Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
2:50 for the no-load screen encode vs. 4:20 for the actual TAS itself...
So we have 1:30 of loading screens in a 4:20 TAS (or about 1/3rd of the total time)... because the PSX port is crap. ;)
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
EZGames69 wrote:
Techokami wrote:
Wonder why you don't go for score bonuses at the end of stages?
do you mean grabbing fruit that randomly appears?
No, not that. This is what Technokami means:
At the end of each round, you’ll receive bonus points if you jump right before the game “takes over”. The closer you are to the ground before the music ends – without touching the ground - the more points you get (10, 100, 300, 1,000, or 7650). This works going either to the right (towards the church) or to the left (towards home).
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
With such a large search space for possibilities I am under no illusion that this is the limit of the game.
Pool games are REALLY tough to optimize - just ask Bisqwit how much work it took for his tworuns of NES Lunar Pool!
That said, I have a concern with the fact you score much higher than the minimum requirement at the Club and City rounds. That extra score costs time for the game to count up, so you really should be aiming for the lowest possible score that can clear the round in one game. Even if it takes longer to set up the shots, you might be able to save more frames than you spend as a result of the lower score at the end of the round.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
TBH, I would rather watch the "Balloon Trip" mode of Balloon Fight instead of this, particularly because the only Balloon Fight publication on the site doesn't cover Balloon Trip.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Evil_3D wrote:
I would like to ask the judges who want to take this run in their hands to wait for us to finish the level comments, this will be useful to understand what is happening (if you're not familiarise with the game)
Ummm... this isn't going to take like 3 months is it? Even though I'm sure it's a slam-dunk judgement, why keep everyone waiting that long for it?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Maybe this particular glitch won't be useful for a TAS directly, but perhaps it could be used to build a consistent verification file for NG+ runs? For example, you could tweak one of the "100%" submissions to run in Save 8, play that movie, copy the emerald data from Save 8 to Save 1 using the glitch after the movie finishes, then use the SRAM state after you perform the copying as your verification file.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Hmmm... ~40 frames of improvement in two different places found in less than 12 hours. This makes me question how optimized this submission really is...
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
r57shell wrote:
If no, then I don't care about VDP FIFO tests. It's not so important for superplay showcase.
Then you, sir, have missed THE ENTIRE POINT of why this website exists. Console verification has always been the ultimate objective for tool-assisted speedruns and this website:
tasvideos.org/ConsoleVerifiedMovies.html wrote:
Since they started, tool assisted speedruns were designed to make it theoretically possible, given super-human abilities, to recreate them on an actual console.
I would argue for deprecating Gens altogether, but I'm pretty sure that would kill off any chance of TASes for a Genesis Sonic game in the near future...
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
This is an interesting run by itself, but it looks like there's also enough that was learned here to improve upon the existing any% run. Any plans on doing that?
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
I'll take a guess at explaining what's going on.
Letting the first hearts drop nearly all the way down the screen allows the maximum number of possible dropping hearts the game can handle at once* to be on screen - this value would be capped internally to prevent sprite flicker and slowdown during gameplay.
Normally the hearts would be released on a regular timer, but if you fill up all the memory slots the drops get delayed and the game will release them as soon as a slot in memory opens up (which is when the score value after catching a heart disappears). It's definitely a case of "slower is faster" here. :)
* It looks like this value is six hearts at a time, which makes sense for an 8 memory slots NES game if you look at the spinach can and the punching bag as filling the other two slots for objects the player can interact with.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Well, in this case it's more like "finding a killscreen in an endless game with a TAS", but I figure it's close enough to go here...
One A2600 game I have been testing for suitability for submission is an unreleased game named Telepathy, which was originally created by Atari to be played with an experimental "MindLink" controller (control your Atari with your mind by spastically twitching your face!) However, the existing prototype is fully playable (and thus potentially TASable in BizHawk) with a standard A2600 joystick.
The game was generally presumed to be endless when I started a test run a couple months back, mostly to determine where a potential submission would have to stop (leaving aside the question of whether a game like this could even be accepted on the grounds it is technically not a finished game). However, upon reaching the 11th level of the game, I found a certain obstacle could not be passed even with tool-assistance if it was already active when you appear on the screen it was on.
I reported this by email to another A2600 enthusiast (who runs a fan website with all kinds of information on the console and its games), and after some back and forth trial and error between us discovered that the seemingly impossible obstacle could be passed if it wasn't active (that bit requires luck manipulation), but the final section of the same 11th level was impossible to beat because you aren't given enough time on the death timer to get through it. Thus, a killscreen was discovered! :D
Details about the above discoveries for anyone interested in reading
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Although Miner 2049er got many ports back in the day (Wikipedia lists 16 different platforms it was released on, excluding modern-day rereleases!) the Colecovision version has an extra level the others don't, so that one should definitely be the preferred choice for this game.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Fearless Smurf smurfs them all! ;P
(The game is also available on the Atari 2600 but the graphics are weaker and there's even less variety in the screens, so Colecovision is definitely the preferred version here.)
MESHUGGAH wrote:
If this somehow goes to moon, I would really like to see the naked smurfette bug.
For reference to those unfamiliar with the bug, this is done either by deliberately backtracking from the last screen or holding UP+DOWN on the skull until Smurf wraps around vertically -> http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/cvsmurf.htm
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Koh1fds wrote:
Here is my list of WR nes runs that we will never know if they are real or not LUL
Maybe we could figure that out by carefully replicating the run in TAStudio and seeing if anything that would seem like cheating showed up in the process? (E.g. luck manipulation being necessary, a Lua script being necessary to replicate the run, etc.)
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 249
Location: Stafford, NY
Necroposting to announce I intend to produce a resynced file for this submission in BizHawk 2.3. I have several reasons I intend to do this:
1. To check if the door skip is an emulator-only glitch (not an unreasonable concern in light of what happened to morningpee's Seaquest submission). If it is, then it would render the submission invalid, and considering this is in Moons a problem here would arguably have a greater impact than the Seaquest submission (in the Vault) did.
2. To serve as a basis for an "extended" version of the movie that goes all the way to one million points. This game, like most Activision games, stops at one million, but because this game has clearly-defined levels you wouldn't need to go that far for a TAS according to the current submission rules. Nevertheless, because the one million threshold is the stopping point for other A2600 Activision submissions, I have decided to try to make such a movie file in case there is a policy change down the road. (It won't be put up for submission unless the policy actually does change, just left in my userfiles.)
I had intended to start this several months ago, but held off because there was no clear policy on resync submissions. Now that there is one, I intend to just put the final bk2 in my userfiles and have someone else use that as the basis for an updated encode.
Wish me luck!
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
