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So far I am unable to reproduce this result in Stella. It is difficult to reconcile the different frames timings between the two emulators, so it may not be possible.
I suspect very strongly that BizHawk is incorrectly managing frames that are shorter then normal, although I can't follow the code well enough to point out where.
But, at least now it isn't (aside from the title screen) blatantly wrong so maybe it's close enough, although my personal opinion would be that it isn't.
As a side note, I have never won a game in Stella with no input, despite numerous attempts. Obviously this isn't proof of anything, just an observation.
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@feos: what do you know about how the snakes work? It seems I am able to slightly change their length depending on how I scroll the screen. I saved 4 frames so far in this manner but am not entirely sure what mechanism is at work.
See the second section here:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29399306582151235
Oh good timing with more level 4 improvements too!
EDIT: saved another 17 frames on level 4 with a better ice block throw.
EDIT2: Here is a current file with all improvements and yet another 10 frames saved on snakes.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29401103848403536
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Wow you are on a roll feos! At this rate this run will come together really fast!
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29394998935083011
Here is a first pass at level 7 (with all previous improvements included.) It is a bit faster then the original. It syncs up to the fireballs. Since they are RNG I guess it would make sense to finalize everything up to that point before having to redo them over and over as improvements are found. I'll also go back to snakes and try to throw in some attempt at entertainment. I guess there isn't that much to do but I'll give it a try.
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Oh, no worries these are all rough drafts, I always do things iteratively. I never try, or expect to have, anything optimized until after quite a few tries.
Thanks for speeding up the process though : )
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Thanks feos!
Yeah I couldn't boot blarg either, I tried for a while with those helmet things on the ground too.
Not sure what you mean about the resource page, am I missing something?
I use lots of different files and cut and paste between them all the time. I don't really care about rerecord count so I don't pay attention to it. So that is most likely why there is a discrepancy. Feel free to suggest whatever number you feel is appropriate though.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29370504072808374
Here is a file with all current improvements. I also did a rough draft of snakes. I also appended the inputs of the original run at the end. I usually have them there but at some point along the way they got removed. I like to have them to keep track of improvements easier. It also makes progress on rough drafts much much faster.
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wow nice find! I had actually tried something similar but failed, glad you got it working.
EDIT: seems like if you are on the left side of the wall you go down and when you are on the right side you go up. I haven't found a real use for the downward scrolling yet, but maybe it could come in handy who knows, this trick might have some more potential.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29332821195644672
Here is my most up to date file. It contains feos' new trick as well as other level 4 improvements. It also completes the first half of level 5, but so far there is nothing really new there.
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Thanks for your research efforts feos, it seems like the difficulty then is keeping going to the left while the scrolling is pushing you to the right, which I guess is why it seems so much easier in 2 player. For the time being I am doing a rough draft of level 5 assuming the clip will not be possible, but I do hope it will be!
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^ oh, good question.
There are 4 addresses associated with 'level' in this game. That is, they increment every time the next level is loaded.
058E
0689
068D
06E0
They seem to be interconnected to determine score, enemy behavior, and level layout, but basically you can set any or all to FF at the end of a level and they will roll over and the next level will start without issue.
So while I don't know the exact behaviour of what happens if the game is legitimately played up to that point, there doesn't seem to be a kill screen.
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oh, thanks for the feedback Brushy : )
I put your name in mainly because I didn't really change level 1 or 3, but if you want it removed that is fine too.
Oh so prone enemies must just be rarer in earlier levels then. I remember seeing them while hacking around to different levels but didn't know what made them appear.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29239365814639538
here it is, it is also my most optimized level 4 at this moment.
Videos I see seem to be pretty easy to do with 2 players, but I haven't seen a one player version and I wonder if it is possible since the screen scrolls a bit differently with only 1 player.
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^it wasn't hard to do so I just quickly TASed the route, it's easier to show:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29191056658029890
You can see that not only is it too slow but it also doesn't spawn the ice block or checkpoint. I think this is because we also need to pass through the hidden clear points in order too. The game spawns the snowmen from one level above.
To pass that point I would need to go backwards which would make it even slower, so looks like this idea is a bust for now.
But that second clip should be faster then that snowball clip in your GIF, so might still be a time saver in that one part.
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Well the easiest checkpoints to respawn are 2 and 6. 2 doesn't help that much since skipping 1 doesn't save enough time. But, Respawning 6 multiple times may be a time saver.
My thought is that instead of doing checkpoints 1-2-3-4-5-6, we might be able to do 1-2-6-6-6-6. It takes ~400 frames to loop around repeatedly to respawn-reactivate. Currently it takes 1850 frames to go the current route to the point of the first loop. Skipping 3 checkpoints means we would use 1200 frames multi spawning checkpoint 6, leaving us only 650 frames to do all the clipping, which doesn't seem possible at the moment.
But the loop can still be improved, in my testing so far I have gotten around 380 frames instead of 400, giving a whole extra second for the clipping.
6-6-6-6-6-6 may even be possible, it all depends how easy it is to clip down there.
All of this needs testing.
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Samsara wrote:
Brainstorming here so I don't forget later when I have time to work: Is that spawn based on a trigger? If so, do we know where it is? Could it still be faster to skip ahead then work backward to activate it?
The snowball looks like it just spawns at a particular screen scroll point. The snowman looks like it spawns somewhere around where the first snowman is after the big icicle falls down.
It looks like the time it takes for the snowball to hit you plus the agonizingly long time it takes to get up again is too long to save time, so I don't currently think this trick is a time saver.
feos wrote:
It also hasn't been proven that skipping checkpoints you can spawn the later checkpoints. Might need testing.
I have spawned the level end checkpoint while skipping other checkpoints, but it doesn't matter because the level still won't end.
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^ oh that is a clever trick I didn't think of that, thanks feos : )
yeah I tried something similar on that neighboring slope but once I noticed the snowman didn't spawn it proved too slow to be useful. I think the clear point is pretty far away.
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Link to video
Here is a somewhat optimized level 4. I tried different tricks to change the route and / or avoid checkpoints but it seems you ultimately have to hit all the checkpoints to beat the level.
I don't have any new ides how to change the route and this follows the same route from the 2 player warps run. If anyone has any ideas I would like to hear them!
Here is the file:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29170580927508065
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Mothrayas wrote:
If you still have criticism towards something the guidelines say, then please clarify again in a way that's unambiguously about the guidelines and not a judge's personal, unenforced opinion.
Well for me one outstanding issue is what precedent, if any, accepting a run on one difficulty has on possible future runs on another difficulty.
Let's take Return of the Jedi as an example but there are other recent ones as well (Oregon Trail comes to mind.) My question is, if a run of these games is made on 'hardest difficulty' and are deemed to be highly/sufficiently entertaining, what would happen to them? Surely Jedi mode in RotJ would be much longer then easy, so if it's accepted it seems it's branch would need a separate branch 'Jedi (hardest) difficulty' even though we don't currently treat difficulty formally as a branch. What's more, the two movies would be 'entertaining' for more or less their own reasons, yet would still be beating the game 'as fast as possible' in their own ways.
So, can difficulty setting ever be considered a 'branch' in this way? Should it formally be a branch?
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I had some time to look over some of the other 2600 runs and see if any of them are impacted by these bugs. I found a couple that had tell tale signs of left edge of the screen glitchiness / double sized player bug.
[2898] A2600 Airlock by Gay in 01:51.68
In the encode of this run you can see that towards the left edge of the screen the player suddenly shifts a few pixels. This is not present in Stella. This is caused by the 3-2-1 bug. The run de-syncs after the bug is removed.
[2228] A2600 Bobby is Going Home by Lollorcaust in 01:16.13
You can see similar shifts in the encode of this run that shouldn't be there.
[2500] A2600 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial by CoolKirby in 00:25.13
ET's spaceship is incorrectly placed in the intro cutscene. Being a double sized player, it is one pixel too far to the left. Doesn't look like a sync issue though.
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Samsara wrote:
Speaking of which, something I'd really like to see a lot more scrutiny given when people say why they chose a lower difficulty. What I see myself a lot is that if the author gave a reason, any reason at all, that is the final word on it and any further discussion or check on the veracity of those reasons is treated as a personal attack.
No. Never. This kind of behavior is what I'm trying to prevent. Difficulty should never be the focal point of a run. It serves no purpose to attempt to dispute it. The reason why the author's explanation is the final word is because it should be the final word.
Unfortunately, the way the guidelines are written, and the way they are tied to the blank (any%) branch for a game, encourages this behavior, in fact even gives it a great deal of importance.
What we have is what should be an objective requirement, beating the game as fast as possible, that is given the subjective modifier of 'following the difficulty guidelines.' Not only that, but this falls under the TECHNICAL requirements for the run. This encourages scrutiny not only of entertainment value, but whether or not the chosen difficulty is justified in being the any% branch run for that game. This is quite an impactful decision to make, and given that it has to be done on a game by game basis, it's no wonder we wind up in such a mess! 8D
In order to put the focus on entertainment, difficulty setting cannot be tied to technical validity. Either make fastest completion flat out fastest completion, or define the default fastest completion run to be on hardest difficulty, and make it a rule not just a subjective guideline. In both cases, other difficulty settings would naturally become branches and be judged as any other branch, by entertainment value.
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^ thank you feos! Should save us some time in working on that one part.
Well I guess it's time to move on to level 4. We'll try to post a WIP every few levels.
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Samsara wrote:
So if a movie's already in Vault or destined for Vault, I would agree that easiest difficulty would be preferred.
* An easier difficulty run has to remove boring repetition to obsolete a harder difficulty run, unless it's a Vault run, in which case it just has to be faster
If nothing else this is at least consistent. Previously there seemed to be a mismatch between fastest completion and preferring hardest difficulty. This resolves it. If this is definitely the direction things are going I might suggest simultaneously updating the vault description:
Vault wrote:
The guidelines for difficulty settings, and password use still apply.
Difficulty guidelines are no longer relevant here. I might suggest instead replacing it with something that says 'choose the fastest difficulty setting' just for clarity.
About 1/4 of the current 'hardest difficulty' runs are in the vault, meaning they can immediately be obsoleted by runs that are truly the fastest.
It also makes clear that runs on different difficulty settings can both be accepted for their own reasons, which is a good thing as well.
I do disagree about disregarding votes that rely only on difficulty. If people don't find easy runs entertaining just because they are on easy, so be it.
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hmm ok, I will do some experimenting and see if I can get that then.
So far going slower there is the only way I could change the pattern. Nothing I did after that point seemed to have any effect whatsoever. But 20 is one of the values I at least pretty commonly see, so getting it seems like it should be possible.
EDIT:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29037157216232902
Here is a file that correctly gets into the bonus. You can see that I slowed down at 2 places. The first is at the midway barrel and the second is right before the bonus. The first seems to impact the cycle I get on, the second is just waiting a few frame ofr the correct value to show up once I get a good cycle.
I don't know really what's going on, this is just my random testing but I hope it gives you some insights.
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Great! Finally some actual movement after so much discussion. Thank you Samsara for taking the time to do that!
It's not in the direction I particularly agree with, but I'm happy that at least something has changed to reflect community discussion, that's always a good start!
This is a pretty clear shift away from the previous standard of preferring hard difficulty to a much more subjective framework, but I think it still needs to answer one important question:
Can an any% run on hardest difficulty be obsoleted by one on easy difficulty if it is faster? Let's assume the run is in the Vault and is unlikely to leave just for simplicity.
Good example: [3042] Genesis Strider by Neofix & Alyosha in 07:22.39 . Would have been several seconds faster on easy, and pretty soundly in the vault.
I think answering this will clear up a lot of questions, at least for me. In particular in the section above difficulty in 'Choose your goals well' it says:
Most games have only one movie, simply going as fast as possible with any means.
Presumably 'any means' includes difficulty setting, does it?
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Well I don't know what value I am supposed to be looking for. All I wanted to see is if I could reach the bonus with a different value besides 0x23. I watched the youtube encode of the current run and noticed that the way the barrel moved after you hit the midway point was slightly different then in this WIP. So I just randomly tried slowing down at that point and yup I got a different pattern of values on my way there.
What value are you looking for? Do you know why a kremgling death sound plays once I release the barrel?
