Posts for ALAKTORN

Posted: 4/21/2015 8:50 PM

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ALAKTORN

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@Moth: I’m pretty sure after much debate about those ACE runs Nach posted about official SNES mouse/keyboard controllers that could do those inputs?

Posted: 4/21/2015 8:42 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Alyosha wrote:

What would you like to know about it? I found the work you've done so far and I did a little testing. As far as I can tell the fourth byte has no impact on what is dropped. It also seems that all enemies (at least in the intro level) have the same drop characteristics. I tested with RNG B4B3A413. Hard to tell exactly how it is being used though.

Knowing how to manipulate life up drops would be nice, but I think what I need now is to know how Giga Aspis’s (the snake boss at the start of the game) actions are controlled by the RNG. I’ve kind of figured out that behaviour changes between the 1st health bar and the 2nd one, and also that most of the time the boss has 2 timings at which it attacks, soon or late. I’m still working on figuring out the perfect boss fight, but I think that the manipulation it’d require would be impossible to get unless I can completely understand the RNG and math out all possibilities given a starting RNG value. I believe it is very unlikely that I can manipulate it just in the fight itself, I would need to start manipulating the RNG from the level so that I reach the boss fight with the correct RNG value.

Alyosha wrote:

I guess this would be kind of trivial with a trace logger type utility in the emulator, so I would say that is an open problem in R&D.

What does this mean?

Posted: 4/21/2015 8:29 PM

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ALAKTORN

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NitroGenesis wrote:

Think of it as a left+right thing.

Left and right, and left+right are buttons you can press on an actual controller. What’s a toploader?

andypanther wrote:

Pressing start with player 2 should always be allowed for Famicom games, since it's a purely physical limitation, like left+right.

Physical limitation of what, having to dismantle the Famicom and use some kind of eletrical current to give it the pause signal as opposed to pressing 2 buttons on a controller? Yeah sounds about the same to me. Speaking out of my ass there, I have no idea what 2P pause would even be on a Famicom.

Posted: 4/21/2015 4:26 PM

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ALAKTORN

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^That actually sounds pretty nice for minor contributors. It would probably be hard to figure out the exact people who found or did what, though…

Posted: 4/21/2015 3:25 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Mister wrote:

exposure has already uploaded his run to niconico http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm26059652

I can see he tried harder to entertain. Can’t tell the speed differences from just the encodes though.

yuigenron wrote:

1. 2P pause trick (found by NitroGenesis) By pause trick, transition time in each zone become shorter, and 2P pause trick enable to omit a blank frame by using 2P start button. However, this trick may have something to do with emulation issues, because Famicom 2P controller has no start button. (And this game is released in Japan only) So, whether this trick is allowed should be discussed IMO.

Oh boy.

yuigenron wrote:

3. Better Bomb Throwing in 99th zone. (found by Sonikkustar) This improvement probably lost meanings due to New pause trick found by exposure. 2.Closed secret doors (93th and 99th zones int the TAS) You can make the Closed door appear by throwing bomb to the door's position. New Pause trick omitted this process.

I don’t understand what you mean with that. The TAS still has to throw bombs to make the doors appear. What’s the pause trick?

Posted: 4/21/2015 1:41 AM

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ALAKTORN

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Derakon wrote:

If any of us had any idea what the actual improvement in this movie was, maybe we'd be able to have an informed debate. Just sayin'.

Yeah. Someone should encode exposure’s run. I also agree input has very little to do with authorship. You can contribute input and not be considered an author, like you can be considered an author without contributing any input at all in my opinion. An author is a person who contributed significantly to the run, pressing buttons isn’t the only way to contribute. Having said that I’ll refrain from arguing whether exposure should be listed as co-author or not until after I’ve understood what the differences between the runs are. Edit: On the run itself, why the hell do you die at the end after the game’s beaten? lol. Voting meh, it’s not that bad.

Posted: 4/20/2015 4:49 PM

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ALAKTORN

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So you’re basically saying the published run uses 2P thinking it’d be faster but it’s actually slower?

Posted: 4/20/2015 12:59 AM

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ALAKTORN

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Amaraticando wrote:

Even livestreams at Twitch can be faked, as the whole thing can be a movie and the player can be pretending to be playing.

That’s not the only way to cheat during a livestream, either.

Posted: 4/19/2015 10:20 PM

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ALAKTORN

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There are tons of ways to cheat that do not require full-on TASing, and tons of top players have been caught cheating in the past, so I don’t fully agree with Aqfaq’s statement. The old Super Mario 64 16-stars WR was found to have been spliced only a few weeks/months ago, many years after it was set. The #1 and #2 players of Mario Kart Wii were found to be using codes such as “live ghost” to copy ghost input and edit it mid-run for their times. A multitude of other cheaters have existed in the history of video games competition. If you’re intelligent you can cheat and get away with it without anybody else figuring it out. It’s very likely that some WRs, old and current, could’ve been cheated. I believe in the vast majority of them, though.

Posted: 4/19/2015 1:50 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Alyosha wrote:

How about some more practical problems that people really want to seem solved?

Figure me out how Mega Man ZX’s RNG works.

Posted: 4/14/2015 4:42 PM
(Edited: 5/15/2015 9:40 AM)

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ALAKTORN

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I hoped you’d come in and lend a hand.

FractalFusion wrote:

Is there any currently-known basis for how the RNG is used by the game? My guess is that since it is a LCG, the higher half (upper 16 bits of a 32-bit RNG) is used.

No idea how it works. I only know that it resets to predetermined values in certain areas, and I know how to manipulate it, nothing else (other than the formula itself).

FractalFusion wrote:

Your script seems to indicate that the RNG is 31 bits instead (% 2147483648). Shouldn't it be 32 (% 4294967296)?

I’m pretty sure it’s 31. Numbers bigger than 2^31 get cut off. Edit: Tried starting the fight with an early dive, have to take 3 HP damage to not lose time. Then I lost 3 frames in one of the attacks I think, so that alone makes it tie with my on-screen win, but it doesn’t even work because I couldn’t get a quick enough dive at the end. Starting with an early spit is 1 frame away from being able to hit, and a late dive loses way too many frames on the 2nd hit already.

Posted: 4/14/2015 11:23 AM

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ALAKTORN

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Aqfaq, take my LOL.

Posted: 4/13/2015 11:42 PM
(Edited: 4/14/2015 4:48 PM)

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ALAKTORN

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Giga Aspis manipulation is a fucking mess. I can see why Moth gave up here. Anyway, as expected I’m 2 frames ahead at the start of the boss. I’ve been trying to optimize it while cheating the RNG for optimal pattern, but even then the results aren’t at all satisfying. Best fight so far is an on-screen kill that takes 1216 frames from 1st movement to the lag frame that reloads your position after the boss fight. 634f if we count from 1st movement to 0 boss HP, which I think is almost 100 frames ahead than the published TAS, but that’s a bad way to count. Edit: The published TAS takes 1277 frames, so mine is 61 frames faster. I didn’t expect such a big cut at all to be honest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRV4I6D6PAM My fight gets a late spit at the start, so that I can do full attack combo loops without wasting time up until the second to last hit (3 frames lost to hit), then gets an early dive to get the kill with the boss as low to the ground as possible. Many frames are actually wasted to wait for the boss to come down here, but it still results faster to wait for it. Edit: Missing the early cycle on the first hit cost the published TAS 41 frames. I’m not even sure what I should go for for an optimal fight. I hate this boss. Hmm, the published TAS lost frames in every attack except for the second to last one… 1f, 41f, then stuff like 3-4f each and 7f on the last hit. The fact that it has 2 fewer lag frames bothers me though. Edit: Lol this sucks, I’m 1 frame away from hitting the boss with an early spit. Edit2: 8 frames lost on the last hit in my on-screen kill. So 3+8 = 11 frames away from perfect? The explosion I got with the head grounded seems to be perfect itself, don’t know why. 17406, 17576–17976 17434, 17604–18004 Boss 0 HP, explosion sprite appears – lag frame / position updated after kill 17406, 17574–17976 17434, 17602–18004 Boss 0 HP, player pixels updated – lag frame / position updated after kill Healing HP at a transerver: 14 14 – 1 HP 14 18 – 2 HPs 14 22 – 3 HPs 1 HP makes no change, each subsequent one appears to add 4 frames.

Posted: 4/12/2015 8:32 PM

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ALAKTORN

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After trying for a while a couple of things, I finally found a way to save 1 frame in the first area in the game. Since for dashjumping you don’t need to dash on the same frame you jump in this game, you can abuse this by delaying the dash to 2 or 3 frames after walljumping, allowing for slower speed while jumping away from the wall and top speed when moving forward again. Made an encode of my A-1 improvement TAS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SUp0LFt_2s Sadly wasn’t able to manipulate any life up drops… I wish I knew how drops work in this game. I’m expecting to save 1 more frame in the A-2 walljump, then I’ll probably go a while before any improvements… don’t remember exactly how it goes. Edit: TAS’d up to Giga Aspis, saved 1 frame at the walljump as expected. Cutscene trigger isn’t perfect but even with perfect subpixel entry it wouldn’t save a frame at this point.

Posted: 4/12/2015 1:54 PM

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ALAKTORN

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^Perfect.

Posted: 4/12/2015 1:09 PM

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ALAKTORN

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That table is really cool. Are wall dust sprites really the only way to manipulate the RNG? Well, and charging a sled into Bospider (can’t be into a wall?). In Mega Man ZX and the first Zero at least, shooting at a wall advances the RNG by 1 step, because the spark that appears for ≈ 3 frames can have 2 different “sprites” (really the same just specular) and they’re picked at random. Does X not work the same? If it worked in X I’d imagine the Bospider manipulation would be really easy… what about using all sorts of other weapons and their charge attacks against the wall or something? Wall dust sprites and sled into boss are really the only things that affect the RNG? Edit:

Hetfield90 wrote:

He will still enter the "walk" animation for 1 frame regardless, but his x-axis position does not change.

If the X-axis position does not change, why is the game aware of how off-position you are? Sometimes it walks 1 frame to the left, sometimes to the right.

Posted: 4/11/2015 10:06 AM

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ALAKTORN

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So the 1 frame walk after defeating a boss is unavoidable? It looks like you’re off-position by some subpixels. Maybe instead of dashing to the center of the screen, approaching it with lower speed such as walking could give a more precise position…? What’s the story behind the spider boss thing’s 2nd pattern not being perfect like all subsequent ones? 7/8

Posted: 4/10/2015 6:39 PM

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ALAKTORN

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^I actually agree with you two.

solarplex wrote:

Agent looks like a floating trashcan more than a robot.

Your trash can must be hella fucking weird.

Posted: 4/3/2015 3:39 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Warp wrote:

What is there to like?

They look like robots. Fits perfectly. You don’t need to know shit about the game to like them.

Posted: 4/3/2015 12:03 AM
(Edited: 4/12/2015 8:39 PM)

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ALAKTORN

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Fortranm wrote:

Does the emulator support switching slot2 roms in movie files yet? Yes, I'm talking about the MMZ3&4 bosses in MMZX.

DeSmuME 0.9.11 is gonna come out soon, so you might wanna look into that before it’s too late. Updated the RNG Lua, just some bug fixes. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21849958098105961 I may start TASing this game soon enough. Edit: to get over small walls with X, walljumping for 1 frame is faster than dashattack-walljumping it when it’s possible to do so. 2 frames is already slower (unless maybe you have perfect position and can start dashing right after). /// This may be irrelevant now that I found the new delay dash technique.

Posted: 4/1/2015 11:48 PM

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ALAKTORN

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I misunderstood the NxQ as being a new solution rather than the next move of why his previous failed.

Posted: 4/1/2015 11:40 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Ford wrote:

NxQ.

Where are you even seeing that? I thought it was some sort of glitch because there isn’t any mate possible.

Posted: 4/1/2015 3:48 PM

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ALAKTORN

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Man, uh, you’re doing movement all wrong. Manually TASing this game is stupid at this point, just use our TAS bot. Lag reduction still needs to be manually figured out, read up on my WWN notes about it. http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21819933019508761 I’m not 100% sure how you could make it work for NC, but probably just changing an address in tasbot.lua with the NC map ID counter should work. main.lua is where you code your strategy in and run it for the TAS bot to TAS. Read around the files to figure out how it works. You could try streaming it on Twitch so I could teach you how to use it. Here is the Watch file I use, should help: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21820147892448536 /// Forgot to mention it’s for USA ROM. Edit: now that I think about it, I think we never coded the TAS bot to work on maps with scrolling. Also btw scrolling is fastest when done with the B button. Unless you’re lucky and L selects the correct unit, I guess. Edit2: anyway all of your questions can be answered if you read my notes on WWN. Edit1000: now that I think about it the TAS bot may only work on the USA version. Hmm.

Posted: 4/1/2015 1:38 AM

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ALAKTORN

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Samsara wrote:

What the hell is that second letter supposed to be.

Posted: 3/31/2015 7:09 PM

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ALAKTORN

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New RNG Lua script is here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21849958098105961 Updated to latest. Added an experimental automated ROM version detection system. Compatible with USA, JPN, and EUR. Also added an input toggle for 3 different modes (as suggested by Flameberger), it defaults to key “D”, but you can change it to whatever you want, it’s the very first function in the script (writing “tab” makes it work with the Tab key). The current mode is written on the bottom screen. The modes are: Complete, Moderate, and Nothing. Complete writes all advances, Moderate only those bigger than 1 step, Nothing writes none. Feedback, error reports, feature requests and such all appreciated. Thanks to my friend STL for coding help, and to Flameberger for his feature suggestion. Edit:

Elpis TK31 in 2009 wrote:

Something I discovered that may be useful, is that you can hit the airplane boss by shooting the Double Charge Shot at a wierd angle, the pink stuff around the charge shot will deflect and if done properly it connects, enabling you to take him down in 3 turns instead of 4!

*facepalms*