I think it's a great idea. I'm thinking, there should be a way to write a program to do the total conversion for you, from the Zelda NES ROM, to a 3D version of Zelda based on some FPS engine. Even if you just replace keese with some bad guy from Half Life or Unreal Tournament or Serious Sam, or something.
Thoughts?
If, hypothetically, it were my job to do a remake of the original Zelda, I wouldn't touch the original ROM for the purposes of creating assets of any kind. I'd play the game, but I can only imagine that generating 3D geometry programmatically like you're suggesting would be a lot of work to get a really crappy result.
Nevertheless, it would likely entail opening Zelda in FCEU, and finding the tile data for a particular screen using MHS' "group search" feature. This procedure is described in MHS' help file. Hopefully, that process would scale up to convert the entire game in a convenient fashion.
Failing that, I'd make (or possibly download from gamefaqs) screenshots of the overworld and all the dungeons, convert them to tga, and do some pattern matching.
Failing that, I'd use a debugger, setting a breakpoint on the tile data in the ROM, perhaps, and reverse engineer whatever compression scheme is used to store the dungeons, overworld, etc.
Whatever the means of getting the tile data, I'd have to write a script that converts it into geometry for whatever map/level format I were using. And then I'd have a bunch of generic box-room dungeons, in a world that consists of maybe 16 textures, and which is filled with headcrabs instead of bats, and g-men instead of moblins. :p
...But then again, maybe this isn't impracticable? Would it really be that difficult to generate decent looking geometry, lighting, etc from a tile engine?
lol. I agree that the most effective TASer isn't necessarily a programmer, but uses whatever methods are expedient. Nevertheless...
#eleventeen: Can write an algorithm that paints dinosaurs in better than linear time.
The game's looking a lot more broken than the last WIP I saw. Very cool how Quaid now jitters like a monkey on crack. The only thing I saw that might be improvable is the stoppage on those steps around frame 17,000. You might be able to climb up more smoothly if you time the jumps differently.
Sorry if that's already been addressed and/or doesn't work.
Good job, anyhow. :)
what inspires you or even perhaps ideas for a screenplay
Subversiveness, in a word. If I were going to write a screenplay, it would (in part) be an attempt to challenge the viewer's sense of reality and of self in the way that Fight Club and The Matrix did. Nothing as a trite or obvious as asking in near-literal terms, "what is real? is this a dream?" but to illustrate aspects of human nature that control what we do and how we act in some way that is intrinsically interesting. Kind of like American Beauty.
That's the only kind of thing I can feel motivated to write. Not just for social commentary or philosophy, or some kind of highfalutin activist nonsense, but just a good movie that makes you think.
I mean, I have social commentary, but I can't do "interesting" to save my life, which I why I don't write anymore. :p
/me watches Bloobiebla fall into the sarchasm
:p
I've never seen RBA before, so this was cool. I give it two thumbs up, but I think it's gruefood for the reasons others have mentioned, and in spite of the reasons that contradict those reasons.
Slashstardash's run was rejected from TASvideos because of imprecision... if the only improvement from the rejected run is a shortcut, then this is certainly not going to be published.
the game is very entertaining so i just submit the run and hope it will be accepted since theres no previous one.
That's generally not how things work here- the standards need to be upheld. Next time, you should post your WIPs in the forums so that other TASers can review your work and tell you how to improve.
Still, thanks for giving us these runs. I was thinking of watching both OoT and CV64, and now I have new versions instead of old ones. :D
I'm sure someone involved in the production of this video has already thought of this, but I have to ask anyway:
is it possible to use the Yoshi-springboard trick in Boo's tower?
I'm just throwing this out in case I never get the time to try it:
A Lua script that watches a string pointer (I.E, pointer to the currently displayed dialogue string) and overlays the Japanese text with a set of GD bitmaps, which spell out corresponding pointer in the hacked English ROM.
Which is to say, soft subtitling that doesn't actually subtitle anything, but creates the illusion of a translated/hacked ROM, and where the translated text is already prepared.
How about everyone writing a short essay on his favorite characters instead? Explain *why* you like them. What is it that makes them so cool? What made you fond of them? That might be more interesting to read than just a list of random names.
I was kinda hoping someone would say that. I'll elaborate a little on my choices (from my post on the first page.)
It struck me as interesting just now, that two of my three serious choices were 1) a mutant whose mutation alienates him from the rest of the world, and 2) a dhampir whose vampirism has the consequence of profoundly screwing up his existence.
In both cases, this alienation results in a sort of anti-resolution at the end of their respective games, where the hero rides off into the sunset, wishing he hadn't been born.
Heh. At least they didn't die at the end.
Awesome. I, too, have played a lot of Pipe Dream. My only gripe was that you didn't spank the hell out of the last bonus stage for a aesthetic sense of finality... but on testing it, it turned out that the bonus stages just plain suck, so that's out.
Yes vote.
Explosion Pills wrote:
I don't understand the reason for a Meh vote.
If 50 people feel Meh about it and say nothing, but the five people who like it are vocal, then it gets published, and teh system has failed to filter out a movie that people generally aren't going to like.
Because that's all the topic would be filled if otherwise.
OMGMEGAMANLOL!
No. Though, I did like Zero... until the Zero series revisioned him into a deformed midget.
I still gotta get a razor-brimmed hat like Kung Lao (Mortal Kombat)
Flynn (from The Peace Keepers) is very angry. Half of the plot is just a lot of stuff that the writer seems to have thrown in his path for the sake of getting him pissed off, so that he can start yelling at people before beating the crap out of them. He reminds me of me.
Alucard (Castlevania)
Guy (Capcom) is a ninja. Not really a "sneaker" sort of ninja; more a "kill you with a pair of sneakers" ninja.
Gebara (is next to the toilet)
And of course, the Queen of Hearts.
Even though I use him as an avatar, I think Byakki (Sengoku 3) is a twat.
Kinda dull, IMO. It would probably be better with some aesthetic polish, such as purposely flying like a lunatic, constantly staying a hair's breadth from self-destructing, and suchlike. On the other hand, it's possible that in a game like this, such a use of style might not be evident or impressive to a casual viewer.
It's hard to tell whether this would be publishable or not... I suspect that if the finished movie is over 20 minutes, people are going to get bored, otherwise it's promising.
I seem to have about 50 dopplegangers, because I have a name that is dirt-common. I could actually change my name to "Dirt Common" and it would be more distinctive.
A thread on Stunt Race FX, and I didn't notice?!
Egads!
Tilus wrote:
Would runs of Stunt Race FX, as SNES9x is now, even be accepted on TASvideos?
Given that we have a Star Fox movie published, I doubt another FX game would be rejected on those grounds.
Would someone mind digging into the game and finding the more important memory addresses in the game, for things such as the clock timer, speed, current turning radius, vertical alignment (for things like jumps) and current coordinates on the track?
I'll definitely try to help out on that end if you decide to do a TAS. I've wanted to see a run of this for ages. :)
Are there any communities of Stunt Race FX players (let alone communities that keep "world record" times) anywhere on the Internet? Detailed searching of Google and Youtube-ish netvideo sites resulted in nothing. It would be nice to have anything resembling world record times to compare against.
All I could dig up was a video of Harbor City. There are some related videos of other tracks. Hopefully they're at least adequately performed, but I haven't watched them.
I just re-watched the movie with input display turned on- I think it would be a crime not to publish it with input display. The version without display seems too redundant.
I've played both games, but I didn't know there were any differences... so I doubt it matters that much for the purposes of TASing.
The wiki article implies that J is better:
This version also fixes some of the flicker effects whenever there are too many enemies and barrels on-screen. There are also two new power-ups added to this version: A Jessica doll, which makes the player's character invulnerable to damage for a short time, and a doll of the player's character, which serves as an extra life. The enemy placement is also significantly different from the original (especially on the "Expert" setting) and the background of Stage 3 (the "West Side") has the bar crowd that was missing in the original port.
That notwithstanding, am I the only one thinking of adding more TASing features to FBA? A TAS of the arcade version would obviously be better than either of these versions...
Not bad. I like the concept of the Simon-clone plus helpful bird. The refights were a drag, though.
I can imagine watching this again, so I give it a Yes.
