You may have seen my
PC Worms Armageddon thread which details the tools present in the private tool-assist version of Worms Armageddon. This thread is meant to promote my favorite tool: trajectory mapping. It's described in the other thread like this:
Trajectory mapping - This feature is extremely useful in all aspects of tool-assisted Worms Armageddon (and probably would be in most other games). It shows the trajectory an object would take in the next ~1000 frames if it took that path, and in roping, goes a step further by showing the possible rope shots after releasing the rope. Imagine having this feature for Umihara Kawase's rope! It really is beautiful.
UraniumAnchor has the idea. He's started a trajectory mapping scripting project for NES Blaster Master. It looks great so far. Not only is there trajectory mapping, but he also has hitbox outlining, the object's state/sprite value (not sure which one), and some other useful information. I'm excited about his run. With tools as advanced as he's making them, it's sure to be very detailed!
Here's what my TAS of the Worms Armageddon rope race map, Mission Impossible 2, looks like with trajectory mapping. I definitely wouldn't have been able to design a replay nearly this good without being able to see what would happen x frames ahead. You'll probably want to watch frame-by-frame in your video player to understand what's going on. Hopefully it should be self-explanatory if you do that. Every frame is included (50fps).
Here's a clean replay of a speed-promoting map being completed very fast (much faster than the intended unassisted time of 30 seconds):
and the same replay with trajectory mapping enabled for comparison:
I've seen several screenshots and videos in the TASvideos community with hitbox outlines. That's a great idea! I wish that was included in Worms Armageddon as well.
Anyway, the point of this post is not just to show off my Worms Armageddon stuff, but to point out how useful trajectory mapping can be. Trajectory mapping works almost everywhere. Of course, I'll admit I'm being selfish. I want to step into the console TASing scene, but all the games seem so daunting to me without the tools I'm used to. What I'm hoping here is that developers/scripters decide to make some game-specific tools, especially for the more popular games.
I know you guys haven't needed it all these years, but I believe trajectory mapping would help bring out the best in the TAS community in general. Most of all, I'd like to see Umihara Kawase with trajectory mapping! Haha.
Also, I don't know Japanese. I wonder what this screenshot says. Anyway, it seems like my version of ffdshow from Sept 17 2008 didn't work. I had to update to the version from Nov 8 2009. Thanks for pinpointing the problem!
Is it just me? I've seen other encodes that look like this too for me (though none that were actually published).