Hello everyone!
First of all, expect some mistakes with my english, but I'll try my best ^^
Ok, I first discovered what a TAS really is thanks to "88mph", it's a broadcast on youtube (but it started on dailymotion) made by RealMyop, who has an account here, and CoeurdeVandale. These videos were litterally TASes with comments (in french), that helped a lot of people to understand what a TAS is and how it works... And it was really entertaining to watch of course.
In fact, my very first encounter with a TAS was with SMB3, like a lot of people ^^
And recently I took the plunge and started TASing Castlevania.
It's nothing "publication worthy", I just do it for fun. And for that I've set conditions to force myself to discover things by myself and not be tempted to just copy what is done in the published movie(s):
-I'm forbidden to break any furniture in the castle, just to be nice to the owner of the place. That means no candle or wall breaking.
-No enemy is killed with the whip, not counting bosses (obviously...), but some unfortunate ones die just because I jump on them. Not my fault if I sometimes need a boost in midair.
This leads to some sort of pacifist, leather whip, no subweapon run. I've almost reached Death right now. It's just a test run anyway, with big mistakes in the beginning.
Now some questions :)
I'm using FCEUX and I'm not really sure how the bulletproof rerecording works.
Yesterday a bad savestate manipulation happened and I thought that I lost an entire level worth of video, but I managed to get it back. The problem is I don't know how I did it.
At first I was stuck back at the beginning of the level in my video, with an error if I tried to load my last save ("not in the same timeline"). The video file was shorter too, etc...
Finally I did load my last save successfully and my video was back (longer, better...). I think it has to do with the mode I was using (read+write or read only), but I did have a hard time figuring how to get back on track with my video, so if someone can explain how it works exactly, I'd be thankful ^^
My second question is simple: how can I help this site? :)
In fact I already have an idea of something that I can do, maybe...
When I started my TAS, I first went to the game resources page for Castlevania, and it didn't help me at all ^^ (the random item drop algorithm can be useful, but not for my run or real beginners (like me, again ^^))
Since I think this game is quite beginner friendly, its page lacks a lot of basic tricks and information, such as memory adresses or enemy behavior (and how to manipulate them).
I don't really complain because I actually had fun discovering a lot of that stuff by myself :p
But I still think it lacks simple techniques and info which can be useful for future TASers. So tell me if I can help with it, not editing myself the page, but at least listing some tricks in this topic, maybe.
Thanks for reading my wall of text, by the way ^^
