When you actually try to make a video of your own, it's much more difficult, but FUN!
It's fun to watch the videos, even the ones for the games I'm not familliar with. Just really cool to see how creative people can be with exploiting and using powerups and shortcuts.
Time attack movies rule!
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
The movies i find funner to see are the ones i made! it's really cool to make a video. only one who made a video for a especific game knows how hard it is, therefore sees it as even more impressive than other people do.
This goes for anybody reading this: if you never tried making a movie, pick a quick game and try it!
One sad thing about this is that there are often situations which are very complicated and as you say need hundreds of rerecords and takes lots of time until you finally get it right, but in the final video that part just looks easy (because that's often what results when making a perfect run: it looks very easy) and you can't really appreciate the difficulty of that part and how much effort the timeattacker spent in it.
For example in my Rygar run at the end of the spider cave there's a section of the cave where there are lots of flying monsters and gaps and you have to jump a lot while not getting hit by the monsters. It took me tons of time and rerecords to get it like you see in the video, but it doesn't really look all that difficult.
Those who oppose tool-assisted speedruns often say that emulator slowdown and free rerecording makes it easy to perform such a run. Well, they are free to try. It's only when you try when you really realize how difficult and laborious it can be.
It's always annoying when I accidentally save the state and realize I wanted to do something different, but once I get it right, it really does look cool in the replay.
Say, does anyone know of any "frame-by-frame" mode for making movies? A lot of people here talk about doing something "at the earliest possible frame", but I'm not quite sure how to find an exact frame while I'm playing because I can only slow a game down so much and I can't see the frame count during play. I know Nesticle has an Advance Frame option that makes you go one frame at a time; does Famtasia have anything similar?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Say, does anyone know of any "frame-by-frame" mode for making movies? A lot of people here talk about doing something "at the earliest possible frame", but I'm not quite sure how to find an exact frame while I'm playing because I can only slow a game down so much and I can't see the frame count during play.
I don't think they are talking about making the run frame by frame when they say that.
Making a movie "frame by frame" was actually an urban legend widespread with all the lies told about Morimoto's SMB3 run. I don't think it's possible to make a timeattack "frame by frame". You can slow down the emulation quite a lot (I think even a speed of 5% is still feasible using the 60fps patch for famtasia, but afaik lower than that makes it just too difficult), but that's not the same thing as making it "frame by frame".
When they are optimizing runs like SMB1, the already-existing runs are already so optimal that they are near perfect, and almost any further optimization will be so small that it's not feasible to measure it in seconds anymore. Since famtasia tells how many frames exactly the movie is long, that's a much more accurate measurement. If you can make the run with 2 fewer frames than previously, you will know that it has been improved. You may save a frame or two with extremely precise movements, like jumping just a fraction of second earlier (possible when slowing down the emulator) etc. I think that "you can save a couple of frames here" refers to this.
I do frame-by-frame controlling sometimes - mostly when using the wall-abuse tricks in SMB or Rockman. I set the emulator to 5% speed (which equals to 3 fps) and literally control it frame by frame. I may even pause after every frame just so that I have enough time to switch keys. Those glitches happen so fast that a lot of things happen in a few frames. When you hit the wall, the wall rejects you exactly 1 frame later. You have to hit the exactly right frame to be able to do something purposeful.
I do that for only 20 frames long (0.3 seconds) periods at max.
Also, for things like entering a door at the first possible frame I may use 5-10% speed just to be sure that I'm doing it on the first possible frame.
At 20% speed I may miss a frame or two.
I change the speed often depending on the scene. For long boring parts (such as between level demoes), I may even play at 100% speed.
I do frame-by-frame controlling sometimes - mostly when using the wall-abuse tricks in SMB or Rockman. I set the emulator to 5% speed (which equals to 3 fps) and literally control it frame by frame. I may even pause after every frame just so that I have enough time to switch keys. Those glitches happen so fast that a lot of things happen in a few frames. When you hit the wall, the wall rejects you exactly 1 frame later. You have to hit the exactly right frame to be able to do something purposeful.
Don't forget when entering passwords at nearly the speed of light!
Yeah, that's one thing I was thinking about. I want to choose things from menus as fast as possible, but the cursor may have some built-in delay that makes it so I have to wait until just the right time to push the button.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 615
Location: The Netherlands
i think the movies are more special to the maker of a movie, then anyone who watches it.
perhaps comments could help (i remember seeing a topic about this somewhere else).
>For example in my Rygar run at the end of the spider cave there's a section of the cave where there are lots of flying monsters and gaps and you have to jump a lot while not getting hit by the monsters. It took me tons of time and rerecords to get it like you see in the video, but it doesn't really look all that difficult.
I thought that part was cool. I think "that's never gonna work" every time at a certain spot where you jump under a flying monster.
