Is this THE LAST improvement you'll be making, or should I just sit on my hands for a few days and wait for you to improve this again?
No, I think I'm done with this game. This is 30 minutes faster than the SDA run, which really doesn't prove anything (and isn't a fair comparison), but still sounds impressive :P
I think this run is improvable, but not for a while (until someone can figure out how to keep NPC conversations from triggering).
Extremely enjoyable for such a long movie. I haven't really played any of the Lufia games, but after watching this, I just might ;) Good job. Yes from me.
woot. Subtitles work now :) I'll have something new (finally) for the next version ... even though the last version is only a few hours old :P
I need some SMV testers to verify whether or not the output is accurate though (i changed the write method in the last release).
Just three things remain (assuming SMV is ok) and this'll be ready for 1.0
- mupen writing
- accompanying help file
- file history storage
One feature that's been mentioned that I think sounds sexy is the ability to extract a state from a movie (if it starts from a save). This sounds pretty easy to do, so I'll try to squeeze it in. Also, controller muxing/demuxing, just for the hell of it ;)
Finally, I want to tighten up the Undo logic, since it's pretty memory intense right now and, time permitting, add a movie comparison routine (diff checker).
Other than that, I think pretty much everything has been done. I think ZMV support will have to wait, since no one's using the new ZSNES yet, but this is still planned.
Ok. Fixed some bugs. I don't think it's 100% yet, but a lot closer than before. If you're still experiencing weirdness with VBM or SMV files, let me know.
v0-10-1
- UI::virtual list caching implemented (for greater efficiency ... or, if you will, FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!!)
- UI::navigating the frame data via the keyboard (up/down/pageup/pagedown ... etc) now updates the
required controllers in the editing console
- ETC::splicer's close button now works
- ETC::zero ranges in the splicer indicate the whole movie (start of 0 = first frame,
end of 0 = last frame)
- SMV::fixed a bug with the parser not handling multi-controller input properly
(frames were offset ... didn't line up) - thanks Zefiris
- SMV::fixed read/write bug that was dropping the last frame - thanks Zefiris '
- SMV::fixed extra data (rom info) being dropped when metadata was updated
- VBM::fixed read/write bug that was dropping the last frame - thanks again Zefiris :)
Ugh, seems that metadata updating isn't 100% bulletproof for SMV (i'm writing too far, so the ROM info is being destroyed). If anyone's having problems with this, drop back to v0-9-2 until i figure this out :(
subtitle output is a good idea, but display format is the thing to be discussed though. I prefer something like one in dehacked's quad movie wip encoding. And I don't think that "Controller #1" part is needed. Even in worst case "#1" is enough...
don't forget to add offset option (for avis with TASVIDEOS logo for example). I don't think other format than srt are needed, as it already takes noticable time to load SRT file with VobSub (for less than one hour VBA movie it was about a megabyte filewhen I checked) for SSA-like format files loading time will be even longer, and size is bigger...
btw, there was export to srt in one old abandoned program V(^_^)V now that I think of it, may be that version was not even released :[
Offset is definitely being factored in (all my tests were way out of sync :P) If you've got an old routine that handled this .... :)
Howdy all.
This was brought up on the Gens forum and I think it's a really good idea. I'm trying to perfect a way to dump frame data out as a subtitle file for use with VLC/MPC ... whatever, so that the actual controller values are displayed during a movie (AVI).
This is REALLY REALLY preliminary (ie. it doesn't work worth a shit yet), but I thought I'd throw a teaser up just for the hell of it (don't worry, I'll fix actual problems first, but I wanted to see how hard this would be).
The "logic" is in place, but there are a few issues (other than it not really working very well =P). I'm working with the Matroska SRT format for the moment, as it seems to be pretty straight forward.
I thought of another funny thing. I always like to watch the keypresses in movies, but lately I've been falling back to watching the encoded .avi files. It came to mind that perhaps it would be possible to output the keypresses from the emu and use it as subtitles in the avi?
So one can choose to load the keypress subtitles if they want. Not sure if it's a big job to make such output from the emu. Still would be cool though.
I haven't done a whole lotta research into this, but I guess it would be possible to convert input to an SRT. If this is something people want, I'll look into implementing this in the editor. I guess the only downside to this is that, since it's not embedded in the avi, you'd have to distribute/keep track of two files (unless you mux it into an OGM or MKV, but then the fonts tend to look bad) ... just a thought
Hey Alter, welcome to the party.
Actually, this was brought to my attention yesterday evening. There will likely be an update this week to address this.
Note to all users, the same issue may effect SMV files as well :(
Hmm... Sourceforge lists the exe-7zip as 0 bytes in size. I can't download it either. Is something up or am I missing something?
Weird. I see what you mean (apparently, I fucked up something as simple as clicking "Update") and have replaced the file in the 0-10 package.
All should be groovy once again.
URG. Just checked, and the package is an older one (i did 3 builds this morning), so the new splicer's "Close" button isn't working ... just an FYI ... this is pretty minor ;)
EDIT: FYI #2, I found a bug with the new splicer's reordering logic ... sometimes, if you move a file to the start/end, then move up/down, it'll overwrite the previous movie with the current one ... working on isolating this.
New release (finally). Still not promoting this to final, since i didn't meet either of my requirements to do so (full mupen support and full documentation).
However, I like what I've got so far, and figure I'll share my progress.
v0-10
- UI::Editing control now "hovers" (Hotkey F2)
- UI::Editing control now now accepts changes via ENTER key
- UI::Editing control can be hidden by hitting ESC
- UI::Message History visible via F4 (was CTRL+M)
- UI::Populate a format icon on load (this is just for fun :P)
- UI::Fixed a bug in the editor that didn't allow you to seek to frame 1
- UI::Added an "Add" button to the splicer so drag/drop not the only way to get a movie in there :)
- UI::SaveAs now allows you to edit metadata (Author/Description)
- ETC::Fixed bug in copy buffer that was causing a crash if you tried to view with no movie loaded
- ETC::Fixed a bug in the splicer that was causing the frame ranges to clear when a new movie is added
- ETC::Fixed a bug where the splicer was dropping the first frame of input
- ETC::Added reordering buttons to the splicer (so movie positions can be swapped)
- ETC::Added append mode to editor (allows you to add an input to the end of a group of frames
without replacing the contents)
- ETC::Splicer now prompts for location of output file
- SMV::Fixed metadata reading (not sure what happened there, but i was reading nulls somehow :P)
- SMV::metadata updating
- FCM::metadata updating
- GMV::metadata updating
- FMV::metadata updating
- VBM::metadata updating
Some suggestions didn't make it into this release, but are still in the works. Enjoy :)
EDIT: Note that there is a help link in the app menu now, but it doesn't do anything ... yet.
EDIT2: The new SaveAs dialog is inspired by Zefiris' editor ... so credit where credit's due ;)
Actually the bug shouldn't have happened, but a bit of the logic in the code was off. If you hadn't reported it, I probably would've not noticed it so quickly. The broken logic also threw off some other minor things.
Glad to be of service. Btw, took a look at the new rls. Looks good, though there's still some stuff i'd like to see fixed (created an accound on the zsnes boards to report it ... figured that's the way to go)
Those Red Alert stages gave me a headache :P Looks good, though, like JXQ, I haven't played this either, so the sub-optimal looking parts may be fine. It's a shame there's no way to chain the dashes to make it go even faster :P
Ha - was just coming to see if you had figured out how to skip that fight and you did (albeit in a different way than I expected). I'd say "perfect," but I'm sure you'd make me eat those words in a couple of days :)
Very nice use of glitches and manipulation. You certainly have absolutely mutilated this game (which keep in mind takes about an hour on the console). Glad to see a Strider run finally not be boring - great job!
I think I've got the route pretty optimized, so it's safe to say I can stop obsoleting these and give people a break to just sit back and enjoy :) I know of a few possible optimizations, though they wouldn't be as large improvements as each subsequent one i've found to date (bold statement I know, but I don't think this can be broken much further :P)
Basically, if someone can figure out a way to keep NPC's from appearing, there's prolly another 15-20 seconds overall to shave off here. The guard in Kazakh that gives you the second disk is unavoidable. The new route i take in Australia I actually manage to skip, but the pause in action while he appears can (hopefully) be eliminated. The scientist in the red dragon i can't seem to get by (using that route anyways) since the ceiling is too low to jump over him. Matic can't be skipped, cause unless that door opens, the screen won't scroll and you get stuck. The last scientist before the final tree is skippable.
I did this once, but have no idea what caused it. This means it's perhaps possible to skip ALL NPCs, but it would require A LOT of testing. If, however, someone figures it out, this could possibly be a sub 5 minute run :)
Ok, I think THIS time, i've got it 99% perfect(ish). Final time is 5:30, so 21 seconds have been shaved off the current (third unpublished) attempt.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/3554/maximus-strider-v4-0-0.fcm
Found a couple more glitches this time around, so I can skip the samurai fight in australia, and a major shortcut in the red dragon.
Unless there's some way to figure out how to glitch the last NPC into not showing up, I think this is as good as it's going to get :)
A thought on how to speed it up even more:
In my WIP, I managed to skip several enemies by sliding or tweaking the physics and jumping in the air. Alas, there didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for it. But there might be a way to skip the samuri in Australia. With the power level you're at, it does take some time. I'll play around with it (in the WIP, he was one of the few I couldn't skip) and post if I get it somehow.
I managed to skip the unnecessary fights in Australia, but alas, it only saved about 300 frames. Regardless, I'm going to try to tweak this a bit more, so if the publishers could hold off for a bit more, i think i wanna do just a little more work on this.
Cool, thanks guys.
But with frame advance can i go back if i did a mistake..like 3 seconds ago or such?
Thanks
If you have a state saved, you can load it while recording and it'll allow you to continue recording from that point (so, if you save your game while recording, do some stuff and don't like it, load that save state and it's like rewinding)
I think this is what you're looking for