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I'm not really sure what to say about this movie.
I'm glad another person improved my movie, but I was a bit disappointed at some points in the run. In particular, you seem to have found a faster method of travelling which is 'to make as few jumps as possible' while I ran the game 'avoiding to be in mid-air at all costs'. When I TASed this game, I assumed that being in mid-air results in slower speed but apparently I was wrong. Unfortunately, this results in even less action as you fly across even more things.
The boss battles could be heavily improved entertainment-wise in my opinion. Just compare your boss battles with mine and you'll see that I'm trying to use the waiting time and make interesting stunts, especially at the final boss.
I'm really not sure what to vote.
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Thanks to Dacicus, I now know a solution!
Go to sound device management and in the "recording" tab, right-click and check "show disabled devices".
In my case, "stereomix" popped up and I activated it. Now I can record audio from my computer. :)
Problem solved.
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You can easily record audio in Windows XP, using its build-in audio recorder. You can use that to record any audio the soundcard outputs.
Now I'm using Windows 7. It doesn't work like this anymore. The standard build-in audio recorder in Win7 seems to be only capable of recording audio input (microphone, headset). I tried various audio recording software, including audacity or No23 and I was said I'm lacking certain drivers. My soundcard is "Realtek High Definition Audio" (I think). I've been looking for a solution to this for a long time...
Please help me! Thank you.
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I'd definitely use a lua script to do all sorts of things like see through walls, have the ability to fly, have infinite health, control other people.
If you can _change_ memory via lua or memory search, why bother using luck-manipulation? :)
What is a frame in real life, in seconds?
Speed control won't work because we are in the medium which is being emulated so we won't know if the "emulation speed" changes.
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I'm having trouble to get this to work. The game runs fine but there is a problem with how frame advance works in Dolphin. I tried r6201 and r6154 so far and they behave the same.
There is "pause" and it pauses the emulation or unpauses it. You can check "frame stepping" in the menu which essentially changes "pause" into "frame advance".
Savestates can only be made individually and after you advance to the next frame (you can't save states while the emulation is paused, it seems). This is just another difference compared to our emulators that I wanted to mention.
Here's the problem:
Sometimes, for whatever reason, when using "frame advance", the emulation may be locked. This means the emulation can't be paused or unpaused, it just doesn't do anything! You can get the emulator listen to you if you minimize & maximize the window, but I'm getting the same problem after ~2 frames. If I disable "frame stepping", the game behaves normally and recognizes my input (if the emulation is unpaused). If the emulation is paused while "frame stepping" is disabled, you can unpause it. But if you make any input, the emulation is locked and doesn't listen to you anymore again.
I was said to visit the Dolphin channel, but I doubt it would help much. So at best, I'd make a topic at their forum later.
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<mugg_> Why do people think this is a troll submission?
<mugg_> Sure, the title doesn't look tidy and there's no submission text
<mugg_> but the movie does work and it's a good run
<mugg_> Unless it was stolen from somewhere, of course
<mugg_> So I think, at this rate we still need more info from the author
@partyboy1a: Ah, okay. But is that possible on the SNES version?
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This run is actually pretty good. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if publication alongside the NES run is warranted.
@ partyboy1a: What do you mean by "koopa setups"?
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I'm also checking out Dolphin(r6201,32bit) now and SSBM(PAL) runs fine. I wasn't able to acquire the SSBM(U) ROM...
Well, I have two questions now since I'm excited to finally be making my first TASes on this emulator.
1) How can I set things like frame advance or savestates? Figured it out myself. After selecting frame stepping in the menu, pause begins to work as frame advance. Savestate hotkeys are given but can't be changed >_<
2) What's the IRC channel of team Dolphin?
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I've been referring to this cartridge at some points in the past now. It contained about 80 games in several different languages (so the catridge contained about 350 games in total, maybe only 280... I'm really not sure). It even had a cover on it with some of the protagonists of the various games so it may have been sold by Nintendo as a rare collection cart at some point. I tried to search for this game on the internet but I couldn't find any trace of it, be it on ROM sites or google (however, there seem to be similar game collection ROMs out there...). I'm not sure about the name but I think it was in German language, something along the lines of "Spiele Hits 350 in 1".
This catridge is the reason why I know many gameboy games and I've been TASing a lot of the games I knew from the cartridge.
Here are the games I remember that were on the cart:
Pinocchio
Toy Story
Alleyway
Klax
Dr. Mario
Super Mario Land
World bowling
Master Karateka
Kung-Fu Master (Spartan X)
Revenge of the Gator
Kid Niki
Felix The Cat
Daffy Duck - The Marvin Missions
Bubble Ghost
The Smurfs
Hyper Loderunner
Boxxle 2 (Soukoban 2)
Volley Fire
Battle City
Tetris
Motocross Maniacs
Pipe Dream
Flipull
Tennis
Mogura de pon
Maybe someone knows better about these collection cartridges or can redirect me to a site that documents these? (But I don't want people to link me to ROMs... that's not allowed after all)
Maybe some people owned similar collection carts, even for different consoles?
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The objective in this shooter game is to destroy your opponent on the other side of the field, by shooting at him. You can only move horizontally. There are different kinds of objects flying between you and your opponent blocking or reflecting your shots. There are 4 mandatory worlds to reach the staff credits and each world has 4 levels. Also, some levels can provide power-ups while [P] is the best because it upgrades your shots. With one upgrade, it only takes 4 shots to kill your opponent and with two upgrades it takes only 3 shots.
Map
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/34024332/volleyfire.vbmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze7jGmy0vYA
This movie completes the first word. I created this vbm a long time ago, but I just recently gained interest to TAS this game again. I think the movie could be improved but it doesn't seem to be an easy job. This game is a huge pile of lag and luck-manipulation so this is actually a time-consuming project. I don't have plans to redo this WIP, so I will either leave it be or continue it someday.
Luck-manipulation works like this: Pause the game, or by shooting and moving sometimes. The opponent is always randomly moving/shooting without thought.
What do you think? A TAS of this game would be about 6~9 minutes long.
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I'm going to make a new any% run. I looked into the memory of the game again in order to search for memory addresses related to Kirby's inhaling behavior and RNG.
I couldn't really find any addresses related to Kirby's inhaling behavior (like addresses that are "true" if Kirby is currently in his 2nd inhaling state or if he is currently sucking in an enemy / sucking at a stone block).
I think that addresses 0x03292569 onward are strongly related to Buddy Kirby's and RNG. If all buddy Kirby's are together, this area in memory doesn't move and it moves a lot if I slide into a wall repeatedly (known to change RNG). I'm not good at investigating this any further though but it's worth to take a look at it.
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I don't know what can be in actuality done with the debug menu in this game, but let's assume for the sake of an example that you could jump right to the ending using it. Would that be acceptable?
I think that something like that needs to be discussed seperately for each game. But how many games have debug menus that are locked away and can still be glitched?
I think that entering an built-in code in an intro screen of a game to trigger a debug menu shouldn't be allowed since it's much like entering a password. This TAS of Mother 2 was created with the mindset that using a glitch to trigger the debug menu is a valid option in a TAS, but it should probably go into a seperate category if it gets published.
Earthbound actually has 2 different debug menus and the second one allows to roll the Staff credits directly. If it had been possible to trigger that debug menu, we would have selected the staff roll directly with it. It doesn't make it any less 'valid' than skipping the whole game, going home and ending the game there, in my opinion.
My personal opinion is that built-in cheat codes are forbidden and we bypass this restriction by glitching to the debug menu. Also, maybe in the future we may see a TAS that manages to summon the credits without any debug menu at all... who knows?
About (J) ROM vs (U) ROM:
Snes9x 1.51 seems to emulate the tent glitch correctly for both ROMs. The Japanese ROM mostly only has 2 primary possible glitch messages and a very rare chance for another few possible glitch messages that may occur, by checking the area in the tent. It is more likely to trigger the debug menu but perhaps the U ROM can be used for more glitchy effects?
I would prefer to see a subtitle saying "you may want to skip to mm:ss" in the part where the game doesn't do anything for 10,000 frames. I would be in favor of not using a screenshot that shows the tent glitch in action since 1) it takes away the surprise, 2) it's actually a boring part of the run (the 10,000 frames of waiting).
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-lixdQUsGY
Interesting speed trick that involves the parasol ability. I'm still researching this trick but I think it's slower than using wheel.
EDIT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EBDOEawZMg
If you manage to get more than 32767 speed, the value turns negative and you move the opposite direction.
Also, interestingly, the animation of King Golem after he dies only lasts for about 32767 frames.
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I wouldn't mind running the game on the PS port, but I'm not familiar with the emulator at all. It seems complicated to set up and there may be more issues to it.
100% (all gaps, goals, cash) sounds interesting, but it's definitely making the TAS way more hard to create. So I could use some help if I actually decide to work on a run in that category. It would also help to find out the differences between the n64 and ps version, concerning gaps or goals (?), levels, and also TAS tricks.
Here are 2 messages Spider-Waffle sent me:
Jumping out of a manual gains you speed, you also gain speed every time you land a grind.
Having special gives you 2 or 3, I can't remember which, extra stats too all attributes, but extra ollie too so you won't be able to do manuals and grinds as fast, not sure which is faster, having special I would guess but tactifully you might not want to get it sometimes if possible so you can fit in 2 manuals instead of 1.
I found when TASing THPS1 that when doing a hard turn (back+left/right) and changing to hard turn the other way that you change direction faster if you do a regular turn for one frame before switching.
Other than that just find the best routes. I recommend playing different routes if your good at the game to figure which are faster, but if it's close and/or your not that good at the game you might to need to TAS them all to test, of course with these games is virtually impossible to TAS it perfect due to 10^100000000 amount slight angle variation combination possible; like turning 180s can be done with so many different slight angle variations
Minimize air time whenever possible unless you gains you something, like speed because you get to land on down slope. So like when going up a quarter pipe to get an item try and do it without jumping tapping back right before go so you just barely get the item, the extra speed you get on landing isn't worth the extra time in the air.
There's some good shortcuts you can do with wallrides (wrs). I could almost 900 off a regular wr on console you so get some serious height off them. And wr into corner or from a slope into the wall you can get almost twice as high.
You can press and hold jump at the right time to land from high falls I think the higher it is the better your timing has to be.
Another trick I forgot to mention is leaning, if you hold down while in the air your skater leans his board forward and up so you can get a little more height and distance if your reaching for a rail/ledge/goal.
Also you might want to use the create a skater option to get one with max speed at the start.
Some of that information can be useful. But I disagree to run this game at pure speed since I think it would turn out very boring, even in the 100% category. I'm refering to the first THPS3 TAS by emu that wasn't received well since it was a pure speedrun rather than a playaround. By playaround I mean, as I mentioned, a run that is much like a pure speedrun but also shows off some special tricks and interesting gaps or tricks/combos.
Also, I'm not sure about the "create a skater" option... I'm leaning towards not using it and just selecting Tony Hawk as the skater since he has good stats (low ollie and moderate speed, I think).
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If you go for pure speed, you will need to rely on speed tricks like jumping out of manuals repeatedly and jumping on rails. I would prefer to show off special tricks and avoid using said speed tricks. That's what I meant by "more like a playaround".
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I'm interested in working on this. There actually was already a thread named along the lines of "THPS" in the n64 forum. A TAS of the THPS games shouldn't be fastest time but more like a playaround (still reasonably fast, though).
I haven't got anything done yet. Also, if I were to TAS this game, I would do it on mupen (I heard the psx emulator isn't overly desync-prone, I'm not familiar with it, it's complicated to set up and there isn't much of a difference between the N64 and PSX port).
Also, if I were to TAS this game, I would aim for all goals & all the cash.
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I once tried to use a cheat code to trigger the debug menu and I think it always brought up valid text data. The tent glitch, however, behaves differently in this context since it brings up nothing. Only a lot of what seems to be text that the game runs through in the background but I already stated that the text pointer doesn't affect anything in this case. I don't have a good understanding of this glitch yet and I can only abuse it in certain ways, as the glitch follows a certain pattern.
The debug menu 2 would be very useful since you can activate the Staff roll directly with it so it would save a lot of time. But it isn't known to be accessible at this point of time.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp_6ouaRK9M
This is an encode of this TAS which removes all the lagframes (not really, the removal is shifted by about 20 frames. Maybe I will make a fixed version, but this should be enough to provide how this game feels like if it were lagfree).
Also, I'm pleased as to how this turned out. I'm glad that you made this improved movie so this is finally settled. I can only spot very tiny possible improvements, for example, in level 3 you could land on some platforms sooner during the autoscrolling so they'd go offscreen sooner, saving a bit of lag.
I'd like to apologize for what has happened earlier and I hope we can keep in touch in a more friendly way in the future.
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The gamecube/wii emulator is Dolphin, but it isn't approved on this site yet due to some desync errors. The TAS was already posted in the Mario sunshine thread and it was made without an actual movie file (it seems).
The objective in this shooter game is to destroy your opponent on the other side of the field, by shooting at him. You can only move horizontally. There are different kinds of objects flying between you and your opponent blocking or reflecting your shots. There are 4 mandatory worlds to reach the staff credits and each world has 4 levels. Also, some levels can provide power-ups while [P] is the best because it upgrades your shots. With one upgrade, it only takes 4 shots to kill your opponent and with two upgrades it takes only 3 shots.
Map
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/34024332/volleyfire.vbm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze7jGmy0vYA
This movie completes the first word. I created this vbm a long time ago, but I just recently gained interest to TAS this game again. I think the movie could be improved but it doesn't seem to be an easy job. This game is a huge pile of lag and luck-manipulation so this is actually a time-consuming project. I don't have plans to redo this WIP, so I will either leave it be or continue it someday.
Luck-manipulation works like this: Pause the game, or by shooting and moving sometimes. The opponent is always randomly moving/shooting without thought.
What do you think? A TAS of this game would be about 6~9 minutes long.