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There's a function built into FCEUX to convert .fcm to .fm2 it should work for pretty much any published movie I think. (There was some really early builds of FCEU that weren't compatible.)
I would debate purchasing one. The thing is they don't really serve any practical use beyond seeing what is possible on console, which you are already doing.
Also with your current boards, they could theoretically support SMB3 if software agreements could be sorted out, right? (Does the circuit need to be modified to open up possibilities of games like SMB3 to work, or just the software?)
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I don't really see anything noticeably suboptimal in this run at all. Errors were quite pervasive in the previous run.
Also I was pleasantly surprised in a couple spots.
Yes vote to a much needed improvement.
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This submission clocks in around 1/13th as long as Desert Bus, but it feels much shorter. You spelled out TAS. The mole is wearing sunglasses. Also, the run was well played.
Yes vote.
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laranja wrote:
Well, I'm planning do Aero Fighters (SNES), I checked already all characters shot and subshots strengts, but the strongest ones are Rabio and Lepus which are secret and can be only be acessed by a code, this keeps bothering me because if I use them i can make the speedrun slight faster than using normal characters, but the fact its a cheat may make the tas look cheap or bad because of using such way but its help to save time , so, can I use them as a method to save some time even if it maybe go a bit againt the rules?
This is probably one of those borderline cases. Is the password something you learn somewhere inside the game? If it is not learned inside the game, you probably don't want to use it. If it is learned inside the game (for example after beating the game once), there could probably be an argument to use it.
You sort of have to gauge how the movie will be with or without those characters. If it is essentially the same gameplay but slightly faster, there is probably only room for one category on the site with or without.
If the characters are stronger, do they make the game easier? If they make the game easier, you should probably not use them. As a parallel, sometimes games are not played on hard mode because all hard mode does is increase boss health. Watching characters fight bosses for set periods of time can be boring. If the password characters in your game save boring repetitive boss time, that can be an argument to use them.
There is no strict ruling on this, but you want to justify the choice before starting the run. It is more about producing the best category to watch than saving 20 seconds with a faster unlockable character.
Consider this movie for reference: http://tasvideos.org/802M.html
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Autofiring is usually not good, in the case of flying in level 7. Especially coming out of a door. You may be losing one frame by the autofire kicking in one frame after the optimal frame. It's just bad practice, unless you've already proven that the exact frame doesn't affect the result.
Have you been monitoring your X position to maximize damage boosts? (http://tasvideos.org/MemorySearch.html -- If anything is unclear on this page, please PM me and I'll clarify it. The page is a bit of a work in progress.)
Have you looked into how much time the automatic health regenerations cost? They seem kind of time consuming to me, and may be canceling out most of your gain from damage boosting. How fast would it be if you were at full health at these points?
Overall though, pretty good execution. I feel like some bosses could end closer to the door, but just do as well as you can.
As for the movie ending, you need to hit A after he says "Let's go again" and then end the input.
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In most cases, you should scroll through all the text afterward.
There used to be a brief discussion on this somewhere on the site, but I'll paraphrase what I remember.
These are your 3 general choices.
1: Quickest time to end input
2: Quickest time to get to credits with a secondary goal of ending input as soon as possible.
3: Quickest time to end input such that no further input can disrupt the credits from rolling.
It depends on how the game ends mostly.
In Super Mario Bros 1, the convention is "end the run as soon as the final axe is touched." In a game with an easily defined ending frame like this, I feel like it is best.
There was once a run of River City Ransom (http://tasvideos.org/1662S.html), where the author trimmed a few seconds, but caused the game to effectively end 3 minutes later than previously. This is stupid, don't do it.
In the Gradius run, input ends quite early, but the game still ends roughly as fast as possible. This is probably okay because the Gradius run is more about showing off than it is final completion time.
In the DKC3 105% run, the very last input of the game is skipped because (1:) it needs to be pressed a minute or two later than the rest of the input, and (2:) the screen automatically passes after 8 minutes. The screen is the 105% screen, and isn't exactly a crucial part of the credits so to speak.
In your case
I could end the input on the last necessary frame and let the viewer/encoder go through the ending text;
If the text scrolls automatically, this is fine. Even if the text scrolls faster with input, you may or may not have to scroll it. If the text does not scroll without input, this is generally not acceptable. Unless there is some strange case like DKC3, you should almost always complete the ending text to get to what we could call the "final state" of the game (automatically rolling credits, "you win", "the end")
I just want to clarify that the encoder records past the end of the input, if that wasn't clear.
I could end the movie on the last button press during the end sequence (which would inflate the frame count beyond actually "winning" the game);
The way you describe it, this is probably what you need to do.
or I could submit the run as being as long as the last input but still scroll through the text before ending the movie file.
This is not possible. The movie you submit directly determines the time that is assigned to the run.
As you can see there is no clear cut answer, but I think your case may be pretty straightforward. If you have any questions, just post the file before you submit, and someone can give feedback on how to end it.
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Arguments that I don't think are valid:
1: This isn't different enough
2: This isn't novel any more
The goal of the site in the case of a playaround is probably something along the lines of "this is the most entertaining movie." As such, if previously drawings were entertaining, they can most certainly be preserved in the new movie. Just because you didn't like watching the same thing twice is essentially irrelevant because most of the people viewing the run from now on will be new viewers.
Arguments I think are valid:
1: The movie pace is less preferable
2: The replacement drawings are less preferable.
I like some of the new drawings, and many of the good ones were also preserved. I think the movie is maybe 1 minute too long for my attention span, but I'm sure results vary. A new viewer probably has a slightly higher attention span for this than me, who has watched the old video at least 2-3 times and the new video 2 times now.
pepness wrote:
When I seen this new run I was kinda torn in a sense and a few others I showed it to felt the same. While the pictures do indeed look a lot better and more detailed, by 3 minutes into the video it was more of wondering what you were going to draw next vs. what you were actually accomplishing. It was like toward the end the original meaning of the video was lost to me seeing a video of someone drawing pictures in a game rather then the actual message of the game accepting your pictures as correct answers.
Pepness makes a very good argument about the pace of the movie changing the perception of the purpose of the run. I definitely can agree with this argument.
Regarding "Picture Drawing" vs Tricking Number Recognition: There are games much better suited to drawing cool pictures than Brain Age. Art Academy first comes to mind. A TAS of Art Academy should aim to be as "artful" as possible
Another point I'd like to make is that I think the wishes of the author should be considered here. If Ryuto had never submitted version 1, we would only have version 2 to choose from. Ryuto could have held back his version 1, knowing that he could perform a version 2 more preferable to himself.
I've tried to consider some key issues. I think my conclusion is as follows
1: Brain Age should aim for cheesy number recognition abuse with pictures because there are other games much better suited to being "artful." This run digresses slightly in the wrong direction from the old one on that spectrum in my opinion.
2: The pace of the new movie is a bit worse due to length in my opinion.
3: Ryuto's opinion on two movies he produced should probably weigh in. I think setting a precedence of overriding author opinions on seemingly minor changes between two movies may be poor.
4: In general, if two runs were approximately equal in entertainment, perhaps the newer run should obsolete the older in order to provide the most entertaining material on the site.
As you can see I have very mixed opinions. I am rather fine with either obsoleting or rejecting, but I think since the changes aren't terribly major, perhaps it is best to respect the author's wishes in this case.
I think all of these points are worth considering, though maybe my perspective is not the best.
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A new glitch was discovered recently that has the potential to break the run. They are still looking into uses for it. I think combining it with save-retreat glitching may cause some crazy sequence breaks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy_Xq75tsaM
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If all you're doing is updating "published" or "unfinished test run", that's helpful.
In general, if you're "fixing" something, feel free to do it. If you're "changing" something, you probably want to ask.
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I was trying to help PJ understand how to fight her, so I mapped out her possible positions. I think she may actually be possible to beat semi consistently, heh. I don't need anything any more, but do note that PJ thought he found a timesaver as detailed in my previous post.
Note: There are ~16 spawns in each cluster. I just didn't run the script quite long enough.
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[08:03] <PJ> i found improvements to the lagoon TAS!
[08:39] <PJ> oh very minor
[08:39] <PJ> well he doesnt have to go to Poper first before collecting the Mint
[08:39] <PJ> he can go straight to siegfried castle and get the mint, then go straight to the church and give it to the cleric
[08:40] <PJ> he goes in the town first and talks to some people
After watching PJ from SDA fight Ella for a couple hours, we noticed that she has a set pattern. From his save file outside the cave it is 3 9 3 9 7 7 9 9. PJ is pretty sure this is not the case all the time. Does anyone know what randomness seeds this formula, or perhaps also what the formula is to generate these numbers?EDIT: Maybe Ella's stopping pattern is constant and he was miscounting previously. Will update if there is more issue. Her teleport location information would be helpful too if that's available. (If a map could be made of all of her teleport locations or something that would be superb, but that is a fair bit of effort, so any information would be appreciated.)
He would like to console speedrun it in the future, so this information would be helpful.
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The format of applying input is a bit hard to get used to. DarkKobold set it up a more adaptable way, but in one line it might look like this.
joypad.set(1,{["start"]=true}) -- For player one, button start is to be pressed during the next frame advance.
The opposite of 'true' to joypad.set is 'nil' This would be the same as not supplying a button press, but if you're passing a variable to joypad.set it should have value 'true' or 'nil'
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If anyone else is having this problem. Save state mid-way through the movie, close out of the emulator, reload the movie, then reload the savestate to resume watching the movie.
I think Mupen 64 has a memory leak that breaks many movies after 20 or 30 minutes on older computers. I'm not sure if it's related to a movie, or just a game running that long in general. When I upgraded my computer this problem stopped. (Though maybe I just have more memory to leak now and haven't reached the threshold yet.)
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I scored what I believe to be the maximum score in Heaven Sky, just because I was curious. I was testing to see if everything in the beginning could actually be shot at full speed, and one can see that it is indeed possible. I should easily score a 5 on the level even at full speed.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/852943804/Heaven%20Sky%2015900.m64
This doesn't start from savestate. Snow Circuit is finalized though.
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Ideas to try:
Bypassing the 810 note door
Finding a way to gather over 100 notes in one world
Clipping into a world without unlocking it (Best chance I can think of is the aerial dive if that is applicable.)
Finding a way to spend less jiggies than is normally required to unlock a world
If you accomplish any of those, I'd really like to see an any% run. Otherwise, either is a fine choice.
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You wall jump twice in a row in a few stars I'm sure, so banning HSWK is difficult to define. I think the 70 star run should simply be "No BLJs, open's all star doors." We currently have Ocarina of Time: Medallions, Stones, Trials, with no RBA. This is a similar constraint.
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Thanks for making this movie available to everyone. It appears well played.
The concept of a side-BLJ seems pretty arbitrary. I don't think it is appropriate to define a category based on the past. Like RingRush said, 0 star runs have been completed non-TAS now, and 1 star runs could be done by anyone with enough practice.
I would vote yes on a 120 star run including optimal strategies from before a reasonable date, and I would vote yes to a well played 70 star run banning BLJs and perhaps other things needing discussed. (Banning HSWKs also seems strange, because two optimal wall kicks would sort of constitute a HSWK.) Perhaps the criteria is "no BLJs, must open all star doors." I digress.
16 star is an arbitrary restriction based in the past. Voting no.
Also, 120 stars is the best category.
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Be sure to download the site versions of the emulators.
http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources.html
There are two modes of the movie: rerecording and read-only. In read-only mode, the file cannot be altered and savestates warp the movie to the point the savestate has occurred. In rerecording mode, the file can be altered, and savestates provide a point to return to and start from. Always load a savestate that is actually part of the movie, or your progress will desynchronize. (A few emulators won't let you load a savestate that is not at a point in the movie.) Always click "Stop Movie" after you're done recording, and be sure to make frequent backups. It's really easy to break a movie file if you don't know what you are doing.
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Welcome! If you're truly interested in TASing, the best way is to grab an emulator and dive right in. It is against the rules to ask for ROMs here, so you have to acquire them yourself. If you do make a movie feel free to upload it here and post the link in the relevant thread: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php Creating copies of existing game topics is frowned upon, so please search for the existing topics or continue to use the Newbie Corner.
If you just enjoy watching that's fine too. I think our movies are 'really good' as well. ^_^
Note: There are ~16 spawns in each cluster. I just didn't run the script quite long enough.