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Where would that fit in?
EDIT:
Lol, never mind. That's great! A wonderful game!
Well, I optimized the input for frame perfection. Thanks to some moves that adelikat suggested, the movie is now less than 22 minutes long. Since my file host is still having server issues, you can get it here.
I'm aware that the move 6. Qxg6 hxg6 would be faster, but I think that the fight between the rook and the queen is more entertaining than the one between the pawn and the queen. I'd like your opinions on this, however. If you want to fast forward to the computer's moves, here are the frame numbers:
1. 4000
2. 26400
3. 48400
4. 53300
5. 57900 (the take-backs occur after this one)
6. 77900
I have the movie and the save states at those frames in a zip file. If anyone would like it, I'll be in the chatroom.
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Thanks for the advice. I'll try to optimize this glitched version, unless someone else wants to do that. Since I should be working on Lemmings anyway, I'll leave the bizarre game idea for someone else, at least for now. ;)
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That's great! I wonder when the "next version" that post refers to will come out.
I personally look forward to runs of Jetpack, Night Raid, and the Mega Man games. Well, the Night Raid one would just consist of perfect shots, since I'm pretty sure the planes come in a predefined manner, but I'm wondering what the high score would be on that game if you destroyed the enemies as quickly as possible and didn't waste any shots.
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Okay, here's the FCM file. I made a zip file that includes the savestates, but my host is still not working. Here are the frames around which the computer makes its moves, if you want to speed up to them, or just go away from the computer for a few minutes:
1. 4500
2. 27000
3. 49000
4. 77000
5. 89000 (wait after this one to see the take backs, if you want)
6. 109000 (this is basically a repetition of #3)
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lol. Well, don't be too happy yet. The movie, although unoptimized, takes 30:35. We'll definitely have to play around with what moves after the first three shorten the computer's thinking time the most. I'm working on making save states right before the computer moves, so that anyone who wants to watch it won't have to wait the whole time if they don't want to.
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lol, it worked! Okay, now to figure out how soon I can start taking back moves and still get it to work. It will probably take a while, but I'll post the moves as soon as I can.
EDIT: Okay, I think this should work:
e4 e5
Qh5 Nc6
Bc4 g6
c3 h5x
Bg5 Qg5x
d4
Take back 3 times while the computer's thinking
Allow the computer to do g6 as in #3 previously, then take it back
Qf7++
EDIT 2: I'm pretty sure that you can do whatever moves you want after you get the queen and bishop into position. So, feel free to have fun for moves 4 to 6, since you'll take them back anyway. Just make sure to take back while the computer's thinking on move #6. I'll make a movie of it, not optimized or anything, just to make sure it works. My file host still seems to be down, though.
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hopper wrote:
We've established that the computer can be beaten at the hardest difficulty level in very few moves if you can find the right ones to get the computer to play uncharacteristically badly, so there's your basis for a "fastest completion" run.
We haven't figured out what those moves are, though.
hopper wrote:
I'm thinking it would be nice, probably in non-battle chess in order to speed things up, to demonstrate something that chess players can really appreciate.
Maybe that should be attempted on a game in which the moves take shorter to execute. Even the 2-D mode requires a few seconds to make a move, since the pieces do some blinking animation.
I don't want to argue over this, since it's just a game with a lot of possible variations. I agree with adelikat that the game should just show off what's special about this version, as compared with other chess games on the NES.
That thing I found with the take-back can be used to give one side one or possibly more extra moves in a row. You need to go about 3 or so moves beyond the place where you can take things back, though, so it probably wouldn't be faster on Novice than the game Arc posted. Maybe it could be used to allow a four-move checkmate/scholar's mate on the highest difficulty, though.
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Nice, Arc!
I remember that I once beat a computer chess game in 6 moves on the lowest level. I don't think those were the moves, though.
Hm, this is weird. I was messing around with the take back feature and I somehow got it to give me an extra move. That allowed me to do a 4-move checkmate, I think. It seems that the amount of moves that you can take back are limited or something.
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DrJones wrote:
Can't you force the computer to make a move on this platform?
I'm pretty sure you can't. There's no option for it on any of the menus.
hopper wrote:
To win as quickly as possible you have to find a line that the computer will play badly and get checkmated.
Isn't that what you're trying to do in any game of chess, whether against a computer or against another player? I understand what you're saying about it not being the true abilities of the computer, though.
adelikat wrote:
how about a 2 player TAS? maybe input a classic chess match.
That's a good idea. Which classic match should it be, though?
adelikate wrote:
also with 3d, the fewest moves isnt necessarily the fastest in real time, since pieces like the knight move very slow. you would also have to consider captures.
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Someone mentioned this game in the "Top games that haven't been done" thread, and I decided to take a look at it. There's not much to say about the game itself, since chess has well-defined rules. As far as a TAS is concerned, here are some factors that need to be taken into consideration:
Difficulty: While there's a rule that the games should be played at the hardest difficulty, I believe that following it for this specific game would result in probably the most boring movie of it. The computer can take several minutes to make one move on the highest difficulty. From having it play against itself for a while, probably around an hour, I think that the amount of time it takes to decide upon a move gets longer as the situation gets more complicated. I'm not sure about that, though.
My opinion is that a TAS of this game should attempt to defeat the computer in as few moves as possible at a difficulty for which a watcher would not need to wait an unbearable amount of time for the computer to make its moves.
Animations: The player has the choice to play on a 2-D or a 3-D board. The 2-D board has a standard representation of the chess pieces, while the 3-D board has figures that actually walk to each spot and fight each other during captures. The animation of each fight depends on what kind of pieces are interacting. This, of course, takes more time. However, I think it will add entertainment value to the game, especially for watchers who aren't avid chess players. Since a TAS would be going for the fewest number of moves to checkmate, the fights would hopefully not get boring, since there probably wouldn't be many of them in the first place and not many between the same pieces.
With these ideas in mind, I recorded a movie against the lowest level of the computer, playing on the 3-D board. I defeated it in 11 moves, but I'm sure that can be improved. Unfortunately, my file host is adding servers or something, so I can't upload any files atm. I'll just write out the moves for now:
e3 e5
Qh5 Nc6
Bc4 d5
Bb5 Bd6
Nh3 Ng8-e7
Ng5 g6
Qh6 a6
Qg7 Rg8
Qf7x+ Kd7
Nh7x b5x
Nf6++
That movie takes 5:38, but my button presses weren't frame optimized and I didn't stop recording as soon as I could have.
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One problem with establishing "expected times" in that manner would be that TASed games within the same category could vary in time saved very much. For example, one game might have way more programming errors that could be abused than another. If any such system does come into play, I think the TASes should be limited to using just the glitches that are known and can be performed on the real console, to keep it somewhat fair.
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Sorry, but I don't think NES Lemmings will be done anytime soon, either. Maybe I can get the first level of difficulty completed by the end of the year, though.
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At least there won't be any problems with the emulator by then. I hope.
EDIT:
TSA: Is the debug rom supposed to be a Master Quest version? That's the only one I can seem to find. I started playing it, but stopped when I noticed that it was a MQ version, so I'm not sure if the one I have actually works. BTW, it starts off running very slowly, at least on my machine. It was at 0.0 fps for a short time.
On a possibly more relevant note, can those boundary glitches be used to skip the shield early in the game? If not, has the best route for getting the money been determined?
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Just for fun, I added a bit to spezzafer's movie. It's just Link (or maybe I should say A) jumping down from his house after Saria greets him. I highly doubt that's the best jump to make, since it's somewhat diagonal, but I'm pretty sure its the fastest one possible. Anyway, here's the link.
NOTE: I'm certainly not planning to do this run. I just hope this will get someone working on it, if no one already is.
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Well, I've decided to pick up the NES run again. Actually, I started over after I noticed a place to improve on one of the early levels. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to work on this for the next two weeks because I have finals, but I'll have time after that.
Level 10 is going to be hard. I'll need to figure out the best time to assign the six bashing jobs inside that big structure. There are twelve different places I could assign them, so it will take a while to determine the best times. My original intention was to save the minimum number of lemmings in each level. However, this would require wasting either a climbing or a bashing job on the one extra lemming that I can't bomb. On the other hand, I could try to figure out a way to assign blockers on the left side so that the one extra lemming gets to the exit at the same time as the last one that I need to save. What would you guys like to see?
If anyone sees a way to improve any of the levels up to now, feel free to let me know. I definitely don't want to have to redo a level after I've completed several later ones. That's already happened at least two or three times, and it's very annoying.
To anyone planning to do a run of SNES Lemmings: You might find this site with the solutions to the levels helpful, at least for a general idea of how to do each level. Some of the NES levels are completely different from the ones on that site, but maybe it has all of the SNES ones.
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GWing_02 wrote:
The only side effect I've seen with it is that the background switches to the last house-type environment you were in rather than the current screen.
That happens on my computer if I use the glN64 v0.4.1 video plugin. The picture of Link in the pause menu is also messed up: It shows some stretched tiles of the shield and other things instead of actually showing Link. Those things don't happen with the Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 plugin, though.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Does the pause show up in an .avi movie?
I think it probably will. I recorded about 20 seconds of playing just to test the pause menu delay with different plugins, and the frame count continues while waiting for the menu to appear. Unless the AVI capture somehow automatically skips those extra frames, they'll be there.
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I'm pretty sure that there are no warps in the game. In some levels, there are multiple doors that you can enter. Some of them lead to treasure rooms. Furthermore, some of the rooms that have only moving platforms (like the end of level 1-1) often have treasures on the other side of the large wall. Even if you enter the treasure rooms, however, the exits still lead you back to the next level. So you have to go through all of the sections that I completed.
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Dromiceius wrote:
I gave it a go in this movie of the first half of the final match.
Well, it was nice to see West Germany on the receiving end of most of the tackles for once. Good job.
Dromiceius wrote:
Allowing anyone to make a long pass costs a bit of time, goalie kicks in particular waste 2 or 3 seconds.
Okay, I see what you mean. I wouldn't always consider those seconds wasted if they allow me to get into position for some nice goal, though.
Dromiceius wrote:
Although I tried to make things interesting, I started to get a bit mechanical around 2:00.
I know what you mean. That's one of the reasons I'm going for variety of goals in my movie. If I wanted to go for most goals scored, there would probably be one play that I would use all of the time, but it would be very boring.
Dromiceius wrote:
I've seen that "super jump" the goalie did lots of times in the past, but I'm not sure how to reproduce it.
The goalkeeper dives to block the angle between the ball and the net. With proper timing and positioning, you could probably get him very far out of the goal by shooting diagonally so that the ball goes just a little bit above/below locations to which he can run and catch it. That usually gets him to dive.
Dromiceius wrote:
My theory is that it's actually a matter of range. They can pass just fine as long as the receiver is more than 1 or 2 body-widths away.
I'm not quite sure it's that simple. When I got my goalkeeper to hurt the opposing player with that header leading up to the last goal, the enemy would get the ball if I only told the goalkeeper to pass once. The distance didn't see to matter in that case.
As far as that glitch that you found, I think I managed to reproduce it once today. I tried to do a diving header on the ball as the opposing goalkeeper was kicking it after catching it, and I flew a pretty good distance one of the times. When I told my teammates to pass to me, the opposing goalkeeper got the ball, and I was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't move, though, so it was slightly different from your situation. The map showed me somewhere around the middle of the opposing goal, but my player's graphic wasn't there. I didn't wait for either team to score, so I don't know if I would have gone back to normal if that happened.
One other (probably useless) glitch that I came across while recording my movie was having the ball somehow go through the opposing goalkeeper and the net. At least, I think that's what happened. I was positioned somewhere around the middle of the opposing goal vertically, and probably within the white lines. I kicked the ball, which had rebounded off of someone or something, the goalkeeper dove for it, and it somehow appeared on the other side of the net. Since I was trying to score and since the other team got possession after that weird out, I didn't keep it in the movie.
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Whoa, that video really was chaotic. You had some goals that weren't in my video, but that I thought about doing, such as the one in which one of your players or an opposing player tackles the person with the ball, only to unintentionally score a goal. I might allow some of my players to take some hits in the second half in order to get that to work, since it seems nearly impossible to get an opposing player other than the goalkeeper in the proper position for that to work when I slide.
I also like how you just ran the ball past everyone and into the goal a few times. Unfortunately, running any length of distance with the ball but without getting tackled in the final match is pretty hard, so I had to settle for a short run (goal #4 in my video).
Dromiceius wrote:
Goalies have trouble passing short-range when they're outside of their net. If you tell your goalie to pass to you when you're standing right behind him, he may very well hit himself in the face with the ball.
I think goalkeepers have some bonus strength to their kicks just because of their positions, so the passes will sometimes hurt people (including themselves) if they receive them too quickly. I used that property to get one of the opposing players hurt during the play leading up to the last goal. Actually, the player would have intercepted that pass without any trouble had I not pressed the pass button multiple times, so that might affect the strength of the goalkeeper's kick.
Dromiceius wrote:
On the options screen, setting your teammates to "pass" instead of "dribble" puts the control in the hands of the computer, and reduces your own capacity to be random.
I understand what you're trying to say, but I somewhat disagree. If you have it set to "dribble," you have to tell your teammates to pass for every single pass. That's not necessarily bad, but they always pass to you when you tell them to. As far as I know, you can't tell them to pass to each other. I see this as more of a limiting factor in the types of goals I can score, since automatic passes between my teammates could allow me to get into position without having to worry about them getting tackled.
Dromiceius wrote:
If you have the ball, and your characte is at full HP ... only to hurt themselves.
That probably results from the fact that the first teams have less total HP than your team does. I haven't ever had that happen on the final match, which is the only one I'm recording in this movie. If it is because of the total HP, then it probably won't work, since the final team has more HP than you do.
Dromiceius wrote:
There's one trick I never managed to reproduce: ...
That's very weird. I'm not sure how useful it would be in my video, though, unless it allows some really unusual goal to be scored. Did you by any chance look on the map to see where the computer thought your player was? Or did you try to have one of your teammates pass to you when you were gone?
Dromiceius wrote:
When your own goalie is out of the net, you can hit him with a superkick. This will cause the enemy goalie to FLY INTO THE AIR as if he had been on the receiving end.
That it could lead up to an interesting goal. It doesn't always work, though. I've had cases in which I did a super kick and hurt my own goalkeeper who was out of the net at the time.
Dromiceius wrote:
Passes where the ball is airborne.
Why are these bad?
Dromiceius wrote:
Catching the ball with your chest. It's a vulnerability ...
That's true, but it's not really an issue in a TAS situation. You can always re-record if you get tackled.
Somewhat related to this is the possibility of doing a super kick off of a standing header. The opposing teams are able to do this later in the game, and I've also tried to get it to work. I'm not sure if it's possible, though, since I failed every time. I think it might be related to what the computer considers a "step" leading up to a super kick. If a standing header cancels out whatever step count you had, then it wouldn't work. That seems to be the case so far, but I'll keep trying to get this to work.
Dromiceius wrote:
Don't KO the enemy team.
It would take considerably longer to KO every player in the final match than in the earlier matches. The half could be almost over by the time you managed to accomplish this, depending on your tactics for doing so. I thought about making that a goal for the second half. Scoring the final goal of the game with all of the opposing players (except maybe the goalkeeper) down might be an interesting finish.
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Maza wrote:
One thing that should make it a bit more entertaining is not to use always the lower right corner to do cornerkicks. Use the upper righ also.
I'll try to get that to work in the second half, if I record a second half. It's harder because there's no time to get into position to intercept the ball on the kick-off. I would have to dribble over to the correct location for the kick to stop right on the line, but the other team (which is always faster in the final match) would catch up. The other option would be to get in place and have someone pass me the ball. That would be easier to achieve, after I find the right spot.
Maza wrote:
You could also try more of those header tricks which you used before the last score. Like bringing the ball from the other end of the field to the other just by using headers or something like that.