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Well, I enjoyed levels 3, 5 and 8, other levels were kinda Meh.
BTW, there was funny moment at the end. When the movie stopped, I played with controls a couple of seconds and then suddenly next level appeared, and ship continued to play on its own.
I was like "WTF, the movie didn't stop?!"
But finally it appeared to be ending demonstration, but hey, that was strange feeling. :)
Voting Yes bordering with Meh.
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There was funny beat-em-up called Pee&Gity - I think it would be nice to see the game TASed.
Also if I remember right, there's some obscure Megaman game for DOS.
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That's... greatest GBA run up to date, definitely! So much amazing tricks and stuff here and there... in my experience, this TAS provokes jawdrops even more frequently than JXQ's SM run!
What I like about "100%" runs is that thay consist of 2 parts - 1st half usually looks as good as "any%" run, and then 2nd part (with heavily upgraded character) is TEN TIMES cooler!
Man, I didn't know the game can provide so much entertainment (not only speedwise).
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Oh, what's so fun with sticking to easy solutions?
Anyway, I'm working on NO-Damage run. All the tricks can be performed without taking damage (yes, even this well-known bug on Yellow Planet), and one aspect of the game's history suggests me that no-damage run suits it better.
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Hey xipo, you seem to like same games as I do. Actually, I'm working on Bucky O'Hare run for pretty long time already. So the question is: are you making No-damage run or you're taking damage?
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Warp wrote:
AnS wrote:
In fact, I miss old times with long submission quees and disputable movies, when it was possible to perform something suboptimal (e.g. play with funny glitches that make you lose several frames) and not to be afraid that someone suddenly walks in and improves your run by simply eliminating all those "flaws".
Exactly when was that? I have been closely following this site from day 1, and runs have been obsoleted by faster runs all the time.
Yes, they were obsoleted by runs that were faster because of new glitches, tricks and new tools. But these new runs still contained some speed/entertainment tradeoffs (and look, these are not "exceptions", it's common practice which remains EVEN today) But as we're approaching games' theoretical limit, there's much less outcome from polishing and new tricks - so it is natural for someone to refuse speed/entertainment tradeoffs, because even 1-2 frames now cost too much, thus no tradeoff can be considered useful (even the coolest one). So don't tell me that nothing has changed since day 1. Tools or people, but the trend exists.
Warp wrote:
I don't remember there ever been a general policy that "it's safe to submit suboptimal runs, nobody can obsolete them". In fact, the policy has always been quite strict on the opposite side: If someone obsoletes your run with a significantly faster one, bad luck. I do have personal experience.
I do .not. have personal experience, but I see things happen. 16 frames are quite significant today.
Blindly aiming for speed will always lead away from entertainment, even if you don't feel it. Here's an example.
In many games even small unnecessary action invisibly accumulates possible lag, which will (*or will not) appear as 1 lost frame somewhere at the middle of game. Does it mean we should refrain from any action that isn't absolutely necessary? Because in fact any dance is additionaly loading processor to some extent.
So if there existed bot that could know what's entertainment and how to create it, this bot still wouldn't show anything, because of higher speed priority. Don't tell me you want TASvideos to be collection of such perfect bot-runs. Welll, if you ask me, I'd like these movies to be rather slightly imperfect than unentertaining.
Warp wrote:
Well, that's exactly the whole idea of a tool-assisted speedrun: They aim for perfection. The goal is to see what would happen to a speedrun if flawed human element was removed from the equation.
OK, I'll speak in your terms and definitions. What this flawed element consist of? In early years it was intended to remove imperfect reflexes, then - to disregard limited memory, now it's necessary to squeeze creativity.
This is going. Somewhere.
Warp wrote:
What has changed is not the goals but the quality of the tools: Today we have frame advance, ram watchers and even robots, which didn't exist in the first years. This raises the quality requirements of the runs. It means that it's easier to remove flaws from the runs.
Please, do not sound so awfully reasonable.
Xkeeper wrote:
I wasn't a fan of the long submission queue -- over 4 months for some movies -- and I personally think two-four weeks is good.
It's just that short quees indicate that movies became less unique and more aimed on frame counter. The less subjective matter (entertainment) a movie contains, the easier is to judge it.
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I wonder why almost everyone keeps simplifying things down to some measurable matter. Sure it makes judges' life easier but it restricts TASing too much. That's why I'm against meeting ultimate decisions/definitions of basic terms (what's TAS, its goal, and how to judge).
In fact, I miss old times with long submission quees and disputable movies, when it was possible to perform something suboptimal (e.g. play with funny glitches that make you lose several frames) and not to be afraid that someone suddenly walks in and improves your run by simply eliminating all those "flaws". Today you have to forget everything and aim on Frame Counter, or you'll lose to someone less principled.
Now there's much less room for art in TASes than it was before. I'm not content with where this is going.
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At first it was even more impressive than current movie, but towards the end everything became kinda repetitive and predictable. I'm still voting Yes, but sure addind some veriety with Laser powerup would make this run much more interesting (esp. considering that entertainment is main goal of the movie).
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Bisqwit wrote:
That gives me an idea.
How about abolishing the poll and instead, rating the submission as publications are rated now?
Then instead of "Voted Yes!" there would be bunch of "Rated 5/6!" posts. Or even no posts at all, because such doublepoll encourages people to express their feeling in terms of numbers, not in words. E.g. if I voted Y/N, I still haven't released all my emotions from watched movie. But if I took some time and effort to rate submission, then I become sure I fully expressed my feelings about that movie, therefore no need to write additional posts and stuff.
I'd like current polls to be untouched. Of course when I read "Did you like" I mostly interpret it as "Do you think this should be published?", being selfish enough to think that I know what's good for the site.
But IMHO, this little misinterpretaions is for good. It makes members of the community feel more involved/important.
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There are some NES games (like Battle City and Tetris) where you can change level map, thus modifying some areas of RAM. But it's still unclear how to call this new code.
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Looks good, I'm voting Yes, although I miss cool input dances (like in currently published movie), as well as Donatello.
Also, I'm pretty sure, with further optimizations this game can be beaten in less then 30 minutes. Just reducing obvious lag can save more than 5 seconds.
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Awesome run for my second favourite MegaDrive game, absolute Yes vote.
Also it was fun to keep guessing all the flamewords without pausing thick action. :)
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moozooh wrote:
By offsetting his position by 0.5 px, you cause the pattern to change (how did you do it, btw?).
First I noticed it at level E, there are water surfaces which slow your down from 1.5px/frame to 1 px/frame.
But then I reralized it's possible to reser subpixel coordinate to 0 by precisely bumping ledge corners (because any wall has integer coordinates), so I change pattern by losing 0.5px, which fortunately doesn't affect time needed to finish a level.
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I think these screenshots should be taken judging by input density - additional algorithm searches for areas with unique input patterns and returns calculated priority for each frame - this priority works as additional factor along with result of screen/sprites analysis. Of course input factor shouldn't be used alone, but in couple with action meter it may at least take away unimportant screens (usually input isn't very varying at such places like menu or unavoidable cutscenes).
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The method isn't accurate. You have to be really lucky (also very careful with managing CPU cycles).
In theory, if you made everything right, it should sync well, but as emulators aren't perfect, it depends. Also note that SNES/GBA emulation is still much less accurate than NES emulation.
So that's only temporary and risky solution, it's better to insert tools into emulator environment.
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Actually I want to thank you for bringing the question up. :) I think, it's kinda important. Well, I also haven't seen conrollercheck-method fail to catch lag (well, in theory, some obscure games might read input via interrupt handler, that'd be the case). But this method still provides too much fake outcome (for example, in DarkwingDuck I had to keep several Counter resets to be able to strictly distinguish uncontrollable points and actual lag), thus signal-to-noise result isn't very good. I think, tools should be as much comfortable for random TASer as possible.
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nitsuja wrote:
I meant that initially it would catch some useful things that it really shouldn't have because although it happened to be correct in the game I was testing, other games could do the same thing and not be ignoring the input.
So, that's why it's better to have a list of possible options - at which point emulator should set "Lag flag" off (or to decrement Lag Counter in my example). For some games it will be controller read, for other - some graphic event (like filling sprite buffer on NES - FCEU should catch writing to port $4014), and for very uncommon cases there should be a way to manually find checkpoint (by tracing code in debugger or just by pure luck) and stick lag indicator to that piece of code.
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Uhh, I wanted to add my 2cents, but somehow it evolved into huge post. 8-[] Ok, here's my take on lag problem.
upthorn wrote:
there's a very simple way to detect 98% of lag in every game.
Usually, detecting lag frames isn't so hard even without additional indicator. It would be more useful to keep a track of lag summary during various periods of playing - to know exactly how much lag you caused by providing a line of input. With this you can not only try to prevent lag at each frame possible, but to manage lag as you wish.
So, indicator isn't real step here. Simple lag counter can provide much flexible approach to handling lag (while it can be realized almost as easy as indicator).
For example, I applied such counter to Darkwing Duck TAS I'm working on with Randil. To say the least, this counter helped to improve run very efficiently - now we can directly compare saveral movies and find the best route with which the final sum of lag frames would be the least.
Also I used this counter to arrange lag frames with better use. For example, if I let 3 lag frames happen at the beginning + 4 lag frames at the middle of level, it finally appeared to be better then allowing 5 lag frames at the beginning + 2 at the middle.
And no, there was no way to reduce lag to less then 7 frames in total. So I haven't reduced lag, but still with careful rearranging I've got 2 frames saved by shifting lag into less important frames of gameplay.
I doubt such result would be acieved by simply detecting lag.
Here I'll explain how my lag counter works. Well, there are RAM addresses in the game which can indicate lag in current frame, but I didn't use them for counting. The idea is more closer to theoretical definitio of "lag". Lag appears when game loop can't catch to real clock. For example, if a game tries to sync with Vblank (as usually games do), it tries to execute 60 iterations of its loop per a second. Thus there should be 60 controller reads per second and so on.
I've initialized new timer, inserted code (that increments this timer) into NMI handler and another code (that decrements this timer) into joystick reading subroutine (although that was not the only possible place to insert it).
Yeah, I'm not so familiar with FCEU modding, so I inserted new tool right into the game (Darkwing Duck ROM) - there were a couple of troubles to shoot (like optimizing original code to retrieve several CPU ticks for INC/DEC instructions - because movie should sync with both modified and original ROM), but also there's one advantage - final result can be played anywhere - from NES hardware to Famtasia emulator (I used it to see lag in currently published movie).
If there's still something unclear, here's how this timer works. Every time (normally - every frame) when game reads joypad input, it decrements the timer by 1. But then NMI (generated every frame - that's for sure :)) increases the timer back to zero (or whatever it was initialized with).
When the game doesn't read input (lag frame), NMI still increases timer. So, for every frame of lag the timer will be increased by 1. In my example (Darkwing Duck.nes) I used RAM to store the timer, thus one address in Memory Watcher can be used both as lag indicator and lag counter.
Well, of course it's better to insert such tool into emulator, not a game. But I'm not sure when I'd feel like modifying FCEU myself, plus the idea is universal for all emulators (FCEU, Gens, Snes9x, VBA), so I drew the picture to fully disclose the concept (well, + dream tool added ;)).
Another picture with some explanations...
Here's how this tool could be used for TASing.
First, of course it would provide new degree of freedom in reducing lag - you can dynamically analyze cpu usage and search for causes of possible lag.
Then, it can be used to optimize unavoidable lag and still get some advantage of rearranging lag frames.
Finally, it could be used for creating lag deliberately - it opens new way to abusing glitches and programm features. E.g. there are games that don't verify collisions during lag frames (I've personally met it in Rockin' Kats, also heard smth like this about Rockman2).
After all, polishing movie is not only about reducing lag, it's about managing lag in needed ways.
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I don't understand the game at all - neither plot/ending nor gameplay features (except usual platformer gameplay). But at least now it's possible to fastforward through these praying scenes and stuff. So I'm voting yes because the movie became less painful to watch then it was before. :)
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Unfortunately, it seems the strategy actually IS more effective on every level, so yes, the fastest movie is gonna degrade into jumpfest and it isn't likely to be entertaining after first 5 minutes.
I don't know jow to solve this. At first I triet to search for some balance, where some tracks are played normally even if it's slightly faster to crash the opponent. But soon it became not so "slightly", and this speed/variety trade wasn't fair (you lose too much time for not obvious entertainment), so I stopped working on this.
Another picture with some explanations...
Here's how this tool could be used for TASing.
