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UnopenedClosure wrote:
Maybe I missed it somewhere in the writeup, but was there a logic behind the specific order of obtaining the Pokémon?
An invalid game corner is used to obtain the Pokemon, and the prizes correspond to values in underflowed inventory. So the Repel quantity is what is mainly used to set the right prizes, so it just goes off Pokemon from the highest index number to the smallest. Of course, the order of the indexes make no sense at all, they aren't identical to Pokedex order in Gen 1 (unlike future gens), they are probably based off when the Pokemon were added into the game (or some other arbitrary reason, idk ask Gamefreak).
Visually perhaps, but how it's technically done is nowhere alike. This movie does not setup any ACE payload (i.e., it does not setup anything that jumps to RAM), rather it just does a ton of memory manipulation (which given the currently published movie, memory manipulation is allowed for 100% categories as long as it is not arbitrary memory manipulation(/corruption)) to just setup an invalid game corner to farm Pokemon.
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feos wrote:
So while the goal of this branch is kinda iffy, I still need to ask if the route is vastly different from all the current publications of Gen2. And whether it's entertaining in and of itself.
For the route, it is fairly different. TM47 abuse has not been seen for any publication yet, and out of bounds Pokemon move swaps gain a niche use for this route too (and technically the underflowed inventory method hasn't been seen yet for a publication, but my other to be published submission shows it, so not really a point there). As for entertainment... well as I said myself, going off votes and current feedback I don't have too much hope on that side. I suppose the similarity at the beginning to my other (to be published) submission with underflowed inventory, along with it just taking a while to do things in there, and the out of bounds Pokemon move swaps end up taking over a minute (although I did try to have some sort of entertainment there by allowing "disco colors" to shine occasionally, but eh, probably doesn't help too much).
Really the goal of this submission is to have any sort of "low glitch" branch present for Gen 2. The issue here it's hard to define. Coin Case shows that 2 game end glitch branches cannot co-exist with each other (although I guess that calls into question Gen 1, which side note that GEG does skip the final boss, that movie publication is just missing that tag). A solution could be just "don't game end glitch" but if having 2 save glitch branches present is an issue, well there isn't too much that's actually possible. It is possible to beat Gen 2 without any save corruption nor game end glitches (and faster than glitchless), but it's really dumb either way and either are arguably save glitches (save shenanigans rather than save corruption). One would be Gold/Silver, where it's nearly identical to glitchless until after the Hall of Fame, which case the game screws up initializing the save when the HoF save is the first save so you just get free glitch mons by depositing/withdrawing Pokemon, which then it's quite literally just glitch past Mt Silver guard then beat Red. Then there is Crystal, which mostly ends up being "beat first 3 gyms, go to Battle Tower, win a round, quick save+reset, start new game with same TID as first time, save before starter, then beat the first 3 gyms again and go to the Battle Tower, the game fucks up saving when you have the same TID as last run so Battle Tower is fucked then you can go get a free glitch mon by getting the Odd Egg." oh and then JPN Gold/Silver quite literally can satisfy both no save glitches and no game end glitch due to a bugged Bug Catching Contest, which would a little over the length of a Coin Case TAS ironically lol
Anyways I imagine any hope I have for a "low glitch" TAS is probably dead anyways, and I wouldn't be surprised if this movie is rejected due to entertainment.
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Amazing work! This is quite an amazing TAS, has everything Pokemon has to offer: catching Pokemon combined with absurd luck manipulation, and post game content not yet seen for TASes. Yes vote!
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GMP wrote:
Oh, from what I understand it is actually far easier for eien to make a TAS in SDLPoP, he painstakingly copied the inputs to JPC-RR only because it was the only emulator relevant to this game that was listed as acceptable in the site guidelines.
If you can get it working with libTAS, that should be acceptable as a Linux submission.
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Acumenium wrote:
I think the issue with save corruption vs. Coin Case is that both cases are either ACE directly to win the game, or a glitch powerful enough to cause ACE but not actually using it for ACE and still winning the game with it. The difference between using arbitrary code execution to pull the credits or using the same glitch capable of arbitrary code execution to put you in front of Red and automatically win is almost nothing.
"glitch powerful enough to cause ACE" in this context doesn't really make sense. "save glitch" (or really just save corruption) is more a kind of glitch rather than a specific glitch itself. Save corruption could yield from "oh no save won't load because it's corrupted" or "oh corrupted some save memory and the game can apparently load it". That is like saying any kind of memory corruption glitch is powerful enough to cause ACE. Some cases yes, others no.
Also the Coin Case is always just ACE so I don't see the point in including that there.
Acumenium wrote:
I think the Gen 1 TASes highlight an interesting non-ACE glitch (IIRC the $F8FF glitch cannot execute arbitrary code) to win the game in record time.
$F8FF is literally an address in echo RAM, jumping there is by definition ACE.
Acumenium wrote:
So... I do agree with you that "game end glitch" is too unhelpful of a description. Delineating ACE from non-ACE with it seem silly when both will be "game end glitches".
My point was this movie avoids a game end glitch so it can be separate from the game end glitch TASes?
Acumenium wrote:
Wouldn't Patashu's problem be solved by only using glitches for the extra 26/27 (if counting Mew) Pokemon that can't be obtained via any means by playing the game? I don't think LWAing or any other Pokemon obtaining glitch is something anyone will argue with against if it's for Pokemon that literally cannot be obtained otherwise.
Alternatively, would completing the Pokedex as much as possible within one cart and without glitches (124 for Red/Blue, 129 for Yellow) be a category that can be explored? It was brought up once before Lucky's glitched CEA run but the only response to it (other than Patachu's question) seemed negative.
1. That's just 124 glitchless CEA before you proceed to do part of the glitched CEA. Which seems to be just some weird "glitchless until you are forced glitched"
2. To be honest, I don't really see too much of a point of a 124 TAS when we have Diploma already. If you want a glitchless CEA TAS, you might as well do it fully with 2 players.
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GoddessMaria wrote:
If I may ask, what is the purpose of this particular movie when the other movie that you have also submitted would be more in line as an improvement to the current movie of the branch? "Game End Glitch" already obsoleted the "Save Glitch" category prior to these submissions.
If the aim is to make "Save Glitch" for Gold have its own branch, I'd like for you to please explain why it should be the case over what we currently have. Given that it was already obsoleted by Crystal's "Save Glitch" prior to "Game End Glitch".
Crystal's "save glitch" is in essence still just a "game end glitch". And when the original Crystal "save glitch" TAS was published, it did not obsolete the "Coin Case" TAS (which is also just a "game end glitch"), that got a separate category, and instead obsoleted the original Gold "save glitch" TAS (which note was obsoleted by Coin Case at the time). That was until my own Coin Case submission, which was rejected due to, again, both "save glitch" and "Coin Case" just being game end glitch TASes and Wint's Coin Case TAS was moved to be obsoleted by the save glitch chain (along with Coin Case not being entertaining enough.
The original Gold "save glitch" TAS I am saying should be a separate branch along with this movie (to obsolete it), as these 2 movies do not do any game end glitching, while all the other glitched movies just do a game end glitch (and the other glitched movies should all be re-named to "game end glitch").
of course this is going to fail anyways, since going off the ratings and feedback, this movie does not really seem to entertaining enough anyways, so even if the goal is sound the audience fucks me over anyways lolAcumenium wrote:
Isn't this just the standard save corruption run but with extra steps? I'm failing to see how it actually differs from the published Crystal run.
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Patashu wrote:
Similarly, I'd love to see an obsoletion in this vein (preserving the spirit rather than the rules of the category) for another pokemon classic cut down in its prime, [2653] GB Pokémon: Red Version "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" by MrWint in 1:54:56.62. I don't know what specific ruleset the RTA equivalent to the category uses to avoid devolving into one-god-glitch but it managed to remain exremely cool ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3myc23dd1_Q ) so maybe there's hope for TASes too?
The ruleset the main CEA leaderboard uses primarily stops "one-god-glitch" by banning "mass farming glitches". What's a mass farming glitch and how does it different from a non-mass farming glitch? It's extremely subjective, in effect it is basically "farming glitches which make run boring are banned, farming glitches which do not make run boring are allowed." I'm not too sure how much footing such a category can have on TASVideos considering this flimsy rule.
That's a bizarre ruling considering we have plenty of runs with entirely subjective and abstract goals that tank entertainment hard, even for games "hard to get a video published for".
Obtaining all Pokemon is not arbitrary like only pressing a button a certain number of times or refusing to even press it at all. It's a very clear-cut goal, even more than an actual speedrun is.
It shouldn't matter how "entertaining" it is to complete said goal. Some Mega Man and most Sonic speedruns aren't even watchable due to it just being a jerky camera speeding through a level but get accepted. ACE runs where a game is completed in mere seconds get accepted despite not being entertaining on any level (like the SMB3 one).
It completes a goal, which is something actually concrete and non-arbitrary.
1. This movie avoids using any ACE exploits, along with other "holy grail" glitches which would end up turning into a "game end glitch". Also implicitly implied is that this branch would avoid any game end glitches outright, even if they aren't sourced from ACE/ARE/AMC (although given Gen 2, that's extremely hard to do anyways since just "go to credits" does not count as a proper ending, you need to actually "beat Red" and trigger the credits there for the "proper" ending). Also, Crystal? All the Crystal glitched movies are obsoleted, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
2. You missed the point. "Catch 'em All" is perfectly publishable, and is even vaultable due to it being "full completion". Of course, since it can be vaulted, the entertainment is able to be severely tanked due to the use of mass farming glitches. Patashu was asking for a CEA run that does not tank entertainment, and to do so, you have to avoid the use of mass-farming glitches. The problem here is "mass-farming glitches" are hard to actually define. What farming glitches count as "mass-farming" and not? RTA's answer: boring = mass-farming, not boring = not mass-farming. So it ends up being entirely subjective.
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Game: Castlevania The Adventure (JPN, GB)
Emulator: BizHawk; Gambatte in GBA mode
Console Verification Device: Gameboy Player with GBI
Movie: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/71190069389254177 (Note, needs dev build to sync, see https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk/pull/2665 for the related change)
Timestamps: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/799578989965737994/838286788807884810/cva.txt
Description of Desync: https://youtu.be/iurOwdqTwvc
Research: This game seems to be really finicky when it comes to input boundaries; I ended up making the timestamps lua respond based off of writes to 0xFF00, which seems to be the best regarding getting the input timing right for timestamps. However, this still resulted in a desync a bit later on as seen in the linked video. On another note, this game does not respond the same on Gambatte w/ ELF as GBHawk, indicating an accuracy difference causing different timing between the two.
Possible Next Steps: ?
Status: Open
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I've attempted a console verification of this TAS, but unfortunately it seems to desync on the first level. Looking at how the game polls inputs, it's all over the place with when in the frame it polls an input, so this is potentially a script issue rather than an actual emulation issue. Still, I'm not too sure, all I have tried still resulted in desyncs, so some hybrid model would probably need to be used to adjust the timing according to when the poll happens (under current Gambatte this isn't exactly possible, mostly due to https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk/issues/2710 so some hacky solution is possibly needed). Although, if it's an emulation issue, then syncing this to console is probably going to be RIP for a while.
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Spikestuff wrote:
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
If it means anything towards this, this movie beats the KC ver TAS by IGT.
Interestingly enough the IGT actually clocks down faster on the KC version.
Taking a guess the KC version uses the same code, that's probably just a side-effect of double speed mode. Although I guess it could be argued that double speed mode gives half the lag and therefore it cancels out although probably not actually right so eh who cares lol
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Pokota wrote:
What we're primarily looking for are gameplay improvements that aren't related to lag management.
If it means anything towards this, this movie beats the KC ver TAS by IGT. Looking at the comparison video, the improvements are easy to see.
Also on the topic of the comparison video, at 4:39 aruk seems to despawn an eyeball while this movie does not. Is there a particular reason why it wasn't despawned?
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/70778271449044110
I've improved the movie by 13 seconds with a better bootstrap. I also swapped games over to Gold as it had better default names and I no longer needed to do any RNG manipulation, so the advantage Silver had is now gone.
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Snodeca wrote:
I'm sure that, if you try hard enough, it is possible to play Pokémon Gen 1 without glitches. However it is TAS only thanks to the badge boost glitch and needing to avoid critical hits. Beyond that, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
You realize there are a ton of straight up unavoidable "glitches" right. Heck, look at Yellow, the starter Pikachu encounter in the beginning is glitched, there is no way around that.
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feos wrote:
I tried comparing the 2 video dumps, and it's a nightmare to figure out actual frame numbers that come from VBA, because it dumps the same frame several times on screen transitions and possibly in other situations.
The "frame counter" in VBA is a vblank counter, which doesn't tick during times the LCD is disabled (i.e. screen transitions) since vblank can't happen when the LCD is disabled (and the LCD can be disabled for an arbitrary amount of time). VBA's video dumper doesn't go off this "frame counter" so during "frames" when the LCD is disabled, VBA will actually dump them.
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Patashu wrote:
Similarly, I'd love to see an obsoletion in this vein (preserving the spirit rather than the rules of the category) for another pokemon classic cut down in its prime, [2653] GB Pokémon: Red Version "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" by MrWint in 1:54:56.62. I don't know what specific ruleset the RTA equivalent to the category uses to avoid devolving into one-god-glitch but it managed to remain exremely cool ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3myc23dd1_Q ) so maybe there's hope for TASes too?
The ruleset the main CEA leaderboard uses primarily stops "one-god-glitch" by banning "mass farming glitches". What's a mass farming glitch and how does it different from a non-mass farming glitch? It's extremely subjective, in effect it is basically "farming glitches which make run boring are banned, farming glitches which do not make run boring are allowed." I'm not too sure how much footing such a category can have on TASVideos considering this flimsy rule.
It can't become a new category if it's the same category in every sense. There's a hacky workaround that involves reverse-obsoletion of newer run by older. Is there a forum post explaining why it's invalid?
It's essentially the same reason this movie is invalid: http://tasvideos.org/2749M.html Shitty emulation of stop opcode = lel
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I have mostly the same thoughts as Tikevin. The movie is pretty well done, and even the autoscrollers have significant work for entertainment. It does get somewhat old, but it still kept my attention throughout the movie. Overall, I have to give it a Yes vote.
