Posts for Scepheo


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sheela901 wrote:
To open a BAT file in a command prompt (cmd in Windows), set the destination folder of where global.bat should be by using the command "cd". For example, the global.bat is in my Documents. The command should go something like this: cd C:/Users/<username>/Documents
Or browse to the folder containing the batch file, Shift + Right Click -> Open Command Window Here.
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Nach wrote:
Are people interesting in having it sooner or later? Meaning, are you guys burned out from DTC5, want to try to work on other stuff, school is busy right now, etc?
As long as the time limit is similar (i.e. I can spread my work and plan around real life), I'm okay with starting again soon. But trying to plan it so the participation is similar seems best.
Mothrayas wrote:
thommy3 wrote:
Could the best stages be hexed together? Couple of frames to gain then, right?
The different damage strategies by every team would probably mess that up.
The first two levels of Team 3's run could easily be pasted in front of the rest of Team 1's run, if nothing else. I think those levels all end with full health. If nobody else is interested, I could just pick the best stages, see if they line up and hex them together later today. Seems pointless to have a known sub-optimal run to me.
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In case anyone is interested, our repository is now open to the public.
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Pseudocode below:
Language: Lua

checkCharacter = read_from_rom(0x140); if (checkCharacter == "N") then offset = someValue; else offset = someOtherValue; end ram_value = read_from_ram(offset);
Obviously these aren't the correct function names and you'd have to check against the numeric value for 'D' (ZELDA DIN) vs. 'N' (ZELDA NAYRU), but walking through a switch/case every time instead of just setting the offsets correct at the beginning is a needless performance hit.
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While I disagree with the notion that board games inherently don't qualify for the vault, I don't see the point in adding an entire tier just for that either. And for those talking about the demo tier: even if that was introduced, these sort of TASes don't even come near qualifying for it. I don't see why we can't just accept TASes of board games (assuming good technical quality and the following of whatever rules we make about difficulty) in the vault.
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Keep going further back: if the game uses an RNG that only progresses when random numbers are needed, then the only way you can manipulate this game is by causing more (or less) random events to happen before it. If that still doesn't work, your best bet is investigating some other random event to figure out the address of the RNG, that way you A) can see exactly what actions do or do not affect the RNG and B) could forcibly manipulate it (by poking the address) until you find a value that makes you win the game. From there it's a matter of trying to manipulate that value when you're at the game.
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GoddessMaria15 wrote:
I know that it's your opinion and all, but what does popularity have to do with a hack's eligibility to be TAS'd or submitted...? If memory serves, it has always been about a hack's quality overall and not about how famous & popular the hack is.
Masterjun wrote:
Movie Rules wrote:
Non-official games are allowed for submission. However, they go through more scrutiny than other games. This is because the game itself also becomes a subject to judgment, so it must be a high quality and notable hack or homebrew with a strong following. The TAS should be high quality on its own merit, and must also show something interesting compared to other game(s) made on the same game engine, if applicable.
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Masterjun's submission notes (found here and here) contain most of the relevant information, or link towards other pages detailing the glitches used. But as far as tabbing between pages, distilling what's useful and combining tons of sources into something that makes sense: welcome to the wonderful world of ROM hacking*. * I know ROM hacking is not the exact same thing as ACE, but it's very related and anything else would just make the sentence unnecessarily long. EDIT: Oops, typo. Thanks for noticing, Anty-Lemon.
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Nach wrote:
I'm not sure what you're saying here, or how one kills a platform.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the scorpion(?) enemy that he has to go underneath before he can jump up to the platform. From what I understand: yes, that results in a sub-optimal jump, but killing the enemy to allow for a better jump would cost more time than the jump would save.
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Double posting yet again to announce the release of version 0.0.8. Now also supports PSXjin.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (144)
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Assuming you have calculated the current distance between the two points to be Dc. Scaling the line to become some target distance (Dt) will scale the distances on the x and y axis with the exact same factor. In other words, given your original blue point (Xo, Yo) and current red point (Xc, Yc), it follows that: Dt / Dc = (Xt - Xo) / (Xc - Xo) = (Yt - Yo) / (Yc - Yo) where (Xt, Yt) is your target location. I hope this is enough to solve it for you.
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pirohiko wrote:
This script cannot acquire an accurate value of "A" and "PC " in the GBC.
I submitted an issue for this bug in the tracker. It seems the bug is in Gambatte, so fixing it may take a while.
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From a technical standpoint these sort of games can be pretty interesting, as it's still quite a step from the theoretical shortest game to an actual RNG-manipulated TAS. Then there's a game's "movement" system, which could also make a theoretical perfect solution not the fastest to execute. I did somewhat enjoy this, so a meh vote from me. And a rerecord count of 25 does not have to mean anything, this movie file could very well be the result of thousands of rerecords, that just weren't done with this file loaded.
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Considering this run will be judged by entertainment anyway (as pacifist is not a vaultable goal choice), you could always change the branch to "no arrows, pacifist". Killing the enemy would not be pacifist, as it is avoidable through the use of arrows, but adding the "no arrows" goal would mean the run at least sticks to it goals. After that, it's up to the audience to judge if the goal makes for an entertaining enough run (as opposed to just "pacifist" or "no arrows").
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Thank you for the bug report diggidoyo, there was indeed an error in the copy-pasting logic. The bug fix version is available here. As for editing the fields manually, I didn't manage to reproduce that error, it worked fine for me. If you have more information, I'd like to take another look at it.
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Sorry about that, seems the zip was compressed with LZMA instead of Deflate. Try again, see if it works now.
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Shameless self-plug: https://sourceforge.net/projects/yaife/. It should work as long as you're using only a single Wii or GameCube controller.
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dwangoAC wrote:
We still need to decide if we want to continue our "tradition" of skipping SGDQ and focusing on AGDQ only [...] Thoughts?
Skipping SGDQ (at least this year) seems like the best idea, not only because organizing everything seems like quite the hassle already, but also to prevent the idea from getting stale. Having a full year in between would mean that there's twice the content to take your pick from and do something with, which would hopefully allow each presentation to feel new.
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That looks a lot more superhuman than the previous TAS. To me, it looks improvable, as it seems like you go flying off real fast some times, and barely get a speed boost other times, so it'd be worth finding out how to maximize speed gain from this. Also, is it just me, or do you gain speed just by power sliding alone? Either way, this is starting to look like a pretty entertaining TAS, looking forward to your next video.
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EgxHB wrote:
Just out of interest, are the total control Tases from AG15 being submitted to the site any time soon?
See this post on the last page.
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For isometric games, I've seen both systems (along diagonals and along horizontal/vertical) used. I'd recommend just picking a direction to walk and look for an address that increases/decreases along with that. Regardless of the system used, this should find some coordinate related address, and then you can work from there. The transformations used to convert from isometric to orthogonal aren't super difficult, by the way. A quick Google should help you with that, as it's used very often, e.g. in isometric strategy games, to convert mouse clicks to in-game coordinates.
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1) You can enable (or disable) the capturing of Lua draw graphics and any other non-game screen elements by checking (or unchecking) File -> Screenshot -> Capture OSD. 2) The problem with lag frames is that whether a frame is laggy or not can only be determined after emulating the frame. The only way to detect lag in advance is by emulating a frame, seeing if it lagged, then going back. You can do this with Lua, if you really want to, by saving a state, emulating a frame, detecting whether there was lag and loading the state again. The better option, but arguably so and not always possible, is to have your script work based on memory values, like position, speed, hp or what have you.
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franpa wrote:
[...] making it needlessly difficult to keep track of recent new publications.
Needlessly difficult? Just ignore any entries marked "Updated". Is that really so hard?
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Pokota wrote:
The_Trust: The cheats don't actually work very well - Poking an address (that is to say, setting the address to a specific value but not forcing it to stay there) works just fine since it's a direct, one-time modification of the memory, but in my experience Freezing (that is to say, continually setting the address to the same value, which is what AR, GS, and Game Genie do) doesn't work right within BizHawk. It's not been reported as broken yet simply because it's outside the primary concern of the main userbase, and I suspect that in my case it's really just PEBKAC.
You're both right and wrong. Yes, freezing is broken. However, it has been reported and consequently fixed. You can have a look at BizHawk's issue tracker to search for these things. Be sure to select "all issues" in the drop-down, or you won't find things that have already been fixed.
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CoolKirby wrote:
I can't seem to open any of my existing 4.0 and later DTMs, whether or not they use the Nunchuk. For most of them, I got a "Could not open...'capacity' must be greater than zero. Parameter name: capacity" error, but for one of them it was a "could not open...input stream does not match" error instead.
Dammit, I should really test my releases more thoroughly, every time I refactor stuff, something breaks. The capacity bug is fixed, but the "input stream does not match" is supposed to indicate that your file is faulty (every WiiMote packet should have a 0xA1 signature, the error indicates that it is missing). If that's not the case, I'd like to have a look at your file and see what's going wrong. Either way, download is here.