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PurpleSunDeryl found a way to get through the floor in Dam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt3TA9unE0k
Edit: This appears to only be useful in this particular spot in Dam. As far as I know, there isn't any other place like this in the game. We are still looking but I believe this was caused by a developer oversight when making the map.
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Derakon wrote:
It's always nice to know the why of decisions made in a TAS. And you can re-use the posts for your eventual submission. So I say, keep 'em coming so long as they're not too much work. :)
Level looked good. I can't remember -- can you switch weapons when sprinting? Would it be possible to take out the AK-47 only immediately before you shoot the computers? I guess it gets equipped automatically when you pick it up, right? Maybe if you grabbed an earlier one, switched back to the pistol, then switched the AK in again when you got to the computer room? That seems unlikely to save time, but maybe it would.
Unfortunately, no. You have to stop sprinting to switch weapons. I switched to the AK-47 as late as possible while still being able to shoot the enemies and computers in the first room. I could have switched to the AK-47 while going up the second set of stairs but i would have lost time from the slower fire rate in the first room and i would have had to cut off a sprint to switch to the AK-47 while going up the stairs. I tried both ways just to make sure of which was faster and taking out the AK-47 earlier ended up being slightly faster. I'm guessing it was because of the faster fire rate in the first room and being able to sprint up the stairs.
Another small time save at the end was switching to the pistol just after shooting all of the computers. I couldn't immediately sprint after shooting the computers so i had time to switch weapons. Switching back to the pistol afterward saved a few frames.
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Thank you! I will most certainly be submitting this run. My favorite part about speedrunning and TASing is the planning process. Routing a game that not many people (or sometimes nobody) speedrun and finding more efficient ways to do things is so much fun. I did the same thing with 007: Nightfire and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and I will certainly TAS those games in the future.
When I made the 8:42 Facility TAS (before starting the full-game TAS), two RTA runners told me about some better ways to move through certain room along with some new tricks. Getting over the bathroom stall door and completing an objective during a required waiting section were two time saves I was told about after making that video. Since then, I've worked with them to re-route this game with a TAS in mind. InfiniteSheldor and JamesBong are the two RTA runners I'm talking about and without them, the TAS would definitely be slower than it is at this point.
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I just finished the Airfield level: https://youtu.be/lcY_D6pASTQ
Shortest level in the game, by far. It's only 3:34 and that's including all the cutscenes. Unlike the previous two levels, Airfield has lots of enemies that are always shooting at you. However, the only enemies killed in the whole level are enemies that are absolutely required to be killed, or enemies that don't waste time to kill. Sometimes enemies will walk in front of you so you don't have to aim at them. That would be a case where killing him would not waste any time.
About halfway through the level, I am sprinting through a tunnel and I take time to kill a seemingly random enemy and also shooting explosive barrels nearby. This was completely intentional. I did this because the enemy I killed causes a scripted scene where a huge explosion happens at the end of the tunnel. This explosion will kill you instantly. I also shot a set of explosive barrels nearby to kill an enemy behind me. Both of these enemies will cause the scripted explosion, but killing them will prevent it from happening, thus allowing me to get through the tunnel much sooner than normal.
For the most part, using assault rifles wastes time because of movement speed. Near the end of the level, however, I used one to blow up all the computers in a building (which is a required objective). Switching to the AK-47 here was faster because of its extremely fast fire rate. The slight movement speed penalty was well worth it in this situation. Most of the time the pistol is faster solely because of movement but this is one of the few cases where it is not.
Someone let me know if you like the more detailed posts like this. I will write more detailed explanations of what I'm doing in each level if you guys want me to.
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I just finished the facility level! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l7RNoGEELc
It's 19 seconds faster than my previous attempt at facility in the first post, so it's a pretty major improvement. I'm really proud of the result and I can't wait to TAS the other levels in this game.
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First, i should address the name of the glitch. In my previous post and in the video i call i "levitating" when a more proper name for it is "hovering". It didn't cross my mind at the time but i think hovering is a better name for the trick. with that being said...
DaTeL237 wrote:
Are both A and B needed for this to occur? Perhaps only A or B is needed...
Or did you try alternating A and B? (Rather than setting A and B to turbo at the same time)
Or perhaps holding A and turboing B or vice versa
Did you try wat happens when setting turbo to other (combinations of) buttons as well? :)
I'm still testing it, but here's what i know about it so far:
1) You need some way to interrupt the sprint in the air. The most convenient way to do this is reloading but it's not the only way. You can also interrupt sprints by stopping or shooting. Stopping isn't really useful and it's not possible to shoot that fast. As far as i'm aware the most convenient way to interrupt a sprint is by spamming the reload button.
2) As far as i know, both A and B are needed to hover. My guess is that bond stops falling temporarily when you interrupt a sprint. That may be why the hover only lasts as long as your sprint. I don't know for sure what's causing this but i'm still trying to find out. The more i understand about this glitch the more i can apply it to other situations and optimize it as well.
3) Hovering only happens when you mash A and B alternating. Mashing A and B at the same time doesn't appear to work and changing the order of A and B doesn't seem to make a difference. I don't know if it's possible to control the height of a hover or to increase your height.
Now let's talk about getting out of bounds. Unfortunately, this game and its engine are very well developed. there doesn't appear to be any useful place to get out of bounds. There are checkpoints or required objectives in nearly every room that cannot be skipped if you want to progress forward. I did some testing in the Solar level since there is an elevator sequence that could save a lot of time if it was skippable. With hovering, it's completely possible to skip waiting for the elevator and get down to the floor below. But there is one major problem: An objective cannot be completed if you skip the elevator and the door to the next section will not open. It turns out there are several checkpoints in the room, and two of them are in the elevator. One at the top of the elevator shaft (when you press the button to use the elevator) and one at the bottom when you get off the elevator. Getting in the elevator and pressing the button is required to progress forward, and i fear that the entire game is like this. This drastically hurts the usefulness of hovering. Just to make it worse, several rooms will not even load until you have passed all the checkpoints. I'm still testing this glitch in many places but i don't expect any huge sequence breaks in this game.
With that being said, there are a few minor time saves from hovering. One of them is in the Solar level. There is a very tall set of stairs that you need to go down, but hovering allows me to skip going all the way down the stairs and access the floor below a few seconds earlier than intended. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more places like this hovering could be used in.
I am still testing this glitch and i really hope there are more uses for it soon! I will keep trying my best to find time saves in this game. Also, i'm almost done with the Facility level. Expect that level to be done in the near future!
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I found a glitch in this game! You can literally levitate. Not even kidding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxT6uqcQT_s
You can use this to get out of bounds as well. This is the first real glitch in this game so it's really major. I need to do lots of testing with this because it could potentially break this game wide open.
Unfortunately you still have to complete all of the objectives, so there's no skipping that. But it may be possible to get out of bounds and skip sections of levels you are intended to play. Like i said i'm gonna do a ton of testing with this glitch and see what i can find!!
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I'm going to be pretty busy for the next week so i won't get to work on the TAS at all in that time. To make up for that, i thought i'd upload what i have so far in the facility level and compare it to my 8:42 TAS i posted here before.
I'm more than 6 seconds ahead at the breach, which is only 3 minutes into the level (this is including the first cutscene which was not shown in the video)
There are many time saves in the TAS compared to my 8:42. Getting over the stall door, shooting the glass and walking through instead of going around it, killing less enemies, not aiming down sights, and a faster phone animation at the end of the video. I expect the finished facility TAS to get somewhere around 8:30.
Here is a video of what i have so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnB9Znjddjo
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JosJuice wrote:
I've discovered a potential problem in Dolphin. Basically, if you're using 4.0-3430 or newer, entering movie recording or playback by loading a savestate leaves Dolphin in a mode that is more desync-prone than if you had entered movie recording or playback in any other way. This problem isn't triggered if you already are recording or playing a movie when loading the savestate, but if you aren't, don't load savestates if you don't want desyncs.
Technical details are available at https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/9681
I've had a lot of problems with desyncing in Goldeneye Wii and i think this may be the reason why. Thank you for figuring out what's going on with that!
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Derakon wrote:
Looking great! Keep it up. :)
I'm surprised by how much the game allows you to get shot even on the hardest difficulty...but I guess it was balanced around regenerating health, so maybe that makes sense.
Thank you! Yes, you can take a lot of hits in the earlier levels. The enemies do more damage as the game progresses so it won't always be that way.
And yes, this game was definitely balanced for regenerating health. 007 classic difficulty gives you more health than normal but takes away health regeneration. To make up for this, the developers placed Body armor throughout the game (body armor only appears on 007 classic) so it's really not that much different than having regenerating health as long as you manage your health and armor properly.
Health and Armor management is a very important part of making this TAS. Killing enemies usually wastes time since you have to move the crosshair away from your destination to aim at them. Sometimes you get lucky and an enemy will stand directly in front of you so you don't have to do that. In the Dam TAS as well as the rest of the game, I will kill as few enemies as possible (except in parts that don't waste time). Sometimes killing an enemy is required not because of health and armor concerns, but because they can get in the way. almost all of the enemies killed in the Dam TAS were because they would have slowed down my movement in some way.
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jlun2 wrote:
FitterSpace wrote:
Okay, this is the last post i'm going to make here, because i finally found the issue!
The problem was the Gamecube controller adapter. On my main computer i was using that to record my test .dtm files. On my laptop i had "standard controller" selected and it would desync at seemingly random places every time. So i plug my gamecube controller adapter into my laptop and it syncs! So for anybody else out there that has problems with desyncing, make sure your controller input is set to the same thing on all computers. For the full TAS i will use standard controller with the TAS input so it should sync on everybody's computer as long as they use the same settings as i did.
That sounds like a bug (either the desync, or this option not saved onto file). Please try reporting it to the dolphin issue tracker:
https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/
But hey, nice you finally found the reason why. Hope it actually does fixes it.
I am playing back the entire movie on my laptop just to make sure it syncs completely. I started from a savestate before since it takes about 6 hours to watch the whole .dtm. Hopefully it actually syncs up and it wasn't just because of the savestate. Either way, it's proof that this game can sync up properly. I believe it was my fault it didn't sync up, not the game. I will still report the bug so maybe that'll be fixed in the future.
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Okay, this is the last post i'm going to make here, because i finally found the issue!
The problem was the Gamecube controller adapter. On my main computer i was using that to record my test .dtm files. On my laptop i had "standard controller" selected and it would desync at seemingly random places every time. So i plug my gamecube controller adapter into my laptop and it syncs! So for anybody else out there that has problems with desyncing, make sure your controller input is set to the same thing on all computers. For the full TAS i will use standard controller with the TAS input so it should sync on everybody's computer as long as they use the same settings as i did.
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So i replayed the rest of the game before the desync happened and unfortunately it happens again in the same place. the Xenia fight in Jungle is as far as the game can get from what I can tell. I will keep trying to figure out the problem but I won't post anything else here until it gets solved.
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I'm going to try to make a complete .dtm again on Dolphin 5.0 with default settings (except dual core and idle skipping will be off). I'll edit this post when i can confirm if it syncs or not.
I assume using the official gamecube controller adapter for Wii U won't cause desyncs? Please let me know if it does.
EDIT: I made another test TAS on Dolphin 5.0 with default settings, except i have dual core and idle skipping turned off as well as DSP LLE recompiler checked. The playthrough got really far into the game but unfortunately desynced again in Jungle, which is almost at the end of the game. I will replay the rest of the game from that level and see if i can fix this issue. I'll post here again when that is done.
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jlun2 wrote:
Any link's fine. There's a host here for this site, but other 3rd party sites works fine as well. If it always works fine on your computer, but not on others, was there any setting that you changed from default?
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Is it okay if I post a dropbox link to the .dtm? Or is there somewhere i can upload it to on this site?
It syncs up perfectly fine on my own computer, but desyncs on every other computer it's been tested on. even weirder is that it desyncs in different places. For one guy it desynced at 270,000 frames and on another computer it desynced at around 400,000.
edit: i should be more clear about what's going on. I sent the .dtm to two people to test on their computers. One person told me it desynced at 270k frames in. the other person has yet to respond to me. I tested the .dtm on my laptop (which is not the computer the .dtm was made on) and it did not desync at that point. instead it desynced much later in the run at around 400k frames in. My question is, why does this happen and is there a way to prevent it? So far it only syncs up on the computer it was made on and nowhere else.
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So for the past few days i've been trying to get a full playthrough .dtm for Goldeneye and i've been having a lot of problems with it. It keeps desyncing at random points in the game for no apparent reason.
I've gotten a few people to play back the .dtm's on their computers and one person told me it desynced at the end of a certain level. So i re-played the rest of the game from that point. Then for no apparent reason, it desynced at an earlier point in the game.
Then i played the movie back on my other computer and it desyncs at different places. So the full playthrough .dtm will only sync on the computer it was made on and it desyncs at random places on all other computers.
Is there a good guide to Wii TASing that shows all the proper settings to use? I'm wondering if it's some setting that i've changed that's causing all this to happen.
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The best example of a multiplatform game I can think of right now is Goldeneye: 007 on Wii (it's not the n64 game). The game is available on Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. I'm currently working on a TAS for the Wii version which is by far the worst version of the game. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are superior in just about every way.
But there is one major difference between Wii and Xbox360/PS3. Higher difficulties on Wii require completing extra objectives just like the N64 game did. These extra objectives are completely optional on 360/PS3. Therefore if we ever get to a point where Xbox 360 and PS3 games are fully TASable, Xbox 360 and PS3 should obsolete each other since they are exactly the same game. (The only difference is PS3 has slower loading times so I assume an Xbox 360 TAS would be preferred, but not required.) However the Wii version would be considered separate since the extra objectives are required.
Multiplatform games on older consoles like SNES/Genesis tend to be different in some ways, but the farther along you go in console generations, the closer and closer games get to being exactly the same between consoles. Xenia (Xbox 360 emulator) has been making so much rapid progress and actually runs some games at full speed. Eventually TASers will have to consider not only the fastest ways to beat their desired game, but also which version of the game is superior or which emulator happens to be superior at the time. But I agree that it should be a case-by-case scenario with the judges on accepting movies from multi-platform games.
