I might be slightly out of it due to jet lag, but I'm quite curious...
How hard is it to take any existing movie file and remove all button possible that will still allow the user to movie the game.
I'm quite curious to see if there are a lot of extraneous button presses. Granted a lot of "extraneous" input is due to "acting, extra glitches in scrolling levels..."... Or take this one step further: The movie playback needs to be visually the same. Could be an interesting project, and help decrease server load (reduce movie file size ;))
Another related idea: it would be interesting to compare the least number of button presses to complete a game (regardless of time).
FYI:
Actually an old topic that randomly popped into my head prompted this question. It was related to the SMB walkathon run, I think, where Bisqwit trims the final movie file to exclude every button press of "b".
Sorry for the convoluted post. I'm tired as hell. And I can't think of a proper title (I've gone through 2 edits).
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Well, I'm kind of new to this thing, but I try to never press a button unless it's needed. That makes the movie looks "clean".
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Bisqwit wrote:
Some button presses that look out of place are actually manipulating luck. So if you said "hey why is this guy pressing B and holding left while this area loads" and you hex-edit the file to not have those presses, maybe stuff in the level is different and the file desyncs. I think most runners don't have anything pressed when pressing does nothing like during a long unskippable cutscene.
Some button presses that look out of place are actually manipulating luck. So if you said "hey why is this guy pressing B and holding left while this area loads" and you hex-edit the file to not have those presses, maybe stuff in the level is different and the file desyncs. I think most runners don't have anything pressed when pressing does nothing like during a long unskippable cutscene.
If a game allows two inputs to skip text, such as A/B, these two may be turbo-ed to avoid frame advance and tedious checking to make sure text is optimized.
Some button presses that look out of place are actually manipulating luck. So if you said "hey why is this guy pressing B and holding left while this area loads" and you hex-edit the file to not have those presses, maybe stuff in the level is different and the file desyncs. I think most runners don't have anything pressed when pressing does nothing like during a long unskippable cutscene.
Yeah, desyncs would probably occur a lot. But I'm sure a few button presses can be removed in each movie file (maybe not donkey kong).
Technically a movie could be tidied up by emulating the game two frames at time and checking if a particular button of the frame before previous carried any effect to the RAM.
Usually games cache the buttons for 1 or 2 frames, but they don't distribute them everywhere in the RAM. Some games use them in randomness checks, but if they do, it would be found out by observing that the RAM is changed across more than two frames.
Technically a movie could be tidied up by emulating the game two frames at time and checking if a particular button of the frame before previous carried any effect to the RAM.
Usually games cache the buttons for 1 or 2 frames, but they don't distribute them everywhere in the RAM. Some games use them in randomness checks, but if they do, it would be found out by observing that the RAM is changed across more than two frames.
So RAM is the "status" or output of the whole game, while button presses is the input. So I take it, it's impossible to directly manipulate RAM?
Or given a certain RAM state, generate all the button presses that creates that state? I'm guessing that the whole I/O aspect is not memoryless (might be causal), probably not linear, and probably not time invariant. Thus all my communications knowledge goes out the window.
So RAM is the "status" or output of the whole game, while button presses is the input. So I take it, it's impossible to directly manipulate RAM?
Indeed.
Well, depends what you mean by "directly". You can mess up with the RAM with cheat codes (gamegenie etc), by "crooked cartridge" trickery and by hacking the emulator. But you can't affect it with your controller input, unless the game is programmed to do so.
So RAM is the "status" or output of the whole game, while button presses is the input. So I take it, it's impossible to directly manipulate RAM?
But you can't affect it with your controller input, unless the game is programmed to do so.
So RAM can affect your button presses? That doesn't seem to make sense. It might be able to restrict button presses... Ok, add crazy feedback loops to the whole I/O subsystem...
Don't forget games where the character moves in "squares". So once you start moving in one direction, the game will basically ignore your movement input until the character steps onto the next square fully. This means that you could get away with only pushing a button every 8 frames or whatever, but most people would find it easier to hold the button for all 8 frames.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
