TASVideos

Posted: 1/12/2016 6:47 PM

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Alyosha

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I will vote for arandomgametaser and samsara as I think they did the best work this year. I am particularly envious of Samsara's ability to add entertainment to otherwise bland games / stages.

Posted: 1/12/2016 2:39 PM

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Alyosha

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Wow that's a very timely discovery , awesome !

Posted: 1/10/2016 10:06 PM

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Alyosha

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On a bit of a side note here, I was wondering why quicknes ended up being the preferred BizHawk core? Was there something in particular or a lesson that was learned to improve emulation?

Posted: 1/10/2016 9:40 PM
(Edited: 1/10/2016 9:54 PM)

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Alyosha

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I am wondering which version of the game is preferred, the GDQ modded one or the original? Would the real RNG in the original allow for a faster run due to more optimal farming? VVVV I prefer the original as well, in fact even if it turns out to be slower. But either way I think this question should be answered before any frame war type stuff gets going, so no one wastes their time. EDIT: or at least give this one a "GDQ Edition" branch to distinguish it.

Posted: 1/9/2016 11:51 PM

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Alyosha

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I tried for about an hour before realizing I really needed a team to make anything decent. I guess I should have taken that suggestion in the opening post a bit more seriously! One other point I'd like to make besides the ones listed above is that one utility of this speed TAS competition is to give ANYONE a decent chance of being able to submit a run, even if not high quality, kind of like an outreach opportunity. This one though was definitely for experienced TASers only. But hey, this was only the second iteration of the contest, gotta climb that learning curve somehow! Still great work with the organization of everything. I did like the format of expert TAS team vs human runners, but perhaps that is better as a seperate item to the speed tas competition.

Posted: 1/9/2016 11:40 PM

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Alyosha

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Absolutely amazing, very impressive and original content. The fact that it can all be done on console is even more impressive and shows the level of mastery that has been developed both in working with the NES and with this game in particular. ACE + console verification never gets old for me, really awe inspiring.

Posted: 1/5/2016 2:39 PM

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Alyosha

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If you happen to be using TAS Studio, you can also do this from Metadata -> Header

Posted: 1/5/2016 2:37 PM

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Alyosha

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Alright time to strike off Strider! Work on Out to Lunch is already well under way too. I didn't quite reach my goal of having the list down to 20 by year end, but my new goal for this year is to have it down to 10. Possible completion in 2017? Let's go!

Posted: 1/3/2016 4:26 PM

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Alyosha

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Go Tompa! Save those frames! I doubt I can be of much help in the early levels given your level of expertise in this game, so I'll leave you to it and focus on Croctopus Chase for now. I want to get at least 2 more iterations done with and without expresso. Perhaps we can reconvene somewhere around Master Necky skip. In the mean time, good luck!

Posted: 1/2/2016 1:41 PM

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Alyosha

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Oh wow glad to see this is still being worked on, looking forward to seeing this finished, good luck with the lag.

Posted: 1/2/2016 1:33 PM

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Alyosha

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I might suggest 2 games that jlun2 recently pointed out to me: #834: tool23's NES Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 05:08.28 #863: Aqfaq's Genesis Rolo to the Rescue in 09:04.55 These games have submitted runs you can use for reference while still being pretty easily improvable. A bit more challenging would be: #4898: Alyosha's NES Mickey Mousecapade in 07:16.58 There is still some room for improvement here and you can learn many TASing ideas from this game while still being relatively short. Also I'm pretty familiar with it so could help along the way. Finally, a short game that you could work on from scratch would be NES Quattro Adventure: Linus Spacehead. It's the last game in Quattro Adventure that doesn't have a TAS, so it would be good both to complete the series and you can learn a bit from it. Hope this helps.

Posted: 1/2/2016 1:23 PM

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Alyosha

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I would like to say that I am 100% in favor of everything arkiandruski is saying. That page zeuper made looks like a good starting point. The vault/moon thing seems to me like an outdated model that site has simply outgrown, which I consider to be a good thing.

Posted: 12/31/2015 2:18 PM

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Alyosha

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micro500 wrote:

I have console verified Weatherton's MK64 Star Cup TAS: http://www.twitch.tv/micro500/v/32566286

wow that was amazing to watch be console verified, great work! What did it take to console verify it? Is it the same as SM64 where it just happens to work?

Posted: 12/31/2015 1:52 PM

Post subject: Effects of illegal opcodes

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Alyosha

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I wasn't quite sure what to do with this so I'll post it here. While looking at some trace logs for NES ghosts 'n goblins at a particular glitch, I was trying to compare FCEUX and Bizhawk to see if there are any differences. I noticed that FCEUX sometimes hangs and Bizhawk (NESHawk core) always resets as the glitch occurs. I traced this down to how the emulators handle the opcode 02. It crashes FCEUX but Bizhawk manages to get by it and keeps on going: Bizhawk:

0390  FF ???                  A:0B X:01 Y:01 P:35 SP:39 Cy:498589133   TBIC
0393  FF ???                  A:B6 X:01 Y:01 P:B4 SP:39 Cy:498589140   NTBI
0396  FF ???                  A:5F X:01 Y:01 P:75 SP:39 Cy:498589147   VTBIC
0399  FF ???                  A:08 X:01 Y:01 P:35 SP:39 Cy:498589154   TBIC
039C  FF ???                  A:B0 X:01 Y:01 P:B4 SP:39 Cy:498589161   NTBI
039F  FF ???                  A:56 X:01 Y:01 P:75 SP:39 Cy:498589168   VTBIC
03A2  02 ???                  A:00 X:01 Y:01 P:37 SP:39 Cy:498589175   TBIZC
03A3  80 NOP #$D0             A:00 X:01 Y:01 P:37 SP:39 Cy:498589176   TBIZC
03A5  54 NOP $02,X            A:00 X:01 Y:01 P:37 SP:39 Cy:498589178   TBIZC

FCEUX:

i288661349         $0399:FF        UNDEFINED                                    A:08 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIzC 
i288661350         $039C:FF        UNDEFINED                                    A:B0 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:NvUBdIzc 
i288661351         $039F:FF        UNDEFINED                                    A:56 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nVUBdIzC 
i288661352         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661353         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661354         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661355         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661356         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661357         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661358         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661359         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC 
i288661360         $03A2:02        UNDEFINED                                    A:00 X:01 Y:01 S:39 P:nvUBdIZC

I don't know which is correct, all I can find is this nesdev article which says 02 should "Jam the machine" , leading me to believe FCEUX is correct: http://nesdev.com/6502_cpu.txt This only matters for things like ACE and such but it seems like an important distinction.

Posted: 12/30/2015 12:34 AM

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Alyosha

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I don't know much about the RAM map of this game sorry. The jump I got was to 02A0 and then it continued on until it hit 03A2 which contained undefined instruction 02. Everything from 02A0 to 03A2 was FF, which isn't a very helpful jump, I don't know if others are possible. EDIT: so far I can only get a jump to 02A0, when the game resets it is BNE past the bad command (by pure luck) and eventually makes it to a BRK. Overall doesn't seem useful at the moment. You can avoid a crash / reset by jumping through the ceiling before going left past the point of no return, but this doesn't seem to do anything useful.

Posted: 12/29/2015 7:39 PM

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Alyosha

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Wow really interesting. Thanks for pointing that out archanfel I was not aware of it. A cursory look at a trace from a crash case shows stack corruption from a TXS instruction and a jump to RAM. Shouldn't be too hard to track down what's gone wrong and see if it's useful or not . I might not get around to it for a while though so good luck to anyone who wants to jump in, I hope it proves useful.

Posted: 12/28/2015 8:56 PM

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Alyosha

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wow, thanks for the show of support Zeuper : ) much appreciated! I pretty much agree with Warp on this one, comparing now to 10 or even 5 years ago isn't particularly meaningful, especially with the emergence of Bizhawk and TASEditor. About the only way someone could beat the submission / publication record nowadays is if they specifically set out to so and planned maybe 2 years in advance, at which point it would be a pretty artificial record. But anyway, onward to 3000!

Posted: 12/24/2015 1:22 PM

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Alyosha

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Thanks for doing this research jlun2. Looking those runs over its not really surprising why they got rejected before the vault was available, but at least it gives me something to look at if I get stuck or lose motivation on the runs from the original list.

Posted: 12/24/2015 12:57 PM

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Alyosha

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I'm with andypanther this is TAS of the year stuff! The set up in that video is really smooth too, the cpu's are right there when you need them, great work!

Posted: 12/24/2015 12:54 PM

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Alyosha

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I'm always really impressed by the total control stuff especially when its done on real hardware, really amazing! The text in that encode gets garbled for me though after a little while, so maybe a higher quality encode is needed.

Posted: 12/23/2015 11:23 PM

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Alyosha

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Since Arc did all the inputs for this run, I request that his name be listed first in the publication entry. EDIT: thanks!

Posted: 12/22/2015 11:32 PM

Post subject: A-2600 Dragster

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Alyosha

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I noticed some graphical glitches in Atari 2600 Dragster, and am thinking there might be an emulation bug First, the car starts in the wrong spot on the screen. Here is bizhawk:

And here is another A2600 emulator PCAE 2.7:

watching some youtube videos all also show the correct car position at start. Also, after a certain point on the screen the car breaks up into sections for some reason:

This also doesn't happen in youtube videos or in the other emulator. Any help on this would be appreciated, if there is a setting I should be changing I surely can't find it. The pics were taken from bizhawk 1.11.4 as well. Finally, I've really noticed big improvements in Bizhawk since I first tried it about a year ago, keep up the great work development team!

Posted: 12/22/2015 4:05 PM

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Alyosha

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So in case this isn't already known, the race ends when $3A reaches #$61. 3A increments every time $42 passes FF. 42 is just adding your speed to itself each frame. So basically, the race ends when you have gone 24832 units along the track. The condition to check if the race is finished actually happens the next frame though, and time increments first, so your final time is actually the next time unit after you cross the finish line. So assuming switching gears never pauses increase in speed, and assuming speed is capped at 252, the theoretical best time you could get in this race is 5.47. Now since switching gears pauses your speed for a frame, this and you need to get at least to gear 4, and you have to switch gears by a certain speed, we can estimate the theoretical best practical time as 5.54. In scepheo's movie, this is possible if speed is never paused after 4th gear is reached. This is still very far away from 5.51, as you are actually already 252 distance units down from ideal time by the time you reach 4th gear, and 672 units away from ideal when your speed caps out. So as far as I can tell, the only way to get 5.51 is to somehow start earlier. EDIT: also I notice some graphical errors that aren't present in any gameplay videos I see, my car tends to split into 3 pieces even in normal play, and at the start part of the tire appears on the right side of the screen. Some sort of emulation bug? EDIT2: its also possible to have a speed of FD, but in order to get it I had to slow down 1 speed unit earlier on which is definitely not worth it in the long run. EDIT 3: so I looked a little more and something emulator related is definitely up here. I tried running the game in another emulator (PCAE 2.7) and the game displays correctly and my car does not stretch apart into multiple pieces. Unless there is some setting I need to change, I think there is an emulator bug.

Posted: 12/22/2015 3:47 AM

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Alyosha

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Oh this is a neat problem, who could have guessed an atari 2600 game could hold this kind of a riddle. Well I briefly looked into the code just to see how the time is kept track of. Here is the bit of code:

--If the racer hasn't finished the race
LDA $D2,X 
BEQ $F344

--If the countdown has reached 0
LDA $8D
BNE $F367

--add time
SED 
CLC

LDA $B7,X -- this is a counter that increments by 34 every other frame
ADC #$34 
STA $B7,X

LDA $B5,X -- notice that the carry flag can be set, so sometimes it adds 4
ADC #$03 -- add time for the current racer
STA $B5,X

One thing I noticed is that if you start from power on, your opponents time is incremented first, but after resetting, my time incremented first as the race started. I haven't looked too deeply into why yet, but I do wonder if this can influence the time you get.

Posted: 12/21/2015 11:57 PM

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Alyosha

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When I first saw the title of this game on the workbench I thought it was a rom hack, somehow I have never heard of this game before. It's a really nice looking game though and the TAS seems well done, too bad about that super jump discovery a little late but oh well no big deal. Thanks for introducing me to a nice game I had never knew existed!

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