Posts for Lex


Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Baxter wrote:
The respawning block doesn't take the place of another block. If you just speed up the game, not catching any blocks, you will get a VERY filled playing field (I think this can even be done on a regular DS). You do die pretty fast though obviously... but you can still see there being LOTS of blocks (relative to how much there would be normally).
You're absolutely right. I just tested it.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
At 00:10, why did you put the green block where you put it? Would it be better fitted into the 2-tall hole on the right side of your block, or were you trying to preserve it so it doesn't get blasted away? On that note, does blasting away blocks help or hurt the run? Maybe I just don't know the mechanics of the game.
Baxter wrote:
Missing a block might look imperfect... but it's not as bad as you think. A black that is missed ends up at the top of the screen... so you don't lose that block actually. If I were to release the R button, all stones would drop slower, and since I do get that block eventually, I think letting it destroy itself in order to show up at the top is the best option. (I do think that pieces that are destroyed by rotating into them are destroyed permanently.)
Hmm, now that you mention the blocks respawn if you miss them, I have to wonder: does the respawned block take the place of another block that would have spawned? I imagine so, because if not, you could miss all the blocks and have them all continuously respawn and multiply ridiculously, which you can't in this game. So, since you're technically still losing a block, missing a block is probably imperfect.
Baxter wrote:
(hexediting would be a long process also probably, since I would need to delete lines of input every 2 frames for several thousand frames).
That shouldn't take long if you know how to write scripts/macros. :)
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Whelkman wrote:
Was this ever seeded? I've been at 8.5% since Friday, and so has every other peer that's connected to me.
I'm in the same boat. Can someone start seeding this? I promise to seed for at least a few days after I download it.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hmm, yeah, I remember this mode being ridiculously unfun on my actual DS due to the split screens both being used as a continuous screen. It was pretty hard to line things up at high speeds. This gameplay reminds me of Asteroids (or multi-ball Arkanoid) in a way, in that you have to prioritize your actions very well to get a high score. It seems like something a bot could do best, since humans prioritize actions incorrectly a lot of the time. It looks like you move your "character" down unnecessarily at some points, giving you less time to catch more blocks, and you even ended up missing one because of it. I might be wrong. OH, I just tried this mode on the real DS again, and I noticed the game ran a LOT faster (even on level 1) than in this WIP. Is the emulation extra slow or something?
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hmm. The video is a 0-byte file. I realize it may be out of date. Can you please re-upload it somewhere? Maybe my browser took a dump.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hey! Thanks, CyberShadow, for the hosting! :D You guys can watch the old TAS demonstrations now, thanks to my good friend here. They're pretty awesome. I've stopped playing Worms Armageddon in general, but CyberShadow and Deadcode are still around, and I'm still here available for questions etc. Would-be-double-post edit: WTF? Where did the mission records page go? All the other sites on Nanacide are still there. Would-be-triple-post edit: Aha! I found it! It was ported over to the Worms Knowledge Base, here, as posted by CyberShadow above... Haha.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Is it just me, or does Blue stop for a frame every time he lands after a jump?
Lex
Experienced Forum User
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Comicalflop wrote:
Unfortunately, with some of the plugins I've looked at, it seems the worms wiggle in weird ways when moving. Like, I'll move him left and he'll look just like Link from ALttP. Also, the bungee rope physics are less abusive. Besides that, it could work, but you'd need to create a good goal mindset for a "speedrun" of WA... in-game time based, real time based, 'turn based', etc. Which mode will it play? Also, I'd imagine the amount of luck manipulation to be incredibly difficult. Also, I don't see as many useful tools that Lex has shown that are available in mupen. Seeing the exact trajectories of projectiles and knowing what is going to happen before you do so, plus so many other tool capabilities the modified WA has that I'm forgetting to mention, is incredibly helpful. It'd take one really skilled person to find the exact same tool capabilities with only L-Spiro's MHS. Also, I love using the word also.
Yeah, like Comicalflop said, there are tons of factors preventing N64 speedrun viability. Firstly, the physics in the N64 version are awful. Secondly, the lack of trajectory mapping would make it 100× more painful than it is with Deadcode's Worms Armageddon tools. I can't imagine doing anything nearly as good as what I've done without trajectory mapping. Roping just couldn't work.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I have found the videos. Now I just need some web space on which to host them. If you can offer about 20 MB of space, or would just like me to send you the videos directly, send an email to lexlexlex@gmail.com or add that address to your google talk or msn (same address for either) and I'll be happy to transfer the files. I love when people see my WA stuff! I spent a long time on it and I'm really proud of it. As of now, I don't have Daemon Tools working, so I can't mount my CD image to start up WA to encode more tool-assisted replays to avi. I may continue working on it if there's any response after this post. I've been playing World of Warcraft recently and haven't been keeping up with Worms Armageddon or the TAS scene, but I don't need to spend as much time on WoW now, so I can probably start working on some of my old gaming hobbies. :)
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hi guys! I've come back here just to easily watch the videos I posted here, but the links are broken. I'm going to investigate the whereabouts of these videos and fix the links if possible.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Open your desired video in VirtualDub. Click "Streams" -> "Stream List". Select your desired audio stream and click "Demux". Assuming VirtualDub knows the stream's format, name the file whatever you want and click "Save". Note: I am a Windows user. I don't know if there's a Linux or OSX version of VirtualDub and I'm too tired to research it right now. :P There's definitely a way to do the same thing in other OSes.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Great job, Alden! Chef Stef's manipulation is fully intact and you've removed the pausing! I applaud you. It looks great. :)
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Well, pausing is even slower, isn't it!? :P
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
This is great. I always love the prospect of glitch runs, and this is demonstrated awesomely. It's great to see that one of my favourite SNES games has such warp glitches!
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I manage to fill my 3200×1200 desktop space with great art just fine. I have a whole directory of nice abstract images I found on DeviantArt, if you'd like. I'm in #nesvideos as LexSfX.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
If you want to make a version with luck manipulation without pausing, try just waiting (with the game unpaused) before holding down. I think that works to manipulate luck. If not, never mind. I enjoyed the movie enough to vote yes, by the way.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Ha, thanks a lot. The artist who created it is brilliant. Here's the original deviation by viperv6.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Here's my desktop. I have two monitors, my right one being the primary one at the moment. They both run at 1600×1200, though the right monitor can go up to 2048×1536 (which I use for playing Worms Armageddon). As you can see, I like abstract art. The background images are by a couple of the great artists at DeviantArt. My OS is Windows XP and my shell is bbLean. The image is here: http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/image/screenshots/desktop3.png Warning: This is a 4.03 MB lossless image. Mushroom! Hello, fellow Autechre fan. :) Oooh, you're into Venetian Snares too. So good!
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Baaaahahahaha! I loved the second-last boss scene, where Chip and Dale looked like they were having a dialogue about the fight! That was amazing. :) The run was certainly fun to watch, and some very clever improvements were made. This is a definite yes for me.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Punk7890, clarify your process by telling us the details of what you're doing. In your posts, write the full names and version numbers of each program you are using. Write some system specifications and give some history behind your codec installation process. This will help us help you to figure out your problem. Before you do this, we are probably just as helpless as you are.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Argh. That sounds pretty frustrating. It sucks to not be able to do the game's levels individually.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
laughing_gas wrote:
This game is impossible to hex edit. Any attempts to do so will result in a desynch, whether it be in the next level or 50 levels later.
Why is that? What happens, exactly, if that's attempted?
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
HHS wrote:
I probably don't move optimally in the beginning but I don't feel like doing it all over again.
If you really wanted to, you could redo just the beginning and edit in the input, right? Or would that mess up the random number generator, causing the rest of the movie to desynchronize in this case? Also, I was wondering, is there any time-saving value in ending a level by hitting the end "ring" at the lowest possible point, or does the game just make up for the extra falling time anyway? This is a general question about the game, by the way; not related to HHS' video.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'm quite glad you enjoyed them! Anyone else with a copy of Worms Armageddon can have as much fun watching these as Kyrsimys did. While playing back replay files with WA version 3.6.28.0, there are several replay controls to use:
    mouse movement - Moving the mouse moves the viewport, regardless of whether Scroll Lock is enabled or not. Holding either Shift or the middle mouse button makes the viewport move at 4 times normal speed. Holding both Shift and the middle mouse button makes the viewport move at 16 times normal speed.
    Scroll Lock - If Scroll Lock is enabled, the viewport will not follow game actions such as worm movement and weapon shots. Pressing the Scroll Lock key enables Scroll Lock as normal.
    1 to 9 - These are the speed keys. 1 is normal speed. The higher the number, the faster the replay plays back. Holding Shift while pressing one of these keys puts the playback in slow motion. Holding 0 while pressing one of these keys speeds up the playback extremely. Holding Shift and 0 while pressing one of these keys slows down the playback extremely.
    s - This is the single step key. The first time s is pressed, it puts the playback in single step mode. Each subsequent press of s steps forward one frame. To leave single step mode, press any of the speed keys.
    r - This key restarts the game from the beginning or restarts the game and fast-forwards to whatever frame you have marked.
    m - This key marks the current frame. The time index of the marked frame will be shown in red in the bottom-left corner of the screen after m is pressed.
    Pause/Break - This is the screenshot key. Each time Pause/Break is pressed, The game saves the viewport as a PNG to the <Worms Armageddon directory>\User\Capture\ directory as screen####.png, where #### is a four-digit decimal number one greater than the number used for the previous screenshot.
I've updated WKB's mission records page with my latest mission TAS for The Drop Zone! Using a new method involving heavy AI manipulation, I was able to reduce the turn time from 19.36 seconds to 3.14 seconds! I've encoded the new run to an AVI file so everyone can watch. :) Kyrsimys, you haven't seen this one yet. Watching the replay is a lot nicer (due to replay controls) than watching the AVI, so I suggest you go to the mission records page and check it out! As always, you can see the past records in the replay archive, linked at the top-right corner of the records table on the mission records page. The AVI file is here: Lex - TAS of WA mission 23 - The Drop Zone - 2 turns - 3.14 sec turn time.x264.avi Edit: Updated mission records page link.
Lex
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Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Thanks a lot! That's really good to hear! I was really hoping the TASVideos community would enjoy these. :)