Posts for Lord_Tom

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Posted: 6/22/2009 6:07 PM
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Lord_Tom
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The highest possible jump is obtained by starting with the y subpixel=0; even doing so, the highest possible morph jump is >1 px short of being able to make that jump, so it's not a sub-pixel thing. Of course, the jump IS possible with high jump...</tongue> The source code PJ points out is partially commented but alas, does not fully explain all the ins and outs of the game. I did try picking up some NES assembly know-how to further the effort, but it was pretty far out of my league. EDIT: Yeah, Spider, you're right about the morph jump "discovery,"...
Posted: 6/22/2009 5:49 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Mitjitsu wrote:
I don't see the point in updating old avi's. Most of them aren't even seeded and many of them have long overdue improvements.
I don't think updating the logos is a real reason for the encoders to go to the effort, though I agree w/ adelikat that reducing file size and/or improving encode quality would justify a (low priority) effort. With respect to old runs not being seeded (or obsoleted runs not being available), what is the technical limitation that causes this? I don't know if most people do this, but I like watching old old versions of runs if possible to better appreciate how good the current ones are, but often I can't get old movie files to sync and the encode is no longer up. Is it disk space? Bandwidth? I wouldn't think making the old versions of movies available would eat up too much bandwidth since the vast majority of users would only download the most recent one, but I could be wrong...
Posted: 6/19/2009 3:37 AM
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Lord_Tom
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Fine by me as long as it's labeled as a TAS and attributed, but pls post the link here so we can watch it!
Posted: 6/13/2009 6:07 PM
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Lord_Tom
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I wasn't going to post anymore WIP's since I'm so close to done and wanted to save SOME surprises. I did look into the health alarm/lag situation, and wasn't able to detect any change in lag based on it. Good laggy screens to test are Kraid, most any room in Ridley's area with the bouncy balls, and any room in Tourian w/ 3+ metroids. I just found another trick that may have already been known, though I never heard it mentioned; you can morph jump *without* actually morphing. To do it requires running up to the edge of a ledge and pressing down to morph just as Samus reaches the edge. If you press down (for two frames) on the last possible frame before Samus runs off, Samus will assume the standing posture as she falls, and can then jump out of mid-air at any point in the fall, as long as you don't move left or right. This technique saved about 9 frames getting the E-tank in Kraid's room. Might save on the Zebetites, too, I'm not sure.
Posted: 6/13/2009 2:23 AM
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Lord_Tom
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Quick update on the 100%...it's getting close, I've got all the items, and have beaten Ridley and Kraid. Looks like total improvement will be about 8 minutes. I'm also planning to do the 1-item, time permitting. I don't think it'll take too long, since the start of it is the same as the any%, and I'm pretty well familiar with the game at this point. ;)
Posted: 5/9/2009 4:30 PM
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Lord_Tom
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This seemed like a good thread for my issue... I'm new to TAS'ing for this platform, and have been having some trouble with mupen re-recording v8. A few q's for anyone with more experience using this emulator... 1. Is there no auto-hold feature? If not, how do ppl deal with situations where one's keyboard doesn't register holding, say, four keys down at once. I'm working on F-Zero-X, where having the throttle on auto-hold would be nice... 2. Is there no way to display the input when playing a movie? Thanks...
Posted: 5/7/2009 12:28 PM
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Lord_Tom
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If you use FCEUX, there's a lag counter that appears above the frame counter. Otherwise, watch memory address 2002; when bit 5 (value=16) is set seems to correspond quite consistently to lag frames. Usually it's 0 if you're not lagging, usually it's 16 or 80 if you are lagging. Not perfect in all situations, but it works for me very well.
Posted: 5/7/2009 2:02 AM
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Lord_Tom
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Hmmm...I suppose so...will have to ask Mitjitsu if he minds (I don't imagine he will), I'd love to have a few comments in there explaining stuff.
Posted: 5/7/2009 1:49 AM
(Edited: 5/7/2009 1:52 AM)
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Lord_Tom
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Joined: 5/25/2007
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Derakon: Minimizing objects prior to a scroll was a technique I was already using, though for most screens it doesn't matter since 90% of screens have no lag during the scrolling. And yes, I'll point out what was done and why so ppl don't think I'm a dope...or at least more of a dope...:D Adelikat: I was SO happy to find out about the subtitles feature, though I totally forgot about it for the SMB3 run. I've been procrastinating on converting my Metroid wip to .fm2, but this'll definitely nudge me. THANKS! Spider: I'll check, though I suspect that a Game Genie code could increease/decrease lag by enabling/disabling certain calculations rather than it being the beeping. For instance, lag potential is greatly reduced after you take damage, presumably because it doesn't both doing Samus/creature collision detection during that time. Also, I'd be somewhat reluctant to submit a run that features that beeping sound constantly, since ppl already complained about too much beeping in the any%, and that was like 1/4 as long...
Posted: 5/6/2009 11:45 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Score another one for the total craziness of TAS'ing Metroid. I was doing one of those single-width, corridor-only screens in Norfair, and thought I'd test if I could shoot both doors open without losing time (because ordinarily firing a shot behind Samus while running only costs a pixel or so). What did I find? Shooting both doors was actually 5 frames FASTER! A little digging revealed that the difference was in lag during the scroll action alone -- enemy movements were identical. My hypothesis is that a door counts as an object on-screen just like a monster does; starting a scroll with the opposite door open = 1 fewer object = less lag in certain situations. As to the "time vs entertainment" trade-off I mentioned, I lost 4 frames getting the missile from the flying creature above the Ice Beam, and one frame striking a pose on one of the resets. For the Ice Beam, it's possible to get the missile faster by running out toward the monster and blasting it, but I thought it made the wait more interesting to lure it over to the door and get the missile from it while the door trick had already started. Spiderwaffle: Yes, speed is a main goal here, but for a half-hour run of what can be a repetitive game, I'm ok with giving up tiny fractions of time to do something interesting now and then -- it definitely makes it more interesting for me, and hopefully for the audience.
Posted: 5/4/2009 3:58 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Kirkq wrote:
Also I found it humorous that SMB3 and SMW are within ~0.23 seconds of each other in completion time now - http://tasvideos.org/1115M.html
Ah, in that case I suggest that this run also obsolete SMW! :D Tompa & Cardboard: I'm open to doing the non-warp run, though it is not currently in progress. Tompa, any details on this pipe glitch you speak of?
Posted: 5/4/2009 3:52 PM
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Lord_Tom
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All the politics aside, I'm happy to see this run published, and look forward to seeing it improved. I also support the idea of generally not allowing a known improvement to bar publication. As a player, most of my runs have 2 loosely defined phases; a research phase where I'm checking out strats and searching for improvements, and an execution phase where I'm actually recording. During the execution phase, it's fairly common that I find some small improvements that affect earlier work. When deciding to go back and revise, pragmatic considerations arise: how big is the improvement? is it visually obvious or even detectable? how much time will it take to redo? is this something that will make my run vulnerable to obsoletion very quickly, with minimal effort? Usually, I do end up re-doing the earlier portions, but I would never want to be required to. At a certain point, I think it's totally legit to flag the improvement for use by future TAS'ers and call it a day. This is especially true with improvements that aren't known to the author until after submission. After all, there's nothing better to entice someone into doing a run than having a known improvement to start with, which practically guarantees publication. And enticing people into doing runs (especially on new platforms and games!) is, I think, what will keep this site going in the long term.
Posted: 5/4/2009 1:27 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Thanks guys! On a side note, here's some weirdness I discovered while doing the Bowser fight: Killing Bowser on a certain frame makes him fly off the top of the screen, leaving Mario trapped on an empty screen!
Posted: 4/26/2009 11:20 PM
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Lord_Tom
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So, as some of you know I've been working on the 100% run for this game. Here's a WIP. No bosses beaten yet, but I have the Ball, Brinstar Ice, Bombs, Varia, Long Beam and Wave Beam; this WIP completes one of my planned 3 segments (separated by resets) in Norfair. Even though I suppose a run without them might get published as a 100%, I decided for various reasons to get all map items, including both ice beams and all energy tanks. That's what the published run does, as well. I anticipate finishing with about 8-10 minutes of improvements over Zoizite's run; although I save a lot of time with new shortcuts & techniques, obviously a large chunk of the time saved is just by using resets... Finally, there's about 5 frames of time/entertainment trade-off so far...can anyone spot them? :D
Posted: 4/19/2009 4:47 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Is anyone working on this now? This (amazingly) is the last remaining game that I played extensively which has not yet been done. If no one is doing it, I might give it a try after my current projects finish up, probably late summer. I watched some of the youtube footage for what's been done so far and it's quite impressive, though I was shocked that some of them were apparently done without re-records?!
Posted: 4/19/2009 4:42 PM
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Lord_Tom
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In terms of pre-publication voting, I think the yes/no/meh system is fine. For movie ratings, I may have spouted on this before, but here's my ideal rating system (it's similar to Mukki's idea): If you want to rate a movie, up pops a list of all the currently published movies you've ever rated, from 1 to n. Number 1 is your "favorite" movie. Number n is your "least favorite" movie. You then choose a ranking for the current movie, from 1 to n+1, resulting in a new, ordered list. Movies' rankings would then be some aggregate of the position of a movie on each rater's lists, perhaps with a minimum 10-rater threshold before a movie's ranking appears. For interface, one could modify a single movie's ranking with just a text box, or take a page from the netflix queue system for multiple simultaneous adjustments. This, as I see it, solves a few annoyances with the current ranking system: 1. the 10/10 problem (and its inverse, 0/0): under the current system, individual users can have significant impact on the rankings of their favorite/least favorite movies by rating them at the extremes. Under this system, they'd have to prioritize, because only 1 movie can be their favorite/least favorite. 2. no more arguments about technical vs entertainment 3. no more worry about ratings inflation, the comparison of ratings across different eras of TAS'ing, etc. Obviously, this would be a radical change, but I think it would end up being beneficial.
Posted: 4/19/2009 3:02 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Just a heads up, there should be an improved "warped" submission from myself and Mitjitsu hitting the workbench in the near future...
Posted: 3/4/2009 2:42 AM
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Lord_Tom
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None of the games I've TAS'd qualify for "the most difficult," but here's how I'd rate them, hardest 1st: 1. Metroid -- random lag, significant randomness, horizontal and vertical acceleration, complex & open-ended routing, character moves at different speeds when jumping/running, many intriguing possible exploits with character completely offscreen that require memory watching 2. Lemmings -- mainly because no prior run published made for a lot of time developing techniques, long game, wide possible solution set for most levels, events separated by long periods of time had to be precisely timed 3. Legacy of the Wizard -- everything depends on luck manipulation to get speed scrolls; very complex & open-ended routing; 4. Faxanadu -- complex routing, complex and completely asinine interaction of character running speed with character attacks, optimization of damage-taking, magic usage, and golds collection over long spans required a lot of planning 5. Rygar -- very very buggy; main difficulty was understanding all the different ways to break the game and how to exploit them This list is not to brag (that's what submission comments are for!), but to try to lay out all the things I've found that made TAS'ing a game difficult. Based on this, my criteria would be: -the internals of the game are difficult to fathom (i.e. stuff happens for no apparent reason; simple memory address monitoring is not helpful) -multiple interacting entities must be controlled simultaneously (i.e. 4 player) -movement is complex (2d vs 3d, acceleration/deceleration/multiple modes of movement with different speeds) -complex resource gathering/utilization with extensive randomness -game sequences are open-ended (i.e. levels can be completed in different orders) -large, complex map -no prior TAS's of the game and finally, I'd add: -everyone hates the game, so noone wants to help or offer encouragement ;)
Posted: 1/31/2009 10:55 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Yeah, it seems to be a bug; the music breaks when you hit start on the 1st possible frame. http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/167632084/lemmings%20m%26s.smv Here's a version that hits start 1 frame later and doesn't break the music on my emulator. (and sorry for not noticing; I TAS w/o sound & had already seen/heard the ending before I optimized the movie) Thanks to Bisqwit for putting music in the encode; if ppl confirm the new .smv doesn't break the music, I'll take having the movie be an extra frame in length...;)
Posted: 1/31/2009 4:38 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Well, if you have this game on the console it should be easy enough to beat it now that I've shown you the solutions...;) Seriously, though, thanks. This run was fun to make, but entailed a lot of frustration and brain-frying along the way; I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Posted: 1/31/2009 5:04 AM
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Lord_Tom
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Just bumping this topic to note that the submission file & comments are now updated to include the 5 Sunsoft levels and taking the game to its real ending. Thanks to adelikat for handling the technical side of things!
Posted: 1/23/2009 10:37 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Cool. Not sure, but I may start working on an improved warpless SMB3 after the warped version; will definitely check it out. Can't now, tho, promised myself no more SMB3 work until Lemmings is done...
Posted: 1/23/2009 10:32 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Update: Sunsoft 3 is done, holy crap, it's done. I think I spent about 30-40 hours on this level alone. Barring similar difficulties with the final 2 levels, this should (finally) be complete in another week or so. Sorry for the long wait!
Posted: 1/21/2009 10:20 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Very impressive work, and I know it was a long time in the making. This run's only weaknesses, as I see it, relate to the game itself, in that it is long enough (unlike MM1) to get repetetive for me, and the insanely quick zipping, boss fights, etc, results in a high proportion of input frames being spent on boring transition scenes. And bravo for writing such extensive comments!
Posted: 1/20/2009 3:55 PM
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Lord_Tom
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Cpadolf wrote:
I give my vote to Lord Tom. While he did not make as many movies as the other ones on the list his where the ones I enjoyed the most (well, 3 of them at least).
<sniffle> You didn't like one of my movies? :( Just kidding, but I am curious which one...Faxanadu? Too slow?
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