Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Lancet wrote:
I don't have a .cue file, and I don't really have any idea how to "be creative" about it. Is there anything else I could do to get it to work? Or is there something wrong with my disc image that is causing BizHawk to not work (Even though it does work in ePSXe)?
Check out DiscoHawk and report back. It might do what you want. Barring that, there are ways to create .cue files, you just have to go out there and find them.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Oh sweet, a Liquid Kids TAS! I've secretly wanted to see one for a while, now.
I feel like getting speed boosts from your own waves can be used more frequently throughout the run to save a few frames here and there, though. Just as a quick example:
This is ~4 frames faster than just walking right normally.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
mklip2001 wrote:
Wait a second. You say the judge goofed... how?
The currently published run was accidentally made on a lower difficulty (IIRC, he went to change the difficulty and accidentally cancelled out instead of selecting), and neither Spike nor the judge noticed it until just now. This submission just corrects that mistake by actually being on hardest difficulty alongside a couple other minor improvements.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
The 99 lives topic has been thoroughly discussed over two submissions, no further comments about it are needed. If you're still passionate about this for some reason, you can start a general thread for it elsewhere, but it doesn't belong in this or any future SMB3 submission threads.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
This actually synced perfectly for me twice in a row. Bus-Level Timing on, Dynamic Recomplier off, everything else should be at default. The only thing I changed otherwise was the Display Method (to OpenGL), but I changed it back to DirectDraw and played the movie again and it still synced fine so that shouldn't have anything to do with it.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
About how much time is lost, then? Pacifist isn't vaultable, but if the time loss isn't too significant then it could technically still qualify as an any% (which would be obsoleted by a non-pacifist run, of course).
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
dwangoAC wrote:
[*]Once a new build of the speed TAS competition game is released next week a TASVideos volunteer will attempt a trial run with no previous help and a time limit, i.e. a full dry run
I can take care of this, since I'd like to participate in some way and I'm not sure if I'll be around to do it during AGDQ.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Hey, speaking of moderation: I understand this is likely going to fall on deaf ears, but please keep everything civil here. No personal attacks of any kind, no calling anyone "stupid" for what they believe in, no matter how much you disagree with them. The point of this thread should be to promote understanding without essentially being a safe haven for people to openly mock the beliefs of others. This thread's always been on thin ice in my opinion, and I won't hesitate to temporarily lock it or even Grue it if I see things getting too out of hand.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
solarplex wrote:
DwainiumB wrote:
~Video~
Difference being the ending roll into the finish? Im not very good with 'spot the difference'. In weatherton, you hear "ahhhh" when he does his roll into the finish while with DwainiumB's you hear "ahh,ahhhh"
From the video description:
Weatherton wrote:
I added a play-around section when I had to wait for Bowser on lap 2 and managed a slightly earlier jump off of DK (which necessitated a higher tumble at the finishline). Next up is Royal Raceway.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
User movie #27250551147300906
Aside from this lazy test of the much faster bribing route (this test is nearly 40 seconds faster and I didn't bother routing the coin collection, so it could possibly be improved even further), I found a trick that can be used all throughout the rest of the run: Instead of letting Alex slow down to a stop before entering doors or interacting with things, you can press down for one frame to stop him in his tracks and enter doors/interact with things 4-5 frames faster. This is used in the town section at the end of the userfile if you need an example.
This time around, if you still want to work on this game for some reason, please redo the entirety of the movie with the new tricks and make a new submission. I hate to reject the submission, but I would expect an improvement to take a while since the entire movie needs to be redone and the large improvement would necessitate a new submission anyway.
You've definitely improved on a technical level, though, so if I do see another submission of this game from you, I'll know it's well-optimized. Keep up the good work, and I wish you luck with either an improvement or your future projects.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
zhangsongcui wrote:
How's the BR run going, Samsara?
It's going to be quite a while before I even start it. The verification file required for the most optimal run is going to take at least a couple of months by itself unless I can get the script to cooperate (it's still a bit iffy, as Hetfield pointed out), and then after that I need to do some proper testing to see if there are alternative, faster routes than the examples in the thread.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Since the movie was rejected, not cancelled, we could theoretically unreject it and re-judge it as a Vault candidate as we did with a number of other movies back when the Vault was introduced. It's a possibility, though admittedly a dubious one.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
I say go with the RTA definition. Saturn's 100% runs all go heavily overboard with unnecessary collection, and personally I would argue they should all be obsoleted with more grounded runs that stick to what the RTA communities define as 100%.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
Slowly working through this, made it up through Stage 10 recently (it helps that Stage 10 is broken and thus only about 2-3 seconds long). I decided to go through and check exactly how far ahead of the published run I am, which was far more number crunching than I ever needed in my life due to how the game "handles" lag. I'll throw all the data into the submission text, but I'll just say that at the end of Stage 10, I'm 903 frames ahead of the published run when directly comparing: 1001 gameplay frames ahead, but 98 more lag frames. The lag has been rising and dropping drastically over the course of the run, I improve it in some stages and in others it unavoidably shoots up by nearly a full second. It's extra bad in Stage 5, where it lags drastically during the boss fight (when it doesn't in the published run) and doesn't lag at all when the plane takes off (when it does in the published run). This actually loses me gameplay frames, but it's only 32 so I'm not worried about it. Every other stage has gameplay improvements, with Stages 1 and 9 accounting for 10 seconds of improvement alone using strategies from the RTA run. Out of every stage with gameplay improvements, only Stage 8 has more lag than improvements, leading to an overall realtime loss.
I don't have an estimate on when I'll finish/submit because Stage 11 (the fish boss) is going to be a pain to optimize, but once I finish that fight, the rest of the run shouldn't take much longer.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
I was following this all through its (secret) life cycle and it's pretty fantastic. It's so dense, every single frame has so much going on. Definite Yes vote!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
Um, you know about Moons, right? It can have a lot of branches for games. You know why there's no clutter?
No, what's Moons? Is that the tier that houses at least 3 completely unnecessary Super Metroid runs that are cluttering up the site and encouraging people to try to submit even more unnecessary Super Metroid runs?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
It'd still be absolutely impossible to determine an obsoletion chain with cheated movies. What would new movies have to do to obsolete published cheated movies? Or do we just have to accept everything without obsoletion and clutter up the site further and further with movies we can't do anything about?
In theory (but possibly not in practice), every game could be a 1 frame movie with only 1 cheat: One that directly sets the ending flag and plays the credit sequence/ends the game immediately, meaning we'd have the bare minimum movie time and the bare minimum number of cheats, and we'd literally have a site full of unimprovable movies. So we'd need to set restrictions on what could be done with this tier, but how do we set those restrictions? "No immediate ending" would be obvious, but how would we limit cheats? Would obsoletions have to be "faster with less cheats"? Or could it be "faster with more cheats"? What if a run reaches its theoretical max time, and someone gets the exact same time with less cheats? Is that an obsoletion too?
Like I said in the MM9 submission, I'm glad that run exists. I like the concept and I'm sure it's an amazing watch, but there's no way we can publish it here under any tier, new or old. It doesn't matter if it's one single cheat that does nothing but make the run a smoother watch or ten cheats that trivialize the game, we can't publish it. I'm perfectly content with having a dedicated area of the site that shows off runs like this as long as it doesn't require them to be officially published, though. In my mind, the forums serve that exact purpose, but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to something like Gruefood Delight for cheated/demo tier runs.
I'm of the opinion that every run serves a purpose, and that having a movie published is nothing more than a privilege. It's not the "end goal" of making a TAS, it doesn't make the movie any more legitimate by any means. The end goal of making a TAS is the last frame, and the movie is immediately legitimate upon it being confirmed to sync for the TASer. Whip up an encode, put it on Youtube, post it here and share with your interested friends. That's all you need. Eventually we may reshape the site structure to account for certain demo movies, but that requires a lot of time invested into new rules and new code, and we have much more important priorities in the meantime.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
I'll explain this in more detail when I wake up, but I'll try to quickly summarize my thoughts: I'm highly against publishing any TASes that require outside cheats or scripts to function properly, and I'm especially against adding a "cheat tier" to the site.
1. As Moth said, it goes against the purpose/goals of the site, where we're all about deterministic input that could logically be played back on console
2. Slippery slope. Simple as that. Accepting something like this will set a precedent where people just start submitting any cheated TASes they want and say "Well, MM9 got accepted, why can't this one?"
3. I'm going to bring up the old demo/playaround argument here: How would obsoletion be determined for cheated TASes? As far as I'm concerned, it wouldn't. There's no logical way to do it. There's inevitably going to be 1 frame runs of games that use one single cheat that sets the ending flag immediately, making the entire tier completely pointless, and even if we set huge amounts of restrictions, there's still going to be a lot of hassle involved
I'd rather these kinds of runs stick to the forums. A run doesn't need to be published to be considered "legitimate", it just needs to exist and there you go. There's no reason to bend the site rules to make one single exception, and it'll just confuse and possibly infuriate the audience. I'll always be glad that a TAS exists for any reason, but in this case I'm completely against publishing it as it breaks site rules.
I'll be watching this thread like a hawk. Try not to let the debates/arguments get out of hand, everyone.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
pdrcr wrote:
I would love to help, and I think the way I'd help the most would be with TASbot Twitter.
I'm already very active on Twitter and ran multiple accounts back when I did PR for my band (@thelooongshot @goodfightmo). Let me know what you need from me, and what resources I'd need
-dama1138 from IRC
I mean absolutely no disrespect by asking this, but... Who are you? From most of our perspectives, you're just a random, recently registered stranger asking to handle something quite important, and we'd all like to be completely sure you're the right person for the job. I'm aware you've been active on the #tasbot IRC, but if you could make yourself more active/public on the forums and our main #tasvideos IRC, that would be much appreciated. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad there are newcomers who wish to take on important tasks that help us out immensely (see: xy2_ with Brain Age), but I've always had a sketchy view of people who ask for a degree of power in their first posts.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player
(2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
As far as I'm concerned, hardest difficulty will almost always obsolete easier difficulties unless hardest difficulty adds too much repetition, like in the case of Earthworm Jim 2 where hardest difficulty adds about 7 minutes of painful-to-watch repetition to the run. I doubt that would be the case here, so you're in the clear to continue on hardest. Just make sure to write out how much you're improving in the comparable sections so everyone knows it's an improvement upon submission.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
This is ~4 frames faster than just walking right normally.
