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Thanks for the info CasualPokePlayer! Hopefully the documentation will be improved on this regard.
If anyone else has additional information in the meantime, it would be appreciated!
That's because CAcert is not a trusted certificate authority by any major OS nor web browser. It should be switched to something else, and doing so would also save bandwidth costs as well since it will allow HTTP/2 data compression in transit. I use Let's Encrypt as the certificate authority for my own website and it's free, so it's win-win.
I'm bringing this up again because the lack of proper HTTPS support is becoming more and more of an issue. For example, Firefox has now a user-facing setting to prevent all HTTP connections, and I sure would like to enable it, but I can't because TASVideos is still the one site I frequently visit that still doesn't support this basic security feature for some reason.
For a seamless transition, I recommend implementing a CSP with the upgrade-insecure-requests directive - it's just an HTTP header, and there would be no need to manually rewrite links that way. Once it's confirmed to work, I would immediately follow with preloaded HSTS to discontinue the unsecure HTTP protocol without any user impact.
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I'm a bit surprised that there's a big page on TASVideos about preferred emulators for each platform and another with accuracy tests, but seemingly nowhere on TASVideos that specifies which BizHawk cores should be used.
I found such a list on the readme file in BizHawk's GitHub repository... but the list is incomplete, so it's not super helpful. For example, SubNESHawk is not documented, and I have no idea how it differs from regular NESHawk.
I was hoping the more accurate cores would be the default ones, but it appears to not be the case.
Is it possible for someone more familiar with the matter to look into this? Thanks in advance!
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
OK, so I just finished writing this and decided to fiddle around some more with FCEUX before submitting and HOLY COW. Turns out, you can do a hyperjump at the final ladder where Maid Marion is and complete the game WITHOUT NEEDING ANY TREASURE.
ASFTHSKYVFTDOKISOHTYVsth
Oh no!
...but then again, now I can't wait for the inevitable updated any% run then! This one was great! :)
By the way, I'm assuming that this does not count as full completion despite warps granting treasures? Because I'd like to see that as well!
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Great run!
I have to vote Meh though strictly because of the disabled music and backgrounds, as it rips the soul away from this great game, and makes watching any run of it a lot less interesting and much more boring. Even watching at 2x didn't help on this regard.
Dunno if it changes anything regarding optimization or if it's easy to revert that change, but unfortunately that's the only thing holding me from voting Yes.
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This new Aura Barrier warp has ACE potential that needs to be analyzed.
Specifically, Aura Barrier warping and saving without fixing the glitched state (by opening the inventory for example) causes a save data corruption that's so bad that the main menu crashes after a hard reset when attempting to print the map name from a save file. (There's no known recovery beyond physically wiping the SRAM at this point.)
However, one of the game's normal routine (a generic block memory copy) is executed from RAM, and since the text parser overwrites RAM, there is a possibility that a useful ACE could be produced from that.
Shutout to Raeven0 for providing this information. More details from him:
For e.g. the "Start Journey" menu, the text script starts at $0bf437. An error is introduced when a map number is read, e.g. for Diary1 at $0bf452 C5 06 F7 74 0D which is parsed as db $C5 : dw $F706, $0D74. $C5 is an indexed-include "opcode", first arg is the address of a pointer list (in the same bank as the caller, here $0b), second arg is the address (same bank again) containing the index of a pointer in that list. Earlier $0D74 is set to the saved map number of file 1. If we have e.g. $0D74 = #$00CC, we read the pointer at $0bf706 + 2*$CC which is $fa3b, so the text parser jumps to $0bfa3b 60 A9 A2 80 8C 88 83 CA which are the bytes for "P y r a m i d" followed by the $CA "opcode" which means "return".
So the ACE challenge is: find a value for $0D74 that causes the text parser to jump to a sequence of bytes that, rather than displaying text, happens to do something more interesting.
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DrD2k9 wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
One thing I've always wondered about this game is what causes Mario to shut the door behind him sometimes at the end of a level. This appears to be a source of time loss, so I'm surprised to see it often in this TAS. Is that event not RNG-based?
So I feel like a bit of an idiot in not even noticing that those two options happen. That said, I've gone back and looked into it a bit.
There is no advancement of RNG for either animation, and I've googled and found a couple sites claiming the same as what fsvgm777 mentioned regarding it being related to the time left on the timer.
For what it's worth, the animation that closes the door is 38 frames longer than the one that doesn't. So the only potential improvements in this run would be stages that finish with less than 38 frames until the next timer tick that would break the threshold that determines which animation is played.
If that threshold is indeed always 150, then only levels that finished with a 150 remaining on the timer would be improvable.
I checked, and none of the stage times in this run were exactly 150 remaining; so I don't think trying to save time this way is worth pursuing further for this particular TAS.
Thanks for the info! Might be worth confirming this 150 seconds threshold for a potential future update though.
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This is Star material in my opinion. Yes vote!
One thing I've always wondered about this game is what causes Mario to shut the door behind him sometimes at the end of a level. This appears to be a source of time loss, so I'm surprised to see it often in this TAS. Is that event not RNG-based?
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It seems to me that the routing challenge argument also applies to video game adaptations of board games, game show games and educational games, which aren't currently eligible for Vault. I'm not sure why those are not currently considered "serious" games.
For example, it doesn't really make sense to me that a single-player card game would be accepted (like [3113] NES Solitaire by TheRealThingy in 00:37.82), but not a multiplayer card game (like #6684: dekutony's GBC Uno "Fastest Uno" in 01:01.01).
I don't mind either way. All I'm saying is that there appears to be an inconsistency in the way Vault eligibility is being considered right now, but I could be missing something. Personally, I would accept anything with a clear end goal to Vault, but that's just my opinion.
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I would like to point out that a nonogram is technically a paper & pencil game. As such, the Vault eligibility of this submission, which is exclusively about solving nonograms, is questionable.
The issue here is that the current wording in the Movie Rules refers to "board games" instead of "tabletop games". This may require a revision for consistency.
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It's obvious that a lot of work and care was put into this TAS, but subjectively speaking it did not entertain me, so I had to vote No.
The reason is because I felt like most of the TAS was more about humiliating the AI by bouncing them around, rather than trying to win efficiently. I'm sure it was hard to pull off all of these advanced techniques and combos, but it became very repetitive and boring to me. The fact that a slow character was used also didn't help.
Whereas most people appeared to greatly enjoy the Hyrule Castle stage, it was the worst part for me. It was very repetitive, showcased a situation that would often occur in casual VS play, and made it worse by using the hammer item for a long basic combo. Even the game threw in the "Stale Moves" negative bonus at the end, and I fully agree with that assessment.
I dunno. Maybe it's because I played Melee to death? (I got the 4995 VS play achievement back then, mostly from 4P 5-stock matches.) Or maybe it's because I haven't played the game in so long and never professionally that I'm missing most of the subtleties? But for whatever reason, almost none of the showcased techniques moved me. The only exceptions were the Pokémon Stadium ending combo against Pikachu, the precision used during the Trophy bonus stage, and the strat against Master Hand + Crazy Hand.
I'm glad most people appear to enjoy this, but I wanted to at least explain my differing opinion on the matter, even if it ends up being interpreted as "grumpy gamer is blasé" or something. ^_^'
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Not a big deal, but it is a bit strange that the description of this movie showcases the Burst Chaser x Air Sliding movie that this very movie obsoletes.
Like, was it obsoleted or not? :P
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Coming from an arcade perspective, Pac-Booster feels pretty much like a cheat option to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with enabling it, but I'm not personally interested in such a run.
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This is a really impressive TAS, congratulations!
As for entertainment, I agree that it's one of those runs that is more impressive technically than it is to watch, as the game does not clearly convey that there's more going on than just going through enemies. As such, I must also vote Meh regardless of how much I appreciated it alongside the submission message.
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It depends on whether "beating all existing records" includes having an equal time. I believe it should be, and this is a very good example of why.
It also sounds like the TAS submitted should have been the longer input with the faster ending, assuming this is not due to the difference in timing between TAS and RTA, but rather due to the difference in timing between end-of-input and reaching the end state. This was recently debated in #6587: adelikat's NES Monopoly in 00:29.53. This submission was accepted for doing exactly that, and the judgement specified that we can't have it both ways.
Regardless, great TAS and Yes vote for entertainment!
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First of all, Yes vote for entertainment.
Second, I'm with adelikat about this movie being faster that the current one. In my opinion, completion time should have priority over input time. I understand that measuring movies by input time is more convenient, but I don't think it should be the primary goal. To be more exact, my opinion is that the primary goal should be reaching a specific state at the end of the ending sequence as fast as possible. I believe this is the best choice, as this particular goal prioritizes getting to the very end of a game over everything else.
Third, I do not understand Alyosha and Mitjitsu's objection, as I could not find any Monopoly judgement that prioritized input time over completion time. In fact, it appears that Hero of the day and FractalFusion cancelled their submission for that very reason.
Finally, given that this run abuses a glitch that goes against the actual Monopoly board game rules (mortgaging properties after the other party agreed to trade them), it's worth considering whether a separate category is justified here. In my opinion, it is for that very reason, and since both movies offer completely different content, they are in my opinion justified to coexist.
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I was entertained.
I'm conflicted about the PAL choice here however. While I do not currently have an opinion on the matter, this is a detail that should be investigated thoroughly by judges.
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Bravo for the judgment notes! They were very well written and answered pretty much every aspect of the problem.
And while I'm also disappointed that this movie didn't get Moon'd or Star'd, I have to agree with the decision for Vault given the general audience reaction. It might be worth considering adding some new tier equivalent to Star but limited to technical excellence instead of entertainment excellence though...
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A big No vote for me. The speedcoding part is uninteresting to watch, the gameplay is relatively simple, and the game goes from pretty slow to even slower. The only interesting part of this submission for me was the technical choices the author made for his demo from his comments and source code, not the demo itself.
I've also noticed several other issues with this submission:
- Just like I pointed out in the previous TI-83 submission, rand does not appear to have been initialized prior to program execution for luck manipulation, so the 2nd part of this run is most likely not optimal.
- This version of the game was designed for this TAS. In my opinion, this is the equivalent of cheating, as anyone can just edit the code to get better potential results. The author even admitted to have added an extra line of code for this very purpose.
- The game arbitrarily ends at level 10, even though changing a single line of code could unlock many more levels. Once again, this can be viewed as a form of cheating, as it forces the game to end early.
- As this homebrew is a clone, it seems pretty obvious to me that the wrong version of this game was chosen, as it is neither the original, the more popular, nor the superior version of Daleks.
While I do believe calculator-based games can be TASed in a way that meets TASVideos standards, I do not believe this is the right approach.
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Oh neat, I never realized that!
Still, I was pretty sure that this particular RAM initialization wasn't a thing is bsnes, so I'm surprised to see it in a derivative.
