Posts for Samsara


Post subject: Star Ocean: The Second Story
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Okay, so PSX support is coming to Bizhawk relatively soon, and I promised myself I would contribute everything I possibly could to a TAS of this game, whether it be one I do myself or one someone else starts. I absolutely adore Star Ocean 2, it's by far my favorite game and has been for well over half of my life, and I want to see it TASed more than anything else. I'm trying to stop myself from absolutely flooding this OP with information (I'm already losing enough sleep as it is), so I'll sum up the game and its potential really quick: SO2 is an RPG with real-time battles that look incredible when done fast. The game can be broken in a number of various, easy ways, including getting the best weapon in the game halfway through the first disc. Random encounters can be skipped entirely and easily, enough so that it's done without any problems in console speedruns. In lieu of flooding the OP with information, I'm instead flooding the rest of the thread with planning and information, which I'll link to in this first post: Nico Boss TAS Analysis post 1: Alen-Tax, Azamgil, Harfainx Nico Boss TAS Analysis post 2: Shin (3) and Synard Useful items (with explanations and locations) Radar item pool + Skill Set breakdowns Here's all the bosses in Rena's story TASed on Nicovideo: Link to video Link to video There are some problems with it, though, and I think a lot of the battles (if not all of them) can be improved. In a future novel post, I'm going to deeply analyze each of these battles and explain exactly why I think that. For now, it's a good introduction to how the TAS will look. I will say two things right now, though: One of the bosses fought is optional and one of the fighters requires something like a 20-30 minute detour to recruit. A few more quick notes that I can add horrifying amounts of detail to if needed: *Rena's story is considered faster and is definitely a lot safer for RTA runs. *The videos above were done on Universe difficulty, which is the hardest. This difficulty is not unlocked at the start: You need to collect about half of the voice samples in the game (off the top of my head, I wanna say you need around 600-650). To say the least, this may require an insanely long verification file if the hardest difficulty is to be used. *The Japanese version is faster not just because of text, but because there's item creation involved in the route and item creation happens to be twice as fast in the Japanese version. Also, the voices aren't absolutely dreadful. *The route may or may not be largely the same as the console route. A lot of testing and work needs to be done to figure out the RNG especially: It seems to only rarely advance when playing the game normally and only changes consistently upon saving and loading. Or at least that's how it was in tests I did a while back. On top of that, testing needs to be done to see which story truly is the faster one for a TAS, since it may be different under frame perfect conditions. I'll be committing myself to this full time after DTC5, whether I do the run myself or with a team. Expect a boss TAS analysis post from me soon, and expect it to be long and rambly and over-informative.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Alyosha wrote:
I think that message was added by whoever made the rom, as I've seen the live run didn't have it.
What's the filename of the ROM you're using? Is it a perfect dump ([!] at the end of the filename)? If the ROM was altered, it might be rejected just because of that.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
TASeditor wrote:
I almost did a tutorial on the lsnes movie editor with text on screen, it's really annoying to put all the text together, I don't have a decent video editing program. So I only could help with writing a text without a video.
If text on-screen is all you want, Aegisub is pretty damn good for that. It's how I've been doing subtitle work on other projects. On that note, I've always personally preferred text/subtitle tutorials. They're easier to follow since you can just pause the video and re-read if you're having trouble figuring something out. The language barrier wouldn't be a problem, either: No one would complain over some odd syntax and if things are just too hard to explain in English then someone else can jump in easily and provide a good explanation.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
jlun2 wrote:
Why does this game get special treatment? Is it because of some kind of bias based on popularity?
How dare you accuse the site of being biased towards certain games based solely on popularity!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
solarplex wrote:
add me on skype
Good luck with that.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
More tutorial videos or even just tutorial posts would be lovely for newcomers, especially if they're translated for the foreign language crowds. I've been tempted to make one myself, though I've always felt really arrogant talking about the things I want to tell new TASers. ...But then again, I am really arrogant so I shouldn't stop myself. Personally, I'd be interested in the more advanced techniques, stuff like finding RNG addresses and writing Lua scripts.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
I'm not sure if I see that working or not. Under the current system, it's rare to see someone that isn't MESHUGGAH or Aqfaq say "Welp, here's one for the Vault". I assume, based on my own thoughts and some thoughts from other people in this thread and elsewhere on the forums, that there would be a lot of misplacement if tier was decided by the submitter: Some people hate the stigma of Vault and don't want to work hard on a movie only to have it end up there, some people have no confidence and think Vault existing is the only way they'll ever have runs published, and conversely some people are overconfident and would submit all their low-quality dreck as Moon material. Under a new system with more defined rules between each tier it might work a lot better, but at the same time more defined rules would reduce the usefulness of separate voting questions since the distinction wouldn't be based solely on entertainment anymore. The best solutions to the voting problems are all way too strict or complicated to ever be implemented, and even if they are implemented that still leaves the issue of some people just being bad at voting in general.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
The hack is definitely publish-worthy, but even as someone who isn't familiar with TASing the game I can tell the run needs more work, especially in regards to entertainment. I haven't had the time to watch the whole run, so I'll refrain from voting, but if the parts I skimmed through are indicative of the rest of the run, my vote would have to be Meh or No. maybe southbird should replace toad with a pony so you'd pay more attention to the game
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
post 444 involves death, oops
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Neither category would be a dumping ground, though. There'd be a category for any%/100% (which is most submitted runs) and a category for anything deemed interesting or entertaining enough to publish. Demo/New Moon/Whatever tier would need to be judged differently and a bit more harshly (entertainment is subjective, maybe multiple judges need to reach a verdict together?), though even without more strict judging I doubt it'd end up full of arbitrary low-content runs since the chatter in the submission threads is usually a pretty good indicator on its own. I'd still just like an official admin statement regarding this. At the very least, it'd be lovely to know whether or not the proposals in the thread and poll are being implemented, considered or even rejected entirely. I could attempt to summarize everything if need be, though I'd need time to look through the thread and try to remove my obvious bias before doing that.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
I think this is the "intended" submission with the "actual" time. The other run is legit as well, it just needs to be updated with truncated input.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
I've tried Bizhawk 1.4.1, 1.5.3, and 1.6.1, using two different Wario Land ROMs, and I'm still getting the same glitched result. This is either intentional or the weirdest thing that's ever happened on the site to the best of my knowledge.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14776
Again, it just looks like there wasn't any clear consensus. A starting point was proposed and then discussion just stopped abruptly and nothing really came of it. Unless there was discussion and a verdict reached behind the scenes (and if so, why was it not publicized?), the only thing about that thread that implies failure is that it hasn't been touched in nearly a year.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Right now, with DTC5 happening and a couple other engagements (holidays, community SDA marathons) I haven't had the time to really work on this. I did start optimizing Stage 7 on the old test run, but I still feel weird about submitting it due to all the noticeable mistakes throughout the rest of the run, and I can't go back and fix them because it might give me a worse Stage 6 pattern. Either way, I'll get this done at some point, most likely when TAStudio is as stable as TAS Editor is in FCEUX.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
what the actual fuck
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Okay, I'm just gonna come out and say it. I'm sick and tired of all the joking around in this thread. Some of us are working extremely hard for this contest and it's discouraging to come into a thread expecting help and advice, only to get nothing but sarcasm. I propose we put a stop to this and make this thread serious from now on. The spirit of friendly competition is that it remains friendly. We're competing, but we're still a community at heart, so we should be helping each other. Here's a small part of TEAM SAD's progress. I'd like some opinions on what we're doing right and wrong. I think the weapon switching is optimal, but we're having some issues with killing enemies quickly anyway. Any thoughts? Link to video
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Was there ever an official verdict for this? The discussion just stopped abruptly over a month ago and I don't think any of the admins weighed in.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Rating submissions was in place for a while as the main voting system, but it wasn't very well-received so it was reverted back. I think it would work only if it were optional.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Plush wrote:
Once he publishes the .m64
Ha, good one! You should hit the comedy club circuit with that zinger!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
DrJones wrote:
The issue arises from not taking into account that females say one thing and mean another.
No, the issue isn't about that blatantly stereotypical and offensive remark. It may be wise to just drop the feminist discussion here. I'd rather not get fired up over gender inequality again so soon after the last time.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Anty-Lemon wrote:
No, that's really not what I meant...
Yo, ignore that guy. No reason to argue with someone who's clearly wrong and can't even back up his arguments.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Boss fight strategy: 1. Hit a button 2. goto 1 3. THE KICK IS GOOOOOOOOOD
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
Just turn off that function in Chrome, it's a nuisance that only returns false positives. All you need is half a brain to avoid downloading malicious files.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
It would be the same as no items, in that it'd pretty much just follow the same route as one of the published/obsoleted runs, but a lot slower and less entertaining to watch. I think the branches we have now are enough. I can't think of any other categories that would be different enough to warrant publication... That being said, I'll still watch pretty much any run of this game.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows - No items TAS
Samsara
She/They
Experienced Forum User, Expert player, Published Author, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
El80ludo wrote:
However, if there is a normal AoS TAS, a 100% souls TAS, a Julius Mode TAS and a warpless TAS, why not doing a no items TAS?
Because it's an arbitrary branch and it wouldn't be different enough from a normal run to justify its existence on the site. Make it for fun, but just know that it most likely wouldn't be accepted here.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.