Posts for The8bitbeast

Posted: 6/18/2017 12:22 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Chef Stef wrote:

I noticed that in some levels (like 1 and 6) you wait around until the portal goes away, while in others (like 9) you immediately start charging a zip. Do some levels prevent you from starting it early?

Yeah some levels are like that. I always do it frame perfectly though. In some levels you can use that time to do a slide but it's rare since you can only slide the way they point you and that is usually backwards.

Chef Stef wrote:

Some levels lag a lot while zipping. Is there a difference in in-level load times between PAL and NTSC that could make a difference? Crash 2 PAL is laggier than NTSC, just curious if the same is true for Crash 3.

About the load times, I didn't go into as much depth as I should have in the submission text. PAL appears to load slightly faster (although this is probably a coincidence from my small sample size). This wouldn't total any more than 4 seconds saved over the entire run. But PAL has a much longer title screen and less aku aku crates (costing over 4 seconds in N. Tropy and possibly other areas). As for lag on PAL, I did a couple of test levels and the lag seemed similar but there could be a few frames different possibly. However, PAL would have to save a lot of lag frames before it became an option (literally almost every lag frame). If PAL is in fact laggier overall like in Crash 2, then that makes it an even worse candidate. PAL is also at a disadvantage because the screen scrolling speed is slightly lower in PAL (loses a frame about every 4 seconds). Japanese seems to vary in loading times, for some levels it's longer, for some it's shorter, but J is slower overall. Thanks for the good questions. I'm glad you spotted it so I could (hopefully) clarify that stuff.

Posted: 6/8/2017 1:04 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Great work. The unintended wall jumps were really good and the level with all the spikes was very entertaining. I liked the method to end inputs early and the overall optimisation was very impressive

Posted: 6/6/2017 10:11 PM

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The8bitbeast

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Great job, it's really good to see how much time has come off this TAS and how well you've optimised it and the routing is really impressive. I love seeing TAS/RTA of this game because it's so different than a casual playthrough. The tutorial seems fine. You can skip past it in the video but it gives people who are less familiar a chance to remind themselves how the game works before you destroy it. There are plenty of popular TAS games that have long intros.

Posted: 4/17/2017 4:00 AM

Post subject: TAS WIP

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The8bitbeast

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Encode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6SKJsAWhcA Button file: User movie #38396068639665610 Lua Script: User movie #38396106633072743 Played on Bizhawk 1.11.8 Rerecords: 685919 This is a WIP from a while ago. I'm not working on it anymore and if I do work on it again, I'll probably be active here so that people know. I'm putting it here as a reference to anyone who wants to TAS it in the future. The main thing to optimise is RNG manipulation. The enemies can spawn pretty much anywhere so it's good to line them up and kill them in one hit if possible. Since you need lots of money in this game, killing as many enemies as possible is a good idea. I decided to use a lua script (linked above) to do all the RNG manipulation for the enemies, but the first few farms in the WIP were done by hand. I feel like the first farm could have been a little better. The sidescrollers are sometimes difficult to optimize due to the fixed jump height and even the autoscrollers can be difficult to optimize because of the lag. Japanese is slower on the title screen, but saves time every shop visit after that, making Japanese faster overall. Also, the US version has a glitchy map that is a copy of another map in the wrong spot, and Japanese doesn't have this error. This makes Japanese technically the complete game as it has an extra map that US doesn't have, this is another reason to use J. There's really too much information to fit into the post (especially about how my script works) so I'm happy to answer any questions if someone picks this up as a TAS project.

Posted: 4/17/2017 3:18 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Great TAS! I've been waiting for this game to get a TAS for a while. I actually worked on one a while ago but didn't get really far before realising this game is almost impossible to optimise. I was really impressed at your routing and knowledge of the game, some of the trees that you cut down for shortcuts, I didn't know about at all. I liked the use of rusty armour for deathwarps and the new glitches were really good to see. The one thing I wasn't sure about was you skipping the flame sword, but with how well the rest of the TAS was planned, I trust that decision. The reason I stopped TASing this was the enemy positions in the rooms. Theoretically, they should all overlap and there should be no going out of your way for them but there were some points in the TAS where I felt that they could have been in better positions. This is just the nature of the game though and the enemies could always be in spots a little better no matter how well you optimise it. I would be interested to know if you had some kind of lua script to do the RNG manipulation for enemy positions? I remember writing one a long time ago but it wasn't perfect. The other option would be reverse engineering the RNG for their positions, which is probably a better solution.

Posted: 4/7/2017 12:03 AM

Post subject: WIP - Warp Room 3

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The8bitbeast

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Warp room 3 WIP, saving warp 1 and 2 so something is fresh for the submission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lOEV5mizuw Current progress is 2 levels into warp 4.

Posted: 2/23/2017 2:51 PM

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The8bitbeast

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Great work! It was cool seeing these WIPs come along and it amazes me how much you know about this game and how optimized this is. I'm glad you TASed on PSG so we know the fastest possible time but I think the run should be published with a PSG and an FM encode. It's cool that you put in the extra effort to resync with FM, that would have been horrible to do.

Posted: 2/9/2017 11:55 AM

Post subject: 3-2

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The8bitbeast

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The RTA community found a timesave in 3-2 https://youtu.be/Mn7dJArgzPk Killing the big blob despawns some fireballs. This would save about 10-15 frames over my TAS but unfortunately I couldn't get it to resync :(

Posted: 2/8/2017 9:27 AM
(Edited: 2/8/2017 9:52 AM)

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The8bitbeast

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Crash 3 is incredibly prone to desyncs and there is no way that this run will be easily resynced if time is saved on the title screen without redoing the entire thing. I would rather wait to do this until I finish work on No Major Skips in case I find any more improvements to this run while working on NMS. The improvement on the title screen should have been mentioned at the time of Lapogne36’s submission since you knew about it at least a month beforehand and he made the same mistake in his TAS. Spike, I understand that you disagree with some choices that I made in the creation and reveal of this TAS, and I hope to clear the air between us by keeping SFX on in my upcoming No Major Skips TAS, but trying to get this significant improvement delayed or rejected (your words, not mine), among other things, such as publicly calling me a twat, after I worked hard on this run and in doing so, discovered a major find for games that we both clearly care a lot about is absolutely disgraceful behavior from a TASvideos staff member. <TASVideoAgent> New reply by The8bitbeast (WorkB: #5383: The8bitbeast's PSX Crash Bandicoot: Warped in 08:23.84): http://tasvideos.org/forum/p/448401#448401 [a:1] <SpikedMuffin> HOW ABOUT YOU GO AND FIX YOUR DAMN INPUT INSTEAD OF GIVING SHIT ABOUT OTHER THINGS FIRST <SpikedMuffin> YOU TWAT <SpikedMuffin> To whoever the judge is, I hope you either set this to Delay or Reject. <Fog> SpikedMuffin: how much currently syncs with your fixes? <SpikedMuffin> Fog^: 0%, cause it needs to be redone the input. <Fog> looks like I'm going to attempt to fix the inputs <SpikedMuffin> Fog^: ...and become co-auth.

Posted: 2/8/2017 8:52 AM

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The8bitbeast

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SFX will be on http://pastebin.com/ME0vT5nf

Posted: 2/7/2017 12:46 AM

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The8bitbeast

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ThunderAxe31 wrote:

TASeditor wrote:
And you really put a poll on twitter?... As if they will give a strong opinion. Also many people don't even have an account in the first place.
I agree about that. The TASing comunity is mostly on this site, and absolutely not on Twitter.

I agree. The TASing community is mostly on this site. But we are trying to appeal to the general public which are not on this site as they are the target audience. Also I did actually ask on this site and only 5 people responded. 5 people is not enough to represent the opinions of all the viewers. The poll is linked here and in the forums so it definitely does not exclude the TAS community. If anybody can't vote for some reason, tell me and I'll add it manually. I actually want to keep SFX on in No major skips since there are already arbitrary restrictions anyway, but I want to do what will entertain the majority of the viewers and some prefer no SFX.

TASeditor wrote:

Does the game only accept 45° angles on the stick? You are only hitting 0,255 and 255,0. And does camera rotation affect movement?

The further you are from the origin on the analog stick, the faster Crash moves. The 45° angles are the furthest points from the origin. Also when zip-zagging being in the corners prevents speed loss, but otherwise all the speed that you build up is lost quickly.

Posted: 2/6/2017 7:54 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Nice TAS. I enjoyed seeing some of the interesting routes like in Chemical Plant and it was funny seeing that it worked out better sometimes to grab 1 or 2 rings out of a set of 3 and come back for the others. There were a lot of little clips that were cool. It was also interesting to see how the game locks you onto certain paths through the level. Oil ocean 2 was easily my favorite level. I didn’t know you could repeat the glitch to get more speed. Getting all the score in Sky Chase was great. While it would have been good to see the special stages included I understand why you wouldn't. Respawning rings would make the goals far too difficult to define. The goal choice seemed a bit arbitrary and usually I prefer any% runs but I enjoyed this one a lot. It was good to see more gameplay in between the totals screens rather than score countdowns taking up most of the run.

Posted: 2/6/2017 4:51 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Theres a poll about SFX in the next TAS (no major skips) here if people want to vote: https://twitter.com/The8bitbeast/status/828430592219897857

Posted: 2/6/2017 12:26 AM

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The8bitbeast

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I like it

Posted: 2/5/2017 11:37 PM

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The8bitbeast

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While item glitch is a lot more powerful than gate clip, gate clip isn’t useless without item glitch. Basically item glitch is the glitch to skip levels, gate clip is the glitch to skip bosses. The zip-zagging glitch is very powerful and a few people have said that it might be good to see a run without zip-zagging. I can see why this is, but I have no interest in TASing that category so Crash 3 (No major skips) will use it. But for example, if someone submitted Crash 1 any% with zip-zagging I would prefer separate publication rather than obsoleting Pirohiko’s run. The possibility for using another level to get a cutscene seems interesting. The fastest level that I can think of is Level 1. From touching the warp portal to gaining control after the level it takes 46.6 seconds. The crystal cutscene after Gee Wiz takes 1:15, so it could be possible. Unfortunately you don’t get the “forgot crystal” cutscene unless you actually get 0 crystals, so this cutscene is useless. Watching normal gameplay it seems that there are no cutscenes after any of the first 5 levels even with SFX on and. I also tried messing around with time trials to get a cutscene with no luck. So unless there are other cutscenes that I’m missing I don’t think it’s possible. If it was possible it would be good because the optimal route would be able to keep SFX on for longer and it would be faster too.

Posted: 2/5/2017 9:55 AM

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The8bitbeast

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CoolKirby wrote:

Could you have saved time by turning the sound effects off as soon as you got control of Crash (before the gate clip), instead of after the clip?

Good question. Turning SFX on/off causes desyncs so it's possible that it might have either saved or lost some frames to turn it off earlier. Generally it's roughly the same speed overall so I doubt it would save time. Even if I made it into the level on the same frame it can desync further in the run so it's nearly impossible to tell. I left SFX on for as long as I could for entertainment.

CoolKirby wrote:

Also, Lapogne36 wrote this about Tiny's boss fight, could you do this after Level 6 too (by turning SFX back on later), or is there no cutscene after that level?

Unfortunately there's no cutscene after Gee Wiz even with SFX on so as far as I know it's not possible to skip the crystal animations. Thanks for the positive feedback!

Posted: 2/5/2017 1:29 AM

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The8bitbeast

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That was a really nice WIP. Balancing the speed build up will be insanely hard. I've TASed the first level of Crash 3 3 times now. You'll probably want to watch a byte for how far through the level the screen has scrolled. 0x065D70 (4 byte) is really useful in Crash 3. It's how far the screen has scrolled through the level, but it works perfectly if the level changes direction too. Crash 2 very likely has a similar address. It would probably help to write a lua script that calculates the amount that the byte changes per frame. Like a screen scrolling speed. I've found that roughly 5x walking speed is a good amount to build up to. You can build up speed on the bonus platforms without jumping in Crash 3 so I thought you'd be able to do it in snow go. But it's possible that it's different in Crash 2.

Posted: 2/4/2017 3:28 PM

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The8bitbeast

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I understand that it probably won't be branchless and I'm happy to accept that, but I don't necessarily agree with it which is why I mentioned it in the submission text. The naming is extremely difficult since it is really 2 major skip glitches that I'm using: gate clip and item glitch. The branch "gate clip and item glitch" doesn't sound good, but I would agree that "major skips" also sounds too vague. If it helps with naming, the idea of any% (No major skips) is to do all 25 levels and all bosses. Of course we could call it item glitch again and I could mention that I'm avoiding gate clip in my no major skips submission text but I would rather avoid that if we can.

Posted: 2/4/2017 4:14 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Oh that's cool if you can skip those title screens. I didn't think that was possible. If you can, how do you do it? Why wasn't this mentioned when Lapogne36's TAS was submitted?

Posted: 2/1/2017 11:05 PM

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The8bitbeast

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That WIP was a great watch! I'm amazed at how much time has come off the published TAS in just 3 levels. In general I'd agree with your choice for FM sound disabled but it might be worth testing it by TASing a level with it on. Disabled is usually faster but sometimes enabled can take the same time or even be faster.

Posted: 1/28/2017 7:12 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Yes vote. It was great to see this run finally happen. It was really well done and the sections with playaround were great to watch. The stream reveal and commentary was great too and it was good to have the 32 minute RTA estimate to compare against. The choice to use clean cart probably made for a more entertaining run but I was really disappointed that you said it's against the rules to start from SRAM in the Twitch reveal as it's simply not true. There are many runs on this site that start from dirty SRAM.

Posted: 1/22/2017 1:22 PM

Post subject: Commentary Volume

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The8bitbeast

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I've turned down the game volume a bit and put it here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sjzj3zts38vqda3/AABQWfpRCp_qp7UgJEsx6XSma?dl=0 I've also included the Audacity project in case it needs further changes.

Posted: 1/22/2017 12:47 AM

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The8bitbeast

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Yes vote. It's great seeing all of this come together. While the jumping can be a bit repetitive it was cool to see the jumps in the Tiny fight optimized. There was some good playaround in the bosses too.

Posted: 1/13/2017 2:43 PM

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The8bitbeast

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System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MarkerControl.AddMarker(Boolean editText, Nullable`1 frame) at BizHawk.Client.EmuHawk.MarkerControl.AddMarkerToolStripMenuItem_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)

Posted: 1/13/2017 1:59 PM

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The8bitbeast

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That method should work for most things I'm trying to do. I still think the hotkey would be useful to commit though. I'm not sure if it was due to the hotkey, but I was getting an exception when trying to add a marker.