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More progress including getting the sought after "4k pidgey" all the speedrunners want
Link to video
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Ares64 has been released! And it runs Pokemon Snap
So after years of wanting to do this I have begun.
Got a few RAM values written down and a LUA script started. Looking to basically be able to trace how good a photo either before I take it or immediately after, so that will be very exciting.
Link to video
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Alternatively, it could be branded under a game title like "Super Mario World Single-Level Hacks", rephrased somehow.
It's a bit of a slippery slope as otherwise it's very possible to end up with a ton of different game pages, a bunch of different YouTube titles, etc., etc., when it's all really the same base game at heart.
Some clicks on "Best Game Ever" expecting something, and it's just a Mario level hack that isn't even a full game.
One of the interesting discussions to be had after allowing ROM hacks and also relaxing the standards of acceptance: what constitutes a "different" game and what level of editing is required to take it to that extent?
I think some form of grouping these together and standardizing them as similar if not the same, whatever it be, would be best.
It also may not end up being a problem, but thinking theoretically if we get a few of these.
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Just used his username as an example. It can be adjusted as needed. Along the lines of this, which I would probably use in a case like this where it doesn't really have a proper name like here (the name of the hack is arguable as it's kind of... default, nor does it appear to have a working title screen):
fsvgm777 wrote:
or, if the level doesn't have a specific name, <X's entry>, where X can have multiple authors.
------------------------------------------------------------------
It is true that it is not all contained on one ROM file, however at this same time in 20 years when we're TASing Super Mario Maker, it would likely all fall under the same game. (I'd imagine some kind of custom save file or patch would be required there without near-impossibly hacking into the internet capabilities somehow while maintaining frame skip, I digress)
If we are being that specific, "QLDC 2023" isn't a game either, nor is it in the title given by the authors (solely "My QLDC Level"). Someone like LogansGamingRoom who submits a lot of interesting homebrew runs built for contests will usually put the contest in the description but there is never any mention in the title.
It's a bit of an odd scenario though as usually those games are full-fledged games, where these are single levels speedily built for a contest that tend to put more weight on being Super Mario World than their own entity, not to mention the name being thrown on after the fact... or in this case, really not at all. It doesn't really have a name. It does, but it doesn't. This would obviously be a lot more cut and dry if it was a full-fledged hack like Kaizo rather than this rare scenario.
I do think it's very important to have here (hacks are like a breathing life force of speedrun.com and the same could be said for here and drive quite the daily competition), and I hope it gets sorted out.
If we're looking at this as a normal ROM hack, the title should stay as-is, and it makes more sense to me now reading that the title is the actual given name rather than Darkman425 describing a contest entry he made. The name of the game is literally "My QLDC Level". I thought it was the author describing the game. Thunderaxe31's example also now sounds a lot nicer.
I guess my opinion now is that it should stay as is, just as it'd be named if it was a full-release hack... wouldn't make any mention of the contest nor the base game.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Maybe warrant a "PAL" category, however on the other hand it could just be up to the user. I.E. If you're planning to try and obsolete it, use PAL, or you'd be foolish not to. Just like you wouldn't use PAL to try and obsolete an NTSC run, and it wouldn't be publishable for a separate category because it's the same game and it's slower. Or like using US text on Super Mario 64 to try and beat Japanese. User error.
PAL version ends up faster, so that's the new gold standard for this category. Probably doesn't need a separate distinction.
Great run.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
IMO, I'd just stick it in the category. It'd look proper in quotation marks. It fits the style of the site more than the other suggestions. Then it could all share the same game page as well, and just have a bunch of different categories. I've seen other examples as this as well. Otherwise wouldn't the system technically require separate game pages? (Which will get very messy very fast)
[TAS] SNES QLDC 2023 "Darkman425's Level" by Darkman425 in 05:34.40
That's really the TASVideos style, shares the same game page, and has the most readability. It allows for co-authors, obsoletions, etc., all without needing to create/add/append a bunch of game pages.
fsvgm777 wrote:
With the Angry Birds example above, I'm reading it as "this is a TAS by ThunderAxe31 of the game Angry Birds developed by Nice Code".
Agree. This makes more sense as it's the developer. I wouldn't use that style here.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
So excited to see this release in the legit BizHawk one day. (I assume publications aren't permitted with this until then, so I guess it would have to sync with normal Dolphin?)
I already have a pub which was entirely made with this version. But yeah I didn't submit the bk2 directly but rather dumped the dtm and submitted that instead. So far there doesn't seem to any sync issues at all provided the appropriate dolphin version is used.
GC or Wii?
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
So excited to see this release in the legit BizHawk one day. (I assume publications aren't permitted with this until then, so I guess it would have to sync with normal Dolphin?)
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Looks like it's in the new rules (and old rules more descriptively) that the practice of running PAL-M games on NTSC is allowed. (Not sure if that is true if you cannot find the proper ROM for Brazil which was not used here)
Nonetheless, I was just mentioning it as a point of discussion solely, as this submission is faster anyways.
I do wonder if the PAL-M scenario here created any loopholes of gain with Brazil SMS vs. NTSC Game Gear, i.e. if they adjusted the ROM at all to run better at 50 fps (higher walk speeds, etc.), it could be illegitimately faster on the PAL-M port.
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Alright so here's the final scoop that has nothing to do with this publication but moreso the former:
Alright so the Brazilian Master System made by Tec Toy (made by a third party and technically not even a Sega console - good example is that they still make them TODAY making the Master System the best selling console in the world)...
runs PAL-M...
which is 60~ fps with a PAL color palette.
PAL-M isn't really officially supported in these emulators and it isn't exactly NTSC either and in theory should run just a hair slower all things considered even without this PAL debate let alone much faster.
However the game library it relies on are primarily European releases. Which are designed to run at 50 fps.
So here we see an interesting loophole where there has been several submissions sped up due to the Brazil thing. Aladdin is branded "Europe" only and creates issues in-game as MESHUGGAH described when ran at 60 fps which inclines me to think the Brazilian Master System ran it at 50 fps or it was never released there to begin with.
Some of the ROMs are branded "(Europe, Brazil)", and some just "(Europe)".
Only info I can find are of the more modern Tec Toys. Apparently they started releasing them back in '89, so if true, I would suppose any pre-'89 made games should definitely not be using this loophole. But even still, all the information is very scarce.
There is no documentation available that confirms they ran it at 60 FPS, just the assumption that they did.
Worst case, they ran at 50 FPS.
Best case, they're overclocking 50 FPS ROMs to 60 FPS that were never designed for it.
Definitely something to look into, because if it comes back that I'm right, it adds 2 minutes to the other submission anyways.
Not that it really matters because this beats it as-is, but I did think it was worthy to bring up as another reason for the "split categories" debate involving Samsara, Memory, and myself.
There's actually quite a few movies this would probably end up applying to. Very interesting.
Cheers!
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Okay, did some digging. Apparently some guy submitted a Tom & Jerry run in 60 fps because it was released in Brazil but he couldn't find the ROM and assumed that it allowed him to speed up the game. Which he did. And it was published.
MESHUGGAH wrote:
I saw that http://tasvideos.org/5339S.html uses NTSC (60 fps) because the game is released also in Brazil.
While there is http://tasvideos.org/4208S.html using PAL (50 fps) and also identified as an (E) ROM while it's actually also USA in the submission (while I only found an EBK, Europe Brazil Korea).
Now the "maybe bug but have no idea":
- using NTSC region (for 60 fps) for Aladdin, many frames' input denied but pause (something like 30% randomly)
- I probably experienced the same only once in thousands of frames using PAL for Aladdin (and maybe it was a random bug)
This is likely what ended up improperly happening with Aladdin as the Brazil release (he didn't use the right ROM anyways so no way to even tell) DID NOT use 60 fps:
MESHUGGAH wrote:
I can somewhat confirm that Aladdin is Export only. This is how I try now to check regions for other SMS games:
- Region settings should reflect what the ROM has in it's headers ($4 SMS Export in this case for all ROMs I've found)
- Using event.oninputpoll (which I guess implemented differently for each core), the 5 polls must be avoided, as this should only appear when you used wrong settings
So even though many sites says Aladdin was released to other regions and ROM names has their flags, it seems to be inaccurate.
So the SMS run is likely sped up improperly and also has other bugs that shouldn't be happening (although they sound more bad than good).
Seems to be a common problem:
MESHUGGAH wrote:
So unless there was an SMS release in Brazil that ran 50fps ROMs at 60 fps, a lot of submissions need to be looked at!
MESHUGGAH wrote:
Brazilian SMS is supposed to be PAL-M, 60hz, however some people commented on having 50hz... This will be a task for someone to track down. This might be an inaccurate fact!
- There are PAL games that has glitches when playing in a NTSC system
There seems to be a lot of published and submitted runs that have relied on this "Brazil" assumption and I haven't seen any evidence it ran at 60fps
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Alrighty, so 35,161 frames at 50 FPS is 11:43 and 11 frames.
35,161 frames at 60 FPS is the publication time of the SMS run.
So definitely something odd going on there.
Unless I'm missing something the SMS run is illegitimately running at a faster FPS.
As a final stretch, I thought maybe this was just an error on the details and the publication video is fixed but it is not, it too is running at 60~ FPS.
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I tried to go do some testing with the Sega Master System version and they only released it in Europe (50 fps) and Brazil (50 fps - it's the same ROM).
Game Gear came out in those countries as well as United States and Japan (which is used; at 60 fps no less).
Even the ROM with the identification given in the SMS publication runs at 50 FPS no matter where I source it from.
Likely because a US release doesn't exist.
Wikipedia and SegaRetro both list the same:
Game Gear
EU: February 1994
JP: March 25, 1994
NA: May 1994
Master System
EU: April 1994
Additionally, all the Speedrun.com entires list the SMS versions (every single run to exist LOL) as PAL: https://www.speedrun.com/disneys_aladdin?h=Beat_the_Game-Master_System&x=824ge0w2-5ly7zqgl.gq7z66r1
I was able to recreate the FPS push by changing the settings in BizHawk which obviously is illegitimate for a run.
The run is listed at the usual NTSC FPS, and I believe the movie will only sync at 60, so not sure how this wasn't caught. I'll look into it more but now I'm sure:
A) It sure seems like a lot more frames should be gained so that boss battle must be a lot slower on Game Gear but faster overall
B) The SMS publication might need a second look
C) Aladdin was only 60 fps on the Game Gear, 50 FPS on the Sega Master System
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Tompa, I met you at AGDQ 2014! (or was it '15?)
Checked out this old run. Anyways, I am confused as to why you did not use the Japanese version. I suspected it would be a little bit faster, however it is actually massively faster. There's a 30 second timesave on the first cutscene alone.
It also saves a frame in the menu where language does not play a part (just throwing it out there, if there's one there could be more).
I'm planning to try and work on redoing it. I ported this over to BizHawk even to the same USA version and let's just say it aged horribly. The sync is sometimes 20-30 frames off, and that's just at the beginning of the movie, all the first loading screens have the inputs too early. VBA really shortened the loading times.
Anyways, even with that said, I created a new file from scratch through the first room. Check out the huge gain I discovered by using the Japanese version. It should be noted the comparative footage is also mine, on the same emulator version, rather than Tompa's VBA run - so yes - the timing is exact. The difference is just that huge.
I actually reused the same movie file for this demonstration since it is just the first cutscene (it will obviously massively desync afterwards), and ironically the Japanese version is faster by a frame on the first loading screen too (for no apparent reason) so the movie had to gain an extra blank frame to get it to sync to the USA version... never thought I'd have to resync a movie this tiny I made!
If I make a new submission I will co-author you and the original co-author, however I'd much rather work with you directly to get this resynced if you are interested
[NO TEXT SKIPPING, IT ISNT POSSIBLE ANYWAYS HERE]
Link to video
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Who cares that there's a 12 hour limit on videos, just split it up.
YouTube commenters gonna love that LOL
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
YouTube doesn't allow dead on 12 hours.
It's better to go by trips as well so at least each segment is completed.
Yeah. Shoot low unless somebody really wants to experiment with how long they can get away with on a test videos, and then hope it applies to all segments regardless of size etc.
It would be a huge pain to split it all to exactly 12 hours and then find out it wants 11 hours and 58 minutes etc., because then you have to adjust video C to pour into video D, video D into video E, etc.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Wait is it 12 hours or 128GB or 12 hours and 128GB?
Or. And it goes by the minimum, whichever you hit first.
A really grainy 12 hour video that's 1 MB will trigger a rejection, and a 10 second 130GB video will trigger a rejection.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Since "anything" is accepted these days is there even a point to the voting system or discussion (aka "vote and discuss") anymore?
Seems like game choice and entertainment are no longer considered, so it's just optimization I presume. Not trying to be sassy and it's hard to set tone through a keyboard, so a disclaimer that I'm genuinely curious.
I do think this is worthy of acceptance due to the effort put in to making the bot.
We're thinking of changing it to something like submission rating, similar to pub rating, with ratings carrying over to the pub. Then it would be able to mean whatever you want to use it for, technical quality, or entertainment, or both, or something else.
That's interesting. I will say all the changes have made it a much more casual place to be and easier for newbies to get started (and especially published), and the YouTube audience doesn't seem to mind.
Sometimes the submission queue gets a little crazy and unpredictable with the homebrew flowing in (some kind of dry), and some games far too easy to really provide any entertainment value, but on the same hand I think it's a good standard to create records for all games just for records' sake and completionists' sake rather than leaving them forcefully unturned, so I do like that change.
With some autoscrollers and extremely simple games being submitted though (perhaps not necessarily this one), I do wonder if a bare minimum should be established. It also seems to conflict with rhythm games still(?) not being permitted, even though that's basically where we're at now, if autoscrollers (with no speedups possible, only slowdowns or perhaps even lack thereof) are cool. There's a part of me that misses the older TASVideos style because it felt like whatever you watched was going to be genuinely enjoyable and a publication was a bit harder to get a hold of (but only due to your own choices, i.e. if you were good it was easy), yet the other part is glad for the new changes - especially since at a certain point we're going to run out of licensed games to TAS.
I do like to TAS a simple game now and then after grinding on something longer, so I'm glad for the change. There are some people that will just submit very simple runs back to back though and I wonder if at a certain point the YouTube audience will tire and the "pizazz" will be gone.
I'm also not sure how the community numbers are doing (tweaked for the new rules and larger amount of submissions), as obviously such a change is also great for activity and frequent publications, so I'm good it's good for that too.
I think the old rules were way too strict but not sure if abandoning all judgement of game choice and entertainment is a good thing. Respectfully.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
33 x 24 = 792 hours of footage
12 goes into 792 66 times = 66 YouTube videos
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
By the way, YouTube has gone away from the days of 500 hour meme videos and videos are now capped at 12 hours or 128GB, whichever comes first. (Unverified account it's 15 minutes)
Pretty neat but a bit of a novelty somebody'll click off of in less than 30 seconds, for something so challenging to the poor encoders.
Since "anything" is accepted these days is there even a point to the voting system or discussion (aka "vote and discuss") anymore?
Seems like game choice and entertainment are no longer considered, so it's just optimization I presume. Not trying to be sassy and it's hard to set tone through a keyboard, so a disclaimer that I'm genuinely curious.
I do think this is worthy of acceptance due to the effort put in to making the bot.
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What is your purpose for doing either of these, quite similar, things?
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
Nice to see a new encoder stepping in to join the others. Probably the hardest job here. Thanks for your volunteer work.
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Isn't this a hardlock, rather than a softlock? Softlocks require the game to be running enough of the main game loop that they're reacting to user input to at least some extent (the classic example used to be something along the lines of being stuck in a wall, allowing you to pause the game but not to move), whereas this seems to be an infinite loop that bypasses any player control of the game at all (if the name screen were reacting to the player's keypresses, that would presumably escape the loop.
Of course, that doesn't really negate any of the interest in the run – you just have to change the category name.
Softlocks include anything showing that the games has signs of life. Usually a black screen with the music still running.
Although perhaps a frozen screen with music or whatever would be considered a hardlock.
Published TASes: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12Please consider voting for me as Rookie TASer Of 2023 - Voting is in December 2023My rule is quality TASes over quantity TASes... unless I'm bored.
