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Jigwally wrote:
I'm not sure how the random puzzle selection for Time Trial mode works (it is not simply a matter of delaying frames) but it might be possible to manipulate a slightly faster puzzle than the one I used (Koopa Troopas).
I decided to look into it and discovered the following:
* The game will make a random list of indexes of the different puzzles you will do in time trial.
* This list is generated on initializing the save data.
* Save data is initialized before you can do any inputs.
* What data was in the save before hand will affect the resulting puzzle (Bizhawk FF's it so it's consistent, but console would have to flash the save on).
* What data is in WRAM on bootup (ie uninitialized memory) will affect the resulting puzzle. Sameboy appears to just put 00 for uninitialized WRAM, and Gambatte appears to FF it (which results in different puzzles).
* Can't do anything to influence the random list you get. You get what you get.
* You could give up on the time trial then redo it to get a different puzzle (ie the next one on the list), but again that different puzzle will be set and the time it takes to do this makes it not worth it.
* Any chance at console verifying time trial is essentially fucked (since uninitialized WRAM on console is overall non-deterministic, might be possible to do some witchcraft to console sync but lol gl on that).
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Jigwally wrote:
Some levels are laggy (1 lag of frame every time I chisel) for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.
I'm going to take a wild guess that this is mostly because you did this on the SGB instead of the GB/C, which just booting the game up I can tell the SGB is has much more lag than the GB/C.
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Oops, seems like the 12 cycle improvement was actually a 24 cycle improvement. I forgot to account that Gambatte's cycles are in double speed mode while GBHawk uses single speed mode cycles. Updated movie file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64667814141526578
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Not to sound impatient at all, but I've noted that my TAS here was submitted nearly 2 months ago, and there's been no activity on this thread for over a month. What's been going on?
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DJ Incendration wrote:
Why weren't the runs console verifyable before? Either way, nice work on all of the Gen 1/2 TASes. I can't wait until they're all submitted and published. Red SC/Gold Coin Case/Silver glitchless are submitted, but there's just one left maybe. Can't wait to see! (I'm saying that for everyone else.)
The previous TAS was made in 2014. No emulator had accurate RNG until 2017 lol
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Thank you, Alyosha.
Edit: so, the current movie length is 1:15.695004, which rounded is 1:15.70. Now we just need to save 20 cycles to bring it down to 1:15.69!
There's pretty much no other way to save cycles at this point, not unless there is some new strat or new menu tech found out (the former being an entire re-work of the TAS and the latter is probably not possible by this point). Oh well
EDIT: Also, the movie file hasn't been updated, someone please update it. For reference it is this movie file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64414945217780527
EDIT2: Nvm, ↓
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DJ Incendration wrote:
So for that line in Red version means: Hold the dpad input during frames 0-11, release it frame 12, hold dpad input again starting from frame 97 and hold it until the end of the bootrom, right? I'm just making sure because I'm finding it hard to understand, still.
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DJ Incendration wrote:
title2 means waiting for Charmander to be scrolled to the next pokemon
This isn't an RTA list. The numbers for gfskip, hop, title, and newgame all represent the amount of frames of delay used in each section. Waiting for the next mon to be scrolled would take way too much time (really, any strat that takes more than 20 frames is not viable for a TAS).
For the pal strats, they are mostly the same entrpntr as explained earlier in this thread:
entrpntr wrote:
(1) no inputs in bootrom (this is nopal)
(2) "tapping a palette" (press and release) at first possible input window in the bootrom (this is pal)
(3) pressing/holding one of A/B/Start/Select in the bootrom (this is nopal(ab))
(4) "holding a palette" through the bootrom (this is pal(hold))
(5) Hold the dpad input through the bootrom, add A or B as a held input starting sometime between frames 70-85 and hold it until the end of the bootrom (this is pal(ab))
(6) Hold the dpad input during frames 0-11, release it frame 12, hold dpad input again starting from frames 70-85 and hold it until the end of the bootrom (this is pal(rel))
But now the pal strats have numbers in front of them. They are just the amount of frames that you delay the BIOS end (multiplied by 2, since the BIOS only accepts inputs every 2 frames and such only delays every 2 frames). To do this, you simply do the strat, but the last palette swap is done on frame (87 + 2x) where x is the number on the pal strat. So pal1 changes their pal on frame 89, 2 changes on 91, etc etc. Then there are the "funky" strats, which I've found on my own. Simply, they are like strats that delay the BIOS end, but you double change the palettes. So say on pal2funky, you change the pal on frame 89, and again on 91. Although only pal and pal(hold) have unique RNG this way, pal(ab) and pal(rel) ends up duplicating it. Hope this explains them all.
(also, the frames are on Gambatte with EFL off)
(also, as another note, the cost will be higher on Blue, since it will be taking into account the title screen being 7 frames slower than Red).
I'm sorry, what? The Header.txt reports a CycleCount value of 317487861, while emu.totalexecutedcycles() gives me 126147684. Something's wrong there.
Edit: Oh, and on a recent devbuild (#498ba66) emu.totalexecutedcycles() also gives me 126147684.
317487861 is correct, and gives a time of 1:15.6950047016 (317487861/4194304=75.6950047016). Also note that GBHawk internally counts single speed cycles, while Gambatte internally counts double speed cycles, so GBHawk will have double the cycles Gambatte would have.
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So putting this here just as a little note. I found newer BIOS strats and they increased the search range a bit, but they didn't actually find a better TID manip. A shame, but perhaps these new BIOS strats can be put to use in some other TAS. I have them up on my repo if anyone is curious about them.
Oh yep, that's an improvement all right.
Which I've just found another "improvement." Simply, using pal on the GBC is a few cycles faster than the GBA. So for the second bootup, just use GBC pal. And for the RNG I can just use GBC's pal(rel), since that's identical to GBA's pal.
EDIT: Oh I also reduced the cycle counts on some inputs, all this put together ends up with 1:15.6950047016
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64414945217780527
Can someone add this movie file to the submission, I've added aloysha as a co-author.
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Alyosha wrote:
What problems are you having with SubGBHawk? It doesn't make sense to optimize for cycles without optimizing the reset, that's where most of the savings are. For example here is a movie that hits reset at cycle
191340171 as opposed to this submission that hits at 191349960.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64408496504648552
Basically just keep reducing the number on the cycle input on the frame before power is pressed until you get the 'save destroyed' message.
I did that, but every time the resulting movie reported some cycle count larger than the original movie (yes, even after taking into account cycle counts are twice as large in GBHawk, it was larger than the original). Looking at the cycle count of that movie, it has 317773377 cycles, dividing that by 2 (to match Gambatte's cycles) you get 158886688.5 cycles, which is more than this movie.
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grassini wrote:
im ok with accepting this, but i'm confused how this isn't faster than Crystal? i really imagined it would be faster, it's really surprising! I do agree the gameplay hardly differs from Crystal, since all games in gen2 went basically the same way with the early legendaries. I don't really see a problem with 2 glitchless runs for gen2 though.
As I've stated, G/S has 8 more trainers to fight, and if you include Rival 3 and Dick (which are optional overall, but are required to free the beasts) then it's 10 more fights. This results in G/S being ~6 minutes slower.
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Posted this on discord, but figured I should share this here, a list of all differences I can think of between G/S and Crystal for this submission:
1. There are exactly 8 more trainers you have to fight in G/S compared to Crystal, accounting for trainers that don't have to be fought in G/S compared to Crystal. If you add in Rival 3 and Dick to G/S, you get 10 more trainers. This does lead to some strategic differences, mostly just to conserve PP.
* As a minor note to 1, wild Pokemon (ie Electrode) are a lot harder to manipulate critical hits for, due to the lack of AI. PrintLetterDelay + Complicated AI = good RNG variance in a fight. A small technical note if anything.
2. Poliwag is not a grass encounter in G/S, so a combo of Wooper/red Gyarados ends up being best for Water HMs
3. Abra ends up being better to obtain in G/S, due to its ability to literally skip 2 trainers, and skip a trip through Rock Tunnel (which is another difference which will be noted).
4. You don't need to take the detour to talk to Gloria before fighting the gym. Which is pretty good when you consider 3.
5. G/S can purchase more X Attacks than in Crystal, mostly due to 3. This does lead to slightly faster fights overall.
6. Burned Tower requires Rock Smash to free the beasts in G/S.
7. No Eusine in G/S, which is probably a good thing overall ngl
8. Kanto overall has some different strategy, which goes into several points:
* G/S can afford to use Strength and Iron Tail a lot more, since its primary use in Erika's Gym can be substituted for Crunch. This is mainly possible due to 1.
* The above point also results in Blue being 15th, and Erika being 16th. There isn't a cost to delaying Erika, and for G/S it is beneficial due to Raikou obtaining Crunch at Blue. Of course, Crystal cannot do this, and has to do more stuff to conserve PP.
* Route 9 in G/S has more trainers that have to be fought, so it's best to go through Rock Tunnel to reach the Power Plant, which does get somewhat better than expected with 3.
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Fortranm wrote:
Of course the strategy is important.
So let me just see if I'm understanding this correctly.
This movie cannot be obsoleted by this submission because it uses the same main Pokemon as this movie and thus should be compared to this movie.
So does this mean that this movie can obsoleted by this submission if I simply use a different main Pokemon, or are you saying this movie should obsolete this movie?
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Okay, but that just leads to the issue that you also have to argue that the current G/S movie will have to be in the same branch as Crystal, which your half your argument doesn't work with that anyways. Unless you want to argue "to obsolete the G/S movie, you can't use the same main strategy used in the Crystal run, else it's in the same branch as Crystal" which just stretches the exception of Pokemon games in the same gen able to obsolete each other to an absurd level.
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Well this is embarrassing, the movie file seems to have gotten the wrong cycle count, here's a movie file with the correct cycle count, could it please replace the submission file? http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/64234746048706299
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DJ Incendration wrote:
No, actually, if you compare Japanese Red to Japanese Yellow, you'll notice two less text boxes in Japanese Yellow that you have to click through to save. I'll give you two user files (ignore the trainer names) to compare.
So you're just proving my point that your timesave is just less text? As I said, Japanese is very compact. These timesaves do not count for comparison.
Of course, if the actually glitchery itself has less swaps and that is faster, then that would count, but I have no idea about that.
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DJ Incendration wrote:
Speaking of the Japanese games, there should be an update to the single SRAM glitch movies. Japanese Yellow is the fastest out of the four games, since you don't have to advance through as much text before turning the power off.
That's just natural for Japanese, since its grammar makes text very compact. However, that timesave does not count for comparing movies: http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#JVsU
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DJ Incendration wrote:
What do you mean by 0,0,5,5? Also, I can't seem to manipulate 0X64D0 or EA or anything like that in Yellow. I have tried many different frame delays, but I could only do the delays in Pokeguy's any% world record, with the soft resets.
You realize that the last Yellow TAS used 0x64D0 too, and that Yellow is just slower than R/B regardless (R/B will obsolete Yellow save glitch TASes, so there's no point to this really).
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Ok, now this is getting complicated.
In this submission, as well as the current publication, the game does advance when you press A at "THE END" and does save the progress, but you can't play with the save file anymore.
In the Japanese version run, the game does not advance when you press A at "THE END" but it still does save the progress and you can continue playing from your save file.
So, each movie has one thing that the other run doesn't and vice versa... Then which one should be considered the "more appropriately" beating the game??
I would personally lean towards the former, but let's say for the sake of argument, they are equal. The English version is far more entertaining than the Japanese version (simply be, most TASVideos users use English, good example would be TCG1 and TCG2 game end glitch TASes), so, shouldn't the English version be preferred anyways for entertainment value?
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
pressing A doesn't send you back to the intro and it doesn't save the progress to the save data..
Looking at it, the game actually *does* save, you don't actually have to press A for the game to save, the game saves anyways a little before the song ends and when THE END is shown, and yep, if you hard reset, you can see the save made... albeit the game crashes instantly because the map script is fucked, but you can clearly see the Pokedex count is 64, so this is the "correct" save.
