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Alyosha
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Link to video Here is a resync of Strider console verified. This one lost about 2 seconds in the resync process due to general difficulties making the inputs work, but I did the best I could. This is a glitchy run, and the original in FCEUX desynced on console right at the first glitchy part, so this is another good data point to check accuracy against.
Alyosha
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I tried adjusting lag definition on the BSNES 115 core, and started getting some good results. Getting desyncs but I'm not familiar enough with SNES to make anything of them yet. Link to video It's a start though.
Alyosha
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Link to video I console verified a resync of Rollergames. I had some trouble syncing this one to NESHawk so it's slightly different then the original in some places, but the important thing here is that I had not previously used this game in developing NESHawk, so it's a good indicator that I didn't accidentally fine tune emulation simply to the games I was working with. There are some edge cases left that are pretty difficult and will require a rewrite of a big chunk of code, but they shouldn't come up in actual games, so I'll wait for test ROMs to become available to verify the expected behaviour before working on them. For now, progress is blocked not by emulation but by not having any runs that actually sync on the updated core.
Alyosha
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With some more help from Fiskbit in working out some edge cases, and puzzling out a few remaining unknown effects myself, the milestone of being able to console verify NES games with full DMC emulation is finally being achieved. The end result is verification of a resync of Super Mario Bros 3 Warpless: Link to video At the moment, I do not have any TASes known to desync on console due to emulation issues. Other games using the DMC channel also work, such as Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Link to video (I also have a TAS of Time Lord that syncs on console up to the last boss but very unfortunately desyncs due to uninitialized RAM.) Starting with 2.7.1, most NES games should be console verifiable with NESHawk.
Alyosha
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I didn't realize just how many verifications happened in 2021, that's pretty cool. Thanks to Bigbass for making things more organized as well, it really helps with getting a big picture idea of where work needs to be done. NES verifications really accelerated last year, and there is still a lot of potential left, I'm really hopeful 2022 will see some more high profile games too like the Mega Man series. It also has to be said that a lot of the easy stuff is done now, a lot of difficult work lies ahead to advance verification into new consoles, but that's also where the fun is, I'm looking forward to it.
Alyosha
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Great work and congrats to the dev. team, site is looking good.
Alyosha
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Here is a movie that I'd really wish to see getting console-verified: #7247: Darkman425's GB The Final Fantasy Legend in 35:57.10 Don't mind the fact that the sync settings of this movie have GBA mode to False, it also synced after setting GBA mode to true.
Done! https://youtu.be/R2KtkdPXI3g
Alyosha
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Award Suggestion: Best Submission Text Submission texts are my favorite part, I almost always get more entertainment value from reading them then from watching encodes, I think they should get more recognition.
Alyosha
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After fixing numerous subtle bugs in IRQ/NMI handling, i finally have a run of tiny Toons that makes it to the end of the game on console. The current run is here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/76487677575343984 Not submittable as a new run in it's current form as it's longer then the published run by a few seconds, and I think with some good luck manipulation it can be a few seconds shorter, but it's a baseline for now. I believe the only remaining issues involve edge cases of disabling the DMC channel, getting really close to correct DMC emulation now. Time Lord can now beat the second level on console due to implementing DMC IRQ delay that surprisingly went untested until now, so making progress there as well.
Alyosha
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Thanks to Fiskbit and Lidnariq from NesDev, I was able to implement some new findings related to DMC DMA. Now some DMC runs are starting to work for the first time. For example this is the first time ever I have gotten past the third level of Tiny Toons on console: I'm going to try to get a full game run of Tiny Toons working next, then probably Ninja Turtles if that works. This isn't quite the last step for DMC games, as Time Lord still needs some edge cases worked out, but should be getting really close now.
Alyosha
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Finally able to start doing some more verifications. here is mickey mousecapade: [3000] NES Mickey Mousecapade by Alyosha in 07:16.58 https://youtu.be/pyij77vgYuY
Alyosha
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http://johnsarcade.com/nintendo_vs_ppu_info.php I think this is the most complete resource available for dip switches and their effects. Implementing what you described would be a lot of work, since the name of each switch would have to vary by game, but most of the information seems to be there. Maybe just compiling all the info into a one document reference would be a good start? I'm personally not interested, but such a thing would be nice to have.
Alyosha
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After some more research, I have updated the power up state of NESHawk again. With this new state, now all available APU tests pass at the same time. This was not the case with the previous state, in particular count_errors_fast gave a result that I never saw on console. Fortunately, the new state also has high compatibility. Most of the previous timing sensitive games work with only minor tweaking of inputs, including Battletoads and Nightshade. Some games will require new movies, Roger Rabbit doesn't work anymore (but that's ok since it was slower anyway by a wide margin.) Excite Bike also doesn't work, but I probably just need to put some more time into that one. I am in the process of updating movie files and .r08 files and will be replacing them in the repo when I get a chance. I did some test runs with Tiny Toons in with the new state, but it desynced at the same point (but in a different way.) So, I still need the last few DMC edge cases working, but at least now everything is consistent. I have reverted the above changes pending further testing, as that state seems to have very low probability and doesn't work with one of the tiny Toons DMC test runs I use.
Alyosha
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Some interesting new quirks are being discovered in the NES by the folks at NesDev. In particular, OAM DMA will read data from the external bus whenever the cpu is accessing the external bus. One implication of this is that there are 0x20 bytes at 0x4000 that OAM DMA can read but the CPU cannot (because the CPU will always access registers there.) It works in the other direction too, OAM DMA will access registers if cpu is executing from register space. (Setting this up is very non-trivial, the test ROM Fiskbit came up with is a pretty good emulator test just to get the setup right.) I just implemented this into NESHawk: This doesn't really mean anything for TASing, I just think it's cool to see new things still being discovered.
Alyosha
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Fortranm wrote:
I'm not sure if it has been asked before, but how feasible is it to add PLAYCHOICE-10 support?
Doesn't look like it would be too hard, but I don't really see a compelling reason to do so.
Alyosha
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Removed Deja Vu II thanks to Spikestuff. 15 total runs remain.
Alyosha
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Cool find! i wonder what the optimal route would look like abusing that glitch?
Alyosha
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NLeseul wrote:
Very exciting! I've been using the TAS features in openMSX to develop RNG manipulations for the speedrun of Dragon Slayer IV (MSX1), and it will be really nice to one day have access to TAStudio and other BizHawk features for MSX.
I just added support for ascii 8kb mapped games, so now Dragon Slayer IV (and many other games that use that mapper) work now.
Alyosha
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Thanks for testing, those issues should now be fixed in the dev build.
Alyosha
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I finished adding SCC support for Konami games, so now games like Gradius II sound good and I have set the core to released.
Post subject: MSXHawk Development
Alyosha
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MSXHawk is an MSX1 emulator. It currently has nearly complete support for games 64kb and under. I just added support for basic Konami games with larger sizes, so ex. penguin adventure and knightmare II now work. I don't really plan to put too much time into this core, but since it's nearly done (at least for MSX1) I figured I'd make a thread for it so it doesn't just go to waste. I'll most likely be setting this core to 'released' in the next release of BizHawk. I'll slowly try to add more mapper compatibility, but for the most part I'll only work on things if someone specifically wants to make a TAS for a particular game. (Also, if anyone wants to develop the core further themselves I'd be happy to answer any questions.)
Alyosha
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Nice improvement, great work and yes vote. The previous run actually relied on a emulation issue that has since been fixed, so it's nice to have a consistent run for this category. (The previous run could still be console verified since the emulation error (MMC3 IRQ timing) could coincidentally be cancelled out by the variability of NES power up state.)
Alyosha
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Here is a video for the current SMW warps run, made using the .r16m in the TAStm32 test files (I'm pretty sure it's the same run.) [4144] SNES Super Mario World "warps" by BrunoVisnadi in 09:54.35 https://youtu.be/Rj-nztkVNbs
Alyosha
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feos wrote:
So I guess resyncing in this game is not really a thing with this amount of changing lag?
In past iterations, level 5 has worked out ok, but level 4 will probably need a lot of work. I haven't had a chance to look at this yet, and might not for a while, I'll gladly add a co-author if someone can fix it up with feos' improved fight.
Alyosha
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Cool tech! Is there a particular run you want to try next?