I think this was the worst TAS block so far. So we got Gradius. Cool. Impressive at first, the the excitement kind of died down as the run went of. There's just so much you can do with an auto scroller and a NES game.
Then we got several short ones where we basically just played around with total control. Yeah, there was the Mario game, but that was kind of not as much fun as the quality was subpar. Why TAS a N64 game on a SNES? Lower resolution, worse color information, less framerate. What's to like? Nothing! ...Well, except the cool factor. I still think you could have saved that for an actual system, if such a thing is possible.
Then there was a shooter which does not resonate with me. Maybe it did with others, but I just find them boring. So in the end, it didn't feel like we got any nice run to really enjoy. Too little content because too much was wasted on "cool tricks." I also think the explanations were very bad, especially what a TAS is. Again. Oh, a TAS is an emulator and we do a little save states and frame advance. But that doesn't explain what a TAS is! We need to put ourselves in the shoes of people who know nothing of what a TAS is. Explain how a TAS is produced, what concepts are used in a little more detail.
In short: my opinion is that we need some actual cool runs that aren't just 5-10 minutes long and less of the funs n' giggles with total control and all that. Sure, I get it, people like it. I like it too. But nothing this year was amazing. Nothing was really wow. I would like to see something cool, but would also like to see a real TAS that has at least some length, a TAS that actually completes the game and isn't just used as a scapegoat for some total control or something. Just throwing out my opinion there in the wild...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrominance
The picture is especially enlightening.
Imagine a block of 4 pixels, or a 2x2 block of pixels. To save space, we remove 2 pixels of chrominance and 2 pixels of luminance. The resulting scheme is called 4:2:0. On decompression, we will try to "guess" the color information we threw away.
But if you double the pixels, then we'll actually not throw away any information, because the pixels we throw away will be duplicates of the real pixels, so we lose no information.
That's basically the gist of it, though I may have gotten some details wrong.
EDIT: The pictures here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling) under Sampling systems and ratios is also enlightening.
In my own subjective testing some years ago, it did not seem like increasing the resolution helped bring down the compression artefacts on youtube (tried with 2K on a 1080 monitor). But then again, times may have changed. But I don't think it's going to help much since youtube butchers bitrates for any content uploaded (although it's even worse for sub-720).
If there's an overwhelming demand for higher resolutions, then I'd say it might be worth it, but not right now since there's practically little gain for a lot longer compression time. This is just my own opinion, of course.
TASvideos has always used bleeding edge technology for video encoding, always ahead of everyone else. Thus the next logical step would be to use the newest HD technologies, which are becoming increasingly popular. Thus we should use 1920x1080 resolution and 5.1 channel surround sound in all future publications. Perhaps we could use some "Now in HD!" tag in the videos.
As technology advances, 1920x1080 is becoming a technology of the stone age. 4k is all the rage now. Thus, if we want to keep with the times, we should publish everything at 3840x2160. We wouldn't want to be deemed old and obsolete, now would we?
But there is not much point is doing that unless you really, really want to keep that terrible pixelated look. HD is good enough for youtube, and the material is upscaled anyway, so it's just a matter of who does it.
I don't think you really have to optimize it to such a degree. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's not like it's unwatchable if you make a mistake that you later realize can be done faster. It's OK if you don't want to redo parts. The important thing is that you enjoy doing it.
Well, to be honest with you, I think the TAS introduction this year was even more horrible than AGDQ. There's a lot of terms being flown around and you were very abstract.
The Mega Man game afterwards was a mess too. Lots of numbers of the screen, but you didn't really explain them. "Taking a memory tour" doesn't cut it. Most people aren't programmers or hardware enthusiasts. They won't know what it means.
The introduction should be handled in such a way that one would go on about a presentation. Pick a game. Show save states. Show frame advance. Show memory contents (speed, position, etc). You almost had it with the Mega Man at AGDQ (I think?).
But enough of the negative stuff. The TASbot block did show off some interesting stuff, though I don't think it was a particularly enjoyable selection (but that may just be me). So looking forward to the next time! I also know how much work goes into this, so let me just also add: thanks for an enjoyable show, and thanks for all your hard work, everyone involved! You are the ones who are making the TASbot block show up and for that you deserve praise!
Something is better than nothing. New tricks are always found. If everyone stays their hand because they're afraid some new trick will be found that obsoletes their time, then there's never going to be a run made.
I... what? He was talking about completely removing the crystal oscillators that generate the clock signal in the consoles; there would be no more clock signal in the console that you need to synch anything to. Instead of the stock clock, an external signal would be supplied to take over that function. It would be supplied in the exact same place where the original crystal oscillator was before,
I missed a "not" in there, apparently, but yes, I understand that the idea is to completely remove the oscillator and use a single one external oscillator to provide the clock signal to all consoles.
so there would be no need to consider in-console clock skew (it was considered when they designed the console);
Ah sorry, I probably confused myself there. I thought we had to synchronize the clock signal in the system, but of course that's not true because we're generating the clock signal, not some external input.
clock skew between consoles might be a factor, and would need to be dealt with. Using the same length of wires to distribute clock signal from the clock driver to all consoles would deal with that nicely.
I don't know how easy it is, but those wires needs to be balanced so that the skew between them is minimized. But considering the low frequency, I don't support that matters all too much.
Well, I'm sure it is impossible for gigahertz processor.
But the SNES run at 21Mhz which give a wavelength of about 9.5m. I'm sure we are well under these dimensions.
More over, skew is not so important if you inject the clock at the same point the crystal oscillator was before.
So, there is a small non zero chance that it could work with two same versions SNES.
I don't have any SNES around there, I can't test it :)
Sure, not impossible, but still not probable.
If you don't inject the signal so that it starts off in the system at the beginning of each clock period, you're likely going to have timing violations or other weirdness. How can you guarantee that you're balancing the wires from the oscillator such that it arrives at exactly the right time in the system?
I don't know how much leeway you have in terms of timings for such old systems, but TASBot has had syncronization issues in the past already. Adding more things that can go wrong is just asking for more trouble where it's unstable enough already.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but could it be possible to desolder the crystal oscillator of the various consoles and feed them with a common clock signal ?
That's asking for trouble. Each electronic system is carefully designed to take clock skew (the time it takes for the clock signal to actually physically travel the wires to different parts of the system) into account. Furthermore, each system is designed to work with a specific clock frequency. If you go slower or faster, you can get timing violations, which basically means the signals don't get to the point they need to go in the appropriate time frame.
I would rather see a good presentation than 100% verified. But it's also possible to prioritize the presentation and cut out material that isn't 100% finished.
Same story as ever, I see. Hoped it would have been better this time, but oh well, I guess.
I thought there would have had to be a cutoff where you would simply have focused on rehearsing everything, even if everything is not yet complete.
Can't tell you what to do of course, but I'd say rehearsing is top priority. Get it done! It's better to have a structured presentation that's incomplete than a messy presentation!
Good luck, and looking forward to the TAS block!
Aside from those 4 things, not much. I think we all pretty much care about the action rather than going around looking for items to kill the next boss. Using a fast route.
No, exploring is what makes Metroid Prime. Exploring is equally important to killing the bosses.
I get the distinct feeling you've never played metroid prime/hunters, or you wouldn't say something so blatantly incorrect.
I have not, but from a glance, it doesn't look too different.
Completely different games.
One focuses on exploration and getting upgrades (Metroid Prime, Gamecube).
One focuses on shooting (i.e. first-person shooter) (Metroid Prime Hunter, DS).
Graphics is a world of difference apart.
We're talking a specific game here. It wouldn't be fair to substitute another game. It's not the same. It's not a port.
A good question to ask would be, if you would compare this run to a run that doesn't get the rare elf and completes the game optimally and is entertaining, how would yours compete? Would it be slower? Would it be faster? Does it take advantage of the altered number of EC is any way or form?
Finally, would the run try to run any commonly agreed upon category (i.e. not a very arbitrary category)? If the answer is that it does not depend on your cheats, it completes the game as fast as an optimized run that does not get the rare elf, is equally entertaining and is of a non-arbitrary category, I think it might get accepted. I am not involved in the submission process, though, so I have no official say.