Posts for DyllonStej


DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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frk7777 wrote:
Did you collect your bounty DyllonStej? http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=412350#412350
I tried contacting them when the first Subspace TAS was published, but they haven't responded.
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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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DyllonStej
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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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Post subject: Re: Decisions
DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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Post subject: Kerbal Space Program
DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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Post subject: Skyworld Fight Skip
DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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Post subject: Inputs not recording properly/other desync issues
DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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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DyllonStej
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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.
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DyllonStej
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The reason why I didn't waveland for several characters was because it literally didn't matter whether you wavelanded or landed and dashed - trust me, I tested for the ones that did or didn't matter. With characters like Captain Falcon, even a purely horizontal wavedash only ties with landing and dashing for long distances, except for the spare part where I found it beats it by a single frame. I also tested all of Squirtle's movement options, and the simple wavedashing trumped the rest of them. If you can find better testing that proves it otherwise, please tell me. In other news, I've toyed with the idea of doing a "Project M All Event Matches" TAS, only to find that one particular event (Donkey Kong vs. many Diddy Kongs) always crashes the game and/or emulator, regardless of whether Project M was used as an ISO or the SD + Gecko method. Today, I finally figured out why: It only crashes on Hard Mode. Easy Mode or Normal Mode doesn't crash the event, so an All Event Matches TAS would have to be performed on Normal instead of Hard. I don't know how this would change things in terms of submissions, but I'm just messaging to tell the news of that.
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DyllonStej
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZVuOfirN-yFArkkHW_8mpR6qB_6R0kNe9laTuU-myFc/edit?usp=sharing This was the most recent guide I could find from the IRL speedruns (Courtesy of http://www.speedrun.com/pmdsky/guides) I suppose most of the routing is the same, aside from in the dungeons themselves. Generally, the RNG is the most improvable and abusable thing, given that it can be modified by button inputs. The RNG handles a frightening amount of things in the game, from the dungeon layouts, to the questions of the Personality Quiz, all the way down to which Partner Pokemon appear in which rows when you go to choose your partner. I believe the RNG Address is located at 0x020AEF2C, given that it changes randomly every frame. It's 2 Bytes, with a maximum value of FFFF (65,535). It also has the same starting value (348C, or 13452 in decimal) when starting the game from reset, even when the DS's time is different, in my testing.
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Post subject: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky
DyllonStej
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I'm not even sure if a TAS of this game would be even reasonable to do, given how long it is with all of its un-skippable cutscenes and stuff. But, if Blue Rescue Team has an active page, I don't see why the Explorers series can't. The IRL Speedrunning community for this game isn't that large either, but they do have dedicated strategies for stuff like choosing your own Pokemon and Partner, alongside some routing. I don't know how much of it can be improved with TAS or not, however, and if TAS-Only routes can be feasible. After doing some test TASing with the Title Screen and all, I found an interesting quirk: When the game is still loading up to the "New Game" menu, you can change the artwork that appears in the background by pressing the DS's buttons; most likely RNG related. It's purely cosmetic, but I think that's an interesting thing that they'd implement.
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DyllonStej
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Just out of curiosity, would this have been good enough to be submitted to Moons or elsewhere, if I didn't encounter the numerous desync issues?
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DyllonStej
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I just started TASing this as a side-project, and found some more interesting things about skipping text. Continuously button-mashing (Pressing A and X every alternating frame) can actually make text boxes go away one frame before they normally do. This applies to secondary text in the same text box, entire text boxes as a whole, and "Shouting" text boxes that can't be skipped like normal. I don't know if everyone else knows about it, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.
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DyllonStej
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I've recently just TASed Pit's first section with the Primid fight, and everything seems to be going very well. I abused RNG to get a Super Mushroom near the end of the fight so I could quickly run through most of the level. I had to "waste" a few frames in the final enemy fight of the stage to get Sticker drops, and I'm sure that they will be helpful later on.
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DyllonStej
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I just defeated the first boss, Petey Piranha, using Kirby's aerial Side-B move to do very large amounts of damage. I think it's his most damaging move in terms of damage per frame, especially in Petey Piranha's case. I had to "lose" a frame to make Petey drop stickers that will save time later instead of a useless CD that doesn't do anything relevant to the TAS.
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