Posts for IdeaMagnate

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Posted: 5/20/2006 7:52 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
When I want to do this, I just set both instances of the emulator to <=25% speed and get them going manually (ie almost at the same time). It's not an ideal solution since I can't pause both of them at the same time or make a multitas, but it works fine for comparing and means no digging through the sdl docs.
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Posted: 5/20/2006 7:43 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
This game is making me suspicious. I know there's some kind of walljump here, but I don't know how to isolate it. If I start out from this state, pushing left while falling against the left wall results in a 1-pixel push to the left every 8 frames (until I get near the bottom of the wall). A similar but less frequent thing happens with the right wall. Additionally, volteccering from this state results in standing on an invisible ledge. I'm going to do what I can to figure this out, but some help from someone with more experience would be appreciated too.
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Posted: 5/18/2006 4:32 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
You need 3 things to make a good tas; an emulator, a ROM image and dedication. Other stuff like known bugs, sda runs, disassemblies, etc are helpful but not necessary. Much of the stuff we care about isn't likely to be documented anywhere anyway. Finding this is probably the most important and demanding part of making these movies. As for bug hunting, I'm sure you'll find something good if you look. The collision detect seems a little odd. That plus the wierd way you can grab onto walls should yield something. Looking through Common Tricks is a good place to start.
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Posted: 5/18/2006 3:54 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I hate to ask the obvious, but are you trying to run the game from the CD instead of a ROM image?
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Posted: 5/18/2006 2:04 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Progress has been really slow, but I'm not dead yet! I managed to beat your S3 boss time by about 45 frames, which I was pleasantly surprised by. I found the memory value of the timer that determines how long I have to wait between flashes, so each one is done on the soonest frame possible. I also made sure each flash does 10p damage, which was as much as I could manipulate. I can't picture this fight ever being more than 5 frames faster. To cancel out the surprise, I discovered that my dyslexia was responsible for most of the gain on the S2 boss. It's still a 6+ second improvement over v1, but not 21 like I calculated. Edit: I also squeezed 3 frames out of the s3 bonus. I don't have nearly enough patience to figure out if there's a way to get everything with one volteccer.
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Posted: 5/15/2006 11:40 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Nice work. I should be able to get this into grrl later tonight.
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Posted: 5/14/2006 1:36 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I'm glad you like it. Knowing what that means makes it that much more ironic.
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Posted: 5/14/2006 5:21 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I'd suggest adding a dark border around the text. It makes the text much more readable (although I still can't read it). .
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Posted: 5/12/2006 1:52 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I've got the avi from Maza and have mirrored it here. Hopefully this will speed up the publishing process.
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Posted: 5/11/2006 5:49 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I accidentally volteccered a little too late and discovered that I can hit him twice with the same shot; once as I'm leaving and once as I'm entering. I wouldn't even have noticed if I didn't have the ram viewer going. Doing this twice ends up saving 74 frames over what I posted earlier. Overall, I gain almost as much from this boss fight alone as from all the improvements up to it. (Of course, the earlier boss fight was very sub-optimal.) I hope there's more fun stuff to be found on the Stage 3 miniboss. Edit: Yup. Apparently he takes 10 damage if you punch him while you're near the ground. The fight isn't nearly as frantic and exciting, but it only takes 3 hits. It only ends up saving me 20 frames to the fadeout, though. Edit2: The sig has been updated. I also discovered a way to cut out the wait in the area 5 of Australia, so it should be a little less boring when I get to it.
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Posted: 5/10/2006 6:33 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Tombad wrote:
Swedishmartin wrote:
No no no, you both got it wrong. It's TAS Ain't a Speedrun.
Winner.
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Posted: 5/10/2006 6:28 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Thanks. I kinda did do that for the wire area. I discovered that carelessly switching wires can cause lag, so I made sure to switch wires only when necessary and did the level without the blackout. I noted the first frame my y-coordinate changed when I was on the wire. Then I started the level with the blackout and used the frame where the y-coordinate changed to get the movie in sync. Also, I just finished the tree boss. I think you'll enjoy it. If I didn't see how fast you did it, I probably wouldn't have bothered trying to optimize it. You can use this state to skip the other stuff. Edit: I just found a way to make it even faster. It's a good day.
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Posted: 5/10/2006 2:28 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Heh. That glitch you mentioned is actually in the latest gmv. For the pic, I just thought it was cool that Pulseman had a mini-me. Edit: I just realized that I beat you in the first bonus stage by 17 frames. w00r.
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Posted: 5/10/2006 1:11 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I know that walljumps depend on a simplistic check for whether you're on the ground or not (I think the assembly equivalent of 16*(y/16)==y ), and this game is probably too complex for that sort of thing. It'd still be worth it, though. That very long wait in one of the later levels needs all the help it can get. For now, I'm having fun with this. I just finished the forest level and cut off more than 3 seconds. I also found a strange graphical glitch and a cool picture that results from firing a flash arrow before catching onto a wire.
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Posted: 5/9/2006 1:32 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Hmmm. Meka looks like nice cross-platform software on the outside, but the sources.txt is a bit disturbing:
Some parts are better than other, many are bad, some are very bad. ... So well, this code is hell, but it's better than nothing. May it serves, may we can work together and improve it.
Of course, Gens has its warts too.
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Posted: 5/9/2006 5:11 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
If someone could figure out if/how walljumps work in this game, it'd help the entertainment value of the very long wait in Stage 7 considerably. I tried it briefly, but didn't succeed and don't really know what I'm doing. Advice would be equally welcomer.
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Posted: 5/8/2006 12:16 AM
(Edited: 5/8/2006 6:56 AM)
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
1 Corinthians 9:26 would have helped you. The overall impressions I got was that this is careless, sloppy and poorly optimized in many areas. This game has potential, but I would not want to see this movie published. I only watched the first half so I won't vote for now, but I can't picture voting yes for this. If you'd like some specific pointers, I'll be following your thread in the Genesis forum.
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Posted: 5/7/2006 9:27 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
This is a fun one you can try at home. If you take a narrow strip of paper with parallel edges, tie it in a knot and flatten the knot, it will make a regular pentagon. For an idealized knot, prove that this works. I'm reasonably sure a proof exists but haven't found one yet.
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Posted: 5/7/2006 2:31 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Looks like a good time to bring this back. I'm improving my previous low-bug version. So far I'm done with the first boss and have gained 776 (!) frames. More than half that's from the boss fight, but everything else is faster too.
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Posted: 5/1/2006 3:21 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Technically it's not built into the language, but iirc the CGI module is included with the core distribution. Many common tasks have modules just waiting to be used. You can find the documentation for the CGI module online here, along with a nice module search page here. I hope you don't let an unpleasant first experience kill Perl for you.
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Posted: 5/1/2006 3:14 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Hmmm. That's an unusual use of free-verse poetry for practical communication. The periods are a little distracting since they're placed in the middle of sentences, and the spelling could be more canonical. Perhaps it's an artistic statement. Other than that, I'd welcome more posts in this new format. Good luck with the game. It would be impressive to see you fly through the game and successfully catch all the flickies without slowing down. I tried this game but didn't find it interesting enough, but more power to you if you do.
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Posted: 5/1/2006 3:00 AM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I see your flame and raise you a reasonable reply. Your code is correct, but a better way is to use the CGI module. 
use CGI;
my $q = new CGI;
my $x = $q->param('variableName');
Perl is a wonderful language if you let it do the work. Google around for tutorials and I think you'll be pleased at what you can get done with a few lines of code.
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Posted: 4/30/2006 3:59 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
I disabled the gui code because it was slower than using the keyboard, harder to extend and not compiling reliably. Using the keyboard is faster, and it's all configurable. More info on that and the ram search are in the file grrl_info, which is included with the source.
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Posted: 4/29/2006 9:14 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
Truncated wrote:
Did I understand correctly if this version is Linux only? It would be really nice with a Gens for Windows that could handle both rerecording and RAM search/display. Currently I have to use two different versions for that. Plus some other changes I'd like to see made but haven't got the skill to implement.
Yeah, it's Linux-only. SDL can be used under windows so I could theoretically port it, but I'd need to get a windows box first.
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Posted: 4/29/2006 5:07 PM
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IdeaMagnate
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (80)
Joined: 3/11/2005
Posts: 352
Location: Oregon
This one had a much more efficient feel than Neofix's. I also liked the variety of magic and how many enemies fell over conveniently placed cliffs. Also, thanks for that JXQ.
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