Posts for Ilari


Post subject: Movie ratings now hidden by default
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The movie ratings have been hidden for everyone, but you can re-enable showing your ratings to others from your Forum profile More information in This thread.
Post subject: Re: Duplicated entries in Movie Statistics
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Warp wrote:
Kmz wrote:
I saw duplicated entries of 2109M, 2079M and 2031M.
I think the code gets duplicate entries from the database in certain situations, but I don't remember the details. (The fix would be to merge duplicates in said code.)
I think it requires the movie to have two or more torrents plus some other condition (possibly that there is a torrent of another movie with file ID between the two). Edit: Scratch that: 2109M has torrents with adjacent IDs: 17387 and 17388. Edit #2: It appears to be that there will be a duplicate if the multiple entries for a movie end up being not adjacent to each other when sorted (the sort isn't stable w.r.t. the movie ID or the file ID). Edit #3: Fixed.
Post subject: Re: Is this hd method satisfactory?
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antd wrote:
Is this method satisfactory for creating good hd videos for YouTube?
AviSource("in.avi").PointResize(2048,1792)
#2048,1792 nes resolution * 8
yt:resize=4:3
(is this tag necessary?)
Did you mean "yt:stretch=4:3"? In fact, this "pointresize 8x" followed by yt:stretch for TV-displaying systems is the current official way of doing HD encodes. Of course, if the source material has some whacky aspect ratio (like PSX 512x240), scaling horizontally by 4x and vertically by 8x might be in order...
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partyboy1a wrote:
The links to "obsoleted" movies on game view pages don't work, and the links to the actual submission don't work too. wow, that was a fast fix.
Oh, nice finding of very subtle bug. It is not fixed yet. And it is not game page specific problem. I just reproduced the problem on a subpage of my homepage. Even the links to other wiki pages break. I know what is going on: The movie module is aggressively cached[1], but involves relative links, which usually break if the "depth" changes (especially if it increases). Normally movie module only appears on "depth 0" (http://tasvideos.org/foo.html), but the game pages put it on "depth 1" (http://tasvideos.org/foo/bar.html). But the game pages aren't the only way "depth 1" (or even greater depths) can appear: You get that too if you put it on a subpage. Edit: Did a slightly nasty hack to work around the problem... [1] The entire HTML of the resulting box is cached.
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rog wrote:
The change wasn't made just so a2600 runs could be published. It's something a lot of people have wanted for a long time.
Just to get the order of the events: Looking at movie maintenance log and site commits log, A2600 E.T. was published before I started even working on implementing tier support (and the support wasn't deployed until some days later). And as to the idea itself, it has been around much longer, but I can't pinpoint how long.
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rog wrote:
http://i.imgur.com/bqwL0.png I don't think that should be tiling.
Unfortunately, fixing it isn't trivial: - If one disables tiling, it looks bad. - Extending the image isn't that simple either, because the background is not quite a vertical gradient (trying to use copy'n'paste to extend it causes seams).
Post subject: Re: What is The Vault?
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zem wrote:
I just noticed this category on the front page. It seems to contain some recent published movies that aren’t in the Latest Publications list? What goes in one list and what goes in the other?
The vault is about speedrun records of less-entertaining games. See [Wiki]Vault[/wiki] and [Wiki]Moons[/wiki]. The thing is very recent, and still needs work on site layout (and the workbench also needs work).
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CoolKirby wrote:
The commentary group was a great idea. Does it include runs with subtitled YouTube encodes, like the Cave Story run?
It does. Flagged that movie.
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Torn338 wrote:
These flags being things like "Stars" "Moons" "Vault" "AVGN" "Console Verified" and "Notable Improvement"? If I've understood this right? In advance I do hope I understood this right :)
Stars, Moons and Vault are tiers. Current flags in use are AVGN, Notable improvement, Console-Verified, First platform and Has commentary.
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arkiandruski wrote:
Any chance of getting a commentary icon sometime soon, then?
Done (Wiki: Movies-Commentary-Obs).
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scrimpeh wrote:
Sometimes, tasblend is used in games with 30hz flicker.
Actually, more advanced deflickering algorithms are preferred nowadays (interestingly, the algorithm in standard encode script seems like selective version of tasblend...)
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HappyLee wrote:
I found a small bug in the publication page. Shouldn't "Notable Improvements" be a lightning bolt? But in the publication page it appears to be a moon.
It is a lightning bolt. Likely a stale cache. Do a shift-Reload.
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AKheon wrote:
Any way to bring my old rerecords to this new file?
This is a VBM, right? The rerecord count is at offset 0x10 (4 bytes). Use a hex editor to read/edit it.
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AKheon wrote:
This fact doesn't change anything within the game, though. I tested by making a new movie that starts from power-on and dumped all the frames of this finished movie in it. It played through like normal. Should the movie file be replaced now, or does it matter?
Yeah, request replacing the submission with a fixed version.
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CoolKirby wrote:
This isn't about the content of the movie itself, but the GBC SpongeBob run is at exactly 6.0, not under, though it somehow ended up in the Vault.
Rounding. The true rating is 5.97 exact (both formulas, see below). Discovered something interesting. There are two versions of the rating formula, one in the database (stored function) and one in the site code. These two do not agree. E.g. On [1927] MSX Invasion of the Zombie Monsters by scrimpeh in 04:15.31, the former says: 7559/1260=5.99920634920634920634 but the latter says 43059/7000=6.15128571428571428571. The mathematical reason why these two don't agree: - The former formula computes average of votes weighted by product of vote category weight and voter weight. - The latter computes averages of categories weighted by voter weight and then averages those according to category weight. These two methods are not equivalent.
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DiscoRico wrote:
TASes are recordings of input from power-on correct? In that case, could a signal be wired from the SNES power switch to circuitry that would automatically deliver the first input at (as close as possible) the same time as the emulated version?
You don't need to do that. Just wait for the console to assert latch and then latch the first input. That is, if console asserts latch, load next word (the first word on the first latch) and output its first bit on data line. If console asserts clock, switch to next bit of the current word to be output on the data line.
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DiscoRico wrote:
So just to make sure this is feasible, SNES games in which UP+DOWN and LEFT+RIGHT are allowed are viable input?
I don't know of any electric-level protections against LEFT+RIGHT or UP+DOWN. The only protection seems to be mechanical.
DiscoRico wrote:
Would a SNES bot be more reliable in terms of syncing if a SNES controller were disassembled and the mechanical switches for each button were replaced with signals from an Arduino corresponding to each button input?
Nope, the bot would just need to react properly to latch and clock and control the data line (BTW: if bsnes source is any indication, the data line has 4 states (I don't know if it is 4-ary or 2 binary lines)). Edit: It is apparently 2 binary lines (pins 4 and 5 in the connector). If one is dealing with simple gamepad, pin 5 can be left unconnected.
Post subject: Re: SNES console verified games
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micro500 wrote:
The SNES controller is an NES controller with 4 more buttons. The shift register they used only supports 8 bits, so they tacked on a second one to support the extra buttons. The interface is the same (power, ground, clock, latch, and data). SNES games then just poll the controller for 12 bits, while NES games only poll for 8 bits.
From reading bsnes autopoller code, it actually polls for 16 bits, not 12. The extra 4 bits appear to be controller identification bits (which are 0000 for standard gamepad).
micro500 wrote:
As for getting movies to sync, that is a totally different problem. As Ilari described, consoles are hard to emulate perfectly accurately.
I claim perfect emulation (ignoring initial state) is not possible even in theory for SNES. Even extracting the complete circuit model and running it in circuit simulator wouldn't be enough. Whereas for NES and N64, I don't know any reason it would not be enough.
DiscoRico wrote:
Also, what is autopolling?
Autopolling is SNES hardware feature where the system itself once per frame polls the controllers and writes the result to special registers, saving the game from having to poll the controllers itself (it can just then read those special registers). The reason it is relevant: Autopolling causes controllers to be polled regardless of lag, whereas without it, games often just don't poll on lag, yielding implicit "skip lag" function.
DiscoRico wrote:
4 more bits for SNES adds LT, RT, X, and Y. Does this mean that NES and SNES both use some form of PWM or PPM to deliver button input?
Actually, A, X, L and R (in that order). The B and Y would correspond to NES A and B. The NES and SNES use the following protocol: 1) Console pulls latch high. 2) Controller latches the controls into shift register. 3) Console pulls latch low. 4) Console reads B (for SNES, A in case of NES) from data line. 5) Console pulls clock high. 6) Controller shifts the shift register by one position. 7) Console pulls clock low. 8) Console reads Y (for SNES, B in case of NES) from data line. ... Repeat steps 5-8 until all bits are read.
DiscoRico wrote:
I see. How does it aid in exporting data?
Using it, one can extract the button data that lacks those frames that are never polled (and duplicated if polled twice). This form is much easier to work with when doing a bot: One can just latch the next record when latch signal is detected and not have to think about timing.
Post subject: Re: SNES console verified games
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DiscoRico wrote:
I was going through the list of console-verified titles, and I noticed that there were only N64 and NES games available on the list. I understand somewhat (I'm a junior in Elec. Eng.) that a microcontroller of some sort is used to feed output from the computer to the console, but is there a particular reason why no one has made a SNES version?
I have heard that SNES version already exists (one just needs to expand the NES version shift registers from 8 to 16 bits). I haven't heard of any attempts at verifying runs with that one tho. The problems with SNES verification: - The SNES has autopoller, which most games use, so you have to get lag right[3]. - Bsnes-based SNES emulators (lsnes and Bizhawk) are very recent, not many runs yet. - SNES is absolutely impossible to perfectly emulate the state evolution of[1]. AFAIK, neither NES nor N64 have the same problem[2]. How severe those limitations are remains to be tested.
DiscoRico wrote:
The reason I ask is because for my senior design project, I would like to construct one, if possible. If someone has tried and come to the conclusion that it would be impossible, I would love to find out why, and see if perhaps there's something that was overlooked!
The hardware is certainly possible to build. As to if any runs sync, even with current cutting-edge emulators remains to be seen. For exporting data for this kind of thing was exactly why I implemented on_snoop Lua callback to lsnes (which was then later copied to Bizhawk). [1] The SNES state evolution is not deterministic. It is somewhat random (due to the two crystal oscillators). [2] You may not know the initial state of these consoles, but if you know the state of the console and the input in meantime, it is theoretically possible to compute the state of the system at any later time. [3] As very good example of getting the lag really wrong and still managing to sync (due to lack of autopolling), take a look at those SM64 runs... The runs are much slower on console than on emulator.
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chiptune95 wrote:
but if you want, I can send you the text file of the keys and you read it and you're trying to see what's wrong
Also, you said snes9x, newest version. You mean 1.53 or 1.54? And text file? Some new snes9x movie file format I don't know about[1]? Or something else than snes9x movie? If it is indeed text file and it is not a Bizhawk movie, I would like to see the file. [1] If that is the case, that kind of file can't be submitted (at least as of now).
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Twelvepack wrote:
Any word on an encode for this?
There's a Youtube stream on the submission post. You mean some sort of downloadable encode?
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
I improved again, overally now with 22 frames. And I have no idea how, but it's syncs for me without opening TASeditor. Could anyone verify this?
I can verify sync, FCEUX 2.1.4a.
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
wait, didn't bsnes changed names to higan? And didn't retroarch used the same core as bsnes?
1) It did, but the SNES core is still called bsnes. 2) Yes, it does, but AFAIK not even that supports newer than v089. And the version is very heavily modified.
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OmegaWatcher wrote:
what about a "highest score possible" tier?
If it is good, those can be publisher in main tier (and if happens to become seriously impressive, perhaps even stars). You mean cases where the run becomes boring as heck because of the game?
Post subject: Re: Adding onto BSNES's Core
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hegyak wrote:
BSNES added DS emulation. I don't know how accurate it is, but it's there.
AFAIK, it is crap as of now. A few games work.
hegyak wrote:
BSNES did update (mentions it's the last time) and improves things more.
Unfortunately, the BSNES interfaces have gotten quite nasty. As noted, v088 dropped buildability as a library, v090 gets even nastier by hardcoding some aspects of its rather original ideas about ROM organization to the core (from core POV, AFAIK, v090 and v091 are almost identical).