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Kenttsu wrote:
Early issues:
1) I haven't been able to get the sound blaster to work. I'm getting this message:
Does the game work with any other sound settings, or do they all produce this error? (obviously works without sound).
Kenttsu wrote:
2) It's one of those games that run notably faster with a faster CPU. Despite being a late era DOS game, I feel that the default 20MHz CPU speed is optimal for this run as it makes the run still relatively easy to follow despite being quite fast (with the fastest in-game speed setting).
New processors in 1995 averaged in the 150-200mhz range (see here). Even for the few years before that they were well above 20mhz. I'd bump the CPU speed up myself. This can be done by decreasing the CPU divider during assembly in JPC-rr. A CPU divider of 5 will yield a 200mhz system; 6.6.... will yield a 150 mhz system (I don't remember if you can do decimals in the CPU divider setting or not).
While the resulting video at this speed may be incomprehensible a slowed down version can be encoded as well to watch what's actually happening while still getting the shorter time for the completed TAS itself.
Kenttsu wrote:
Early observations and strategies:
-Levels can be viewed in game's editor. I'll post pics later.
-Before starting the game I set the game speed to 100% and number of players to 1 (otherwise it would start a death match mode).
-Item boxes contain random amount(?) of random items. Box's content is decided when player picks it up so RNG manipulation will be really important as some items are very expensive and can be sold.
-Getting enough money for good digging equipment and armor is probably worth it
-Player can buy teleport items (round hole) that can be used to move to the teleports that are already on the map (the second level in the test run skips half of the level)
-The fourth level and some of the later levels got several exits. But it appears that only one is available. I haven't yet tested if the exit location is random.
Use RNG manipulation as efficiently as possible to yield your best box contents within reason for frames lost to manipulation.
Look into the teleport stuff more. You may be able to cut a lot of game out using these.
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phoenix1291 wrote:
Probably a silly question, again, but how to use fastloaders?
I asked about fastloaders back in July. SaxxonPike tested a few with the core and said that some worked, but I don't believe specifics on how to use them were detailed.
I had suggested it might be implementable as an optional part of the firmware setup (assuming this is possible from a coding perspective).
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Chamale wrote:
Why is it faster to use RTA strats after the first three halves? Is it just that it's not possible to outmaneuver the AI defenders without releasing the Up button? Or is it related to the clock having only 30 seconds on it?
Correct on the timer. I tested through every half until it stopped being beneficial to run a regular play; after the first 3 halves.
Also, did you test running out of bounds instead of running directly into the defenders? For example, in High School first half, that stops the first play at your 41-yard line instead of your 44-yard line, so it's slightly sooner and will let the clock run down a bit more.
I did not consider running out of bounds.
I may look into this, but it will have to wait. I'm focused on other projects at the moment.
I'm guessing that going OOB instead of being tackled will change the RNG of what formation the defense chooses. If so, all the dodging will then need redone from scratch. If not, it may be easy to update and re-sync by simply adding L or R to go OOB then add a few frames for the extra few yards to reach the endzone.
EDIT: Ok I had a few brief moments to look at this. Running out of bounds does indeed result in a different defensive formation. I didn't yet have time to TAS in all the dodging to see if it indeed yields a faster half or not than in the current submission.
As the defense is definitely a different formation it will require at least 2-3 halves of completely redone TAS work if it is indeed faster. The reason I say 2-3 is that in the first half of college, the extra distance to run might fully run out the clock and result in a slower half than running the play as currently submitted.
I will test further as I am able. Leaving the current submission for now.
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MUGG wrote:
About the read+write thing, my problem was as follows:
I lost my leading savestates, so I played back the movie and got new savestates.
But when I loaded those states, the emulator would play until the movie's original end each time.
I deleted the movie file and the savestate's backup file, but it didn't fix the problem.
The "Truncate" option worked for me though.
"Truncate event stream" simply removes all input events beyond the current point in the loaded movie.
Savestates will always have all their input events. When loaded as a movie instead of a savestate, it will play to the end of the savestate's event stream. The savestate itself will retain its event stream even if you truncate the currently running movie. To change the savestate, overwrite it with a new save after truncating.
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I've made some progress.
Within jpc-rr, I edited the fdconfig.sys file to contain the line
device=emm386.exe RAM
I then had to edit the autoexec.bat file and delete
cutemouse
I reset the system (from the file menu).
Then tried to run the game.
This got me past the memory problem....but now freedos doesn't have the CD drive installed....I don't know how to do that part.
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MUGG wrote:
When creating an image, JPC only lets me choose between floppy and hard disk. It does not let me choose CD. (If that makes sense.)
When importing a disk image, select your CD .cue/.iso file as your 'Image file/Directory'
It should then add 'CD-ROM Disc' to the 'Image Type' drop-down box.
EDIT:MUGG wrote:
@DrD2k9
I tried to run an HD image of the (trimmed) CD version.
It tells me the game needs 560K of free low memory and 1024k of free EMS (expanded) memory.
I currently have 610K free low memory and 0K free EMS memory.
How can I set up enough memory to run the image?
Try not skipping autoexec.bat at startup. That should load the needed memory.
There's also slight possibility that memory amount in the PC settings is actually set too high. This can occasionally cause some games to think there's not enough.
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MUGG wrote:
How can I make sure the game gets enough cycles in JPC-rr?
You can set the CPU speed by adjusting the 'CPU Divider' during assembly. A higher number yields a slower emulated CPU. Divide 1 GHz by the divider number to get the effective CPU speed.
As this game was released in 1992, the default CPU speed in JPC-rr should be fairly accurate already.
As a note: the faster the emulated CPU speed is set, the slower it will appear to run while TASing or playing a movie in the emulator itself. The dumped AVI will play in a media player at the appropriate rate for the CPU speed settings.
I hope all that made sense.
Also, if I want to run the CD version, and I have the game as a .bin and .cue file, how should I proceed to run it in JPC?
I've not yet done a CD based game that required the CD to play. But I believe you can make a JPC-rr image of the CD as you do an HDD image of the installed game.
In the assembly settings I think you can set the CD drive image similar to setting the HDD image.
c-square or slamo may have better info on this.
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MUGG wrote:
I can select neither Save>Movie nor Start Dumping while I'm running the game. I can save movie before "starting" but when I "load" it later, it doesn't seem to play back.
Stop/pause the game (T) and both of those options will become available.
When you save a movie, it essentially makes a file similar to a savestate with all inputs up to the point where you save the movie. The difference between the files is the savestate file has extra information; the movie file will have minimal necessary info and input events.
Savestate files and movie files are the same file type just with slightly different information. You can open/playback a savestate as a movie file.
Once you have a saved movie file/savestate with inputs; load the movie and start dumping before starting the movie. Once the movie runs as far as you want to dump, you can stop the movie then stop dumping (also, I believe it's possible to simply close the emulator and the dump will be good).
Once you have a dump file then you can convert that to a temporary encode (avi, etc.) that you can watch on VLC or other appropriate video player.
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c-square wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
One note on this. Some programs accelerate the mouse movement in weird ways, so clicking and dragging doesn't always drop the cursor exactly where you stop.
This could be for two reasons.
First, ctmouse by default accelerates mouse movement, meaning that moving x by 100 has much more than double the effect of moving it by 50. You can turn off this setting by unloading ctmouse and reloading it using "ctmouse /r32". That will make it scale linearly, meaning 100 will be exactly double the movement of 50.
To check if this is the case, use the 'M' key to bring up the manual mouse movement screen and move your mouse's x by 10. Reload and move by 20. Reload and move by 30. If it's linear, then it should move equal distances between the three. If it's not, then 30 will be much bigger than three times 10.
Second, if the resolution of the mouse area is different than the games I've been playing, then it will move differently. You can adjust the sensitivity of the mouse movement by using the 'Y' key to bring up the mouse speed screen and alter the numbers till you find ones that work. Note that this will only work if the mouse is moving linearly.
Thanks! I'm pretty sure mine wasn't running linearly. Glad I wasn't very far into the Indy run. I'll try the different settings.
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c-square wrote:
Also, to move the cursor, now you just have to click on it and drag it with your own mouse cursor. No luascript needed. :)
One note on this. Some programs accelerate the mouse movement in weird ways, so clicking and dragging doesn't always drop the cursor exactly where you stop. Sometimes the resulting location will be farther than you dragged, but it will still be in the correct direction.
Example Game: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (yes I've started a run of this among my 20 or so other projects).
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link_7777 wrote:
Looked good to me, voted yes. I assume missing the field goal either takes longer or doesn't end the half?
I didn't think I missed any, but it doesn't matter right now. I'm cancelling this submission.
My thought on running a play and letting the timer start does indeed save a few frames in the timer countdown...at least through the first half. I'll be checking to see how many halves of play it saves time on and will re-submit a better run.
At least this time, I found my own improvements instead of someone else directly pointing out a time-saver.
The new run will look significantly different at least through the first half or so. I'll be dodging many more opponents and saving a few frames in the process. It should also be more obvious why the new method would be much harder for a human player.
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ViGadeomes wrote:
Wasn't it possible to try something more dangerous, ambitious than speedrunners around opponent's tackles ? Because here, there is not a lot of changes between matches. It's not against you but the repetition of the sound when your score increases is ugly. Good job on but not very entertaining sorry... "meh" vote.
Possible, yes. But. I didn't feel it would add enough entertainment value to bump the run to moon status, so I just did what was less time consuming for me and aimed for a Vault run. It's also significantly more time consuming to TAS more dangerous dodging of the defense while still maintaining constant vertical speed.
The annoying sound of the score is unfortunately unavoidable as the timer doesn't decrease on kick returns as it does on normal plays. Running around more won't fix that. I even tried getting tackled and running a normal play to get the timer going, but it took longer to get the touchdown that way. Though now that I think about it, the timer running may save the lost frames by having less time to count down after the touchdown. I'm going to go test this right away and will upload a new run if I find it's faster.
I'm not offended with a 'meh' vote; I'm actually surprised as I expected mostly 'no' votes on entertainment.
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I highly suggest using c-square's modified emulator. It's MUCH easier to actually complete a TAS with than trying to use menu/keyboard commands to move the mouse cursor.
I've never played the game, but I'll help out with what I can.
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Battles of World Runner has a built-in anaglyph stereoscopic 3D effect. It's activated by pressing 'Select' during play. It splits the video into R/L images that produces a 3D effect when viewed through cyan/red filter glasses as seen below.
I was curious what the programmed anaglyph stereoscopic effect combined with the 3DNES effects would look like.
Edit Side Note: I also notice that your score/info bar is on the top of the screen where on my version of BOWR it is on the bottom.
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Spikestuff wrote:
Useless topic is useless.
Why must you be so rude with your responses?
Had your response been identical except without this sentence, I would have simply said 'thank you for the information' and appreciated the learning opportunity. However...
While, I can understand voicing disdain toward those who have consistently shown that they are unteachable, it's just plain rude to react in such ways toward those who are willing to learn (or, God forbid, actually want to ADD value to the site).
Forgive me if I'm too noob or so ignorant in your eyes that I didn't realize the 'Import Movie' option was to import movies of OTHER emulators. I was under the impression is was to import them from folders other than the default.
Furthermore, the fact that BizHawk can auto-convert the .fm2 input files INTO a tasproj file is not obvious. Especially from a drag/drop approach. There's nothing in the menus that suggests this. There's nothing in the documentation (that I could easily find)
here that suggests this. TAStudio doesn't give the option to open .fm2 files in the dropdown box.
Even if someone knew that the 'import movie' option could open the movie files of other emulators, they may not realize you can then open TAStudio and get a new .tasproj file with the inputs already populated. Some things aren't as intuitive as you seem to think they should be.
Some of us simply don't have the Godlike knowledge/understanding of all things TAS related that you seem to want everyone to have before doing something as simple as even saying 'hello' on the forums let alone attempting to offer anything of value.
PEOPLE MAKE HONEST MISTAKES!
The rest of us aren't all idiots. Some of us WANT to learn. Some of us WANT to improve. Some of us WANT to add value to the site. But your responses rarely foster those desires. And they even more rarely encourage people to look to you as a mentor in the field.
As far as the 'uselessness' of this topic.
It was something I perceived as being a method of personally imparting some value to the site.
To believe that I'm the only one who has ever wanted to be able to do this and not known about the already available option, is naive.
So while what I was offering may indeed be useless, the topic isn't. Especially if it gets someone else the information more readily than I was able to learn it myself.
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For anyone interested. I can fairly quickly convert the input information from FCEUX .fm2 and .fm3 files into BizHawk 1.13.1 .tasproj files.
This is primarily for inputs. With a bit of extra work, I could do the frame markers as well (I'm unsure but doubtful on branches at this point).
EDIT: In light of the information provided below, my offer isn't needed.
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I'm cancelling this submission.
I'm frequently amazed and frustrated at how quickly my work is beaten by someone else on this site. I try all the various combinations I can think of to beat a game as fast as possible before submitting, but someone always seems to find something I didn't.
It can be extremely discouraging. Especially when I've spent hours upon hours working on completing an entire game and then someone finds an improvement near the beginning; forcing me to either abandon the game outright or redo practically the entire run.
It's even more frustrating when it's for a game that has never been submitted before, and no one else seems to care much about until after I submit it.
ThunderAxe31, please don't take all this as a direct result of your post....I'm just venting a general frustration with this site and my own incompetency in TASing.
In regard to this particular game: I had already been reworking it myself, for at least the 5th time (having gone through it multiple times looking for improvement possibilities before originally submitting). I had also found significant improvements as of last night (not as good as yours, though).
I don't know if I'll ever re-submit. I've mostly lost the desire to work this game... unless GunCon gets support.
Edit Side Note: I also notice that your score/info bar is on the top of the screen where on my version of BOWR it is on the bottom.