So there's this thing that's been annoying me during basic testing, and it would also annoy anyone trying to remotely optimize Galaxy TASes at all:
When I press Z, Mario crouches either 1 or 2 frames later. The problem is, I have no idea when it's 1 frame and when it's 2 frames. 2 frames is the more common case, but 1 frame would obviously be more useful. This affects the timing of inputs required to execute long jumps and backflips.
If anyone feels like helping out with Galaxy TASing/Dolphin testing, investigating this would be a big help.
Is it correlated with...
-Mario's position?
-The kind of surface Mario is on?
-What frame of animation Mario is currently in?
-Some global timer?
I think that a typical mouse can only move (signed byte) pixels in X and Y diections in a given message, if this protocol is still in use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing)#PS.2F2_interface_and_protocol
Although, couldn't programatically moving the mouse around escape this limitation? I know that WM_MOUSEMOVE messages use two bytes and just say the final location of the mouse, so there's no 'one byte' limitation there. If you programatically move the mouse more than 128 pixels it would just create 'one mouse movement' not chunk it up, right?
Finally, my understanding is that a mice informing the computer about a mouse movement is interrupt based (so can happen as often as it wants, whenever it wants) - so any game that polls for mouse movement once per frame instead of learning about it via interrupts can have arbitrarily far mouse movements in one frame, regardless of above concerns.
I like how a few days after this topic was made, we have a spurt of 5 submissions over the course of 24-48 hours. I guess it's just the clumpiness of random distributions at work.
I think it's because the standard of quality in TASing has gone up. I know many TASes that will be extremely good are currently in development to ensure they'll be as good as possible (TTYD, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, DK64 some day?, Twilight Princess, etc).
We can also do a 2nd loop run with the bullet hell lua script.
I'm actually pretty interested in ridiculous difficulty level TASes of gradius games in general (I recall that all the arcade games had ridiculous loop 2s, for example, and all those are quite interesting to watch)
TASing Windows and DOS games can be done without needing ROMs (because the version of the game you would buy and play normally is the version of the game you TAS).
I already thought about a G/S/C run as well, since there seems to be no run of it (not counting the glitchless run), but I don't know much about the glitches in this generation, yet, and they are not as well explored as in Gen I afaik. Also, it appears to be harder to gather information about it (e.g. I wasn't able to find any reliable information on the glitch used in the video you linked). There will be a lot of research to do first, but I may be up for it in the near future.
Just as an update, werster and RingRush have been looking into glitch hunting/tweaking usage of glitches in Gen II:
twitch.tv/werster
So if you're still interested you could check that out, contact them and talk, etc
EDIT: Werster just beat the elite four using a glitched route + instant victory glitch and it didn't crash!! This means he should be able to go on and beat Red. This is a great proof of concept that means the game can be fully beaten like this.
Not completely true, Mitjitsu - TASes formally submitted to the site should use all TASing tools available, but TASes that simulate perfect real time play or have other restrictions or just show off glitches/tricks/techniques are very useful for study, analysis and improving real time speedruns, and are very welcome in the forums.
It's usually inspiration/serendipity/random chance/poking and prodding at everything you possibly can.
But you want to try and do things like
-use illegal items, abilities or combinations of items/abilities ('glitch' moves and pokemon that aren't assigned to real things in Pokemon, illegal combinations of beams in Super Metroid, attempting to stun an unstunnable sprite in Super Mario World)
-do illegal state changes, or an illegal state change + mode combo (turn into stone while entering water in Kirby's Adventure)
-...
But even knowing how memory corruption/arbitrary memory glitches happen can't tell you how to find one, you just have to learn as much as you can about the game and try everything you can and try harder at everything that looks promising.
It's sometimes said that the games with memory corruption glitches only have them because enough people looked at them to find one. Maybe almost every game has one and is waiting to be found.
In addition to being pacifist/0 kills at Shaft, you should be level 1/no gained experience.
As long as you follow both those criteria anything goes. It's worth calling the category pacifist/level 1 or something like that to convey what getting no kills 'means'/'is bundled with'
Do you think there's a way to find a way to corrupt the value of 0057 (speed in subpixels) to the value of 7F?(or anything above 28) It's amazing the glitches that are caused with a speed value of 7F... you can practically move through walls with it... or has this been searched for
? I don't know how it would be done at all, but if it's possible...
SMB1 does not have many variable sized arrays/pointer dereferences/etc, it's a simple enough game that due to how it's coded arbitrary execution glitches and memory corruption aren't likely.
Hello arukAdo :)
Another TAS I've seen requested for symphony of the night is low% relics, after a new route was found where you get big tossed by a spike ball in the chapel to get the mystic pendant for double MP regen. Though thinking about it, I think a TAS of low% would be way more like the any% TAS than anything else. You'd be able to use the MP regen glitch (where the game pauses the same frame you regen MP) as well as manipulate mana prism drops/money for mana prism purchases, you could manipulate boomerang drops for rapid rises, you should be able to manipulate the same weapon and shield drops any% does, etc.
It is under production by the excellent MarathonMan (tj90241). It aims to be a cycle accurate emulation of the N64, similar to how BSNES/Higan is for SNES. When it is closer to completion, I think it is worth looking into for adding TAS tools to or even integration into Bizhawk.
Here is the github which also describes the aim of this emulator:
https://github.com/tj90241/cen64
Here is CEN64 running the title screen of Ocarina of Time:
Link to video
I've considered this earlier, don't tempt me :(.
Also, props to P.JBoy for finding a solution to the stereo problem, I tried creating a cheat of some sorts myself but failed miserably.
Somewhat related, is there a reason why there doesn't seem to be an "Any%" run of Metroid Fusion?
