Posts for Lex


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Lex
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
moozooh wrote:
Destroyed? You people sure are picky. :P That replay didn't look half bad on my PVA display. (Also, I remember having a video file of said replay on my HDD actually.)
For reference, here's how it looks in the original video file, as played by MPC-HC: http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/image/screenshots/mi2mpc-hc.png. Yes, YouTube destroyed its quality. Compare with the same map after the destruction by YouTube: http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/image/screenshots/mi2youtube.png. (Thanks for the idea, moozooh!)
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Mister Epic wrote:
DarkKobold wrote:
A quick question - all of this seems to be based on the fact that youtube... sucks. Seriously, seriously, sucks.
It doesn't suck. It just lacks 60 fps. It's probably the only site (this, and Archive) that supports 4K resolution and 3D playback options (useful for Virtual Boy movies). Plus, a lot of users don't have a time limit! It just needs 60 fps support.
It also needs correct 1080p support. It destroyed the quality of a 1920×1080 video I uploaded. It also needs nearest neighbor scaling.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Mister Epic wrote:
So yeah. I've encoded the same Super Metroid clip I've used for my other tests, using both frame blending techniques mentionned. 33% + 66%, 66% + 33% 33% + 66%, 50% + 50%, 66% + 33%, 50% + 50% If one of them is going to be adopted in the official encoding rules, I'll take creaothceann's function, and make an AviSynth function called "TASBlend", requiring only a clip, so we can use it as easily as clip.TASBlend(). EDIT: I personally like the first frame blending method. What do you think?
Yeah, that first one looks awesome!
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
turbofa wrote:
New improvement of the first game! http://www.mediafire.com/?xe4o34pf1hjbbr4 I'm understanding how work the wall-jump. Is similar at the super mario bros version.
Much better! Your run is almost as fast as the fastest run I found, and the wall-jumping you did on the last level was cooler. :D I, personally, think this is submittable. I would vote yes. It's short and sweet with many tricks for its length.
Post subject: Hourglass has incompatibilities with new nVidia driver(s)
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I installed a bunch of Windows updates a few days ago, including an nVidia graphics driver via Windows Update. When I tried to run Syobon Action in Hourglass (r39 first, then r49 when I noticed there was a new Hourglass version) today (to play back anothers' .wtf file), it froze on frame 4, with a blank white surface displayed in the Syobon Action window. The frame counter was stuck on frame 4 despite Hourglass saying "Current status: Playing". Syobon Action ran normally without Hourglass for me. I tried the same with Cave Story, and it wouldn't run either. The only game that would run in Hourglass was IWBTG, which played the entire glitched TAS WIP and synced perfectly. I just uninstalled my nVidia graphics driver then tried Syobon Action in Hourglass again. This time, the frame counter got past frame 4 and ran quickly, but I couldn't see or hear anything (makes sense). I'll now try installing an older version of the nVidia graphics driver. If it doesn't work, I'll post an Hourglass log here. Edit: For the record, the previous driver I had before the update was version 266.58. The version I got from the update a few days ago was version 275.33. I'm now installing version 266.58 again. I hope it works. Edit 2: Yup! That was the problem. Going back to version 266.58 (as found from the nVidia driver archive search) worked. Syobon Action now runs in Hourglass for me again. Unfortunately, I accidentally overwrote the Hourglass log I had with version 275.33 of the driver. I've now edited the title of this thread to reflect my findings.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
AKheon wrote:
Lex wrote:
What version of VBA does this use?
I did this run using VBA 1.7.2 v21-interim. Old habits die hard, I guess...
Please include this information in the submission.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
What version of VBA does this use?
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Kuwaga, you're among the rest of us who interpreted "I want Gameboy aspect ratio as the default" as discussing the pixel aspect ratio. I picked it because I like the exact configuration of 160×144 with a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, which is the "Gameboy aspect ratio".
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
This is awesome. Also, I'm posting this mainly to bump this thread because Grunt's edit doesn't do so (for those who weren't in #tasvideos at the time TVA announced it). Dark_Shikari has worked hard on this. Thanks, Dark_Shikari! He can be found in #x264dev on freenode for questions and compression test result reports. He's an advocate of questions. Several other codec developers/experts idle there also. Compression tests are always welcome. The x264 command line argument for 4:4:4 is "--output-csp i444". The x264 command line argument for RGB is "--output-csp rgb". My 4:4:4 test command line is
x264 --preset placebo --qp 0 --qpmax 0 --threads 4 --fullrange on --output-csp i444 --output "B:\media\video\capture\lexencode.264" "B:\media\video\capture\lexencode.avs"
"--fullrange on" is not necessary for RGB, as fullrange defaults to "on" with RGB. Edit: As of this edit, Dark_Shikari is also in #tasvideos.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'm all for this. Encodes should be unscaled. If video players can't handle viewing unscaled encodes how the viewer wants, that's the players' fault, not ours. However, YouTube is tricky because it's such a popular way of viewing TASes and has such a featureless video player. Streaming sites could still use their own rules.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Brandon wrote:
Considering all of these things, I think we should either ban the use of SGB runs altogether, or wait until Snes9x can support the actual Super Game Boy cartridge and create runs on that.
I propose a third option: don't publish runs as "SGB runs", but make nice-looking encodes using VBA's SGB palette extraction (and borders for games where it looks nice). Encodes don't have to be accurate to be nice-looking.
Lex
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
We could also go in the opposite direction like was done with a high-resolution (and TASVideos-official) Zelda: OOT encode. It looked completely awesome and it didn't adhere to nonsensical rules regarding authentic look. There was also a TASVideos-official high-resolution Sonic 3 encode done with HQ4x (though I don't agree that scaler looks good). The point is, almost everyone knows TASes are done in emulators. If they don't know that, it's probably best not to try to trick them.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The act of TASing and TAS planning is the ultimate spoiler. The entire TAS community accepts that revealing secrets is an essential part of TASing. Without secrets (warps, glitches, sequence breaking, actually completing the game which shows the ending and the entire route to get there), a TAS couldn't exist. So, yes, please share your awesome strategies for FF7! I'm looking forward to reading them. :D
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
sgrunt wrote:
Lex wrote:
Most viewers aren't going to expect SGB games to be displayed at a TV aspect ratio.
So... viewers don't expect a platform that by its very nature outputs to a TV to output to a TV. Right.
Why did you quote this out of context? It goes with the other points in that paragraph. Learn to read. I said it because I made the point that games which happen to have SGB support are primarily played on GB systems.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Pokémon isn't a TV game. SGB happens to run it on a TV, but that's not its main platform. Most people play SGB games on a Game Boy (Pocket/Color/Advance/Advance SP). In this game's case, it has to be played on a Game Boy to be completed without glitches. Most viewers aren't going to expect SGB games to be displayed at a TV aspect ratio. Doing so also introduces problems that aren't present in the original SNES analog output, such as horizontal interpolation. By the way, 256:224 is 8:7 in lowest terms. 160:144 is 10:9. If you want the encodes to be so accurate, fix NES encodes since they don't display with a 4:3 aspect ratio even on a 4:3 TV (as I described in my previous post). Also, it's not the SGB outputting the incorrect aspect ratio. It's the SNES.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Oh, I don't expect you to. I'm just sharing my view. I voted yes, for the record.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
X2poet wrote:
Lex wrote:
I enjoyed watching this video, but I would have preferred speed over subjective "entertainment". I still think it's more interesting (and entertaining), even for fighting games, to show the fastest way to win in a TAS.
I don't think so. If aim to fastest way,using the same character,the same skill,all the enemies is killed as same as each others.That is the fast,and need to test which character's attack would be the fastest. As is to say,it would be boring.
It wouldn't be boring to me. The most exciting thing to me is to see the speed their health bar goes down, anyway. When focusing on the health bar, the current run seems sloppy. Here's an example of a fighting game maximizing damage and being entertaining simultaneously.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I enjoyed watching this video, but I would have preferred speed over subjective "entertainment". I still think it's more interesting (and entertaining), even for fighting games, to show the fastest way to win in a TAS.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Kiwi, you keep referring to "all encodes [you] watched" instead of referring to specific lists of videos. If you know any specific videos which demonstrate your claims, please post their relevant identifying information.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
It says "You may not modify, enhance, supplement, create derivative work from, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reduce the CD-ROM to human readable form." in the installer's EULA.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
We're neither profiting nor causing companies to lose money by reversing games for TASing, so it's probably safe.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
It seems many strats were missing. I found a much faster TAS (01:57.10!) here: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm14799710
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Well, your time is really close to Nekosin's time and I'm sure you can spot the same thing I spotted that looks slightly slower. :) Another run may just put you under his time!
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Even if it was illegal, game companies put anti-reversing clauses in their EULAs in order to prevent online cheating and other such resource- and reputation-harming activity. If they don't lose anything from the reversers, they're unlikely to pursue legal action. Here's an interesting related story. It's technically illegal to reverse-engineer Worms Armageddon. However, in 2001, a skilled reverser named Deadcode initially made a cheat program from heavy reversing, then made a program that counters that cheat program and adds some extra features to the game. Team17 (Worms Armageddon's developer company) had an open mind and actually hired him to work with the game's source code to improve their game instead of pursuing legal action.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Nice improvement! At the end, is it possible to cut off the input earlier? I have a feeling 2:22.02 isn't the accurate length of the TAS, since the end music started playing long before your input ended.
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