Posts for Ike

Posted: 9/15/2005 5:52 AM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Great run, I notice you hardly step out of the minimal path to complete the game. That made me wonder that if random battles were eliminated, would the run be under an hour? total_frames - ( average_frames_per_battle * number_of_battles) < 1 hour If we could (somehow magically) eliminate all random battles, and determine the absolute minimum path (including no bane sword; though it is not feasible) to complete the game, then we would have an idea of the absolute lower bound of any speed run. That would be interesting at least.
Posted: 9/15/2005 5:34 AM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Abso-freeking-lutely, Totally amazing run. Impressive how you only stepped out of the minimal path to finish the game a few times, and no inn stops! Great technique, I didn't think this kind of improvement was possible. This, and hearing that FFIV is coming to the GBA just made my evening. Very cool run.
Posted: 8/31/2005 11:32 AM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
I'll put up a page later today that sorts out all these links and maybe a howto to explain the purpose.
Posted: 8/31/2005 11:25 AM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Looks solid, I can't wait to see some of the runs that take advantage of these tools. I think putting shared memory in the emulators is a good idea, I've seen no difference in CPU usage (surprisingly) on either operating system. The only problem is that Windows implements it differently than other more POSIX-compliant operating systems so it would be another subsystem that needs to be split up in the codebase. A linux version of the VBAshm client I slapped together can be perused here: [URL]http://ikebo.hypermart.net/VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2shm.tar.bz2[/URL] It stores the shared mem in /dev/shm which can be read simply using standard file i/o. The win32 version is posted above. It only adds two very tiny modules shm.c and shm.h and replaces a few malloc/free calls with vba_shm_[malloc/free], and modifies the configure script to ensure shm libs are installed. Trivial changes, and no performance impact, but it may be a headache to sort out by operating system. It would make a great build-time option though.
Posted: 8/23/2005 9:32 PM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Heheh, exactly. There was a discussion about how best to approach working on games with daunting randomness, and the idea of developing tools specific to certain games to try and make a TAS a little more accessible. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2023&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=80 [thread for Aria of Sorrow] Basically the modifications to VBA allow any other interested programmers to write a program/tool to hook into the shared memory and fuddle around with the code/flow/memory even VRAM programmatically to make additional tools. It was Hoe's idea and shows some interesting potential. Hope that kinda makes sense.
Posted: 8/23/2005 9:19 PM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Sorry about the delay, I've been dead to the world the last few days. I sent an e-mail with a link to the binaries and modified source. If anyone else wants a copy I'll create a new thread "vba hacking" in the VBA forum with links. Starting a new thread is probably a good idea, so we can keep the AOS-specific stuff here and the emu tools hacking elsewhere. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=44398#44398 [a VBA Hacking Thread]
Posted: 8/23/2005 9:17 PM
Post subject: VBA Hacking
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
This may be a good place to post information about hacking VBA to create tools for specific games. Here are links to a hacked version of VBA which creates shared memory in paging if anyone else wants to fiddle with it to create tools. (1.7.2shm) http://ikebo.hypermart.net/VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2shm.zip [devel version] http://ikebo.hypermart.net/VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2shm-debug.zip [debug version] http://ikebo.hypermart.net/VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2shm-nodev.zip [non-devel version] http://ikebo.hypermart.net/VisualBoyAdvance-1.7.2shm-src.zip [modified source]
Posted: 8/22/2005 12:04 AM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
Alright then. I reinstalled VC6 and got the VBA codebase built with the shared memory changes posted here. I read over the thread. I have some time I could spend working on AOS-specific tools. Give me a description of the kind of tools that would best suit your task, and if the others want to assist with their disassembly expertise it would be very helpful. I'll begin looking over the AOS internals.
Posted: 8/20/2005 6:42 PM
Quote
Ike
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 4/25/2005
Posts: 9
Location: USA
How is your progress coming with the modification to VBA? I am new here (but a long time lurker) and I'll lend my help for this cause if you need it. I have these changes implemented in the Linux version of the code using POSIX shared memory functions; however, I assume most people do their emulation/disassembly in Windows. I'll install VC++6 and see if I can get the changes you mention to build if you are still having problems with Visual Studio.