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After watching this TAS and making my own version of a different category, it becomes apparent that the optimization in this submission could be easily improved, as I've summarized in the linked video
Link to video
In summary:
Castle Grounds: -2f from running up the hill instead of exclusively jump kicking - I can excuse this one because of how minor it is, the general strategy is still good
Bowser in the Dark World: -146f (4 seconds, 26 frames) from general application of the spindash edge cancel
Bowser 1: -40f (1 second, 10 frames) from grabbing Bowser earlier and doing an eariler throw
Lobby movement to basement: -87f (2 seconds, 27 frames) from primarily spindashing through doors
Bowser in the Fire Sea: -547f (18 seconds, 7 frames) from primarily taking the short way up to the warp through a series of wallkicks instead of going the long way
Bowser 2: -230f (7 seconds, 20 frames) through reaching Bowser quickly enough to grab him before he lands, skipping the waiting period of the platform moving.
Upstairs movement: -349f (11 seconds, 19 frames) through better usage of spindashes to skip the doors and stairs.
Bowser in the Sky: -538f (17 seconds, 28 frames) through spindash cancels and better speed conservation as a whole
Bowser 3: -84f (2 seconds, 24 frames) from again grabbing Bowser earlier and hitting the bombs more optimally.
In total: -2023f, or over one minute and 7 seconds.
While most of these timesaves resulted from utilization of a specific technique that wasn't used in this TAS, the technique itself was already known and used in a 1 Star TAS made about two years ago
Link to video
Which means it could've been used here too.
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For the record, the plugin settings used for the movie are built into the .m64 file itself. Additionally, to my own knowledge and from my own experience, the ability to sync this hack and other Super Mario 64 related things isn't inherently reliant on specific plugin settings or emulator resolution (In contrast to something like Ocarina of Time). This is why I didn't make any specific notes in the sync settings aside from the emulator used, which does affect sync.
Regardless,
Video: Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6.1
Sound: Jabo's DirectSound 1.6
Input: TAS Input
RSP: RSP emulation Plugin
As for "how", there's normally a "repack" of the emulator (https://repack.skazzy3.com/ ) that contains these plugins alongside the most recent version of Mupen, but that's down now for some reason. I think I can only say "Find them somewhere else" (Jabo is closed source apparently), but again, the settings aren't required for sync.
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I've made an additional improvement of two input frames by timing of "the first frame of fadeout", at the expense of not being able to end input as early due to the timing being more strict. It is linked at User movie #638593397933906760
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
CoolHandMike wrote:
Yes, if you want to replace this submission's movie file.
Kinda defeats the entire purpose of other Golf TASes that target lowest score, or as branched by the other Golf TASes as "maximum score" to outright replace it with something that isn't.
An alternative file for publicationoran entirely new submission would be more suitable for something like that, and not take its place cause again it defeats the purpose of this submission.
DyllonStej, just to make sure I am understanding this right you want to replace this movie file with an improved version of this one with lowest number of strokes right?
Yes, that is what I'd like to do. Lowest Score, new improvements to time. Almost done with the improvements, a few holes left.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Nice improvements! Was watching you work on this in discord so nice to see it submitted.
However, Spikestuff found a solution that was roughly 1.5 seconds faster than the attempt in this movie, but requires two strokes to do so
Could you post an example like a user file, video, submission of completed tas that shows more strokes being faster? Otherwise this goal of Lowest Strokes would be the same as Any% AKA Fastest Completion as far as I can tell atm. While there may be a faster solution for that Hole 8 with more strokes, but it may not work out with the current improvements in this submission to ultimately end up as a faster tas.
Link to video
Here's a YouTube video comparing the two, where the two-stroke solution (Right, "Lowest Time") on Hole 8 carries over a ~1 second improvement all the way to the end in comparison to the one-stroke solution (Left, "Lowest Score").
In the process of making the two-stroke video, however, I fully realized how the camera system works in terms of additional time saved and thus would like to submit an improved movie whenever I fully redo it. I assume this improvement would be submitted to userfiles, correct?
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I pretty much hold the same opinion of this as InputEvelution, except I didn't even get past The Ruins (Due to a combination of uninterest, mild confusion, and a lack of time). As a person with a surface level understanding of Undertale's glitches, there's only so much fooling around you can do before it feels stale.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Incredible tas! Really enjoyed this update. Peach, MetaKnight, Yoshi, and Captain Falcon really were interesting to watch.
55:00 Is there a faster way to bounce forward first instead of having to bounce backwards? Like immediately moving left and bouncing of the wall with the bomb then? Or maybe bouncing right up and getting hit to move down?
There's no ceiling available at the start of the room, and the Bob-Omb deals far too much knockback for the camera to keep up, even with the Bounce Boost technique that doesn't freeze the camera. The Mite's knockback is low enough to do a proper boost, but I need to bounce on that right wall first and move backwards a bit before being able to move through the stage (As Bounce Boosting requires you to move into a wall or a ceiling for it to work). For what it's worth, the old TAS didn't do a damage boost here at all.
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d-feather wrote:
I'd give $25 to anyone responsible for a TAS of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Subspace Emissary.
Posting here to mention that I've not only completed one, but two movies of The Subspace Emissary, both accepted and published to the site without any hassle. I DM'd once soon after the first TAS was published, but didn't get a response, so I guess I'm trying here.
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fsvgm777 wrote:
Unfortunately, the TAS desyncs for me after the jungle (first Donkey and Diddy Kong stage) on version 1.0 of the game (which is the version I own) on either OpenGL or D3D11. It fails to select Pit for the next stage.
This was on an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor with an nVidia RTX 3060 GPU.
The previous TAS synced fine for me, though that was on an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor and an nVidia GTX 1060 GPU. Not sure if that makes a difference, though.
Unfortunate that it's not syncing; I updated the MD5 checksum notes to reflect that.
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I'm very happy to see the full result; it looks absolutely wonderful.
My favorite parts were the item shenanigans in the Fighting Polygon Team battle, especially with the grand Home Run Bat finish.
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I think that this is a fantastic technical achievement, but like the other people who voted "Meh" for this movie, I believe the full entertainment offered is hampered by things like several waiting periods, seemingly little payoff from complicated setups, and the fact that a significant number of jumps are still required to beat the game in spite of all the work done.
The middle portion is absolutely due to my inexperience of the game and what's exactly needed (And what isn't) to beat it, but I believe that would also be the case for a regular person just watching it without any proper context.
Many people have brought up the SM64 ABC challenge when comparing it to this movie, but I'd also like to bring up the DS version's own "jumpless" publication, which actually beats the entire game without jumping at all. In this case, the possibility of completely beating the game in this manner allows for a much higher number of alternate strategies. The sheer number of unavoidable A presses in this submission, by contrast, brings up a few situations that are just like a regular run, and briefly made me wonder "Is this still an A Button Challenge?" before it went on to diverge from the norm.
In the original N64 version's challenge, the small number of A presses left (Or rather just "one" when going by any% instead of 120 Stars) gives highlight to the remaining problems and - in my opinion - a surface level understanding of why they need an A Press to be solved.
For this movie, the number of A presses is beyond "zero" or "a few" (Totalling to over five dozen), and I feel that the importance of the jumpless solutions here is blurred by the numerous other sections where jumping is simply unavoidable.
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Three and a half years later, and it still doesn't seem like anyone started on one yet. I got the idea to try giving this a shot for some reason, but I don't think I'm familiar enough with the RNG to properly string things together.
My first idea for the general route was just copying the current RTA route and its RNG-modified Excadrill in combination with traditional TAS RNG manipulation, assuming it's possible to get a perfect one without needing to restart and modify the system clock like RTA.
For what it's worth, I discovered that it's possible to change the MAC Address that Desmume uses (Which has an impact on some of Gen V's RNG) by directly editing it in the executable (Searching for its default value "00 09 BF 12 34 56" in a hex editor and replacing it with any arbitrary value). I don't know the "legality" of such a change when it comes to a potential TASVideos submission, or if it would even matter in the grand scheme of a TAS, but I guess it's something to think about.
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JSmith wrote:
Fox vs Rayquaza: You crouch-cancel the electric ball attack. Did you evaluate reflecting it for damage instead?
Fox Horizontal Movement: Is it generally faster to land between side-Bs than to bounce off an enemy? Relevant in e.g. Lake room 13
First Ridley fight: Was it impractical to manipulate an early tail-slide attack like you did with the second Ridley fight?
The electric ball attack deals practically no damage (Even when reflected), so I opt to cancel attacks instead.
It's not possible to bounce off of Goombas or Koopas unless you're in the standard non-helpless falling animation, so landing between Side-B's is still the only option.
I couldn't get a Ridley tail attack until quite late with Pikachu even with attempted manipulation.
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Zinfidel wrote:
I was unable to get this movie to sync until I disabled all Wiimotes in the controller configuration. I have had this problem with other Dolphin movies - I'm not sure if it's specific to my hardware or not.
If that's the case, should I add an extra note in the sync settings?
For what it's worth, the input file also only uses a single Gamecube controller and nothing else.
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(Running on Ubuntu 19.10)
After my unsuccessful attempts at getting Kerbal Space Program to load past the initial loading screen in LibTAS (Thanks to freezing at a particular point within the loading itself), I realized that I needed to update LibTAS itself. I can confirm that the game now loads properly with v1.4.0 of LibTAS (As opposed to v1.3.5, which I first tried it with).
I've currently found two new issues beyond the beginning load: Input file desyncs from inevitable load time differences (Even with LibTAS locking the framerate) and the overwhelmingly slow speed that the game runs at while hooked to LibTAS (About six FPS on the main menu, and less than one when I tried to load to a Career game mode).
While disabling Software Mode greatly improves speed, it ruins savestate functionality in the process.
With everything said, I made a very brief "Proof of Concept" TAS that plays around with some menuing at the main menu. https://twitter.com/DStejGaming/status/1303098249172189185
The speed issues might be related to my own setup, but I never checked anything beyond LibTAS' settings.
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After some consideration, I believe limiting the character selection to only characters originally choosable (With the exception of horde-battle only sections like the 2nd Midair Stadium section or filler sections like the dash across the Halberd in Sea of Clouds) can open up the variety alongside allowing the optimization/timesave of the Debug Mode to show through at the same time. That does mean I have to re-do Sea of Clouds with Sheik, but it's better than going through the entire run all over again.
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After doing the third level (Sea of Clouds), I'm now finding it painfully obvious that Sonic is the most heavily favored character to use, due to his running speed not only being faster than any other character in the game, but also being higher than that of his Brawl counterpart (4 versus 3.5). His speed makes practically any loading penalty negated, which worries me in regards to the run's entertainment value or variety.
While I could take an alternate route, by not choosing Sonic for every level under the "Speed/Entertainment Tradeoff", the reasons for choosing a different character would be arbitrarily decided on a level-per-level basis and often fake at times, and also wouldn't make sense from the viewers' persepctive, either.
I'm at a loss as whether to continue doing this or to stop now.
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Link to video
I had previously thought that the majority of fight skips possible in Brawl were impossible in Project M, due to the nerfing of several characters' recoveries. I neglected to consider the use of outside help, like with the Green Shell item.
I found a way to bypass the last fight in Skyworld, using the aforementioned item to help me get high enough. After uploading the unoptimized video, I found a better method of gaining height that also allowed me to bring the Green Shell with me to the end of the level, allowing me to do a small damage boost that saves about 10 frames. The new route (In comparison to the video's route) saves 56 frames in total, while the fight skip itself saves about 12 entire seconds.
With this in mind, I'll keep an eye out for any other potential fight skips that can be done in this manner, given that it's practically an infinite recovery.
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Thank you very much for the information! I'll make sure to try it again on another version of Dolphin to see if the issue is something else.
EDIT: Still encountering desync issues, even with the reccommended settings and Dolphin 5.0-1225. At a loss at what to do.
EDIT #2: After starting over completely on Dolphin 5.0-5000, the one-frame-early-desyncs still occur, but I believe I've found a "good-enough" way of bypassing the issue by saving and loading a savestate while the movie plays back in Read-Only mode.
I believe this form of desync prevention has already actually been used in a published movie before (http://tasvideos.org/5627S.html), so I don't see why it would be an issue with my TAS.
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In my attempts at making a TASVideos publishable TAS of Project M's story mode, I've ran into numerous issues with desyncs recently. Despite having all of the TAS-unsafe settings off (Including Dual Core, Idle Skipping, and any Graphics hacks), no memory or SD cards inserted, setting the RTC to be the same time on boot-up (On both Dolphin 5.0-266 and 5.0-424, the versions that I tried), and only using a single Gamecube Controller to use, the input file still saves effectively random key inputs one frame before they should, desyncing the run.
Saving a savestate while in Read-Only mode, then reloading the savestate somehow fixes the issue, but only for inputs that were saved close in time to the savestate. As an aside, to make matters even more troubling, it doesnt even seem that the game loads for the same amount of time while the input file is being recorded versus the input file being played back for the first time after recording, making it desync once again, and forcing me to start recording again while the flawed input file plays.
So, I'm at a complete loss as to what to do. I've been dealing with nonsensical forms of input recording flaws that can't even be fixed most of the time, alongside what seems like nondeterministic loading for the first instance of input recording, despite the fact that I have all of the settings correct, as far as I'm aware.
The only method that does work is playing back the entire movie, checking to see if inputs were saved a frame earlier than intended, and hex-editing the file to have it be correct. Over the course of an hour+ long TAS, the issue turns from bothersome to downright impractical, and I don't have the patience to deal with a single minute of waiting as it is.
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I will do my best to make the run as non-repetitive as I can. A good part about that is the fact that the ability to switch to any character isn't as cut-and-dry as it seems.
While Project M's Debug Mode allows character switching, it comes at a tradeoff of extra loading time. The most optimal characters to switch to from a specified character are the ones 1 step or 10 steps away from him/her in the character rotation, as they only require one "switch" with the options that the Debug Mode has. The more you have to switch characters, the longer of a wait there is for the character to load, which reduces the potential time saved.
In my testing so far, the first fight in the game (Kirby/Mario vs. Mario/Kirby) is still faster to beat with Kirby inhaling Mario and falling off of the edge of the stage than any other character, when taking into account the extra loading time for other characters to be used.
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Over the last couple of weeks, some Project M speedrunners have discussed the possibility of using Project M's debug mode to speedrun The Subspace Emissary faster. This includes things like switching to any character in the game (Invalidating the character limitations of a level) and bypassing the camera lock to skip autoscrollers.
With this in mind, I've begun work on a new TAS of the game. A key difference is that I'm trying to make a TAS that's publishable on TASVideos, through using a patched Brawl ISO and starting the game from console boot-up.
I've run into several issues, however. Obviously, the Wii's Real Time Clock needs to start at the same time after every boot up, which means Dolphin revisions before 5.0-266 are effectively impossible to work with.
Using Dolphin 5.0-266, while functional, still has a large host of problems in keeping the .dtm file in sync. Even when I've turned off all Graphics hacks, Dual Core, Idle Skipping, and other miscellaneous things, either the emulator itself is reading inputs from the file incorrectly by one frame, loads things in different times when recording inputs vs. playing the same inputs back, or records the inputs themselves one frame off. Saving and loading a savestate while the movie is being played back only fixes it for a short period of time before the desyncs occur again.
I'm either going to try all of this again on another revision that might record inputs better, or continue putting up with the fact that I have to fix every minute desync by playing progressively longer and longer progress from boot-up. If anyone can help me with this, I'd greatly appreciate it.
I'm very happy to see the full result; it looks absolutely wonderful.
My favorite parts were the item shenanigans in the Fighting Polygon Team battle, especially with the grand Home Run Bat finish.