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An update to this:
Fastest Completion has been removed (it's now Wiki: LegacyPages/FastestCompletion).
YoshiRulz has created a module to replace the list on Wiki: Movies.
YoshiRulz has also made a pull request to add links to systems on game pages. They note that they would have linked to Wiki: Platforms sections, but that the difference in platform naming prevents this (an alternative solution to this would be additional anchor links on Platforms page).
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FractalFusion wrote:
It's easy to forget since it's been two years since everything started, but the game itself (being a children's game and all) does not police whether a dinosaur is four-colored in a valid manner. That is left entirely to the consensus of the community.
Unfortunately I still remember the situation with the first publication of this category.
Does this submission definitely satisfy the four colour rule?
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Fwiw, this was quite easy to sync verify, but I'm hesistant to mark it as such since the emulator is unapproved.
Trying to condense the considerations for acceptance into shorter points, I got this far:
TriCNES does not meet some of the Requirements for an emulator to be approved. It doesn't produce audio, it can't be used to enter inputs/create "normal" TASes (although it does play back existing movies from other emulators), and it has no AVI capture.
The first ~15 seconds of the credits are visually "wrong", because of the PPU reset flag. This doesn't occur in the console verification video because it's A) verifying the Reset run rather than the submitted Power On run and B) using a Famicom.
Intercycle cart swapping could be used to complete/execute arbritrary code on any NES game.
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To note a few things. This won't suddenly enable every modern game to be played in PCem, because of processor instruction sets (like SSE) that Pentium 2 doesn't support, and other limitations.
There has been a TAS created with the 2GHz CPU:
Link to video
I don't know how difficult the process was and what FPS they got while making it (450 MHz is already quite slow to work with).
I wasn't aware of anyone experiencing desyncs on existing PCem movies from poor performance. If that's the case then it's probably worth making a couple of test movies to check sync with others.
Also I assume this discussion will also apply to DOSBox in BizHawk, which may be more popular and I could see people requesting this in the future.
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2012 TAS with (I think) the same ruleset, for possible comparison.
Link to video
In the IWBTG thread there's mention of a way to glitch the credits to get the final input sooner. Is that done in the submission?
CoolKirby wrote:
I don't know why our site parser detected 51 FPS as Hourglass does show 50.
The 4 bytes at 0x014 in the movie file = 51. Haven't checked inside Hourglass.
Edit: Site parser has been fixed now
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scrimpeh wrote:
In general, for TAS-adjacent content, it's easier to start with what's already there. I would therefore consider linking to existing videos from speedrunning-focused content creators about TASing on the site (with permission). Any kind of "speedrun explained" or "record history" videos are good for this (although I don't know any great videos highlighting the history of specific TASes off-hand).
Bismuth has a great "what is a TAS" video as well as some videos on specific TASes/history.
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0.2 was released Apr 2011 (couple months before this submission). Submission comments say May 2010 though, so it's either 0.2 or a bug-fix release of 0.1.
Would've been hosted on Zophar but obsolete versions get deleted there.
On the forum I linked it looks like the author is adding attachment downloads to posts but I don't know what they are exactly (might need to make an account).
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GJTASer2018 wrote:
You might recognize this game as essentially a fancy 3-D JezzBall clone. (The original release of JezzBall unfortunately doesn't run under DOS so can't be TASed through the usual method of libTAS + PCem - did anyone ever try it through Hourglass "back in the day", perchance?)
?
This very submission is showcasing Windows NT with PCem
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Link to video
AIRXONIX.ISO - this is the Kellogg's Frosties release, equivalent to this dump.
md5 checksums after verification movie:
Hard drive image: 4f52a8ca4a9f19bfc9f9c36a694042a8
nvr: 52a74ff0b68996140e7bb5f09ce9e6a8
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Link to video
Not sure if the Google Drive upload was changed but it does seem to be a verification movie. Reuploaded here.
Verification movie produces SHA1 C99DF8487D92C4FF03FD17CF4ACAD774D2B77372 which is different to the submission's SaveRAM.
Verification movie is also on a different ROM. Submission uses a bad ROM.
However, it seems to sync with the correct SaveRAM and good ROM.
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You submitted this in FCEUX's binary format, rather than the normal text format. The parser only supports the text version at the moment.
How did you end up with this file? Did you rename a .fm3?
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The FPS limiter on the XP version is controlled an 8ms Sleep call:
https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/Release_1.0/SpaceCadetPinball/winmain.cpp#L274
Checked with Ghidra that the same code is in the XP executable.
I think a TAS of the 3D Pinball version of the decomp should use v2.0.1 or earlier, since v2.1 changed the collision system to Full Tilt version. There's a typo in 2.0.1 with "Commendation" though.
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Experimenting with the "hidden test" debug mode. Pressing Y afterwards displays the FPS in the title bar.
Windows 95 version runs at about 15,000 FPS.
Windows NT version about 7,500 FPS.
Windows XP version, 120 FPS. This was when Raymond Chen put the limiter in, clearly.
The decomp version has options for both "updates per second" and "frames per second" and the choice to uncap updates per second. For me it maxes out around 350 FPS/UPS on lowest resolution though. In practice there's not much to do with this info, but it's helpful to note the different versions can behave quite differently.
Hidden test also works in Full Tilt, but you need to use Tab instead of Space.
