Posts for CyclopsDragon

Posted: 10/15/2021 5:30 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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How many times can I vote yes?
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 8/7/2020 9:14 PM
Post subject: Converting from 4.0.2 DTM to 5.0 DTM?
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CyclopsDragon
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Okay, so I know the full DTM won't work because of emulation differences, load times, etcetera. But right now, I'm trying to copy small segments of an old TAS made on 4.0.2 into a new TAS being made on 5.0, just to see if they'll sync. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, the way that Dolphin 4.0.2 records inputs is very different from the way that 5.0 records inputs. I guess it's something to do with the massive difference in VI between the two? I'm not really familiar at all with the technical details. TL;DR: I'm wondering if there's a way to take these inputs that were recorded on 4.0.2, and get them to a state where they'll behave the same way in 5.0, barring emulation differences.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/2/2016 4:37 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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TheMG2 wrote:
Weatherton wrote:
The glitch is so simple to execute (though I'm sure it takes many tries for an RTA) I'm not even sure it would get into the moons category if a run was submitted and published. I wonder what's really going on inside the game logic. I'm more curious about the reference to "glitched levels." Is it possible to go to levels that are not otherwise accessible?
There is a known debug level in 2 which was accessible in story mode through certain menu glitches, but it appears somebody got to it through challenge mode with this glitch. Actually that brings up the question: Does this do anything interesting in story mode or no?
Might as well cover a few bases while answering this. The glitch does nothing interesting in story mode. It doesn't even take effect; you just get sent to the retry screen. Warp goals have no effect on this glitch. Taking one for the first goal and also the glitched "final level" goal do nothing differently from simply taking a blue goal. It'll more than likely just take some experimentation to find TAS methods to do this on almost any level that has a way to be airborne near the goal. The glitch has been done on A1 in SMB1, a runner says he was close to finding a setup on SMB1's EX1, and you can be airborne near the goal on M1, as well as Wormhole, Charge, and possibly even Variable Width in SMB2. So it's possible that the entirety of the Expert TASes could just end up being the first level of each set, once with massive playaround while waiting for the timer to run down, and then again fully optimized. It would be interesting as a fully-optimized Vault run (unless for some reason the playaround was good enough to get it into Moons), but we'll just have to see what kind of optimization comes from this. There was an interesting find with the glitch yesterday. Super Monkey Ball Deluxe behaves very slightly differently on Xbox and Xbox 360, so when a strat for E1 Ruin was found on Deluxe on Xbox, a different one had to be found on Xbox 360. However, the one on Xbox warps you to fake floor 92, whereas the one on Xbox 360 warps you to fake floor 56, where you can do the glitch again to get to fake floor 100. Since the goal tape is broken later in the Xbox 360 strat, our theory is that the game counts up a floor every frame after the tape is broken, and when the floor reloads, it ends up on the floor number that it reached before the reload. I've also just realized that this glitch will mean that the new TASes will have game-overs in them. You have to get an extra life in SMB2 to make it to Master Extra before you game over (which thankfully won't actually lose more than a few frames), but SMB will game-over in Master by default. Also, it's worth noting that the RTA potential of SMB Deluxe Expert (and TAS if it was ever possible for Xbox) is now faster than the RTA potential of SMB2 Expert if this glitch is used. The glitchless RTA of SMB Deluxe Expert is more than twice as long as the glitchless RTA of SMB2 Expert. What a time to be alive.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/1/2016 10:41 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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Why is this game so broken? It seems to be possible to get this glitch to work on some levels with the movement of the scent bag/party ball/whatever you want to call it. Link to video
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/1/2016 6:51 PM
(Edited: 9/1/2016 9:27 PM)
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CyclopsDragon
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Yep, so as you can see, a new glitch has been discovered. Basically, on levels with moving parts, the monkey ball stops moving on the frame that time runs out, but the level moves for one more frame. If that one frame causes the goal tape to be pushed through the monkey and broken, you respawn on the same level (or potentially on a glitch level, more testing is required), but as though that level was the last level in the difficulty. When you beat the level, you are warped to the next section. This means a lot of things are probably going to happen and we don't know when or how. We have to thoroughly test every level with a moving goal to know which ones we can do it on, but we will probably end up at least making a new TAS of Expert. This glitch does NOT work on SMB2 PAL, and the current status of the SMB2 PAL Expert TAS is somewhat up in the air due to Byrz more or less not TASing anymore and my lack of motivation to optimize some levels. In SMB2, the glitch could possibly be done on B4 Switches and definitely on A8 Inchworms and AX4 UFO for TAS purposes, which would save a lot of time in the TASes. But with Expert, we have to figure out if we can get the glitch to work on Melting Pot, because not only is the goal moving slowly, but it's moving away, and the other side of the goal has basically nothing to work with. Jump Machine would be the next best, but if Melting Pot works, the TAS would go Wormhole->Free Fall (blue goal)->Melting Pot (glitch)->Melting Pot->Charge->Strata (blue goal)->Puzzle (glitch)->Puzzle->Centrifugal (glitch)->Centrifugal->Master Extra normally. This would make the TAS a total of 16 levels. This glitch also works on SMB1 and SMBDX. E3 has been confirmed as working for the glitch. A lot of stuff is happening all at once and we're going to have to let things calm down a bit before we figure out what to do. I'll try my best to keep this thread updated with developments as they come.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 10/27/2015 10:11 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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Just as a note, the published movie's description of the game that came from the old publication would benefit from an update. The game has 113 unique levels, so saying "There are over 100 stages" would probably make more sense. It's a bit deceptive to say that we "warp" to the Expert levels, because there's nothing stopping you from choosing Expert right from the get-go. It would probably make more sense to say that we tackle the Expert levels (or something along those lines), although this is a bit pedantic. The description also states that we play the 50 Expert levels and the 10 Master levels; the 10 Expert Extra levels should also be included in this.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 10/22/2015 3:04 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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Here's an update on the possibility of a SMB1 score TAS somewhere down the line. I recently improved an old TAS record on E9, finally breaking 30000 points. This is something that I wanted to do before considering a score TAS. Link to video There are still a couple of things I personally want to accomplish before considering working on this TAS. First, we should definitely finish our current TAS projects before we start on another one (SMB2 PAL, SMB1 competition mode things). Second, there is currently a snag on E6. The current console score record only gets one banana bunch because of the cycles on the level. I have looked at the level a lot and I'm convinced that it's possible to get both bunches. I've been mere frames away from being able to get a desirable collision after getting the second bunch, which would make this cycle possible and gain a lot of points. Another interesting thing about a score attack TAS that I never considered is that there is a warp bonus multiplier in Challenge mode that doesn't apply in Practice mode, and it applies before the points for bananas are added. This means that for the three levels in Expert where we take warp goals, it's very likely that we wouldn't even use the established score strategies for these levels. For example, on E2, the score record would need to be improved by 14 frames to match the Challenge mode score achieved in the time TAS. Additionally, E42 has already been TASed for score in Practice mode, but the existing TAS may be sub-optimal for score in Challenge mode. This may result in a TAS being made for the score attack, and then each of these three levels being done again outside of the full score attack TAS.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/29/2015 4:38 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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DiscoRico wrote:
I see. Makes sense about the no death restriction having to be placed. Further question, though. What would an "all bananas" challenge look like?
Not possible for the Expert through Master category or the Expert through Master Extra category of SMB2. E35 in SMB has a banana embedded in the side of the level that makes it impossible to get, possibly even if you allowed yourself to die (although allowing yourself to die would make the category rather arbitrary, since the bananas respawn if you die). In SMB2, it's impossible to get all of the bananas on E30 Banana Hunting, the best TAS gets 78 out of 87. And even if you could do it, there's no way to get all of the bananas on M4 Passage without being forced to take the green goal, which renders the run impossible because you would skip the bananas on M5 Notch. All Bananas would likely be possible to TAS for Beginner and Advanced in SMB and Beginner in SMB2, but in most cases there would be one or two entertaining floors among a mildly boring remainder of the run, so it's not really worth doing.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/28/2015 9:01 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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DiscoRico wrote:
This may seem like a silly question, but what are the similarities/differences between this run and a hypothetical score-attack run?
It really depends on the floor. For some floors, like E7, E24, and all of Master, the score strategy is the same as the time strategy, so going for time would entail going for score. However, other floors such as E9 and E42 would change dramatically. The main issue with a high score run lies in the fact that Floor 9 has more than 100 bananas, so you could theoretically just loop that floor infinitely, collecting every banana and then dying. If you wanted to do a score attack TAS, you would have to put a "no death" restriction on it, which is totally reasonable. It's certainly something that's been considered, but given all of the possible categories that could be TASed (for example, SMB2 Expert through Master Extra No Warp has some very cool TAS strategies), it would take a lot of time and effort for a group of TASers to put them all together (probably a lot longer than it took for us to put this TAS together, even with a larger group of players, and not many players have computers that they can use to TAS), so we're focusing on the main categories.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/28/2015 3:51 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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Derakon wrote:
This TAS was excellent. Thanks for making it! Any plans to do SMB2?
We have actually started a new SMB2 TAS. The new one takes advantage of the fact that the PAL version can be played at 60Hz instead of 50Hz by holding B at startup, and by playing the PAL version at 60Hz, the monkey gains more height from clipping because of how the developers decided to compensate for the difference between NTSC 60 and PAL 50. The physics is rendered once every frame instead of constantly, so they gave you more speed and height out of clips and certain movements, so playing PAL at 60Hz instead of 50Hz leads to more speed in most places, making PAL objectively superior for in-game time for almost every level.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/28/2015 4:25 AM
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CyclopsDragon
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SmashManiac wrote:
By curiosity, was the 100 bananas on purpose or is it a coincidence?
That was intentional, but inspired by a coincidence, I suppose? At some point during the Extras, Byrz realized that we would have 120 bananas at the end of the TAS, so we went back and avoided collecting bunches on a couple of levels to make that happen.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 9/27/2015 2:39 PM
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CyclopsDragon
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Raelcun wrote:
Am I missing something about the embed, though? I tried embedding the video in a post preview and it gave me the option to watch in 720p60fps
The inability to watch an embed in 60FPS refers to the submission page, not the forum embed. The submission page doesn't use the HTML5 player, and the old player doesn't work with 60FPS when embedded.
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Posted: 9/10/2015 12:01 AM
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CyclopsDragon
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Hello again! It's time for an update on progress. We've reached the end of the Expert Extra stages in Super Monkey Ball, which means we only have the 10 Master stages left to complete. We've had some very cool new strats and some unexpected time saves along the way, so the finished product will be even more ridiculous than the first TAS. Based on our current pace, we'll be able to finish the input recording by the end of the month; however, because of the nature of the game, that's not guaranteed. PAL Super Monkey Ball 2 Expert through Master Extra is currently on hold until the Super Monkey Ball Expert through Master TAS is complete. This is for two reasons: so we can give each TAS a separate submission instead of submitting both at once, and also to give each TAS the attention needed for it to be really optimized. We left off at Floor 20 (Earthquake). In the meantime, here's a level that doesn't appear in any TAS because of warp goals. I recently improved this level by a huge margin because of a relatively new setup that I applied to this level. Link to video
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 8/26/2015 3:55 AM
Post subject: Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
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CyclopsDragon
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I guess Deluxe deserves its own thread separate from 1 and 2. I've been doing IL TASes for a while due to the inability to do an actual proper TAS of this game, since you can pause during ILs to set savestates and pauses don't show up in replays. Because of how much more tedious it is to TAS ILs in Deluxe, I think I'm the only person currently doing ILs. Unfortunately, a full-game TAS of this game will not happen unless we get a working Xbox emulator with TAS tools, because the Xbox version of the game is vastly superior to the PS2 version in terms of both loading times and graphical quality, and as it stands, we don't even have proper TAS tools for PS2 (as far as I can figure out). Here are a few of my bigger improvements over the console records. Some come from new strats while others are simply execution. The rest can be found on the same channel. Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video Link to video
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 8/19/2015 11:18 PM
(Edited: 8/19/2015 11:22 PM)
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CyclopsDragon
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andypanther wrote:
Does the PAL version support 60Hz? I never owned this game, so I don't know this. Because the thing is, if this is one of the many third party games where the devs where too lazy to include 60Hz support, using it in a TAS wouldn't be legit. Only play PAL on 60Hz when the game actually supports it!
I'm glad you mentioned this, because I completely forgot about that. Yes, the game supports 60Hz on PAL; all you have to do is hold B during startup and the game gives you a menu asking if you want to play at 60Hz. Granted, this loses some time in TASVideos timing, but that time has already been made up in the TAS itself.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
Posted: 8/19/2015 10:37 PM
(Edited: 8/19/2015 11:20 PM)
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CyclopsDragon
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Hello, everyone! I figured it's about time I registered and made this post. I've been working on TASing these two games (as well as SMB Deluxe) for the past year or so. I'm bringing this thread back to let you all in on some goodies from Byrz and myself. This post will be a bit of an info dump, so please bear with me. First of all, I'm happy to let you all know that we're working on two completely new TASes! Super Monkey Ball's "Expert through Master" TAS is being completely redone, and we are also working on a TAS for "Expert through Master Extra" on the PAL version of Super Monkey Ball 2. Progress has been much slower than it was for the original TASes due to a much higher standard of optimization, but we've been making good progress recently. I won't spoil anything about them yet, but rest assured that there are new strats and new optimizations which continue the series's standard of jaw-dropping movement. Why PAL for SMB2? SMB2 runs on a non-deterministic physics engine (i.e. physics is rendered once every frame instead of constantly), so in order to compensate for PAL running at 50Hz, the physics engine was altered to give more speed and height from clips and boosts, to make up for the fact that physics was rendered at 5/6th the speed; this results in the engine being more or less equivalent to NTSC 60Hz. However, this means that when you play the PAL version at 60Hz, the physics gives you more speed and lift than was originally intended, allowing faster and cooler strats. EDIT: The game supports 60Hz on PAL on the official release; all you have to do is hold B during startup and the game gives you a menu asking if you want to play at 60Hz. Granted, this loses some time in TASVideos timing, but that time has already been made up in the TAS itself. So why wasn't PAL used for the original SMB2 TAS? Mostly because the vast majority of the RTA community does not have access to the PAL version of the game, and the TAS was largely made for them. We're now using the PAL version to see how far the game can really be pushed. That's not all, though. A lot of SMB TASing has been done that wasn't posted here. Byrz made full TASes for Beginner and Advanced of both games, and we've both also been working on IL TASes. I've compiled a small playlist of the coolest of these, which you can view here. Note that these are all time TASes: I figured those were the most relevant here, but there are also score TASes and stunts that you can find on our channels or in our TAS compilations. Less relevant to this particular thread is my TAS work on ILs of SMB Deluxe, because it's not technically applicable to the thread for the Gamecube games. Unfortunately, TASing Deluxe ILs is very painful due to not having frameadvance, and until we have a functional Xbox emulator with TAS tools, there won't be a full game TAS of Deluxe, due to PS2 having much longer loading times and worse graphical quality. I can't really give an estimate on when the new TASes will be finished, but we can keep anyone who's interested updated on our progress. In the meantime, I'll probably still be working on ILs in addition to the new TASes, and if anyone has any ideas or TASes they'd like to see (I'm still debating category score attack TASes), feel free to bring them up. Until then, enjoy what we have for you here!
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014