Posts for Bisqwit

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Posted: 10/30/2010 11:10 AM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
TASVideoAgent has mood-variant avatars based on Star Control III. Its set is about 3 years old (I configured it in Sep 2007). Fireballs were coded late last year (though actually installed early this year). I did indeed make them a little more common this week than they used to be; they were the sort of "did I see right?" event that Mario used to be in the rating adjuster back when submissions could be rated. But I did more. Sig VG: Pooyans
Posted: 10/29/2010 12:53 PM
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Bisqwit
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Critical five wrote:
Did I win a cookie or did that happen eons ago?
You win half a cookie.
Posted: 10/29/2010 12:23 PM
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Bisqwit
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It's obvious when you see it. Don't bother looking for it...
Posted: 10/29/2010 10:27 AM
Post subject: Changed something
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Bisqwit
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Location: Arzareth
I changed something on the site. Feel free to report related bugs in this thread. (You will need Javascript support to notice the change.)
Posted: 10/24/2010 10:59 PM
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Bisqwit
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I like the camera AI in this game. Looks like this game does not do dishonor to the franchise name.
Posted: 10/24/2010 9:35 PM
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Bisqwit
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The submission message mention of inertia making controlling more difficult is an important note in my opinion. It is not as easy as it looks.
Posted: 10/16/2010 8:06 PM
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Bisqwit
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I think MisterEpic's example at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7qChIVCNU8 has the subtitle rectangles completely masking way too much interesting content...
Posted: 10/15/2010 7:41 PM
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Bisqwit
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Delighting think-out-of-the-box optimizations in Item 1 use in Metalman stage (and probably in others).
Posted: 10/15/2010 3:34 PM
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Bisqwit
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Week numbers are evil because they differ from standard to standard. So you mean Oct. 25 to 31. During that week I'm not likely farther from Helsinki by average than I am now, probably closer even.
Posted: 10/15/2010 7:39 AM
(Edited: 10/15/2010 8:46 AM)
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Bisqwit
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RingRush wrote:
Just because Islam teachs conversion does not mean it teachs VIOLENT conversion.
Whether it does or does not is beside the point; I am not here to argue. I could argue in the Ask Bisqwit thread though, but [this] and [this] will get you started. Be sure to check the references. I just point out things that I've learned and the way anyone who is interested can learn more about these things that interest me. Whether you believe it or not; and whether you are interested or not, that is up to you. I could also point out that Scientology is a devious hoax, and that the Japanese are in vain praying to their dead relatives, and that Santa Claus is not a real person, nor did the Saint Nicolaus exist whom he is allegedly based on. And that wealth does not equal happiness. And that Emacs is better than Vi (I use neither), and that Linux is better than Windows. And Honda is better than Fiat, and that communism simply cannot work and that democracy too is wrong. And that abortion is wrong, and that the Russians are fine people, and that the only thing French in France today is their language. If people can proclaim things like "there is no God" and "man descended from monkeys" without getting in trouble, I feel that I am also entitled to my message.
Posted: 10/15/2010 5:16 AM
(Edited: 10/15/2010 9:14 AM)
Post subject: encoded
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Bisqwit
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Encoded: http://w-create.com/%7Ebisqwit/rockman2-tas-aglasscage,finalfighter,pirohiko,shinryuu-r2.mkv HD @ youtube: part 1, part 2 Link to video
Posted: 10/13/2010 11:52 AM
Post subject: Examples
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Bisqwit
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player (296)
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Location: Arzareth
And here is how I create transparent logo animations to begin with. As I have written before, logo animations are created as a set of PNG files. Each PNG file has the same resolution, that is the resolution of the movie being encoded (such as 256x224), and each file corresponds to one display frame, and (optionally) the filenames are numbered sequentially so that the name indicates which frame it is. For example, a 190-frame animation might consist of files frame000.png, frame001.png, and so on until frame189.png. I generally include the intended resolution in the animation, such as: logo_256_240_f103.png is the 104th frame of a logo sequence that is rendered at 256x240 resolution. To create the animation sequence (individual image files), I use a script of some sorts. In some cases, the script is wholly a single computer program (such as POV-Ray). In some cases, it is a bash-script that runs many tools (such as Imagemagick's composite) to superimpose actors on top of a static background image. Here are some frameworks for creating a transparent animation. 
Language: php
<?php

/* Define screen resolution */
define('W', 256);
define('H', 240);

/* This function, called once per frame, formats a filename for that frame's resulting image */
function ffn() { global $frame;
                 return sprintf('logo_%d_%d_f%03d.png', W,H,$frame); }

/* Begin rendering image frame */
function imgbegin()
{
  global $im;
  $im = ImageCreateTrueColor(W, H);
  ImageSaveAlpha($im, true);
  ImageAlphaBlending($im,false); 
  ImageFilledRectangle($im, 0,0,W,H, ImageColorAllocateAlpha($im, 0,0,0,127));
  ImageAlphaBlending($im,true);
}
/* Finish rendering image frame */
function imgdone()
{
  global $im,$frame;
  ImagePng($im, ffn()); ++$frame;
  ImageDestroy($im);
}

/* Render image frames, put your program here */
imgbegin(); render($im); imgdone();
imgbegin(); render($im); imgdone();
imgbegin(); render($im); imgdone();
imgbegin(); render($im); imgdone();
Language: shell
# Create a name for frame's image file
geto()
{
  printf 'frame%03d.png' $frame
}
run() 
{
  frame=0
  for x in `seq 256 -2 196`;do
    # Superimpose Alf into the static background image, put in output file
    composite -geometry +"$x"+93 alf.png background.png `geto` &
    frame=$[frame+1]
  done
}
Language: shell
# Run POV-Ray to create an animation, render at specified size
antialias="+a0.5"
maxframe=360
maxclock=3.0
# clock=seconds, frame=frames.
loop()
{
  x="$1"
  y="$2"
  size="+w$x +h$y"
  clock="+kfi0 +kff$maxframe +ki0 +kf$maxclock $3"

  povray $clock -D $size +ua $antialias millylogo.pov +ologo_"$x"_"$y"_f.png
}
The avatar used in this post is also created with a similar scheme.
Posted: 10/12/2010 10:55 AM
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Bisqwit
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Joined: 3/8/2004
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Location: Arzareth
L-Spiro wrote:
Everyone has posted nice things. Bisqwit are you really 32? Your ocarina video makes you look, uh, younger. Congratulations on holding your age so well while not being Asian.
Well, I was technically a year younger than that, when the video was recorded. But yeah, I often get that. Thanks.
Posted: 10/12/2010 9:06 AM
Post subject: Re: cra…ziness
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Bisqwit
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Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Fabian wrote:
Bag, to be fair, Bisqwit has been really crazy for a pretty long time
Crazy enough to establish this site! Heh. For many things ― be it an April Fools prank, a joke, a column, or an aphorism ― in my opinion, the best and most effective one is the one, that contains so much truth mixed with completely preposterous claims, that it forces you to give it the benefit of doubt. You cannot be completely sure, whether the author honestly stands behind their word, and exactly which part of it, really. And this is exactly what my statement above is about: I urge anyone to do the research. This is core to my nature so much, that of many of the things I say in general, I am not sure even myself which parts I believe. I stir things and see what it develops into. If you represent view A, I will defend view B, or vice versa, to be sure to get the best (and worst) of both worlds. Not to say that I do not have my own view ― by now it should be rather obvious what I really believe in ―; but it is just that to build and reinforce any view, I try to collect the best arguments from all sides. Which is why in the dnd system, I associate myself most with the chaotic good alignment. As for the evilness of the casino link, I think that it is a tradeoff between one evil and another evil.
Posted: 10/11/2010 9:50 AM
(Edited: 10/11/2010 11:54 AM)
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Bisqwit
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Xkeeper wrote:
So I'm honestly not seeing the reason why this site is that expensive to run.
Hosting providers are usually very stingy re: prospects of PHP configuration and database content. The exact requirements are listed on the page I posted once. To put it bluntly, it is all too easy to say "you're all idiots" when you do not need to be the one who does the things. TASVideos, the site, has been developed in the environment that worked well with my server and setup. If redesigned, you could perhaps make it work on a much cheaper hosting than it currently runs on. While probably sacrificing some existing functionality. But are you volunteering to be the one to redesign & reimplement it from scratch? It can not be that hard, considering that I have set my self to do it a few times too. Never had time, though! Plenty of great ideas, never enough time. And now I no longer care. Why? Because these are the times of Elijah, Moses, Ezekiel and David. (Look up the song!) These are the times when the wheat and the tears are being separated. Wheat, quit acting like the tears. This is a biblical metaphor for YHWH's people and pagans respectively. Gears of change are moving at so many affronts simultaneously, driven by the same spirit of deception, and these changes will bring in events described in Bible prophecies. Ongoing signs of these changes include ※the political battle regarding the division of Jerusalem (to which I like to refer to this map: http://ivarfjeld.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/palestinian-statehood-deadly-trap-set-up-for-israel/); ※muslim schemes of world conquering (did you know that there are Sharia courts in Britain? If a British woman is married to a muslim husband, and she is battered and beaten, and she goes to the police, she can end up in the Sharia court because she is registered as a muslim, where they judge her according to Islam's laws, that the husband is all within his rights to beat her wife, and that the wife was disobedient when she went to the police and must therefore be punished? Did you know that there are areas in Malmö, Sweden where Jews cannot walk safely? That there are areas in France where even the police cannot go because Muslims are praying there on streets? That Christians can be persecuted and arrested with false charges in Dearborn, Michigan, and even the mayor can make false accusations of them despite video evidence? Did you know that the Qur'an does not have the concept of "peace"; it only defines armistice? That Muslims are not allowed to make pacts with non-believers; and if they appear to do, it can only be done for the purpose of advancing the goals of Islam (which is to subjugate the entire world under Sharia law, under which Allah is proclaimed greater than any other god), and any such pact with a non-believer must be single-sidedly broken in 10 years or less? It is called a hudna. Look these up.); ※ and schemes aiming for a single world government (artificially induced financial depressions; the global warming hoax that simply is one of the devices by which wealth is sifted away from people (who can own land today? In Finland, if you are one of the few people who actually own land, you are in a very miserable position due to absolutely mad EU legislations concerning what you can grow and how exactly and where you should report on everything you grow); the H1N1 flu; legislation that seeks to strip people of any independence or self-sufficiency (farmers are only allowed to grow such types of wheat that they must always purchase new seeds every year; seeds produced by that wheat does not grow a new harvest, and they cannot use multiyear varieties); roadmap towards a global currency to replace all current currencies; increasing surveillance and tracking) ※ for instance. I believe that these are the times when YHWH is working to expose everything that can not last, and to contrast righteousness with wickedness, to make it obvious to anyone, who has eyes to see and ears to hear, what is in his truth ― Torah and Prophets ― and what is not. Which is why so many pedophile bishops are being exposed today, and which is why Israeli media is recognizing day by day more who are the friends of Israel and who are the enemies of Israel, and which is why a growing proportion of Christian believers stop going to churches, because what their heart tells them that they should have, they cannot find in the churches today, for those churches are filled with legacy from Rome and Babylon. God is calling Ephraim to come home, and hearts are being awakened. And which is why sinners become more sinful and righteous become more righteous, as the Bible predicts. As was in the days of Lot, will be the day when the Messiah comes back, said Yeshua. These are just some of the things that preoccupy me these days. Again I recommend you to tune regularly to God's Learning Channel, http://www.godslearningchannel.com/ , if you want to know what is happening in the world without the information being filtered through money-mandated motives. (You know how investors can tell you what kind of content you can publish and what kind of content you cannot? When said investors are the Saudi oil kings… Depressingly, this goes for elementary school and university curriculae in USA, too.)
Posted: 10/11/2010 8:18 AM
Post subject: Alpha-blended, superimposed logos; graphical subtitles, etc.
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Bisqwit
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[img_right]http://w-create.com/%7Ebisqwit/glc_hud1.png[/img_right]For a while now I have contemplated on trying out a new format for the subtitles. It bugs me to see such simple and raw subtitles being used on TASVideos publications. I am talking about the "<game> in <time> played by <player>; this is a tool-assisted blahblah see blahblah" standard text you see in every movie. I have been thinking of making it look better. My inspiration was my favourite TV channel, God's Learning Channel, as seen in this picture on the right. I wanted to make something similar. Also, it has been bothering me that the logo blending technique I've been using for years has still not been used by any other TASVideos encoder. By logo blending, I mean this effect where the video is already playing when the logo starts, and the video and logo are superimposed, as seen here, below (the bulk of the logo is in the process of fading out, but Milly is still fully opaque until she runs out from the screen). Other logos using the same technique are also shown (each image has a link to a sample publication where the respective logo was used). The motivation for doing partially superimposed logos is that I can have a logo that is more than 1 seconds long, without making the viewer wait for the actual content to begin, and also without masking the entire game video content for the duration of the logo. I strived to only mask things like static copyright / title screens, and even them only minimally; at least a glimpse of them can be caught while the logo is fading out, usually much more. In the standard logo (shown for Castlevania above), the TASVideos text begins to fade out at 0.8 seconds and has completely faded out by 2.8 seconds; but Milly continues running until 5.4 seconds when she exits the screen. I had also intentionally customized her running path so that she appears to run on the same surface where mr. Belmont walks. Since its inception, my logo blending technique has been implemented through terms of an emulator patch. My standard "nesvideos-piece" module reads PNG files from a specific directory, and superimposes them over the emulator's video while the video plays. However, this approach has been used by virtually nobody else than me, and emulator patching is not very convenient either. To solve the two problems simultaneously, I created a standalone program, which: -- Renders subtitles into a graphical, visually impressive format -- Reads a raw encoding (RGB24 video and raw PCM soundtrack) -- Superimposes it with a number of graphical sequences (the logo sequence and any number of graphical subtitles) -- Sends it to a dedicated encoder (by the standard "nesvideos-piece" mechanics, i.e. the same as --videolog parameter in fceux). An example of the end result of this program can be seen in my Rockman 2 encoding, available here (SD/mkv) or here (HD/youtube). It is still in alpha stage, and vital configuration (such as subtitles, video resolution, fps, and logo image locations) are still done in source code only. The source code can be acquired from the Git repository at git://bisqwit.iki.fi/hudmaker.git . I am providing it here in case someone wants to develop it further. Here is how exactly I encoded Rockman 2 (mandatory details like hudmaker configuration and filesystem paths, and optional details like remote shell and mencoder parameters, are omitted for brevity): 
Language: shell
# Set up an encoding script that simply puts audio into a raw file and video into another raw file.
VIDEO="cat s.log > 1.raw & cat > 2.raw"
# Run fceu
fceux --soundrecord /dev/null --videolog "$VIDEO" rockman2.nes --playmov rockman2.fm2
# It produced 1.raw (audio) and 2.raw (video).

# Run hudmaker
neshudmaker
# It produced audio.mp3 (audio) and tmp.avi (video).

# Produce final mkv (or, you can first use x264 to re-encode tmp.avi with optimal settings)
mkvmerge tmp.avi audio.mp3 -o encode.mkv
# It produced encode.mkv (final product).
The end result is a video encoding that has a logo and a subtitle like below: So there. I do not intend to make many more encodes for TASVideos (probably only the next Rockman movie), but I made this as a proof-of-concept one. The graphical appearance of the subtitle is not a masterpiece of art (I made it in less than an hour), but still very different from what has been used before, and more impressive.
Posted: 10/10/2010 5:06 PM
Post subject: HD-encoded.
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Bisqwit
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HD-encoded. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX9u-QCREJY Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv3Dk4kU9Jo Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX9u-QCREJY&feature=PlayList&p=95CFBA39AD4BC06C&index=0&playnext=1
Posted: 10/9/2010 10:34 PM
(Edited: 10/9/2010 11:12 PM)
Post subject: renewly encoded
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Bisqwit
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Joined: 3/8/2004
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Location: Arzareth
New encode: http://w-create.com/%7Ebisqwit/rockman2-tas-aglasscage%2Cfinalfighter%2Cpirohiko%2Cshinryuu.mkv Featuring new HUD technology. Also fixed the problem that Megaman's first appearance was completely masked in the previous encoding. git://bisqwit.iki.fi/hudmaker.git for the source code of the tool used here. Now my logo overlay/blend technology is completely stand-alone and independent of an emulator and does not require emulator patches. In theory, it could be used by anyone now. EDIT: I typoed aglasscage's name in this MKV. I'll replace it one more time. EDIT: Replaced.
Posted: 10/9/2010 11:47 AM
(Edited: 10/9/2010 10:27 PM)
Post subject: encoded
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Bisqwit
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Active player (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
EDIT: Encoded. I do not know how to put stuff into Archive.org, so I'll just link to it this way: http://w-create.com/%7Ebisqwit/rockman2-tas-aglasscage%2Cfinalfighter%2Cpirohiko%2Cshinryuu-r0.mkv (It's an MKV, and MPlayer says it is 59.4 FPS despite being encoded at 60.0988 fps, but no matter how much I tried, including both -af lavf and mkvmerge, I couldn't change the fact. I'm not sure if there is A/V desync; I may be just overly paranoid about it.)
Posted: 10/3/2010 10:15 AM
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Bisqwit
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Joined: 3/8/2004
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Ilari wrote:
The only high-profile example I recall was Bisqwit's Chrono Cross TAS (9 hours!).
Indeed it went like that. I modified* pSX to produce a continuous stream of video encoding of every frame it renders, and I added code that takes note whenever savestates are loaded / saved; when a savestate is saved or loaded, it records the current position in the video stream into a log file. When the TAS is finished, the log file can be parsed to see which sections of the video recording must be stitched together to produce the actual TAS video, where undone segments are removed. As a side effect: if no stitching is done, a recording can be retrieved of the whole TASing session with all the redo-redo-and-redoes. pSX already supported pauses, so given the possibility of frame-by-frame capture, a frame advance feature could also be implemented, but slowdown was introduced naturally by the recording process. *) Not so much modify the emulator, but rather, modify the environment it runs it so as to achieve the desired result. More details.
Posted: 10/3/2010 9:59 AM
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Bisqwit
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This was in the past, where I still believed in the concept of entertaining performance, such that arises from skillful maneuvers that lack any sign of hesitation, and in that absolutely fastest completion is not a factor. That, and the fact that I did not have competition yet, so I did not have to consider dilemmas like how to compare two submissions by different people, that came later and not without problems. Nor much experience, either.
Posted: 10/1/2010 7:12 AM
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Bisqwit
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Location: Arzareth
Nach wrote:
moozooh wrote:
And why exactly would that be needed?
Because certain features aren't enabled for users with less than 400 posts, and as a developer, she needs to be able to test these features.
You know there exists a framework that allows to add exceptions for users for exactly purposes like that without having to input and display bogus data.
Posted: 9/23/2010 9:07 PM
(Edited: 9/26/2010 6:46 PM)
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Bisqwit
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Dromiceius wrote:
It's like watching a snail traverse my back yard. Voting No.
Hey! I've watched snails traversing distances.
Posted: 9/23/2010 9:06 PM
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Bisqwit
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Location: Arzareth
pirate_sephiroth wrote:
He didn't mean it literally... floppy disks don't come with RAM memory. He meant SRAM as "Save RAM" or simply "Saved Data"... EEPROM and Flash aren't SRAM either, but we call them like that anyway.
And what I meant is that FDS saves don't come with a neat separatable unit that stores the saved data. It is written directly into the original game image, akin to a ROM patch, which modifies the original game.
Posted: 9/21/2010 12:04 PM
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Bisqwit
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Location: Arzareth
Mitjitsu wrote:
You need to complete the game 8-9 times to get the extra worlds. However, you could get round this by using SRAM.
Actually, in the FDS, no such thing as SRAM. The data is saved directly onto the floppy disk (the disk image file, which also contains the game).
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