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Posted: 10/2/2005 9:40 PM
(Edited: 10/23/2005 6:18 PM)

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Aqfaq

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Buck Rogers - Countdown to Doomsday. This game is quite funny. I'm not sure what the movie might look like, but it would probably be among the shortest RPG movies on the site. Gamefaqs has a walkthrough of it: http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/buck_rogers_countdown_to_doomsday.txt It seems that 9/18 of the missions are optional. Moving is easy because the team moves on squares. Just manipulate good character statistics, check the route and avoid battles. Recording should be easy.

Posted: 10/2/2005 9:21 PM

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Aqfaq

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Yes, the sounds have gone off every time (about 5 times). Some kind of *beep* loop stays on the air occasionally.

Posted: 10/2/2005 7:13 PM

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Aqfaq

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I watched the whole movie now. Your strategy was nice. I could probably not play that well myself. I guess the optimal destroying order for enemy structures would be 1) construction yard 2) vehicle factory 3) barracks or palace 4) all else Ofcourse, this order is probably not possible in every mission. Harkonnen Death Hand would do miracles in the last 2 missions. Damn, it's really hard to decide what house to play. But now we need to solve the sound problem. What causes it? My suggestions: a) bad rom b) some Gens sound settings

Posted: 10/2/2005 6:08 PM

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Aqfaq

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It seems that we solved the desync problem only to run into another kind of problem. When I watched the first 2 minutes of your movie, the sound went off. The problem is too technical for me to solve.

Posted: 10/2/2005 5:38 PM

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Aqfaq

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Highness, please show us the gmv! I tested the european rom and something strange happened. I began playing the first mission with normal speed and suddenly all audio goes "piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii", no sound, no music, only "piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii". I restarted and it happened again after a minute or so! Is this normal for the european rom, eh?

Posted: 10/2/2005 4:58 PM

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Aqfaq

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Good work Highness! I'll test that other rom too. I should have tested more those different roms myself in the first place. Hopefully we got the desync issue solved now. :)

Posted: 10/2/2005 12:09 PM

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Aqfaq

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I think we should forget manipulating everything for now. It would require too much experimenting to get all things go optimally. Yeah, this is going to be a long movie. Maybe the longest one on the site. :) Truncated, did you record your playing?

Posted: 10/2/2005 12:58 AM

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Aqfaq

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Watching this movie and reading the Rockman discussions have taught me a lot about how video games work. All those tricks are quite inspiring. My suggestion for the screenshot is some frame where extreme item drop manipulation is manifested. It was very impressive to see large weapon refills rain like water. It's funny that no matter how fast Rockman moves, he always has the same relaxed face. :)

Posted: 10/1/2005 11:31 PM

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Aqfaq

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That would be very great indeed! I'm not sure how much I can concentrate on this myself, but we don't need to hurry, right?

Posted: 10/1/2005 4:24 PM

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Aqfaq

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This Dune project will be too hard task to me alone. I could possibly make 5 quality runs for other games with equal amount of work. Maybe someone will do the PC version when/if Dosbox has re-recording movie support. Hee-he. Ok, offtopic then. I recommend watching more movies by David Lynch if you happen to enjoy his Dune movie. His movies are... broken. Lost Highway is my favorite. :)

Posted: 10/1/2005 10:41 AM

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Aqfaq

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Good news: I found a way to improve 1st mission a couple of seconds again. Bad news: Hex-editing tested. I did it like this: 1) recorded a movie X from reset to the end of mission-2 2) recorded another movie Y for mission-1 only, stopped recording when hitting button A would start mission-2 3) inserted X to Y from the position where X hits button A to begin mission-2 Result: desync It seems not possible to insert missions together at the point where pressing button A begins the next mission. However, I did this only once. There might still exist some positive frame nearby from where the inserted movie would sync. If this is not true, the whole game must be done at once. BTW, any kind of meaningful hex-editing inside a mission is impossible because moving the cursor differently affects so many events. Dune: 1 Timeattackers: 0 Are we losing the game?

Posted: 10/1/2005 12:50 AM

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Aqfaq

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Yes, that's what I meant. Some buildings' performance is weakened if they are damaged & buildings are damaged enormously when installed on pure rock instead of concrete. I'll keep editing the first post of this thread as the project goes on.

Posted: 9/30/2005 6:18 PM

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Aqfaq

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Oops, major mistake spotted. Building concrete plates under refinery makes harvester drop it's load very much faster. Yes, Dune is better on PC. Yes, there exists a Dune book.

Posted: 9/30/2005 3:35 PM

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Aqfaq

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Truncated wrote:

I consider Ordos the hardest... probably Harkonnen is the easiest because you only have to deal with one death hand (from Sardaukar).

Every Death Hand in the game can be manipulated to miss. EDIT: Highness, shooting the enemy harvesters is useless. The computer does not need spice to buy things.

Posted: 9/30/2005 3:31 PM

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Aqfaq

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Truncated wrote:

You should move your harvester so that it's as close to the base as possible just when it finishes harvesting. I think it was 2-3 seconds away from the edge now.

You are right, but it seemed that when the harvester is on the move, it does not harvest. Player can't move a harvester without slowing down the harvesting. Moving the cursor and clicking units makes the harvester behave differently. I managed to have quite effective harvesting, but it may still be improvable by many seconds. Truncated, could you please record the whole Atreides campaign? Highness, it would be very great if you made it through with the Harkonnen. You can play with 100% speed if you like. Even better, record with the LOOKAROUND code on! Yeah, beware the desync and have fun! I'll test how fast the Atreides' 2nd mission can be done. OK? Are we the only ones interested in this?

Posted: 9/29/2005 9:23 PM

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Aqfaq

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One of my friends just pointed out that the different houses are actually quite like skill levels: Atreides - Easy Ordos - Normal Harkonnen - Hard Sounds reasonable, huh? I think Atreides is the best to start with. I checked out the last level of Atreides. The enemy is attacking so frequently that some kind of defense is necessary even in a timeattack! Ofcourse, it might be possible to lure attackers away with trikes. There is a limit for the amount of units on the battlefield, so the enemy might not build new ones if the old ones were still running all over the desert.

Highness wrote:

A thing that I always imagined helped reduce lag when playing on console was to zoom to an unexplored place where the shadow has not been revealed yet.

Yeah right, and it would be nice to watch black battle-screen for about 1,5 hours. I would appreciate if someone recorded a simple full game movie, no matter how fast. Highness? Truncated? Someone? EDIT: After some testing, it seems that Harkonnen can use Death Hand missile quite effectively in the last 2 missions. Death Hand is not very accurate in real game, but can be manipulated to hit any square. All enemy Death Hands can be manipulated to hit sand or their own attack force. Oh well, speaking of the last mission is mostly useless at the moment. I'm afraid my motivation will end at the 3rd mission.

Posted: 9/29/2005 1:38 PM

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Aqfaq

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Great to have more brains interested on this! There is an amazingly huge amount of different ways to do things and manipulate events in this game. Here are some of the most important tips (from the Ledmeister guide) that could/should be used in a timeattack: 1) The parameters on credit usage are somewhat flexible. For example, structures and units can occasionally be produced at a cost which is slightly below the documented price. 2) In general, a carryall will attempt to retrieve any unit which is ordered to move to a location that the unit cannot reach on its own. 3) When a starport is first placed on the battlefield, it will show a random number of units available, and each unit type will have a random price. 4) Prices of units available at a starport will change every few minutes of Game Time. 5) A player's spice/credit status is subject to entropy. As a game progresses, spice/credits will disappear intermittently, at a rate which can vary from game to game. 6) Individual enemy buildings may be targeted for attack, whether or not they are visible to the attacker. A player can use the Targeting Cursor to click on enemy buildings, even if they are in unrevealed/undetected areas of the battlefield. 7) To shorten the long delay between weapon/ability regenerations at a palace, quickly destroy and replace the palace after each use. (Whenever any new palace is placed on the battlefield, its weapon/ability will be available for immediate use.) 8) It takes 11 to 12 minutes of real time for a Harkonnen palace to produce a new Death Hand, 15 to 16 minutes for a Sardaukar palace to produce a new Death Hand, about 4 minutes for an Atreides palace to regenerate the summon-Fremen ability, and 6 to 7 minutes for an Ordos palace to produce a new saboteur. The next question may cause brain damage to anyone attempting to make an optimal movie: what kind of things cause lag? For me, battling against lag while maintaining all other things would kill any motivation. 9) Game Time (time elapsing within the game environment) generally slows down with an increase in units on the battlefield, speeds up with a decrease in units, and is suspended whenever the Game Screen is not displayed. Game Time may also slow down when units on the battlefield experience difficulty in carrying out orders. I'll try doing the 2nd level soon. It would be great if someone tested attaching (with hex-editor) some single-level movies together to see if the playback desyncs. Also, it would be great if someone tried improving my movie just to see if the harvester behaves differently and to check the desync phenomenon.

Posted: 9/28/2005 11:29 PM
(Edited: 10/2/2005 12:12 PM)

Post subject: Dune - The Battle for Arrakis

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Aqfaq

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Dune - Battle for Arrakis (or Building of a Dynasty) is clearly a real-time strategy landmark. I bet it would be amazing to see it being completed perfectly. So, I decided to record the first mission to see what it would look like. The movie file: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/dune-level-one.gmv The ROM: Dune - The Building of a Dynasty (U) [!].bin The Emulator: Gens-9f I choose to play Atreides because the first mission of the Atreides campaign can be played faster than corresponding Ordos or Harkonnen missions. Also, Atreides mission 6 has only one enemy base (Ordos & Harkonnen have two). The units are balanced quite well, so none of the houses have obvious speed advantages. A complete analysis of all missions should be made to judge which of the three campaigns is the optimal choice. Anything goes for now. It was not very hard to do the first mission. I played long periods with 100% speed which will definitely be impossible in the later missions. I guess there's not much room for improvement unless the harvester can be manipulated to collect spice faster. Actually, sometimes it was faster, but that caused desync! Yeah, and sometimes the buildings were manufactured a few frames faster than normally which made the playback desync. I had to check the movie after every installed building. Irritating & strange... Interesting detail: I managed to be a pacifist. That seems to save 1 frame in the mission statistics screen. :) The 2nd mission will be quite easy to make. After that, it will be utterly difficult movie to produce. Hopefully the desync problems were only my own problems. Whoever wants to try doing this movie has my full support. There are 9 missions and it might even be possible to construct a full movie from single-mission files. So yeah, why not make a multi-author movie? Oh, I get it: no-one else is interested. (This movie may not look like superplay for those who don't know that the objective of the first mission is to collect 1000 units of spice.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT: I redid the first mission quite a bit faster, but did not manage to manipulate the harvester optimally yet. The file above is updated. I also made a list of all things that can be manipulated by moving/clicking with the cursor. I'll update the list when new things show up. * harvester movement * harvester's appearing square after unloading spice * mission ending time after objectives are completed (Seems to depend on the direction from where the reinforcements arrive, but I'm not sure. In the current movie, they come from the left.) * player & computer Death Hands Not verified: * harvester suck speed? * sand worm movement? * construction yard's production speed? * player/enemy units' facing (in guard mode) Here is a current list of things that need to be done: 1) test hex-editing single-mission movies together to see if any mission could be redone at any time (this would allow much more flexible movie production) 2) make demonstration movies for all 3 campaigns 3) find out more about the desync problem! Help is appreciated a lot! And finally... Mission ending times for Atreides: 1 - 3:17:02 by Aqfaq 2 - none yet 3 - none yet 4 - none yet 5 - none yet 6 - none yet 7 - none yet 8 - none yet 9 - none yet All - none yet Anyone can try beating these times. I think they can be regarded as the current timeattack world records. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Battle for Arrakis - Timeattack Project Status: Reinforcements needed! Estimated Production Time: 128 years

Posted: 9/14/2005 10:53 PM

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Aqfaq

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One more feature request for EME: the possibility to choose what columns to view. Getting rid of useless columns would make it easier to handle things. You know, some games don't use X, Y, Z or MODE buttons at all.

Posted: 9/9/2005 1:01 PM

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Aqfaq

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One of the best movies I've seen recently. Yeah, give this a star.

Posted: 9/1/2005 10:48 AM

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Aqfaq

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There are many strange and wonderful things that can happen when you fall off the edge of the world. I don't know much about programming, so I have no idea what exactly causes the ending to happen. If someone can give a better answer, please do.

Posted: 8/28/2005 2:20 AM

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Aqfaq

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I can't keep secrets. Here's Gods played through in 11 minutes and 7 seconds: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods-1107-demonstration.gmv I managed to do a crazy thing in the end. If you have seen the current published movie, you may want to fast forward to the final level. I think 10:41 is quite possible after some optimization. Gotta test some more... Oh, try starting a new game after the playback has stopped for some secret extra super fun! ;) EDIT: I added some screenshots for enthusiasts to enjoy. Believe me, all these images are from the actual game! http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/new_decorations.jpg http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/hearts_do_no_damage.jpg http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/abstract.jpg http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/surreal_space_shooter.jpg http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/oops,_this_is_not_gods.jpg http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/announcement.jpg Then some savestates... I guess this is some kind of a "flash" animation: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods_flashy.gs1 This is even funnier: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods_blob.gs2 This must be the immortality thing they talk about: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/immortal_gods.gs3 Here you can shoot hearts: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods_shooting_hearts.gs4 The game gets pretty chaotic because of that "crazy thing". It seems that almost anything can happen. There seems to be a huge amount of different outcomes depending on the player movement. EDIT-2: Just to let everyone know, I found a way to complete Gods under 10 minutes. :)

Posted: 8/21/2005 1:00 PM

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Aqfaq

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I already did a Genesis version of this: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2477 My vote: no

Posted: 8/19/2005 6:48 PM

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Aqfaq

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Yeah, closer to Lost Vikings than Lemmings. If only you could handle more than one human at a time... I've done 12 (of 80) levels now, but one level must be redone because the extensively used "infinite climbing" trick involves killing a human which means Game Over at level 12. I continue doing the movie when EME has copy/paste feature. Gens is my favorite emulator at the moment and there are many good games that are not timed yet.

Posted: 8/19/2005 6:35 PM

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Aqfaq

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AngerFist wrote:

You still on this? You better not pull a Aqfaq here :)

Heeey, that's not fair! I'm still working on it! Try optimizing the first two minutes of "Wonderboy in Monsterworld" yourself. I bet you'd get angry with that... :)

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