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Hello, old friend. It's been a while.
Link to video
The main improvement over both the published run and my last improvement WIP is not changing the difficulty: The difficulty changes nothing that would be noticeable in the run, and in fact no one really knew the differences between each difficulty until recently since they're not even noticeable to experienced players. This saves about 2 seconds, but most of that is lost due to Bizhawk's more accurate loading times, leaving the improvement to only 53 frames upon landing in the first stage. Around 15 frames are gained, but 23 are lost, leaving the current improvement at 45 frames.
There are two things to note: There's an extra enemy spawn compared to the Snes9x WIP which causes the bulk of the lost frames, and I unavoidably lose a frame every time I land, since the landing cancel has to be performed a frame later on Bizhawk. If I can get that enemy to cooperate and not spawn, then I'll have at most 6-7 gameplay frames over the Snes9x WIP due to all the other minor movement optimizations.
I know, I'm just as confused as you are.
This may become a group project depending on circumstances.
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Oh yeah, this is a collaborative TAS. I knew I was too tired to post.
Kurabupengin wrote:
LEL i thought we were going to keep this secret
I only planned on that since I hadn't seen this thread for some reason... also I was only planning on keeping it secret before April Fools' Day <_< I figured I'd be more motivated if it was out in the public eye anyway. We did kinda start the improvement a couple weeks ago and I haven't been checking in...
Exonym wrote:
First of all, is landing on the skateboard necessary? I don't see anything that warrants it, or do you have to be on it to advance the stage?
It ends up faster from what I tested due to how that stage ends, but it's been a couple months since I did that stage so it's worth taking another stab at.
EDIT: Aha, I took note of it back when I was working on the run. From what was going to be my submission text: "Using the skateboard allows me to use two less spin-dashes (which means two less stops) and also allows me to skip walking up the staircase, simply by bouncing off a crate, a dude-who-can-only-exist-in-the-90's, and jumping off the skateboard at the peak of my ascent so I can bounce off of the second crate at the top of the stairs, getting me a little more distance."
I'll take a look at it on the improved file, since I was thinking that the skateboard looked a little too slow compared to an alternate route.
Second, I'm assuming the slopes that looks like stairs can't be dashed up, because you walk up them. But the slopes that arent stairs can be? Seems like a silly game design.
That's exactly what I meant when I said if something looks out of place, then that's how the game works. You can't even crouch on stairs, which means you can't dash. Being anywhere near them locks you at normal walking speed, even if you fly at them at 7 pixels-per-frame you'll just immediately drop all your speed once you get within a certain distance. You can dash up the slopes in the first area without losing speed, but you lose speed dashing up the slopes in the second area (noticeable in Area 2-2). Sometimes you can land on slopes and stop immediately, sometimes you can't, sometimes it's based on positioning and sometimes it just doesn't work no matter what. The mechanics are just... strange, overall.
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Wait, this thread's been here since January? Apparently I have Coke blindness or something.
Link to video
Here's a proof-of-concept WIP that I made a few months back and just got around to encoding. It's improvable in a few areas, namely menuing and possibly some of the routing. An improvement is in the works and might take a bit, but for now this is a good indicator of how the run's going to look for the most part.
If something looks odd or out-of-place, chances are that's just how the game works and there's nothing I could really do about it.
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ALAKTORN wrote:
Regardless of that, TehBerral actually brought up a valid issue– what’s up with the 3 rerecord count of this publication? http://tasvideos.org/4673S.html
It looks like a mistake and should be fixed.
It's intentional and explained in the thread. Archanfel was using an input editor that doesn't add re-records... And that's yet another reason why rerecords aren't an accurate measure of quality.
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This is probably a dumb question, but are you running CCleaner or anything else that erases browser history? I've had experiences where I'd set something like that up to run automatically, then promptly forget I set it that way and wonder why I'm being logged out at midnight every Wednesday and Saturday.
Either way, it seems like an odd issue, especially if it doesn't always happen.
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henke37 wrote:
Quite a blatant rule violation. I quote:
Movie Rules wrote:
It must beat the game (1-level movies are rejected).
I guess everyone just hallucinated that credits sequence at the end of the encode, then. How strange that we all imagined the game being quite clearly beaten.
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How about just post important information on the forums immediately after it's discussed on IRC to ensure that everyone active in the community knows about it? Is that so hard? I never want to feel like I have to join the IRC channel to partake in all the important discussions that seemingly happen there and not here on the forums.
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JeedUnit wrote:
ALAKTORN wrote:
I presume calling yourself Jeed cost you some frames? What’s the ruling on naming in TASes, actually? I suppose you could be allowed to name yourself whatever you want, even though it’s not a speed-entertainment tradeoff.
I lost about 25 frames before starting the game and I think exactly 30 during the game. I also lost 3 that I got back for rng manipulation.
Naming is a non-issue. If someone ends up submitting an improvement that does nothing but use a shorter name, it'll be rejected.
Also, yes vote.
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henke37 wrote:
Are "May contain bugs" and "not deterministic" not big enough flags?
Are "optional", "small bugs", and "safely fixed in time" not implying that it's relatively safe?
EDIT: Also, expecting a non-native English speaker to know what "not deterministic" means in the context of emulation is a little much, especially when it doesn't specifically make mention of TASing and input files like the Advanced Bus Timing info does.
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To be fair, it does say to leave Advanced Bus Timing on if you're TASing... And the info about the Dynamic Recompiler isn't too clear on the effect it can have on an input file.
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Isn't Mupen ridiculously outdated at this point?
Bizhawk's N64 core is an adaptation of Mupen, anyway, so switching over shouldn't be a hassle unless you're either lazy, stubborn, an idiot, or some combination of the three.
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Aqfaq wrote:
You correct. I have no brain. you man like you say that always to a woman like me. I should sweat and toil to make run and complain and be proud of me. then have brain only.
I can't even come up with the words to describe how much I fucking loathe you.
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Meh vote. After I saw the first couple battles, I more or less knew how the rest of the run was going down. I'd love to see the published TAS redone with added entertainment.
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Alyosha wrote:
I didn't really have anything formal in mind beyond this thread, but I'm certainly willing to team up with anyone who wants to work on one of these.
I was thinking more along the lines of the main IRC channel or some of the smaller game-specific Skype groups that get talked about every now and then, since this is a pretty large scale project that'll have a lot of people working on different runs. It could just be a hub of WIP sharing, team formation, and instant feedback.
It's just a fleeting thought of mine, though.
I'd work on Star Ocean if I didn't have so much on my plate already...
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I've looked into a few of these before. There are some improvement WIPs scattered about the game threads if anyone wants a starting point: I vaguely remember Ferret Warlord was working on StarTropics 2 and had some progress up, but I'm not sure where that was going. Omni was working on improving his Lagoon run a while back, though he might be just a little too busy for it now. There was a seriously hype Kirby Super Star improvement being worked on by some Japanese TASers... Does anyone know the status of it?
Would this project benefit from something more actively collaborative, like a Skype chat or a dedicated IRC room?
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