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There's a (slight?) problem: The game apparently doesn't end. That's what Wikipedia and this review say. Based on my recent playing, it seems true. You can use warps, but you never get a "Congratulations! You won!" message and the levels seem the same after a while. Makes you wonder about the point of the warps...
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Gigafrost wrote:
Basically, a simple little puzzler we were given in college (for .1% overall extra credit in the class, hahaha) was to make a program that prints itself out.
That's called a quine. Here's a page that has examples in various languages.
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According to some threads on the DOSBox forums, save states will indeed be pretty large. They would apparently need to include the status of files to which the game could be writing in addition to the register states and other basic things. From the posts I've read, it sounds possible, but it also seems that people aren't too enthusiastic about working on this feature. I guess that makes sense, but :(.
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CoolBumpty wrote:
It's to get to the spirit temple as young link before going into Dodongo Cavern
I see. It definitely sounds like it would be pretty cool if someone could get that to work. What's the trick to getting over the river of sand without the hookshot, though?
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It worked! I was able to eliminate one lemming faster by assigning it the bashing job earlier. That didn't affect the frame count, though. Rather, the blocker assignments allowed me to get the four lemmings I needed to save from the left side into a very small space right by the structure, so they reached the exit 57 frames earlier. Here's a link to the updated file, including a save state to skip directly to level 10.
EDIT:
I found a way to improve level 7 by 36 frames. You'll notice that I assign a builder by the gate. Its purpose is to delay a lemming from covering as much ground so that it will land on the ledge by the exit instead of falling into the pit. It lands earlier than the builder that was building over the pit, thereby saving the frames. The file is still the same.
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qqwref wrote:
Now wait a minute, we're not starting from the computer power up. That would be like starting to record a NES emulator when you turn the TV on. You start when whatever program you're emulating starts - just have the emulator assume that the program has just been started on the computer (after having been installed, of course).
Okay, I see.
qqwref wrote:
If everything you need is missing, you're not really very far, eh?
Lol, that why I included the quotes.
qqwref wrote:
I think I've seen a slowdown-capable program for DOS somewhere, but that was all it did.
You mean Mo'Slo? I've heard of that, but never used it. DOSBox actually has slowdown capabilities. You can set how many CPU cycles it emulates per second or per millisecond in the configuration file. There are also hotkeys to increase and decrease the amount while running it.
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adelikat wrote:
Some of my favorite parts are when you were able to kill off all the uncessary lemmings without the "armageddon" tool. Finding creative ways to do this in future levels without wasting time is going to improve the quality of the run greatly.
I try to do that before resorting to the nuke button. The jobs they provided in some levels don't allow it, though. For example, I tried to bash through the crystal on the left end of level 5, but it's unbashable. I was also thinking of building a ladder and having the extra lemmings fall to their death in level 10, but the gate that they come out of prevented the builder from getting high enough.
adelikat wrote:
Also there will inevitably be moments where you have to wait, how about using the extra "tools" that you get to have the "disposable" lemmings so silly or neat looking things or just to find cruel ways to kill them off.
I'll try.
adelikat wrote:
In terms of speed, I didn't see anything in those levels that could be improved, keep up the good work!
Okay, thanks. I just thought of something in level 10, though. I might be able to get the lemmings on the left of the structure closer to it by using blockers before the climbers start falling. This would depend entirely on how long it takes for all of them to be released. If it works, they might be able to get to the exit more quickly. And I thought I had finished the level...
EDIT:
I just did a quick check, and I might be able to assign one blocker before having to assign the floaters. I'll test if this is faster after my large block of classes today.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Well, DOS does have support for programs in the background, right? Aren't they called RTLs or something?
According to Wikipedia, they're called TSRs. Also according to Wikipedia,
MS-DOS was not designed to be a multi-user or multitasking operating system
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
And do you REALLY want to see Mega Man for PC?
Of course. It was one of the few games that I had under MS-DOS (I now have both of them ;)). Admittedly, the graphics are horrible and beating the bosses is pretty trivial in both games, but I wonder if there are as many glitches as in the console versions.
Phil wrote:
There's DOSbox.
I hope DOSBox is going to be one of the first re-recordable PC emulators. It "just" needs save states and the re-recording features.
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qqwref wrote:
- circumvent the executable's native speed (allowing timed events to slow down, possibly deliberately slowing down processes by a scalar)
Forgive my ignorance, but how would this be different from any other emulator? Isn't it just a matter of having some hotkeys that increase or reduce the number of emulated cycles per second?
qqwref wrote:
- change the executable's size at will (make it windowed instead of fullscreen or vice versa)
I think that this would largely depend on the nature of the OS being emulated. For example, I don't remember DOS having support for what we would call multitasking. You were either running a program or not, which meant that it was either taking up the whole screen or none of it. I assume it would be similar for other command-line OSes.
qqwref wrote:
- add your hotkeys to the executable's hotkeys (because you need the keyboard to control the emulator and the executable)
I'm pretty sure this would depend on the game you're trying to play. The simplest platformers probably have some variation of the arrow keys, one key for jumping, and one for attacking. On the other hand, I've heard of some flight simulators and FPSers that use up a large amount of the keyboard.
qqwref wrote:
- make an arbitrary savestate (this may be insanely huge, on the order of 10 MB, but whatever)
Yeah, this would probably be the biggest problem because of the memory and register states that would have to be saved. Furthermore, that just made me think of some other problems that could come up:
The (directory structures?) would have to be the same on both computers if someone wanted to run another's movie. For example, it might desync if one person had the game files in C:\Directory1\ and another person had them in C:\Directory2\.
Recording from "power on" could be annoying depending on how long it took the emulated computer to start up.
I really have no idea how the timing would work, so this might not be a problem at all. Anyway, desyncs might arise if the emulator lags on one computer but not on another.
In any case, I definitely think this will happen sometime in the future, and I can't wait. There are some PC games that I want to TAS or see TASed (Mega Man PC, anyone?).
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After a long break, and probably the hardest work I've yet done on this project, here is a WIP through level 10. (expired link removed)
Regarding level 10: I was able to assign a floater and a blocker to the first lemming and switch back fast enough to assign a floater to the second. I also had enough time to assign the second one a bashing job before it started climbing again. In order to do that, however, I had to assign a floater to the third lemming at an unoptimal time, since it would have otherwise died from the fall. Finally, I saved 156 frames by assigning multiple bashing jobs instead of letting one lemming do all the work.
As always, any hints or comments are welcome.
EDIT:
Oh, yeah, I forgot to say this. I think that I'll post updates every time I finish 5 more levels from now on, instead of every level. I'll also include save states to the new material, so that people don't have to watch the old stuff over and over again.
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Nach wrote:
In several places, I notice you start attacking before you can hit the enemy, and the first attack misses. Is this luck manipulation or just not enough precision?
Can you tell me the level or frame numbers when this happens? I've just watched the movie, and I can't find it.
Nach wrote:
I also noticed in one place you take a big jump to a platform, see that you can't make it, and land on a lower platform then jump higher.
I'm pretty sure I know what part you're talking about. It's in level 2-2. That action was intentional. I jumped so far to the right in order to get the first skeleton to appear. If I would have just landed on the lower platform from the start, it wouldn't have appeared until after I had jumped again.
FreshFeeling wrote:
I'm pretty sure there are varying jump heights.
There are.
EDIT:
After checking the memory values during the boss fights and determining which address held the health information, I found out that I missed one hit on the skull boss and that very many of my hits on the bird boss did horribly small amounts of damage. Due to this sloppiness, I'm canceling this run. I'll work on figuring out where the values for the normal enemy health are stored, so that I can check how much damage I did and check if I missed any attempted hits.
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Lol, I guess turning the sound on can help with such decisions.
Nice movie, Acmlm. It's weird, though, because you only get 14700 points when I play it back. You also miss some of the enemies. Which version of the emulator do you have, and what settings are enabled? There might be some desynch issues.
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Nice movie. I've tried this game a few times but could never figure out how to fight. You clearly showed that you knew what you were doing. YES from me.
BTW, did you kill the boss in one hit? That's what it looked like to me, but I keep thinking that bosses shouldn't go down that easily.
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I was born in Romania but have lived in the U.S. most of my life. Therefore, I'm fluent in English and probably know enough Romanian to survive, although I wouldn't say I'm fluent in it. I've taken some Latin. I might be able to figure out some words in Romance languages like French, Italian, and Spanish, since they're derived from Latin and similar to Romanian to some degree. My plans are to learn Greek and Hebrew sometime, in addition to learning more Latin.
BTW, if any of you want to learn Greek or Latin, I recommend Textkit.
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Kyrsimys wrote:
Jetpack is great, but is there any way to turn off the PC-speaker sounds?
There are command-line parameters that you can use to select the sound. Use "jetpack -s0" to turn off the sound. I think it goes up to -s3, with one of them being the PC speaker, one the Sound Blaster, and one some other sound source. I can't remember, as I've always turned off the sound since switching to a Windows OS.
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Jetpack is a great game! I remember getting the Christmas edition on my family's 486 years ago. It came with the computer, and it took me so long to finally beat it. I downloaded the full version a while ago, and played up through several levels, maybe 20 or 30 of them. Haven't beaten the whole game, though.
Squarez Deluxe is also fun.