Interesting. I will try this!
I'm still on firefox btw. I hate change so I rather stick with what I'm used to, even though firefox' memory leaks make me kill it 10 times a day.
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Just a quick report about lag counter. I don't know if you can use this info but:
When I TASed Stuart Little 2 (GBA) on mgba core, I noticed the lag count wasn't working properly. It only counted some lag at the start of the run during the menuing or something, but it didn't register lag that happened throughout the levels.
And now I'm TASing Hyper Lode Runner (GB) and notice the lag count would increment even on frames where the screen updates. I suppose it means input isn't polled on those frames but the game still updates.
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Samsara wrote:
1. More emphasis on publication ratings, for sure. Make it easier to rate movies, give people more of an incentive to rate, perhaps change what gets rated if we can find some things that work better than Entertainment/Tech Quality.
Ratings are subjective. Everyone has their own rules how they rate things and technical ratings sometimes seemed unfair (to me at least). I suggest a) you keep the current system and the current ratings instead of flushing all the rate data, or b) let people give a single rating, namely how much they liked the run.
2. A more streamlined system for co-authorship and movie credit in general. Perhaps a system that allows users to be rewarded with player points for being involved in a movie, without having to be made co-authors? Examples: Someone who provides a helpful Lua script, or someone who helped route the game but didn't provide any actual input in the TAS.
I have always been fine with the way it has been. I don't think we need an extra submission data entry "people that helped". Just put that info in a Thanks section in the submission text. Also, it seems very unreliable/inconsistent to measure how much someone helped and give points according to that. But then again, you could introduce a different point system next to the player points, called "assist points". I think I could see myself liking that, but I can't tell.
4. I suppose it's high time we really discuss what we want to do with the tiering system. Do we really want to keep tiers in a literal sense, where Vault is under Moons and Moons is under Stars, or should we discard that in favor of a more categorized system, such as Speed and Entertainment? Should we loosen the rules on what goes into Vault, allowing more diversity in there, or should we loosen the rules on what we can and can't accept as new branches in Moons? There's a lot to discuss here, though I would personally like to move away from Vault and "tiers" in some way, shape or form.
I find the tier system confusing and just ignored it pretty much throughout the years. If I were a regular site visitor, I'd probably come to the site looking for runs of games I played, without caring what tier. That's actually something I've done way back in 2006 before I registered on the forum. I won't care what tier the runs would be in. All they seem to tell is how well received a run was before publication anyway which doesn't really tell anything about how good the run actually is.
--
I would like to contribute in the CSS/design changes. Maybe I will even try to make some samples images of what I'd like the site to look like.
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WIP is coming along nicely. But currently I'm stuck in level 21, trying to find the most optimal way to do this puzzle..
Edit: I think I figured it out.
GameFAQs wrote:
The puzzle here is not too bad. Just be sure to dig 3/4 when 1 starts
to regenerate then dig 5/6 when 3 starts to regenerate and wait a half-
second after you can dig to start. So the order is:
Dig 1, 2. Dig 3, 4, 1, 2.(from the left.) Dig 5, 6 from the right then
3, 4 and run to the left for 1, 2. Drop down the center, go right and
left, climb up the stairs and wait for parts to get filled in again. Go
to the spare room.
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I have a huge table that I iterate through every frame to draw something for each entry. Is it possible to somehow just draw it once on a canvas and then display that canvas? How to use gui.createcanvas?
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I call it Steve. No seriously, it doesn't matter what we call it. We've been calling it movie file since the beginning so might as well stick with that. And if you change the name, it won't stop me from calling it a movie file in the future.
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I checked out the 2016-08-06 Windows nightly for fun today.
The recent ROMs list is still there maybe because something still existed in appdata directory. Some entries caused nothing whereas other entries caused the emu to crash.
Then I tried drag-dropping a ROM on the emulator but nothing happened.
Then I tried to load a different ROM via "load ROM..." in the menu and the emu crashed again.
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gui.pixelText(20,20," test ",0xFFFF0000,0xFFFFFFFF)
gui.drawText(20,30," test ",0xFFFF0000,0xFFFFFFFF)
This will make it so the space before the test has background color, but the space after it doesn't. Is this something I should put on your bug tracker too or intentional?
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I found that you can stay in 2nd room forever by pausing on the frames where the room2 timer depletion occurs. (It occurs when globaltimer%0x40==0. Since the globaltimer keeps running but the depletion doesn't occur while the game is paused, you can prevent the door from closing just by pausing at the right times.)
The game resource page has been updated.
Edit: You can survive rematerializing blocks by pausing. The game kills you on every third frame or so. This doesn't work on bad guys.
Edit:
WIP (levels 16, 17, 18):
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/662947520/LodeRunnerGBTAS2016.bk2
Bizhawk 1.11.6
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TASing-Luascript:v7 (17th Aug 2016) (really minor changes)
v6 (10th Aug 2016)Overlay-Luascript:v2 (17th Aug 2016) (also contains v1, which you can see in my level 16~24 wip video, and the avisynth script)
Somehow I still don't like how it looks. So maybe next video I will just use no overlay or the TASing overlay.
Btw, it seems datacrystal lied in saying 2 blocks are stored in 1 byte. It's actually 1 block per 1 byte.
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The level layout doesn't allow it in 4-2. I don't know if it works at all on an "every 16 pixels" basis. But if you can bounce off of enemies or use a platform, you gain more possibilities of doing the bug. Instead of every 16 pixels you can do it on every single pixel and some of them allow the bug to happen.
Did you play on the PAL version? If so, then this was already a known bug.
Potato Stomper wrote:
That is the PAL version and it's known to have glitchy floor collision detection although I only saw it after hitting a block before. A PAL TAS could maybe use this in 4-2 to speed up the warp zone section.
I investigated that bug a long time ago. It happens when Y-speed is higher than it should be (7+ pixels instead of 6 or something), which happens at certain jump heights. I had tested it thoroughly in 4-2 and couldn't do it through the stairs. But I think it could be done in other levels such as 1-2 at the end but I don't know if it's faster than going through the wall.
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c002 2byte player xpos
c004 2byte player ypos
c012 2byte enemy1 xpos
c014 2byte enemy1 ypos
c022 2byte enemy2 xpos
c024 2byte enemy2 ypos
c032 2byte enemy3 xpos
c034 2byte enemy3 ypos
c019 1byte enemy1 drop timer*
c029 1byte enemy2 drop timer
c039 1byte enemy3 drop timer
c049 1byte room2 seconds timer**
ffd4 1byte global timer***
ffb4 1byte amount of gold until level finished
ffcc camx
ffce camy
ffd2 camx limitation****
ffd3 camy limitation
* It is assigned a number between 1 ~ 255 depending on ffd4 and decrements per frame. When 0, the enemy will drop his stolen gold.
** decrements by 1 each 0x40 in ffd4. When 0, door in room2 closes.
*** Enemy movement, where they respawn, when they drop gold and possibly more things are dependent on the global timer.
**** This value restricts camera scrolling. It is used e.g. in level 16 room2, because that room doesn't make use of all the available space.
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What was that "Test Area" text about at stage 1?
Well, it's a test area the devs put there to test if clearing all 5 tubes of paint will trigger the level end, I guess. Going into that room is faster than going through the level.
At stage 2 does, grabbing the speed powerups earlier save any time, or nah same?
No, because it doesn't matter if you grab it earlier or later, you would slow down to normal speed anyway. But the last powerup was grabbed as soon as possible since it was near the finish.
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I made a list of the best IL times I could find for Tomb Raider 3.
India
1 Jungle - 00:35
2 Temple Ruins - 11:13
3 River Ganges - 01:24
4 Caves of Kaliya - 01:27
South Pacific
1 Coastal Village - 01:30
2 Crash Site -
3 Madubu Gorge - 03:37
4 Temple of Puna - 01:48
Nevada
1 Nevada Desert - 01:42
2 High Security Compound - 08:18
3 Area 51 - 06:02
London
1 Thames Wharf
2 Aldwych
3 Lud's Gate
4 City
Antarctica
1 Antarctica
2 RX-Tech Mines
3 Lost City of Tinnos
4 Meteroite Cavern
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Why is it that enemies have 0 POW in battle (as can be seen when using the MLSS script) but they do have a non-zero POW in the guide? I tried editing an enemy's Pow address but its attack damage didn't change. Its attack damage only changed after editing his Pow modifier.
Def, Stache, HP, Speed are loaded to enemy slots, but Pow isn't.
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I remember this discipline from various Japanese tv shows that aired here in Germany ages ago... Sports Bakka, Takeshi's Castle, ...
Why does Sports Bakka's original Japanese title and this game both have "Nan-chan no honō no charenja" in its name? I suppose the game stems from the tv show? Who is Nan-chan?
Btw, it seems datacrystal lied in saying 2 blocks are stored in 1 byte. It's actually 1 block per 1 byte.
in english?