Posts for InputEvelution

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Posted: 3/12/2024 2:42 PM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
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Did you discuss things with Blazingmo at all prior to posting this? You cite the submission as evidence that "people don't want to go through SRAM verification hassle" and say that "the author's never gonna feel the need to make a movie with SRAM enabled", but it seems to me that unless Blazingmo has actually told you this directly, you're just making assumptions about his interests and intentions. Many TASers choose to TAS with SRAM disabled because they find that a preferable category, or make new iterations of a TAS for small and big improvements over and over again. This is Blazingmo's second submission of this exact game, even.
Posted: 3/4/2024 7:09 AM
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InputEvelution
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Deciding how to vote wasn't hard - I always enjoy watching TASes of Wario Land 4, and this one was no exception. That said, I do feel like I might have enjoyed this a bit less than the other current publications. While it definitely shows off some routes that aren't in the others, the lack of zips did make everything feel a bit more same-y across the run, so it feels like it loses variety in the process of gaining some. That said, 3 out of the 4 published branches are just different difficulty options, whereas this aims to do something much more substantially different, which I like.
Posted: 2/29/2024 10:01 PM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
Posts: 166
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Samsara wrote:
Thank you for doing this! Also, if you want the Editor role so you can add these warnings yourself, let me know and it's yours.
That would be great, thank you so much for the offer!
alexheights1 wrote:
Auditory epilepsy is a real thing and can be caused by ZX Spectrum loading noise.
This brings up an interesting point - most discussions of epilepsy prior to this have focused on photosensitive epilepsy, but if static noise can also cause seizures that's potentially another issue to consider. Would it be possible for you to link to some more information about the condition in question? The results I get looking up auditory epilepsy mainly seem to focus on noise as a symptom rather than a trigger.
Posted: 2/29/2024 11:27 AM
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InputEvelution
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Masterjun wrote:
In that case, why not just "savegame" or "saved game" like wikipedia calls it.
I'm gonna second this idea from Masterjun. "Savegame" is still a bit difficult to understand at a glance, and not particularly popularly used in speedrunning, but I've racked my brain for any kind of better term that covers all possibilities like this, and I can't come up with anything. At best you would use more specialised terms depending on the situation (some games may benefit from having some, but not all, things unlocked for instance), but I don't think that's what's being asked for here.
Posted: 2/25/2024 12:16 PM
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InputEvelution
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I've been bringing up examples of movies that might warrant the addition of an epilepsy warning to their publication text for a while now, but I wanted somewhere more formal to post about it. fsvgm777 suggested that I make a forum thread to post further examples, which should hopefully give other people a better place to bring up examples as well. Starting off: I think that it might be worth adding a warning to SMS and GG Sonic 1, specifically in regards to the Sky Base section and GG's final boss.
Posted: 1/7/2024 4:57 AM
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InputEvelution
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[5067] PSX Motor Toon Grand Prix by lazycurler in 13:37.61 [5073] PSX Pink Panther: Pinkadelic Pursuit by wesen in 18:50.80
Posted: 1/7/2024 4:19 AM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
Posts: 166
Location: Australia
[5070] Windows Dono's Tale (SAGE '22 Demo) by TheAmazingYucemu & chickennugget in 03:38.75 [5353] Linux Super Mario 63 Redux (Tiny Demo) by Vexxter, Tomothy & roblox8192 in 00:14.78 [5657] Linux Me and My Launcher "glitchless" by Merl_ in 00:48.82
Posted: 1/5/2024 8:08 AM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
Posts: 166
Location: Australia
[5167] GBA Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow "Julius mode, beat Chaos" by hellagels in 05:38.02 [5487] GBA Wario Land 4 "Hard, all CD chests" by Aut0, Reseren & andymac in 42:17.66 [5690] GBA Sonic Advance "Knuckles, No Ultraspindash" by GoddessMaria in 13:13.34 [5521] GBA Snood "Puzzle" by g0goTBC in 04:59.18 [5330] GBA Wario Land 4 "S-Hard" by Reseren in 39:20.97
Posted: 1/3/2024 10:30 AM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
Posts: 166
Location: Australia
[5370] N64 Spider-Man by arandomgameTASer in 21:35.87 [5673] N64 Bomberman Hero "100%" by Captain_Forehead in 1:25:18.50 [5514] GC Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 "All Goals and Golds" by Rocker in 07:58.70 [5712] GC Luigi's Mansion "Hidden Mansion, 100%" by NEVERDOORS in 56:35.57
Posted: 11/5/2023 3:22 PM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
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feos wrote:
I think this proves that game installation deserves to be in a separate movie if a CD is used. Do you know if floppy disk installation has the same problem?
I don't, unfortunately. I'm not even sure if I currently have a working floppy disk reader...
Posted: 10/30/2023 3:29 PM
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InputEvelution
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feos wrote:
Oh god so it makes a difference in the end D:
Well, I did a little bit of testing from the v2 verification movie before this, and the same starting times were longer there. So I suspect that either the removal of daylight savings doesn't actually get saved due to restarting during OOBE, or that it just takes longer during DST anyways for some reason.
Posted: 10/30/2023 1:00 PM
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InputEvelution
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Joined: 3/27/2018
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DigitalDuck wrote:
Every "long" load occurs during daylight savings time, and every "short" load occurs outside of it. I wonder if that's relevant.
Great observation, I hadn't noticed that at all!
Posted: 10/29/2023 3:09 PM
Post subject: Navigating bootup
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InputEvelution
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The duration of time it takes for Windows XP to actually finish booting up and take you to the desktop is rather inconsistent between different time-and-dates in libTAS (with half of the outcomes being a full 17 seconds longer!). I've documented the duration and outcome of some of these possible starting times in a spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_j1zkYPPHR4jLLW3bybvnjsN6K7sV_vWZHLm7X5SwaE Windows XP in general seems to be rather sensitive and unpredictable with lag. Simply moving the mouse around on screen seems to be able to affect the duration of loading times (often for the worse), and clicking on things the first frame they appear often seems to result in slower loading times than waiting a few frames beforehand. Without a better understanding of exactly what Windows does behind the scenes with managing tasks, the best solution here seems to be one of trial and error. Regarding avoidance of the mouse, I've found a rather comprehensive cheatsheet for keyboard shortcuts that may prove useful to others: http://www.shortcutmania.com/Windows-XP-Keyboard-Shortcuts-printable-cheatsheet.htm CD loading times in particular seem to present a difficult hazard for TASing, as loading earlier savestates after PCem has started reading from the CD image seems to cause desyncs, and even strange errors from XP itself on some occasions: Running the movie from the very start seems to give consistent timings without errors, but combined with XP's strange lag inconsistencies, it seems game installation in particular is likely to be a pain to optimise.
Posted: 10/29/2023 8:30 AM
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InputEvelution
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LogansGamingRoom wrote:
2. i noticed that you used “Gens” as your emulator. Gens isn’t preferred for emulating the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. instead, most of us like to use a multi-platform emulator called “BizHawk”. you can download it from this very website.
From what I gather, Gens is still overwhelmingly preferred among Sonic TASers due to a discrepancy in specialised tools available.
Posted: 9/23/2023 7:20 AM
Post subject: Screen tearing and broken v-sync
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InputEvelution
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Testing out the PCem Windows XP config, a number of games I've tested have had an issue with screen tearing. This seems to occur regardless of the game's performance, though altering the monitor refresh rate can sometimes affect how the tearing presents itself visually (for instance, raising it from 60Hz to 100Hz made the tearing appear more as a slowly moving scanline in high-performing areas of one game). The games themselves didn't have any options to turn off v-sync, but there was an option in the 3dfx Advanced Features menu. Turning this on revealed a larger problem; 3dfx D3D v-sync is completely broken, causing flickering bars to appear across the screen that make gameplay completely unwatchable (and also have some strange z-buffer interactions). My best guess is that this is some sort of driver bug, though I've only been able to find two pages that sound like they might be addressing the same issue (listed below). https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/how-i-fixed-my-voodoo-3-problem-ot-sorry-hoping-it-helps-other-libsdlers/4094 https://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/index.php?topic=59 I've already mentioned all of this on Discord, but have made a forum post about the issue at feos's request.
Posted: 9/1/2023 12:40 PM
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InputEvelution
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feos wrote:
I have a feeling OOB mouse in this game fits the artistic decision to use or forgo speed techniques for entertainment, but reducing the wait is arguably also more entertaining, so I'm not sure that the current publication could showcase.
I agree with the classification of inbound mouse as an artistic choice, and that there isn't really much entertainment value offered by it over this one in doing so. That said, I think since both of these movies are made by the same runner, it's important to ask Spikestuff what they want to do about things. (If the movies can't exist side-by-side due to similarities and lack of entertainment, which one would she want to have up? This one through an obsoletion, or the other by sending this to Playground?)
Posted: 8/8/2023 3:10 PM
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InputEvelution
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I noticed that the times in your submission comments for Flying Battery 2 and Sky Sanctuary seem to be ever so slightly slower than those of the Sonic non-newgame+ TAS on the site. Is there a reason behind that discrepancy (e.g. different time-measuring methods, differences in emulation)?
Posted: 7/4/2023 2:31 AM
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InputEvelution
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My suggestion that a decrease in YouTube video length would lead to runs no longer being publishable was not intended to be taken seriously. I was pointing out the flawed logic of using YouTube length limits as a metric for acceptability.
Posted: 7/4/2023 1:30 AM
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InputEvelution
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LogansGamingRoom wrote:
that’s exactly my point. the video length limit on youtube is 12 hours.
In my observations, there seem to be exceptions to this rule that continue to pop up. In any case, why should TASVideos be beholden to the arbitrary limitations of another website? If YouTube changed the limit to 6 hours tomorrow, should FF7-9 runs no longer be published?
Posted: 4/27/2023 11:53 AM
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InputEvelution
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I feel that you could kind of classify L+R/U+D and the clicking-outside-bounds into a sort of "controller-based glitch" category of sorts? They're possible under certain setups, yes, but I think the fact remains that the vast majority of game developers did not intend their players to be able to do this, and they open up a lot of possibilities otherwise not possible, especially in the case of Flash. Could this be used as a means of distinguishing the difference for the case of Standard? I quite like rythin's proposal in this thread and would be interested in seeing it implemented.
Posted: 4/25/2023 10:30 PM
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InputEvelution
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Okay. While not necessarily applicable to these two TASes, I feel that it's worth talking about the limitations of off-screen mouse input in the official Flash Player, as this seems to have been the main argument used for allowing it. While you can indeed click things before they appear within the regular bounds of the screen in Adobe's offline Flash Player, you can't really do so along diagonals. Expanding the window in two dimensions at once merely causes Flash to expand things up to fill in the gap. So while it's possible to click things that are off-screen in one dimension, it's not possible to do so for things off-screen in both at once. It's also not possible to see anything beyond the normal bounds, at least in the games I tested. Entertainment-wise...frankly I don't find much of a difference in this case. I found the previous Sniper Assassin 3 movie pretty unenjoyable to watch, partially due to a lack of visually interesting gameplay but admittedly mainly due to the fact that I find the torture sections intolerable to watch. It would be nice if we were talking about a movie able to skip those sections instead of the shooting gallery waiting times, but alas, this is not that scenario. That being said, I am still not against the idea of having these as two separate branches. While I can't say I find its usage here to fall under the category of a "major skip glitch"...I would prefer it if TASers had the option to submit movies that specifically choose not to exploit this kind of thing. It feels...cheap? Unintended? Unentertaining? It's hard for me to pinpoint anything in my gut reaction that makes for a coherent point here, and it seems the few of those who have participated in discussions about this agree on accepting it, but I'd very much prefer to be able to keep making TASes that choose not to use it, without such things being treated as an "optimisation error" or "not in an entertaining enough movie". Frankly, the most I've been able to see myself using this is choosing a female worker in the Papa's games where a male worker would otherwise be faster to select. Perhaps L+R/U+D is worth considering in this discussion as well, if it's considered a rather similar issue to this.
Posted: 4/14/2023 10:18 AM
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InputEvelution
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I feel that Samsara's point regarding collaboration is particularly interesting. In cases where the person's submitted a movie for a game that isn't even on the site yet...why should we care so much about the state of the optimisation? Even if it's sub-optimal, they've put in more work than anyone else has so far for getting it on TASVideos. And even if one can demonstrate that the movie is unpolished, sub-optimal, etc., why not go and make some improvements to the movie yourself for a collaborative submission? No point complaining about a lack of effort from the submitter if you're not willing to put in the effort either.
Posted: 2/14/2023 9:08 PM
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InputEvelution
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Okay. So to clarify, if a movie can only be further optimised via RNG manipulation, does this mean improvements can only be submitted on the same emulator version as the existing publication?
Posted: 2/14/2023 11:42 AM
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InputEvelution
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It's come to my attention that the currently published TAS of Wii Party cannot be reproduced on the latest version of Dolphin. The reasons for this are as follows: - The initial value of the timebase register is set depending on the initial date and time (at least, in Dolphin). Specifically, it's incremented by 182,250,000 for every second. - This renders many timebase values completely impossible to reach, as the lower 4 bits will remain the same regardless of what date and time the user selects. - Wii Party happens to seed its initial RNG value from the lower 32 bits of the timebase register. - The slightest of changes to emulated disc read speeds in Dolphin, it seems, can change what lower 4 bits the timebase has when Wii Party seeds RNG for the first time. In short, none of the RNG seeds accessible in Dolphin 5.0-12247 can be legitimately obtained in 5.0-18448, and vice versa. You can hack the RNG value to get a proper comparison across versions, of course, but this raises the potential for an issue where a TAS on an older version of Dolphin becomes completely unbeatable on newer versions, simply because the accessible RNG seeds are different. Is this an issue of concern, and if so, is there any conceivable way one could address this problem?
Posted: 1/27/2023 7:55 AM
(Edited: 1/27/2023 7:56 AM)
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InputEvelution
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I believe the quote about "true endings" was mainly in response to Spike bringing up TASes they'd had rejected or sent to playground for not getting a good enough ending (such as Myst). HappyLee seemed to think this was a poor equivalence, and I think his reaffirmations later on that his TAS got a "real" or "proper" ending and not a bad one was part of that.
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