EDIT: I would think it'd be better to not try to synchronize things like which hotkeys are being pressed, and instead only synchronize the movie file and the current frame count. With the exception of saving and loading savestates, which has to be synchronized more directly.
I think I'll sync up all save state related functionality and speed related functionality. The only thing that's left to implement in that regard is fast-forward and frame-advance. And I still have some spare bits for those anyway.
I currently sync the emulators up by letting the faster ones do an active wait, so it'd unnecessarily consume processing power if I don't sync up speed related functionality. Also, if I set one to a faster frame skip than the other ones, the faster one would always have to wait for the slower one. I can still change my code to not use active waiting, but I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort atm. The whole thing runs pretty smoothly now, even at high frame skips.
You are basically suggesting that the emulator in lead mustn't change, don't you? So you could always take its speed and let its slaves advance at its pace. I want the user to be able to switch between the windows at any time. That would still work if the emulator in lead is set to background input, but only accepts input if one of the other Gens has the focus currently. I hadn't thought of that approach. I've currently implemented it in a way that the window in focus is always the leader and when there's no Gens window in focus the fastest one at advancing the previous frame takes the lead for the current frame.
However, using a constant leader, if I switch to a different window and change the speed there using the menu instead of hotkeys, it wouldn't affect the emulator in lead. So I'd have to send it a message anyway. But without having the need to really sync anything up. Hm, I'd probably give that approach that I think you have suggested the upper hand. I'm wondering if I should rewrite my code.
Hm, I think I'll finish it first as it is, then once it's done I'm going to think about if it's worth changing it.
Or, I could keep my changing leader concept, and still do the background input thing. That way I could always let the fastest one be in lead for the current frame (as I had it initially intended to work out anyway). Should be the fastest option overall. Any form of active wait would definately have to disappear though.
Ah, I see.
Anyway, I've now got save states, frame skip, slow mode, pausing, etc synced up. Frame advance doesn't work yet though for some reason. Do you know if pressing the frame advance button does not send a window message like most (if not all) of the other function keys?
Not again.. I've been looking at [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RFuRY7azgA]this[/URL] for far too long now. Damn cross view. I'm crossing my eyes since forever now and I can't overlap those pictures at all. They always get more instead of less. :(
3 pictures is the least I can get with crossing my eyes. I put my finger between the screen and me, so that when I close my left eye, I see my finger with my right eye in front of the left part of the screen. When I close my right eye, my left eye sees my finger in front of the right half of the screen. So when looking at the finger I should then see the 3d picture, shouldn't I? I see just 3 pictures next to each other then, I don't get this stuff at all.
Also three circles instead of one in 3d in [URL=http://www.vision3d.com/methd04.html]this one[/URL]. I hate myself. [URL=http://www.vision3d.com/frame.html]This[/URL] works though. This stuff always gets me so worked up..
I would have done the exact same thing in that situation if it comforts you. xD Except that I'd probably never get that far in the first place on my current skill level.
Also, since you seem to like KMFDM a lot, I think I'm going to recommend [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwein]Schwein[/URL] and their album [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinstein]Schweinstein[/URL] to you. The album scores very high on the weirdness-scala for me and that's why I kind of like it, even though I feel some songs could be catchier and less repetitive, but I think that when listening to KMFDM too. My favourite track on it is actually the remix one, so yea, it's not the best album in the world, but whatever.
You aren't supposed to see an illusion there, you have to feel weird, it screws with your brain that insists on forming an average face. ie feeling uneasy would be an ok effect, crying too i guess, my eyes tried to cross at some point, brain must have though if you cant beat it join it :P
Well, none of this happens to me.
Thanks Warp, for your explanaition. For some reason I hadn't considered how lots of these optical illutions are almost completely based on individual experience.
Edit: Just for the record, the dragon illusion works for me. Maybe the human faces have so many grooves that my brain detects some clues that the object rather has to be hollow.
Can lua handle mutexes and memory mapped files? That would make it more powerful than I had thought. I can't imagine this working at all without mutexes or mapped events. (I only use mutexes atm, which might be inefficient, but atm my primary goal is to get it to work at all)
No, I'm quite sure the movie files would be the same. Written frames by the program in lead and read frames by the second one were the same for every frame in one of the cases that desynced right at the start. I'm quite sure there must be something else going on.
Edit: Actually you're right, the movie files could still be different if writing to the movie file happens at another point throughout the frame than the point were I sync up the input. Because the input could have changed in between for one instance of the program. I'm beginning to understand, I hope.
Input between frames could be the cause as I've written all of my code assuming it wouldn't matter. Writing the input to the memory mapped file happens at the same time throughout a frame as reading it. But the input is updated in between for the one that's writing. (I didn't think it would matter) I'll try a few ideas to fix it later today.
Edit 2: Yep, input in between frames caused the problem. Fixed it now and haven't gotten a single desync yet.
I also fixed a bug where you'd get a freeze sometimes when having more than 2 Gens synced up and then switching to a random window.
I like how this is progressing.
Edit 3: Guess what, movie recording already works. I've opened the same game 3 times and successfully recorded a .gmv that didn't desync upon playback. Then I've opened 3 different games and recorded me playing them at the same time in real time and the resulting movie didn't desync. ^^
Also, without those debug messages there's absolutely no lag visible.
Unfortunately without savestates this is still pretty useless atm.
Oh, mine don't. Interesting.
I also failed to see [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-fYSyb982I]this[/URL] illusion correctly before I was told what I was supposed to see. I'm supposed not to be able to see the hollow mask at all (explained [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHuStlT1RM8]here[/URL]), but I find it a lot easier to see than the illusion.
Btw, I also can't see the "magical eye" kind of pictures or 3d movies with 3d glasses. Something seems to be wrong with me. (big news ;))
I got a "magical eye" book as a birthday present once and everybody was so amazed by it, I can remember myself trying for days to see those illusions, but I'd only end up crying. Any helpful advice didn't help at all. I didn't want to give up, but it was no use.
With 3d movies I only realized that I see them less 3d than others when they started ducking out and to me the object seemed to be (at least kind of) hovering only a few inches in front of the screen.
One of my favourite misheard lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFsQrpy2BNw
Great chorus.
But then again, I guess part of the fun comes from knowing the band and another part from hard gay cameos.
Bisqwit: most awesomest pic eh? Especially if you look at it from a distance.
BRB, vomiting
I saw the pic when you posted it, but didn't get what's so special about it. Now I've found it on some optical illusions page. And it made me curious. What am I supposed to see in this picture?
I see a girl with 4 eyes and 2 mouths, no matter from which distance I look at it.
Thanks, that actually did the trick. ^^
Yes, I'm quite sure lua can't do it.
That part with the input works like a charm now. :)
nitsuja wrote:
What exactly are you trying to do?
I guess this should be useful once it's done. Here's an extremely early test version. I just got it to work a view minutes ago, so I'm sure it's still buggy. My silly debug messages are still enabled. They cause the majority of the lag that's present in this version.
Instructions:
Make sure background input is disabled. No full screen. Close gens to safe settings.
Open gens_multi_test.exe for X times. I recommend 2 times because it's least laggy.
Load the same rom in each opened version of it.
Play the game and the windows should remain perfectly in sync.
The only game I've tested this with is Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
Remains in sync for most of the time. It does desync at some certain points though. I'm not exactly sure why. This may be due to certain aspects of the emulation that I'm not aware of. Much more likely it's just some kind of ordinary bug in my code though.
You can switch the windows while playing or switch to non-Gens-related windows and the games should stay in sync. If one appears to be frozen, then that's most likely just because Gens doesn't want to update the display of that window. Moving the window a bit to either side should fix it. This bug was already there before I messed with the code.
The purpose of this project is to make creating multi-game movies a lot easier. In those cases you would of course load different games. Loading the same game, however, seems best to test how well the whole thing stays in sync.
Movie recording most certainly won't work yet, as I have not tested it yet, nor ever thought of how it might influence the whole process yet. If it does work, then it's by coincidence. xD
With re-recording I'm sure it doesn't work, as I only sync up gamepad input as of yet, so loading a state should only work for the currently focused window as of now.
The whole thing is Windows-only.
Link removed. :p
Edit: I have checked the inputs in the cases I got a desync, but they were still perfectly the same for each frame. So, I now think the desyncs are caused by something that has to do with the emulation itself. The only difference in some of those cases were different amounts of lag frames, regardless of them having used the same input. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Does input between two frames affect the RNG?
How about instead of using a logo in the gap, you used an actual clipped photo of that part of the real device there? Probably less bothering than the logo.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
But hey, why pass up a chance for easy advertisement?
How about combining those ideas and put a photoshopped photo of a DS there that has some leet TASVideos spraypaint on? XD
How can I make Gens believe I've presssed a key that I actually didn't press? I figured somebody here would know because movie playback wouldn't work without this.
What I've done is disabled the Update_Input function by adding in a return at the beginning of the function itself. This made Gens not accept any of my input anymore.
Then I've passed on some valid data to SetCurrentInputCondensed, but that didn't result in Gens thinking I've pressed a button. Any idea why it doesn't work?
SetNextInputCondensed works, but I want the current input to be changed.
This cute little fellow begs to differ.
Its antennas have the ability to directly influence your brain so that you're gonna think switching would be advantageous whenever you've picked the car first! Another ability is to force the game master to open the door with the car, even if he technically wouldn't be allowed to! The whole concept is bullet proof.
Its fur is actually made of micro glass fibres, effectively dispersing any sneaky capoeira laser attacks and then absorbing the energy via photosynthesis!
However, in each round where the host opened the wrong door, the probability of winning by switching was 2/3 in that round.
No. I'm assuming by "wrong door" you mean goat. I'm also assuming you don't pressume we got a goat as our first door (so we could have either goat or car). If you had, then the probability of winning by switching would be 100% in those rounds.
So you say we got our random door, and we see the game master opening a goat. How great is the probability of winning by switching? You say 2/3.
I say, we are in one of 4 equally probable cases now. The only information we've got is that the game master randomly opened a goat. I'm going to refer to my post above now and say we are either in cases 1, 3, 5 or 6. Those are the ones were we get shown a goat by the game master. 2 of them win by switching, 2 of them lose. Makes it 1/2 and not 2/3.
So, I guess the statement of yours I've quoted has to be wrong.
The 2/3 probability comes up if we have 6 equally probable cases in which the game master shows us a goat (Actually there are 3 cases and one of them splits in 2, because he could select from one of two goats. So it's 4 cases, but they're not equally probable, so I'm counting the other two twice). That only happens if he always has to show us a goat. Switching wins in 4 of those 6 cases here, making it 2/3.
I could also say this (for the random host). We have a 2/3 chance that we get shown a goat (1/2 * 1/3 + 1/2 * 1/3 + 1/3). If we had a 2/3 chance of winning by switching now (like you basically said), the overall chance of winning would be 2/3 * 2/3 = 4/9
So our chance of winning would be > 1/3 and that contradicts the experiment you spoke of.
However, if the game is played only one time, and the randomly opened door was incorrect, is it advantageous to switch?
I don't get why if switching isn't advantageous generally (for the random game master), why would one single case be treated differently?
To me that's like asking the question of when you toss a coin chances are 50% for tails and 50% for head, but for one single toss, what's more likely to appear?
With the random one switching is the same as not switching, you can't get an advantage. No matter how often you play.
With the friendly one switching is advantegous. No matter how often you play.
Why would anything be different if the game is only played once?
If you don't know if it's the friendly game master or the random one, and only these two possibilities exist, then switching is advantageous.
If you know it's the random one and by chance he acts like the friendly one, then switching would be advantageous for that one game, but at that point we don't know if he did, so the point is moot. The probability that he acts like the friendly one for one try is of course exactly so low that it nullifies the advantage the friendly one would give to you. I don't really get your question.
If the host opens the door with the prize by accident what happens? Start over?
No, that means you've lost. Theoretically you could chose one of the two remaining goats and lose either way. It basically means game over.
If he picks the door at random there are 6 cases.
1: You pick goat1, he opens goat2.
2: You pick goat1, he opens car. Game over.
3: You pick goat2, he opens goat1.
4: You pick goat2, he opens car. Game over.
5: You pick car, he opens goat1.
6: You pick car, he opens goat2.
There are 4 cases in which you can decide if you want to switch (and still have an influence at the restult). The rest should be obvious.
a) In 2 of these 4 cases switching gets you the car. (1 and 3)
b) In 2 of these 4 cases not switching gets you the car. (5 and 6)
c) In the 2 remaining cases switching and not switching both get you a goat. In the original problem switching gives you the car in these two cases as well because the game master mustn't open the car in that one. So cases c) lead to a) instead for the original one.
Like I've said, the improvement you proposed is actually slower. (slightly faster at speed level 1, but slower at faster speeds)
Not sure about the others, haven't really looked into them.
Edit:
I guess the routes were copied from [URL=http://tasvideos.org/1378S.html]here[/URL].
Thanks to [...] SprintGod and Mike89 for their great help in planning special stage routes.
mike89 wrote:
You'd be surprised how much time went into the bonus stages. I remember one night Upthorn, Sprint and I poring over the map for the last super emerald stage, and each coming up with entirely different routes that differed by probably half a second total. Mine was the fastest, and Upthorn made a couple of improvements to it to present what you see there.
So, I guess improving on them would be quite hard if it's even possible.
For the record, this and this are more like what I like.
Sweet. Reminds me of the meetings I attend where students sing Christian songs together. On one hand I find it a bit scary, but on the other it's still kind of nice.
May I recommend you the band named Skillet? I think they're quite ok and probably my favourite Christian band. Heavier style than what you've posted.
[URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_wfv7yIAA]This[/URL] and [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nijYWV6Nn9E]this[/URL] are two of their softer songs that I like.
How likely would it be to find a time saver for one of the bonus stages? How much effort has been invested to come up with these strategies?
Tried to beat levels one and two, but couldn't come up with anything faster.
BRB, vomiting
Its antennas have the ability to directly influence your brain so that you're gonna think switching would be advantageous whenever you've picked the car first! Another ability is to force the game master to open the door with the car, even if he technically wouldn't be allowed to! The whole concept is bullet proof.
Its fur is actually made of micro glass fibres, effectively dispersing any sneaky capoeira laser attacks and then absorbing the energy via photosynthesis!