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Hitboxes in this game are actually extremely accurate
I think it's worth noting here that the Intellivision uses hardware level collision detection (like the A2600.) So, there are no hitboxes like you encounter on the NES for example. If pixels from 2 different objsects overlap, this information is placed on a hardware register. That's why the collision detection is pixel perfect.
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feos wrote:
Sorry Aran. I tried reading a whole lot of your posts, and I simply can't. I keep giving up three lines into a sentence of 10.
He's asking about combining the rating system with the voting system. (I think it was discussed somewhere before?) This sentence seems to concisely sum it up:
Aran Jaeger wrote:
And my suggestion above with the rating system being put in place of the no/meh/yes poll
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Ok, I was wrong about that. The game does set the 'ROM write enable' flag, but the root cause of the problem is that it doesn't set the stack pointer before starting to execute code. A 'CALL' instruction then overwrites the ROM bank. This happens since I initialize the stack pointer to zero, then it gets decremented to 0xFFFF (ROM bank register.)
I tried looking for documentation about where the stack pointer gets intiialized to, but I don't see it actually specified anywehere. 0x0 and 0xFFFF both crash the game, so it can't be those. It's possible that's it's just some unspecified value.
If this were the case, this game would function by pure chance on real hardware. The game does need to be able to return to the proper address after the call, so the stack pointer does have to be in writable memory.
This is very strange. My guess is that during development, they didn't realize the mistake they made since they left the ROM write anbel flag set, meaning the stack pointer could start anywhere and still be in writable memory on their dev boards, thus masking the problem.
Or it really is initialized to something internally and I just can't find what. The documentation does specify that the only register actually set is PC (to zero) so who knows what actually happens.
Anyway, I added a game specific hack to make the game run by putting the stack pointer in RAM initially. I don't particularly like it, but it does work now.
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What a surreal thread.
Grincevent wrote:
When you think about it, the site favors yes votes in general. Why? Simply because most people don't go watch each and every TAS, they choose which ones they want to watch, the ones they are interested in and they are most likely to like, and by extension, to vote yes for.
Anyway, I found this kind of funny as this is exactly what I do. I'm very surprised so many people even have the patience to vote 'no' or 'meh.'
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HappyLee wrote:
So we end up with a polarizing submission of a run that shouldn't be controversial at all. Many people claimed that the vote result (once and for a long time less than 80% "yes" votes) makes sense because it's "subjective". My question is, what changed?
I think at least part of the answer to your question here is that you under-estimate how much TASVideos itself changes over time. I briefly looked at profiles of the people who posted in your SMBJ2 run, and about half of them haven't even logged in since this run was posted. Several have not even logged in in 2018. I would be quite surprised if there was >50% commonality in voters between this one and your 2012 run. Even between this one and SMBJ2 I would be surprised if the commonality was more then 85%. Newer people I would expect less likely to find SMB highly entertaining, just due to having not grown up with it (it's 30+ yrs old after all.)
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It looks like you are using gambatte. 2.2.1 had some bugs in gambatte, use 2.2.2 or preferrably the Dev Build since a lot of improvements have been made since then.
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Fortranm wrote:
Each archive contains two ROMs; the original ROM, and a version with a fixed header that allows it to run on normal Game Boy hardware and most emulators.
This is from the description of the recently surfaced Pokemon Gold/Silver demo rom. It would be nice if GBHawk can run the original rom, just saying.
It can't run on normal Game Boy hardware? If that's the case then it shouldn't run in GBHawk either.
What did the original run on then?
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Personman wrote:
feos wrote:
To be honest, I don't know why we even still have polls.
I think this would be a great time to abolish voting altogether.
Personally I use the polls as a quick gauge of whether I should watch a run or not, so I guess it's not strictly a tool for judges. Although I could just as well use number of posts for the same purpose if the poll wasn't there.
So I guess I agree. Also I don't like being asked a question only to be directly told that my response doesn't matter, might as well not even ask.
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Kurabupengin wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
I improved the tilt controls in Kirby's Tilt 'n Tumble to include rotation rate effects. Now the controls should feel more realistic. If anyone wants to test I would appreciate any feedback. This would also effect Command Master, if anyone is familiar with how that game's controls feel.
I made a movie of the first level:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47518336021050499
Syncs just fine in the latest build.
Seems to control well, though I haven't played this game on a real gameboy for years, so I can't really tell if there's anything off.
Thanks for the testing. If you do happen to notice anything out of place do let me know, as I would like any TAS of the game to be physically reasonable.
I suppose one could crack open the cart and replace the accelerometer circuits with something that just returns predetermined values, but I'd still like those values to be based in reality.
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I noticed that when I convert runs from VBA they tend to sync much easier on GBHawk then Gambatte. This is because VBA apparently also ends frames always on VBlank boundaries. On GB and GBC, the distance between VBlanks can be arbitrarily large since the console can disable the screen, and many games do so during loading. So on games with significant loading times, the difference between the time in reported frames x frame rate and actual real time can be pretty large.
For example in my new Kwirk movie, using frame count and 60 fps gives: 15:51.59
But, a more accurate time would be to divide cycle count by cpu clock speed (4021503155/4194304) = 958.80 seconds = 15:58.80
It's probably not worth doing anything about, I don't even know if you can get a cycle count from VBA, but the difference seemed significant enough to at least mention, since there are many VBA GB runs.
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HappyLee wrote:
No one can imagine how pissed off I am to hear some people saying that this is somehow less entertaining than MrWint's run without providing evidence or details. Yes, entertainment can be partially subjective, but at least don't let your feelings go over the facts.
Were it not for the trickery at the end of 5-1, I would definitely be one of the people saying that MrWint's run was more entertaining. I generally find neither run all that entertaining really, the constant shooting of fireballs at everything I find mildly irritating after a few levels. I actually preferred 4-1 and 6-1 in MrWint's version because at least it's a break there. Overall I generally prefer his simpler stlye. The shooting in the castle stages and the jumping into the breakable blocks in 4-2 and 6-2 were also things I consider to detract from the entertainment value. MrWint did that too, I don't know why. Doing more stuff isn't always better.
Were some of the meh or no votes drama related? I would guess probably. But I'm also not that surprised if they aren't, as the years tick by newer people just aren't going to find the older games all that interesting.
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I improved the tilt controls in Kirby's Tilt 'n Tumble to include rotation rate effects. Now the controls should feel more realistic. If anyone wants to test I would appreciate any feedback. This would also effect Command Master, if anyone is familiar with how that game's controls feel.
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Thanks for the post mortem Warepire, I'm sure it comes at the end of many frustrating hours of work. Too bad Windows is such a mess, I was really hoping something revolutionary would come out of this project, thanks for trying though.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47379906146930089
I resynced the current warps run to run in the current dev build and also added inputs to the end to make sure You vs. Boo is unlocked.
(In order to unlock You vs Boo, you need only score 100000 points in the normal game, but you have to end the game, either by completing it or game overing, to unlock it.)
I'll try to see if I can get the you vs boo run working now.
EDIT: And here it is:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47383954392527461
note that Bowser 2 is slightly different since the original desynced there. It's the same number of frames total though.
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Sonia wrote:
By the way, can you make Grayscale the default palette for Gambatte (like in GBHawk)? Cause the default pea soup one looks pretty ugly.
That makes sense since everything gets published in grey scale anyway. Done.
I also updated the text in the color selector dialog boxes to be 'Default Green' and 'Default Grey' to reflect what's actually happening.
I also set 'equal length frames' default to false while I was at it.
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MUGG wrote:
Will GBHawk be prefered to Gambatte in future runs? Does GBHawk have higher accuracy yet?
No and no.
The answer to your second question would have been yes 2 months ago, but gifvex and tikevin83 and the pokemon people have done an amazing job in keeping Gambatte up to speed with current developments in accuracy.
At this point the only real reason to use GBHawk is for a couple of homebrew and pirate games, Kirby's Tilt 'n tumble and Command Master.
I'm not done yet of course. This is what I consider 1.0 for GBHawk. Future work includes GBC improvements, link cable stuff, more mapper support, possibly SGB, and whatever else people come up with the Gambatte can't do.
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With the latest commits to GBHawk Pinball Fantasies finally works. This is an infamous game in GB emulation and a large part of my motivation for starting GBHawk. It was already figured out though by the author of Sameboy long before GBHawk reached the point of being able to analyze it, so once again I was late to the party, oh well.
Originally I was going to wait to work on this until after test ROMs are released that test the required behaviour. But there is only one internally consistent solution that makes the game work and passes all the other test ROMs and accuracy checks (such as the pokemon runs) so there was really no point in that.
With this, original Gameboy emulation has reached the point where I consider it capable for TASing. So, I'll be putting it into released state once I go over and clean up some stuff.
Gameboy Color emulation has progressed significantly, but I haven't really touched double speed mode or associated timing stuff, and there is generally still a lot of work to do there. Maybe I can start on that soon now that I'm pretty comfortable with the original Gameboy part.
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Here are the improvements I found so far:
1-4 improved to 31 moves
1-9 same moves, one turn saved
2-1 improved to 97 moves
3-4 improved to 136 moves
I think 2-1 is just a simple oversight.
I looked at some of the other levels but many of them are more like just solving a maze, so aren't really that interesting.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/47270114374730904
With the latest commits to GBHawk Pinball Fantasies finally works. This is an infamous game in GB emulation and a large part of my motivation for starting GBHawk. It was already figured out though by the author of Sameboy long before GBHawk reached the point of being able to analyze it, so once again I was late to the party, oh well.
Originally I was going to wait to work on this until after test ROMs are released that test the required behaviour. But there is only one internally consistent solution that makes the game work and passes all the other test ROMs and accuracy checks (such as the pokemon runs) so there was really no point in that.
With this, original Gameboy emulation has reached the point where I consider it capable for TASing. So, I'll be putting it into released state once I go over and clean up some stuff.
Gameboy Color emulation has progressed significantly, but I haven't really touched double speed mode or associated timing stuff, and there is generally still a lot of work to do there. Maybe I can start on that soon now that I'm pretty comfortable with the original Gameboy part.