FCEU has a fast-forward key (like all good emulators), I couldn't find one in Famtasia ... and I need it often, especially when I need to rewind past my last save (or to a precise point) and have to replay the whole movie. I haven't tried re-recording in Famtasia, but it works great in FCEU ... although a "play from savestate" feature (instead of only record) would be really useful with backup saves.
Being limited to powers of 2 for speed in FCEU doesn't bother me too much, since I usually stay at 25% speed and use frame advance when needed (again, I switch a lot) ...
FCEU also runs smoother and got the best accuracy I've seen of all NES emulators (it's the only one that runs Klax perfectly, for example), so that's another pretty good reason for me to go with FCEU.
After my first successful attempt at manipulating the CPU's last turn, I only had about 600 re-records ... the rest was all because I tried about 800 different timings to get a shorter wait.
The CPU actually goes bankrupt at 53 seconds, which is still shorter than the previous submission (bankrupt at 1:01), and no player input between the movie's end and the bankrupt can stop it from happening.
35.17 seconds is my new time, after about 800 tries for manipulating the CPU's last turn ... that's about as good as it's going to get, and it beats ziplock's by 0.77 second (46 frames), so I'll submit it.
Ah, I just waited before rolling, but that might help cutting off a few more frames ... all I really need is a better way to affect the CPU's rolls, especially for double turns.
After about 500 tries, I still haven't been able to get a shorter wait at the end (forcing 1/432 odds to happen is hard), so I might end up submitting it like this ... but I haven't given up yet.
Chance is determined the exact moment you start the game (when it says who goes first), then nothing affects it ... getting "Go back 3 spaces" after "Advance to Go" was pure luck that could have needed a fairly long wait to force.
But I found another way to affect my rolls (not the CPU's), and I'm using it right now to make them shorter ... might save about 1 second total.
(edited)
Got it down to 35.85 seconds, but waiting about 2 seconds before exiting the menu ... hopefully I'll find a better way to manipulate the CPU's last turn.
Player rolls 5+5, visits jail
Player rolls 4+4, buys Tennessee
Player rolls 3+1, gets Chance: Advance to Go, Collect $200
CPU rolls 2+4, buys Oriental
Player rolls 5+5, visits jail
Player rolls 3+3, buys St. James
Player rolls 1+2, buys New York
Player buys 11 houses
(recording stops here)
CPU rolls 6+6, pays at St. James
CPU rolls 3+1, gets Chance: Go back 3 spaces
CPU lands on New York, goes bankrupt
Double 4's then 3 was what I wanted to do, but in his case, it wouldn't be enough for bankrupt since the CPU spent less on the first turn ...
I once got double 4's then 2 when I tried on mine (St. James then Tennessee), and the CPU had just enough money to mortgage.
Wow, I didn't think of that possibility with the "Go back 3 spaces" card I had, that was even faster than mine would have been with the double roll (by a few seconds), since the CPU did one less roll.
Too bad most of it was based on mine, that would probably be the definite record (or is it?).
If you look closely, that was done without wasting any frames ... I just pressed A at the same time I did Left and Up, and "P " came out (not sure how, bug?).
This actually took about a hour and half to make, thinking about the new improvements while recording. It's still beatable by several seconds if you can successfully manipulate the CPU's double turns, but doing it on 2 rolls at once without waiting too long is nearly impossible (the odds were 1/324 every frame). I once got the CPU to land on St. James (with doubles) then Tennessee, but he had just enough money to mortgage ...
- I go first to save half a turn
- I take the fastest way to New York Avenue
- CPU buys the most expensive thing nearby (income tax might work too, but wouldn't help that much if even)
- I go straight to jail so I can go back to the orange section (need 2 rounds to buy it all)
- CPU spends some more while going slowly
- I get out of jail and buy St. James Place
- CPU spends some more while going slowly (again)
- I buy Tennessee Avenue to complete the set (so I can buy houses)
- Since it's my turn again, I do whatever's the shortest (Chance)
- Then I spend all my money on houses
- Now that it's time for it, the CPU lands on my houses and pays a lot
- Again, I do the shortest possible turn since I have nothing left to do
- But with the money I just got, I buy more houses (otherwise the CPU would mortgage to be able to pay and get out)
- The CPU lands on the houses again and goes bankrupt (I win)
The strategy is pretty simple, I try to get houses as fast as possible (works best with orange) and make sure the CPU lands on them with not enough money left.
With a better Chance card (the one I got gave $50, I needed $10 more), I'd have enough money to buy all the houses in one turn and save 8 seconds, but that can't be changed once the game is started ...
Ah, right, I was working on a faster run just now and ran into this problem too ...
... but I still managed to improve it all the way to 1:10, using only 5 turns (went to jail once) and manipulating luck with minimal waits instead of pausing!
Pretty nice, but I noticed this at the end:
- Computer player pays $550 (3 houses), is left with $520
- You build more houses
- Computer player lands 2 spaces farther and goes bankrupt
Were the last houses really needed? You could save about 8 seconds otherwise ...
Pausing, dropping the block in a different spot, pressing Down (before Level 19) ... but they all involve re-recording so you can try out different possibilities and pick the best one, which he didn't do (only 4 in the whole movie? Probably to avoid getting Game Over).
NesVideoAgent wrote:
When I tried to submit a movie, it said it couldn't because it started from a saved state and not reset. But the state that it starts at is the beginning of the game which is reset anyway really. I know I recorded it from reset option origionally. I'll just submit it here if that's ok.
Game Name: Tetris
Filename of ROM: Tetris.nes
Your Real Name: Marshall
Your Nickname: marsh8472
Emulator: FCU Ultra 0.98.12
Programming Errors: Sometimes I moved the blocks a certain way to affect what block appears next
Aimed For: Wanted to see what happened after passing 999 lines (level 100)
Game no longer keeps track of scores after 999,999 points, doesn't display accurate "current level" after level 29, doesn't show accurate level on "high scores" screen after level 99, doesn't show accurate "total lines" after 999 lines, I think the maximum fall rate occurs at level 29.
I quit at level 102.
Ran emulator at 1% normal speed, not hard once you get used to it but very time consuming.
Ahh, much better ...
Anyway, I guess you weren't going for a speed run, but:
- Considering you recorded at 1% speed, you went rather slow, even in the menus ... mine was mostly 25% (didn't know about frame-by-frame yet) and had faster controls.
- If you're going to start at Level 9 instead of 19, fine, but then at least keep holding Down ... I could have gone faster than that (until the high levels) without slowdowns/savestates.
- Tell me how you can do efficient luck manipulation with only 4 re-records ... sort of hard to always get the best luck on your first try, no? I noticed you still got more straight blocks than normal (must be some trick I didn't know about), and managed to get 60 tetrises in a row at the start, but it could have been better.
- At least until you reach Level 29, you should keep the height up a bit so the blocks take less time to drop all the way down.
- I thought my own movie was getting somewhat repetitive after 4 minutes ... this one is 7x longer (but could be shortened to 24 minutes at the rate I went)
I'll have to admit I myself wondered what happens after 999 lines (A00, heh) and Level 29 ... but I'm going to vote no for the above reasons.
What about Excitebike in 00:56? (but then it's only one track, not the entire game)
I'm working on another that might end up just under 2 minutes (Quarth, 2 player tag mode, level 9, actually my second run), but I'm also thinking I should work on a bigger (or longer) game next ...
Or I could stop it as soon as the last block before 999999 is in place, which would cut off at least 4 seconds ... but then that might be a bit early to stop at ...
4matsy wrote:
Heh, nice to see you over here Acmlm. (I used to post on your boards under the name WhooHooD'oh, before the reset.)
I remember your old NESticle movie too, where you got all those tetrises...though that wasn't nearly as rockin' as this one. :)
I remember some guy in another thread saying that the game actually got faster at level 30...would've been nice to see you go that far, but there wouldn't really be anything to do at that point besides maybe show off a few tetrises for a bit, since you'd already have 999999 points...
The one at zophar.net (from 4 years ago) where I did 16 tetrises in a row? That must be the best I've done with normal play (NESticle only supported slowdowns/frame-by-frame for movie recording anyway), so that was still pretty nice ...
The block speed after 19 finally goes up at 29, all the way to 1 frame per tile (I found that out about 3 years ago using slowdowns). That's instant death normally, but still beatable with slowdowns, and it does continue after 29 (with glitched level numbers!) ... but getting the movie that far would mean scoring 19 more tetrises (about 2 more minutes), unless I don't start from Reset and do it just to show off.
And yeah, nice to find you here too, hehe.
1. Some pauses seem longer than other, does this affect the outcome of the blocks?
It does, although I just found out the frame I pause on also affects it, so there could be some minor improvement there ... but I still can't seem to get exactly the blocks I want.
Player input doesn't affect it directly (that's what I tried first), the only other thing I noticed that does is how long it takes for the block to drop ... since that depends entirely on where I place it (on Level 19 and higher), I couldn't get satisfying results.
Mazzic wrote:
2. Wouldn't it be possible to end the last row higher in order to get GAME OVER sooner?
Yes, but filling up the blocks a little more before the last tetris would have taken longer than the additional drop I had to do for Game Over.
Mazzic wrote:
3. Well, this hasn't got anything to do with your playing but you could have stoped the recording earlier.
By about 1 second, true, but that can easily be fixed ...