A lot of people don't realize this, but the concept of tool-assisted speedrunning had actually started from the Doom community. However, the TAS'ing capabilities for that game are relatively primitive. While console emulators have all those fancy features, the TAS-enabled Doom ports (e.g., TasDoom, MBF and PrBoom) offer only basic ones, such as save states, rerecording and slowdown. I'd love to see more TAS features added to those source ports.
There's a more advanced port called DooM Replay Editor that supports Frame Advance, displays player speed/coordinates, etc. The savestate code isn't perfect, but the whole thing is perfectly stable and reliable if you follow a few simple rules that no one's ever bothered to write down.:-) I've created several demos with it and, in all my usage, have only run into one desync.
All Dances is easy (there are only 8 to bother with) and all Lores would make you actually go to Hidon's cave. There're many story elements that would be skipped (dressing up Gau to reunite him with his father, say)...that game had so much depth that most anything else pales. But I digress.
I didn't include the Dances or Lores as requirements, because then it follows that Rages should also be required. Maxing out character abilities would be nice, but Rages would just be too tedious(in both recording and viewing), and it doesn't seem logical to exclude just one character from a 100% run because he would take too long. I wouldn't object if a runner wanted to throw them in, of course; I just don't think they should be required.
As for Gau's father, how about "All Characters, All Espers, All Side Quests/Plot Threads?"
Question: Would there be a 100% Final Fantasy game or not? I Don't know if it could be entertaining though, I'm just wondering.
I don't think the first one would be different at all. Are there any side quests?
FF4 (SNES) would have to include not skipping the Sealed Cave, obviously and all of Rydia's calls. That would show the majority of the game. Should getting the special weapons be required, though(Murasame, Masamune, Excalibur, Adamant Armor)? I would say yes, because you get to see the unique monsters, but they don't really add anything to the story.
FF6 (SNES), I think, is simple: all characters, all espers. Going further by requiring all Dances, Lores and especially Rages would just be tedious.
Here's a new, perfectly synced AVI(449MB) to tide everyone over until the run gets published...
Update: Wow. I was expecting a dozen or two downloads, but 80+?! Unfortunately, that puts me within reach of my bandwidth limit for the month, so I'm going to have to remove the link. With any luck it should be published shortly, anyway, and we'll have a version that is TOTALLY synced up...
Can you please reupload it? I suggest Megaupload, using split archives.
Unfortunately, no. I removed it from the server already and I didn't keep a local copy. If someone still has a copy and would like to do so, that would be fine, of course.
Thanks a lot for encoding this. It goes out of 1-2 seconds out of sync during the cut scene where Child Link meets Zelda, and goes back in synchhalf-way through the Shadow Temple - no biggy though since the rest of it is perfectly in sync.
Sonuva!!!! I knew I should've watched it first. Well, sorry 'bout that, everyone.
I think there's something weird about how Mupen splits the AVIs that requires them to be merged in a certain way. I'll have to do some experimenting.
In any case, you're all welcome...
Here's a new, perfectly synced AVI(449MB) to tide everyone over until the run gets published...
Update: Wow. I was expecting a dozen or two downloads, but 80+?! Unfortunately, that puts me within reach of my bandwidth limit for the month, so I'm going to have to remove the link. With any luck it should be published shortly, anyway, and we'll have a version that is TOTALLY synced up...
This is not a problem with FCEU, but is an inherent property of the NES itself: the audio hardware is located on the same die as the CPU and thus is always clocked at the exact same rate. Overclock the CPU (by inserting a faster oscillator, leaving the original one on the PPU) and the audio pitch will go up.
Really? I was under the impression that the APU used a different multiplier than the CPU.
There's another issue with increasing the clock speed on the NES: certain games (mostly stuff by Rare - Battletoads is the first that comes to mind) rely on exact CPU timing in order to accomplish certain visual effects (e.g. parallax scrolling). In such games, increasing the CPU speed would result in graphical glitches and could potentially cause the game to crash.
Still, an option to overclock the system would be an awesome feature...
I've offen wondered myself why no one has done this(especially with the older systems where lag is a real problem). I was able to speed up FCEU, but the frequency of the sound gets doubled(like Bisqwit said), even while the games played at the proper speed. The cause of this is actually a problem with FCEU(audio processing speed is tied to CPU speed; it shouldn't be).
I don't care much for the idea of upgrading the graphics or sound of old games, but I'm all for removing limitations and making things run more smoothly.
.....Ow. I have only done the coin ship once in World 5. Well, I can manage. Hopefully.
White Houses will get me. Plus, that means going through 2-2 twice.
Why would you need to go through 2-2 twice?
stickyman05 wrote:
well, what i would suggest would be to get the coin ship first, and (after beating all the levels for the world) come back and take on the hammer bros again.
I was considering the Coin Ship to be a substitute for the Hammer Bros. No need to re-enter the world.
Kyrsimys wrote:
100% = All levels & Hammer Brothers. Mushroom houses, spades and coin ships are irrelevant.
That would work, too. You don't think the Coin Ships, White Mushroom Houses and Warp Whistles being "secrets" would necessitate their inclusion in a 100% run?
I'm glad to see someone's finally doing another 100% SMB3 run(and for SMAS, no less).
IMO, 100% consists of:
All levels (obviously)
All Hammer Bros
One Coin Ship each in Worlds 1,3,5,6
All White Mushroom Houses
All Warp Whistles
I'd skip the regular Mushroom Houses(except the ones you need, of course). Ditto the Spade Houses. Neither really adds anything to a run, 100% or otherwise.
The game is called "Castlevania", which doesn't make much sense to begin with. What does the word even mean? Like, the "castle" part obviously means a castle and "vania" is a… typical russian name, isn't it?
Well, since the Castlevania series involves Dracula, the logical source of the name would be "Transylvania."
I can't tell you why it's happening, but I7 has some kind of filtering enabled. Try some of the Output Image Processing options with I10 and see if they give you the softer look you prefer.
The I10 image is actually much more faithful to a true SNES, though.
Each category page could basically get the same view; list of games that contain movies matching the category criteria.
The game information would contain brief links to other type movies of the same game.
I like it, but I'd also suggest listing the Gruefood submissions("There are ?? rejected movies for this game"). The page could be separated from the normal content(or listed at the bottom of the game's page) and simple(no screenshots, descriptions, AVIs, etc; just the category, who made it, a link to the movie, and a link to the submission thread).
While FF6 would come in a very close second, I'll have to go with Super Castlevania as my all-time favorite. A great combination of moody and melodic.
In the 8-bit realm, both Zeldas and the Megaman series(#3 was probably my favorite).
<Issue>The issue that called for creating the rule was that translations are updated by the translators, and being a translator myself, I feel that a translator wouldn't like their older version being showcased somewhere when a newer version is available. Because of the sync issue, a movie existing will make it more difficult for the old version to disappear in favor of the new version. And if it does, then nobody can play that movie.</Issue>
My two cents: include the patch/patcher with the movie. That way, if the patch is obsoleted, the correct version will always be available for use with the run.
The OpenGL plugins perform screen captures by basically pressing PrintScreen and then cropping the resulting image. Thus the video must be always on top, and that's a big waste of screen space. I'd rather do it once and still be able to use my computer during the heavy work. Snes9x, FCEU, Gens, etc. don't have this restriction. Must be 3d acceleration related.
The way I understand it, the frame is drawn by the plugin. Since the AVI routines can't access whatever video buffer the plugin is using, the only option is to capture the frame after it's been displayed.
The fault belongs with the whole "plugin" fad(probably the worst idea ever to hit the emulation scene)...
Are you sure? I don't remember file splitting in FCEU and Snes9x. But do remember it exists in Gens.
Definitely. I helped add it to FCEU(starting around v98.15, I believe). Not sure when it was added to SNES9x, but it's definitely there. Creating an AVI from the FF3 run would've been a pain without it.
As to Gens, I haven't upgraded in awhile("about" lists TEST10WIP), so it wouldn't surprise me if I was wrong here...
EDIT - Actually, I've found that using OpenDML the 4GB limitation can be overcome. I take it that Mupen64 doesn't support OpenDML. Perhaps segmenting into multiple files could help?
As far as I know, none of the TASvideos emulators support OpenDML. File splitting is the easiest way to get around it, but it's only implemented in FCEU and SNES9x.
Search engines attempt to perceive the HTML the same way as the human does, i.e. recognize things that are relevant (headings, titles) and things that are just decoration&garbage.
Things that don't get rendered anywhere bear very little influence to search engine optimization.
Does this take into account stylesheets? Could you put the old NESVideos name in a seperate tag and define it in your CSS file as "display: none"?
adding this line to ppu.c:
<tt>static const unsigned EXTRA_CYCLES_SCANLINE = 900; // BISQWIT'S ADDITION</tt>
And changing this line:
<tt>X6502_Run((scanlines_per_frame-242)*(256+85)-12);</tt>
to:
<tt>X6502_Run((scanlines_per_frame-242)*(256+85+EXTRA_CYCLES_SCANLINE)-12); //-12);</tt>
I gave it a shot. It eliminated video lag, but introduced audio lag(since the cpu is still running at the same speed). I guess I'll have to do a bit more studying...
After coming across an article about console overclocking, I started to think that it would be fairly easy to accomplish the same thing with an emulator. I loaded up the FCEU code and made a couple minor changes and it worked...sort of.
Any semblance of lag was gone and games still play at the same speed. However, the sound was affected. The tempo remains the same, but the pitch is twice as high as before. I played around with some of the sound values, but didn't succeed at anything except slowing it down. I believe the key to finding the problem is that the emulator will crash if Sound Quality is set to anything but Low, but the reality is I have only a vague idea how it all works.
I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help figure this out. I don't know if removing lag would fit with Bisqwit's vision for TASvideos, but it would certainly be cool for actual gameplay, and could be made an option fairly easily.
For anyone looking to help, here's how I accomplished the overclock.
1. In x6502.h, double the values of NTSC_CPU and PAL_CPU.
2. In x6502.c, X6502_Run(), double the number of cycles specified in the ifelse statement just before the start of the main loop(cycles*=xx).
Ah, that explains it. I would've thought the forums made up a good portion of the site's traffic(it would save about 30KB per topic page).
Okay, I'll go back to being invisible now. -)
Wow, the forum sure runs faster in the middle of the night(Pacific Time).:-)
I was thinking, Bisqwit, you could probably increase overall speed and reduce bandwidth usage considerably by cutting the number of topics per page in half. I think 50 might be overkill. :-)
Just a thought...
Weird. If you can, extract a small section(a few seconds should be plenty) of the MPEG-2 stream from one that does and one that doesn't distort and post them because, honestly, I'm stumped...
For your first problem: does the picture have the same distortion when played on your PC, or if you rip it? If so, post a screenshot. Otherwise, nothing is coming to mind, at the moment(but I'm tired:-)).
I'm assuming you're using the AVS you posted earlier. The desync with SNES9x is probably due to the line:
AssumeFPS(last,1008307711,16777216,false)
The framerate above only applies to FCEU. SNES9x is straight 60fps(change the "false" to "true" and it'll work, though). Also, you don't need to run AssumeFPS twice(in any case); only after Weave to convert to 29.97(30000/1001).
Oh, and you might as well have the emulator output 48KHz audio, rather than resampling it.
