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Just want to correct a few things.
Samsara wrote:
2. CCG messes around on the PC to manipulate EGG. Glitchless gets EGG first, then puts EGG in PC. In essence, both runs do things re: EGG on the PC, which evens out in time.
The reason CCG uses the PC before getting the egg has nothing to do with manipulating its DVs. It's actually just simply because of movement. For glitchless, the scientist is talked to on the left, with a turnframe. This saves a net 8 frames overall, since talking to the scientist on the bottom will cause him to take an extra step (16 frames), which is more than the 8 frame timeloss from the player doing a turnframe to talk to the scientist. Glitchless has to talk to the scientist before going to the PC, since glitchless wants to deposit the egg. CCG just doesn't need to do so immediately, since it's just using the PC to write a payload in, and doesn't want to deposit the egg. As such, it can talk to the scientist on the right after using the PC, which saves a net 16 frames over talking to the scientist on the left before using the PC, since it saves 2 turnframes (the turnframes saved are the 1 turnframe from talking to the scientist on the left and 1 turnframe to go to the PC after talking to the scientist, talking to the right doesn't need a turnframe, and since we're leaving after talking to a scientist, we don't need to use a turnframe to go in the right direction, since the cutscene faces us towards the door in the end).
Samsara wrote:
CCG goes straight to Game Corner).
CCG goes to Goldenrod Underground, not the Game Corner :P
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feos wrote:
the primary techniques showcased that make these runs this short are now basically the same.
Just want to note something about save corruption. If a TAS decides to use save corruption, but also forgo ACE (and ARE/AMC), then you would actually still end up getting a run faster than Coin Case. Hell, ban checksum collision and save corruption is still faster by a land slide. Save corruption is that powerful.
(this is mostly based off the fact the current RTA WR for Gold No ACE is 32:45. A TAS would easily cut that down below 30 minutes. And of course that's without checksum collision. Slap in checksum collision and it would probably be under 15 minutes, probably around 12 minutes)
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feos wrote:
Someone probably needs to do a search through all movie branches on the site to tell if any other game has had "save glitch" alongside some other major skip glitch like "game end glitch".
Not only G/S exclusive, but also English G/S exclusive. So bonus points for forced entertainment.
Also, for Crystal NSC glitches... there really aren't any. The current RTA route for NSC is potentially also under the "save glitch" branch. While it doesn't corrupt the save per se, it still abuses a glitch within the saving system (tl;dr Battle Tower has a quicksave, the game uses the Trainer ID to identify if the save is the correct save, manipulate the same Trainer ID for a new game, and go back to the battle tower, and yes that means do the first 3 gyms a second time, and battle tower ends up loading data from the quicksave, which goes horribly wrong).
For something that wouldn't be save glitch at all... the only thing I can think of is *maybe* the Sandstorm/Spikes glitch... which as the name implies, requires both of those moves. Which the fastest way to obtain them would be... a level 36 Onix, and for Spikes, a Qwilfish fish up with an Old Rod on Route 32 during a Swarm... right. Which then once you set it up, you would barely save any time over glitchless. Oh, also any autoheals would mean you'd have to redo the glitch, so haha lol.
tl;dr Crystal doesn't get squat without save corruption.
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Samsara wrote:
barring a revelation that something only works on an emulator, and given your dedication to console verifying these runs, I don't even see that happening
Well, that does bring an interesting point. While No Save Corruption runs easily console verify, Save Corruption does not. The issue is primarily just due to the fact that we cannot programmatically hard reset a GBP. So far, for gen 1 save corruption TASes, verification has done either 2 things: 1. a human does the reset (reasonable for gen 1, it's a 4 frame window), or 2. the expected save data is flashed onto the cartridge. For 1, my submission has the reset window at a whopping ~60μs (gifvex's is worse, with only ~10μs to work with). So yeah, that throws human resets out of the question. For 2, while that works easily for Gen 1, the same can't be said for Gen 2, due to the presence of RTC in the cartridge. This could easily lead to some input boundary issue, an extra lag frame appearing, and of course, if any RNG is involved, it will certainly desync (this isn't too much a concern, but important in case some future movie has RNG elements later). Along for my submission, the proper VRAM timing is needed for Type D1 map corruption, which can possibly also be screwed over by RTC. Not to mention the inherit shakiness of such a "verification" since it's still making the assumption that's the data that would result if we timed the precise reset correctly. As it really stands, the save corruption runs should work in principle, but at the moment we can't do a true console verification, and the more shaky methods still have a good chance to desync just due to RTC.
None of this applies to Coin Case since it doesn't need a reset, so it can usually just sync right away (barring some cart that has some extreme clock drift, even then the run is 30 minutes long so clock drift is very unlikely to happen in the first place).
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ScHlAuChi wrote:
I`m not sure it works without death, becasue you need at least one enemy to be low enough so you can jump on it.
Enemies tend to fly around the same height as the player, so in order to get them to go lower, the player needs go lower too. But maybe crouching works?
I did experiment abit with the speeder to follow me into the pit and see if it can be used as a jump pad, but it didnt really work,
as getting it into the pit was taking too long and jumping off it was less reliable than the death method.
You're probably right. I did some experimentation and yeah the enemies actually do appear to have some path finding. I was able to get the enemy to appear further in the pit, but it just flies too high. Death is probably the best method
I also want to see if possibly the weapon upgrade could be skipped in favor of just managing weapons smarter.
ScHlAuChi wrote:
I`m pretty sure that the few frames saved there wont be worth it, becasue later in the game the bosses (as can be seen in my original run) take way way longer to kill without such upgrades.
So you probably make that time back multiple times. Each weapon has a total of 2 UpgradeLevels, so for an ideal run
you want to have the Standard weapon at UL2
Why upgrade the standard weapon? Why not upgrade the laser rifle and just manage ammo smartly. The standard weapon can just be used to mow down most enemies with the laser rifle just used for bosses/enemies the standard weapon doesn't destroy fast enough.
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ScHlAuChi wrote:
There is some big potential in this area to skip the long way around. I did some experimentation, but I dont know if it is actually faster, due to the death anim taking so long - but it is still worth exploring:
I do not believe a death would be needed. Some luck manipulation would be needed, but I think it might be possible to get the enemies to fly around there? Although regardless, that would be much faster than the long way around.
ScHlAuChi wrote:
At 2:50 you jump to the right, is that so you can avoid damage?
You can just walk off that plattform and land on the lower one without taking damage, as can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/GER6szPPp6A?t=655
Maybe thats faster?
That's probably faster, I probably wasn't doing it because enemies were in the way (in hindsight I should of killed some of them when I had the shield).
ScHlAuChi wrote:
I want to explore the Laser Rifle in the box and see if it warrants the time it takes to pick it up). Also, the menuing in this submission is sloppy as hell (menuing being the keypads and cutscenes mostly). Those parts at the very least should of really been done in TAStudio.
I am pretty sure the laser rifle will be worth it in the long run due to the higher damage output especially against bossts.
I also believe this would improve 3:22 of my run, assuming the turret is taken out with 1 shot with the laser rifle, this should mean the player doesn't need to take a hit from it. I also want to see if possibly the weapon upgrade could be skipped in favor of just managing weapons smarter.
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So I did Level 1 of this game, and was able to improve it by 268 frames. A lot was just optimizing movement, in particular, stopping less to shoot enemies, occasionally with some luck manipulation. I also decided to grab the first door card before flipping the switch (this lets me kill some enemies in the way that I would have to go through anyways to flip the switch, enemies that simply won't die fast enough and would force the player to take damage if they were taken head on, so best soften them up). I believe this can be further improved (in particular, I want to explore the Laser Rifle in the box and see if it warrants the time it takes to pick it up). Also, the menuing in this submission is sloppy as hell (menuing being the keypads and cutscenes mostly). Those parts at the very least should of really been done in TAStudio.
encode: https://youtu.be/_0uaoteVRgM
bk2: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/65022029841809440
Also, somewhat unrelated, but in making this TAS, I discovered a glitch that essentially locked the game in an infinite loop. For context on this glitch, when the game loads something (cutscenes, new area, etc), there is 1 non-lag frame within the score of lag frames, and pressing buttons on that frame can affect the player when the thing is loaded. For the glitch itself, on the commander cutscene, I pressed Start on that 1 non-lag frame. FOR WHATEVER REASON, THIS LOCKS THE GAME IN AN INFINITE LOOP! Maybe this could become some GEG, but I don't really understand whatever ASM the Genesis uses so I wouldn't know how to really do it.
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Samsara wrote:
the simple fact that CCG was intentionally kept alive and reclassified as a separate category to save glitch makes it difficult to be absolutely certain one way or the other.
As I've noted in my rant argument, this classification parallels Gen 1: game end glitch effectively being No Save Corruption (and paralleling Coin Case glitch) and Red's save glitch (well, "SRAM glitch") being a separate branch (which can be seen as a parallel to Crystal's save glitch). I suppose when you look at it in that perspective, this re-classification makes somewhat more sense.
Samsara wrote:
This really needs more feedback, especially with the Crystal improvement also on the workbench, as I don't think either run can be properly judged until we reach a definite conclusion.
Crystal is practically accepted, we're just waiting for 2.4.3/2.5 to roll around and for cycle counts to be actually used for timing on SubGBHawk movies :P
There appears to be no duplicates in this "list" and as I've corrected on my original post, this list is re-randomized upon entering Time Trial 64 times (don't ask how I got 133 lol). So in essence the game will go through each unique puzzle before it re-randomizes the list. (again of course, the game does not care if all are completed, giving up goes to the next puzzle on the list)
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
That's not what I mean. Of course GB games don't use double speed mode (unless you force them to do so with some heavy glitching or ACE), but GBC games do change CPU speed at arbitrary times, so we need the SubGBHawk core to count half cycles during normal speed, and counting full cycles during double speed, just like Gambatte does. This is the only way to have a CycleCount value that reflects the exact movie length.
"force them"
You can't. If the header says it's DMG only (like Pokemon Red/Blue does), the BIOS will boot into a pseudo DMG mode, and one of the things this mode does is make it so you cannot write to rKEY, which is needed to switch to double speed mode, and thus the stop opcode used for the switch will hang the system. (of course, if the header says DMG+GBC, it isn't locked out provided you're booting on a GBC).
Ok minor rant aside, my point was that this shouldn't matter for this movie's CycleCount at all :P
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
Changing to double speed mode does not effect the cycle counts. It still counts in single speed ( 4 MHz) increments.
This is also no good. I just run some tests with both Gambatte and SubGBHawk, with both a GB game and a GBC game that uses double speed. We need SubGBHawk to count half CPU cycles during normal speed mode, otherwise the value of the cycle count will be unusable for calculating the exact length of movies, especially because the engine of GBC games may change CPU speed at arbitrary moments, so we need the counting to scale with that, just like Gambatte does.
GB Game that uses double speed mode? I assume you mean a game with DMG+GBC on the header, considering games with only DMG on the header (like Pokemon Red/Blue) cannot enter double speed mode (nor are they able to use other GBC only features like extended RAM).
In any case, this should probably be moved to the GBHawk thread, as this isn't applicable for this submission.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
EDIT: There is a potential consideration regarding if the game tracks completion of the Time Trial puzzles:
If all 64 unique TT puzzles must be completed before any are repeated, then it's likely tracked internally even if there's no indicator to the player that it's tracked.
From my poking around, it seems like it does not track puzzles completed. The internal counter just goes up every time you go into the Time Trial puzzle. The game does not care if you actually complete the puzzle or not. ie if you give up right away, it will give you the next puzzle on the list when you go back to the time trial (and it will not re-randomize the list until you enter Time Trial 134 times EDIT: this is wrong, it's 64 times).
Also just want to say (again), the "randomization" relies solely on what should be (what should be) non-deterministic data, both uninitialized SRAM and WRAM are used to create the "random" list (cough cough DK94 cough cough). Since Gambatte just FF's the entirety of uninitialized RAM, you will end up with a constant list 100% of the time. The fact that Sameboy got a different puzzle is simply because it does not have the same behavior regarding uninitialized RAM like Gambatte (SRAM is FF'd but WRAM is 00'd).
(tl;dr the list isn't really random just due to how emulators treat uninitialized RAM, for the purposes of a TAS, it shouldn't be considered random)
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Memory wrote:
Is the save glitch possible on gold/silver?
Well, there's literally a Gold movie in the save glitch obsoletion chain, although that was much slower due to much less knowledge at the time. If we're paying attention to my Crystal submission, the answer is yes, and no. It's fairly complicated, since the current save glitch movie abuses much more than save corruption. I'll go over the list of things it abuses.
Save Corruption/Checksum Collision (the main part that makes it "save glitch"): Yes, they use identical saving systems and the checksum uses the same concept.
Type D1 Map Corruption: Well, move 0x00 has type d0 in g/s technically, but still, I haven't seen a case where it actually corrupted the map. This is useless anyways because of the next glitch abused:
Map 0xFF00 Corruption: Map 0xFF00 is NOT friendly in G/S, it will always result in a crash, unlike Crystal where it doesn't crash, but rather causes giga corruption (without crashing!) that ends up being helpful for setting up ACE.
The actual ACE exploit: I'll be looking at gifvex's Crystal save glitch movie first for this. That movie used 0x1500 ACE. That ACE is exclusive to Crystal, and cannot be done in G/S. G/S does have somewhat of a parallel however, type d0 can cause ACE, but the entrypoint is like the Coin Case too, requiring at the very least 3 Pokemon.
Now looking into my submission, it uses a wrong pocket TM to achieve ACE (specifically TM22), this ACE exploit is actually shared between all Gen 2 games with this exact TM...
Well, it goes to wCurItem on all versions, which does end up getting slightly more complicated to create a bootstrap to the temp mail buffer (the simple dec h jp hl won't work here, not to mention we don't get nice corruption from map 0xFF00 so we would essentially have to create each item needed with bag structure manipulation). Which leads to the main issue with G/S, the location of the temp mail buffer leaves me no way to modify it to plant joypad inputs... yeah. Well, I do have a theoretical way to do so but it would end up doubling the size of the joypad payload just due to the fact that hl cannot be touched, and unsure on some specifics on it (which actually dictate on whether it's possible to do in the first place). Not to mention it would less entertaining since you don't get to see giga corruption or giga fucked bag, just a bunch of ? and tossing them, and very possible it might be slower than Crystal overall.
tl;dr yes but it's likely slower than Crystal, and if not, it would be more boring than Crystal (both of which is why I don't want to pursue making such a movie).
Now, to answer the opposite (just in case this is brought up), can a Crystal movie do the game end glitch (ie Coin Case's effective branch)? Yes! Well, not the Coin Case specifically, but it does have 1 glitch that can be done without save corruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5-ITad-oec
Well, it uses save shenanigans instead, which might fall under "save glitch" (it's not save corruption however). So possibly it's actually a no, but in any case Crystal will be slower than G/S if you forgo save corruption (and by contrast, G/S is likely slower than Crystal if you use save corruption).
EDIT: In case another point wasn't clear, save glitch on G/S, while likely slower than Crystal, would definitely be faster than game end glitch (ie Coin Case). Of course, that leaves save glitch in a pickle since G/S would be likely be unable to actually have any movie published in that branch since Crystal would obsolete it.
And now let's get into the main issue this goes into. The submission's feedback has been mostly positive, just not *overwelming* positive like you would see on most Pokemon movies. Say this means that this movie is not eligible for Moons (you could argue both ways imo, but let's look into this scenario). If it's not, then it would have to be rejected since the save glitch branch completes the game faster than the Coin Case branch.
Then, I guess you into why this submission was not overwhelmingly positive. I haven't seen any actual specifics into why this is less entertaining than MrWint's movie. I believe it's more people do not care as much for Coin Case TASes nowadays (they were popping up in 2014, this is 2020). So, say this is the case, wouldn't that mean MrWint's Coin Case should be de-Mooned? If so, then it would be forced into the save glitch's obsoletion chain, due to Vault only having the fastest completion, and save glitch being faster than the Coin Case (I guess I semi-win this way since my Crystal save glitch submission obsoletes MrWint's Coin Case lol).
Now say, regardless, it is accepted. I could argue this is still acceptable, as the feedback that was there was still fairly positive, and there have been several cases of movies being accepted to Moons by the virtue of obsoleting another Moon, despite minimal (but positive) feedback. I guess in this case, that leaves Crystal able to obsolete this chain if some faster game end glitch is discovered, but really, it would likely just stay as Coin Case, with G/S likely staying the faster version w/o save corruption.
(yes I'm also aware that most of this was rambling :c)
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Jigwally wrote:
Newest version:
Spikestuff pointed out to me that you can do a soft reset to the title at two points (between Easy/Kinoko Picross and between Star Picross/Time Trial) because reloading the save is faster than going through the text message. However when I tried doing this, I had to readjust input for a bunch of new laggy levels, and in fact there were so many laggy levels that I ended up losing time vs my non-reset version. So for now I have only added the single reset right before Time Trial mode..
So would a hard reset on Easy/Kinoko save time or does lag screw that over too? iirc there was less lag with a hard reset for over a soft reset, but I didn't look into it that much.
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Spotty optimization aside, I think abusing this hack exclusive bug was a bad idea in the first place. You end up with a majority of levels just zipped to the end at the beginning, leaving a fairly boring TAS. Especially considering this is a hack, which is not eligible for Vault.
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EZGames69 wrote:
I am wondering if this category was considered fastest completion at the time Mr. Wint submitted that run. I am not sure if it's entertaining enough to be it's own thing so I am not sure how I feel about it.
At the time it was the fastest completion, although when save glitch stuff came around, Coin Case was separated from it. You could parallel this to RBY's game end glitch and save glitch, the former forgoing save corruption, which I somewhat highlighted with this part of the submission:
Forgoes save data corruption
Of course, save data corruption would easily be faster than this (either forgoing the Coin Case or combining save glitch with the Coin Case, the latter obviously being slower than the former but still faster than this submission, if that makes sense).
In any case, I'm wondering why this isn't as entertaining as the previous movie, are party swaps or Slowpoke actually that entertaining to make a difference? Or is Toto somehow more entertaining? (which wouldn't make much sense when Cynda requires much more luck manipulation to work, which is somewhat noticeable imo)
