Posts for Samsara


Samsara
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Samsara wrote:
Otherwise, this is perfectly acceptable.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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You'd need a full verification movie that sets up the save file. Otherwise, this is perfectly acceptable.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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20 seconds into a 2 hour TAS and I'm already having serious doubts about the quality. Menuing is noticeably bad: Lots of autofire. Name entry isn't optimal, and I don't mean the fact that a name is entered at all, I mean about 30 frames are lost from not entering the letters as soon as possible. The speed is changed from MPH to KPH for what I can only assume to be "no reason whatsoever". For a TAS that reportedly took a year and a half to make, I'm not seeing a whole lot of effort here. I shouldn't be ready to reject this run before I've even seen the first race.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Balimaar The Bass Fish wrote:
In the meantime I will stew on the "What Next?" question.
My suggestion for this, which has worked for me for a long time: Pick up a game you like that doesn't already have a lot of representation on the site. You may like Super Mario Bros, but it's probably the most optimized run we have on the site. It's been studied and TASed to death and the only improvements out there are purely theoretical. Likewise with Super Mario 64, or Super Metroid, or Super Mario World. If you choose a game where the barrier to entry can only be cleared from the next solar system over, your career as a TASer is going to quickly turn into nothing but frustration and eventually quitting. I started my "career" with Terranigma, a game that I had picked up and loved a while ago and decided that it would be an ambitious first TAS for me. There wasn't a whole lot of information on it at the time, and there wasn't (and still isn't) a published run for it, so I started to look into it, and I kept finding out new things, and my work inspired other people to start looking into it as well, and they found even more new things, and overall it helped me get more into the hobby. Even though I didn't even come close to finishing that (admittedly super ambitious) first project, I continued on and kept TASing and got to where I am today. Of course, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from looking at SMB or any other popular game, and a new pair of eyes looking at an old game could lead to a huge new discovery, but I honestly think it's a bad idea to go in hoping you'll be the next klmz finding the next flagpole glitch. One of the main things you need is motivation, and a lot of my motivation comes from feeling like I'm actually making meaningful progress. If I'm TASing a game without a published run, something like Treasure Master or Splatterhouse or Majyuuou, then my motivation comes from knowing that I'm creating something unique, and all progress is meaningful. If I'm improving the published run of a game, such as Earnest Evans or Gimmick or Gunstar Heroes, then my motivation comes from the actual process of improvement. Every frame saved over the run I'm improving is meaningful progress, and seeing the results of me pushing down that time and bringing up the number of frames saved is what keeps me going. Like Mothrayas said, it's a simple game to pick up and use to learn the TASing basics, but it's going to be hell to "break in" that way. Your goal should just be learning the process, how to use the tools effectively, how to get into the mindset of repeating sections over and over to squeeze out every last frame. The "meaningful progress" you should be looking for is just improving yourself. That's the best advice I can give to a newcomer, so hopefully it helps, even if it's just a little bit. ...Also welcome to the site! I probably should've started with that. That would've been a good idea.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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jlun2 wrote:
Does the run itself as a whole count as entertaining if people only watch the boss battles and skip most of it?
We can surmise that the game itself isn't Moon-worthy judging from the published run's average entertainment rating being well under Moon level, and I would assume that the vast majority of this run is going to match said published run beat for beat outside of battles. If, say, 6 or 7 hours are the same Vault-level of entertainment, then we'd have to see if the 1 or 2 hours of battles are enough to make up for watching people talk to each other or walk around for a while. It would be a lot easier to show sort of a "battle sampler" as opposed to jumping through thousands of hoops to temp encode an 8 hour run that not many people are going to bother watching all of. Either that, or we could just discuss the goal itself and try to come to a conclusion that way. I'm personally leaning toward the goal not being publishable, but some very persuasive people could sway me with some good arguments.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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I haven't watched the whole run yet, but I've watched enough to be able to tell that this could be publishable on the basis of optimization. It's fine. The issue is the goal. Is it really enough to warrant a separate publication? Instead of a full encode, which is going to look mostly the same as the published run, I think we just need to see the battles that don't use Super Combo. If everyone agrees that it's a significant and entertaining difference to janus's Super Combo usage, then we can publish this run.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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PikachuMan wrote:
If we like we could use the MSU1 hack and play it on lsnes for the CD quality music.
That would not be an acceptable hack.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Honorary Mentions (group projects where I had little to no input): 20. [3137] SNES Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by arandomgameTASer, Exonym & Samsara in 30:11.80 The small sections I did were hell to do, and then the end result wasn't even entertaining enough to make it to Moons. Damn shame. 19. [2777] NES Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II by Aglar, Randil, Alyosha, rchokler & Samsara in 07:14.32 I literally have no input in this movie. I'm only listed as a coauthor because of a frame war I ultimately lost. Sure I helped knock it down, but still... why? 18. [3124] NES Battletoads "warpless, 1 player" by feos, Alyosha & Samsara in 21:38.38 I joined this project at a bad time and had to drop out quick. My biggest contribution was inviting feos, who basically did the whole damn thing by himself since Alyosha also had to drop. Great movie, but it's not something I can be proud of creating. 17. [2923] NES Streemerz: Super Strength Emergency Squad Zeta "Streeeeemerz Mode" by adelikat, Aglar, Noxxa, Really_Tall & Samsara in 05:03.33 Streemerz as a competition was fun as hell, optimizing it was also a thing I didn't really do though. Being the official submission Resync Bitch was a bit of a pain, but it was still fun to bring down the time with all the improvements coming in. 16. [3224] NES Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse "Grant path, warp glitch" by arandomgameTASer, Samsara & Noxxa in 15:22.01 I love Castlevania a whole lot, even if I didn't have a lot to do with this movie I'm just glad I managed to get in on a Castlevania run at some point in my life. It's a good run overall, I'm pretty proud of my (small amount of) work too. Actual List (solo projects + group projects I contributed heavily to): 15. [1793] SNES Run Saber "1 player" by Samsara in 13:38.48 Garbage. A lot of what motivated me to finish it was just being so far ahead of the published run at the time, though it took me a while to realize I was only so far ahead because of all the entertainment tradeoffs used in said run. I can't help but look back on this run and despair. 14. [2554] NES Wayne's World by Samsara in 05:38.86 Fuck this game. 13. [2911] A2600 Riddle of the Sphinx by Samsara in 01:37.41 I really only submitted this because I finished it. It's not an entertaining run by any stretch of the imagination, though I think the rating is a little unfair. 12. [2962] PSX Umihara Kawase Shun by Samsara in 02:18.75 This is so low on the list because I don't feel like it's my run. It's all my input, but apart from a couple small changes in routes, it's not really mine. And yes, I'm ranking this improvement lower than... 11. [2945] PSX Umihara Kawase Shun by Samsara in 02:21.94 ...because I feel like I had more of a say in this run. It's still ultimately not much of my run, sure, but with my knowledge at the time I felt motivated by all the "improvements" I was finding over the public run I had access to. You know, the one that wasn't hidden from everyone except one dude on the forum. 10. [2240] NES Moon Crystal by Samsara in 08:35.12 This is the first TAS I actually put effort into... But it wasn't a good amount of effort. There wasn't a whole lot of research or testing done, I just kinda went in not expecting to find much over JXQ and ended up finding more than I expected. And then it was basically rendered obsolete super quickly for the dumbest reason: Me. I'm the dumbest reason. 9. [3201] SNES Majyuuou "best ending" by Samsara in 16:13.40 This wasn't a whole lot of fun to do, I'll be honest. It started out neat, but getting into things like later boss fights and all the lag reduction, it kinda turned into a hellish project that ended up not being as nice of a result as I would've liked it to be. 8. [2635] NES Treasure Master by Samsara & micro500 in 19:15.80 Not the most exciting or difficult game (in fact, it's pretty sync-stable and improvements could be easily added to any stage at any time), but for an early project of mine I think it turned out really good. It was probably the most fun I've had with a project just due to how simple it was: I actually hashed out 15 minutes of the run in one straight 8-hour session. Best part of the run was finding that huge Prize World skip (and even finding a TAS-only part 2 for the skip that makes it save way more time). If I hadn't found that, this would've been lower. 7. [3168] NES Gimmick! by Aglar, Hotarubi & Samsara in 04:24.61 Look back to the Umihara Kawase Shun comments and you'll understand why this is lower than most people think it should be. It's just barely enough of "my run" to classify it under something I feel like I worked on, but I can't really be too proud of it because the movie's overall a huge copout. If I redo best ending, it'll be 100% my input, and it'll probably be first on this list in the future... But for now, any% sits here. 6. [3018] Genesis Earnest Evans by Samsara in 07:36.54 5. [2987] PCE Splatterhouse by Samsara in 12:15.72 It's clunkier than Wanpaku Graffiti and I think people are overrating it. My entertainment stuff only got really good in Stage 4 and onward. Still, it was a fun run, I like watching it back from time to time, and it does at least have the bonus of syncing across two different game versions, which is Real Nice, Yo. 4. [2915] NES Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti "best ending" by Samsara in 19:11.24 This run kinda influenced my entertainment choices for all of my future runs. I'm super happy with how those sections turned out. It's just a shame that the last two minutes is dedicated to a single, terrible boss. I feel like the run would've been much better received without that. 3. [2823] SNES Umihara Kawase "sightseeing" by Alyosha, ars4326 & Samsara in 11:44.77 This would be higher up if I hadn't taken a month away from the project almost immediately after starting. I'm a flake. I know. Even though a lot of this run is based off of the efforts of the same Umihara TASer whose work I used for Shun, this was definitely the most unique Umihara run of the lot, where some stages actually used unique strategies and optimizations that made it all look different. Problem is: It's improvable. Using that same TASer's new strategies. You can tell why I hate Umihara TASing. Fun fact: I believe this is the first published run that was primarily made using (an at-the-time extremely buggy, beta) TAStudio. So there's that piece of history for ya! 2. [2933] GG Coca Cola Kid by Samsara, ars4326 & dekutony in 08:26.47 Daaaaaamn, I'm proud of this and how it turned out. It's the closest I'll ever get to Sonic TASing, the group work was excellent, and thankfully none of it was too overly difficult. 1. [2908] SNES Run Saber "1 player" by Samsara in 13:05.27 This was basically absolving myself of my TASing sins, going back to my oldest and worst run and destroying it in every possible way. Much better optimization, new tricks, more entertainment, and god just look at that screenshot. It's a masterpiece. This is the run I would show people if anyone I knew outside of the site ever asked me about my TASes. But then again, that's probably going to change before the end of the year.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: thank god, i'm done, also an encode
Samsara
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Link to video 2541 frames (42.35 seconds) ahead of the published run.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Saturn wrote:
and a handful of single trick-demos (that are basic stuff to find for a TASer with some general knowledge)
Atma wrote:
saturn did a test run of this a while back
Good job finding it all back then! You did a great job populating this thread with "basic stuff" that you definitely found during your first, complete test run of this game!
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: oh man ANOTHER encode
Samsara
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Went ahead and encoded this one at the same time as the any%: Link to video
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: oh man an encode
Samsara
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Replaced and encoded: Link to video
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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You need to make a new movie on the mGBA core. Core information is saved within the BK2 and loaded alongside it, and it's highly doubtful the movie would even sync across cores to begin with.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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More accurately: If you mean copy-pasting from one TAStudio instance to another, that feature's implemented, but only in the interim builds located here.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Save states, basically.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Config > Cores > Uncheck "NES with QuickNES"
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: G.I. Joe (NES)
Samsara
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PPK wrote:
BizHawk 1.11.7 G.I. Joe won't progress. When you try to start a game it gets to the first screen after start and it just sits in the briefing room with the monitor showing green. Button presses do nothing. Music seems to be playing though. I tried two separate ROMs both do the same thing.
Try pressing Start.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
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Seven Force continues to be a pain, but after a couple of form switcheroos I'm finally back to a comparable point with the published run. 5 out of 7 forms down, and I'm exactly 31.5 seconds (1890 frames) ahead. EDIT: The majestic, dancing Eagle Force is now dead. 6 out of 7 forms down, up to 39.25 seconds (2355 frames) ahead.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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For future reference, forum search only really works if you surround what you're searching for in quotes, e.g "Track & Field 2" as opposed to just Track & Field 2.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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I'm pretty sure you've already joined.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Wow, saved one minute for every time you had to restart due to finding another trick. Great moves, keep it up.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Saturn wrote:
As said before, the run is not suitable for this site in its current state, so there is no need for an input file when a video exists that shows everything in detail. Surely having it just to make use of the copy-paste function is alot easier and faster than optimizing something on your own, but at the same time it's also lame and kills the uniqueness of a TAS.
You don't have to release the input file, but could you just stop lying and admit the truth? Your excuses are completely nonsensical, and we all know you're just too much of a stubborn egotist to release something that would actually be genuinely helpful to Panda and everyone helping out with the TAS. Fair's fair, isn't it? You stole information from this thread and passed it off as your own work. It's only fair that you give us the input file that we made possible.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Alright. Just had to make sure this was submitted in confidence.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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Location: Northern California
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Idea for any% in case I ever get around to it: If I can keep the shotgun from Stage 6 and keep it through to the final boss, I can hit it about a second earlier per shot. Time may be lost trying to conserve shots, but if it's less than a second per shot it should still result in a time save.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.