Posts for TheAxeMan

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Posted: 3/31/2012 7:25 PM
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TheAxeMan
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Joined: 7/17/2004
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Thanks everyone. I wanted to submit for April Fool's just to keep everyone guessing. I guess I am a little early but it was a convenient time to submit. Here's the (old) discussion of that technique on the forums for those who have watched: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1421&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60
Posted: 3/20/2012 4:24 PM
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TheAxeMan
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Ah, I see. It's just that the mp4s default to the short comments and youtube defaults to the long comments. Unfortunately, most people will just use the default. The first comment on youtube already mentions this. If it's possible, the short comments should be the default. To be honest, those long comments go by too fast for video captions and mention the lua drawings from the script. I didn't think those should go in the video. But it will be interesting to some people.
Posted: 3/20/2012 6:15 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Thanks for getting around to this. Unfortunately, the youtube encode uses the loquacious captions from my watcher script, not the abbreviated comments I posted later. Sorry if it was confusing but I put those on pastebin to avoid cluttering the forum: http://pastebin.com/agvQZNtJ Looks like the torrented files have the right subtitles. Also, could we link that watcher lua from the publication? As I said earlier, I was hoping to use this to get more people to play the run in the emulator and explore a bit. So far there have been about 50 downloads and a lot of good feedback. One more thing: unlike the previous version, this run does not use death as a shortcut. Explanation in the submission text.
Posted: 3/18/2012 9:18 PM
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TheAxeMan
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Why don't we just publish the main encode. I'll put together the lua for the alternate version some other time.
Posted: 3/3/2012 9:13 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Ok, here are subtitles for a main encode. http://pastebin.com/agvQZNtJ Can I get some example lua code that generates the margin text? It doesn't have to be fancy. I just need to get an idea what coords to use and how to organize it.
Posted: 2/26/2012 6:54 PM
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TheAxeMan
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Ah, cool. The sidebars like that are good for showing mem contents. I would keep the same abbreviated comments I am working on now. Can we put hitboxes in? It shows a lot in this game.
Posted: 2/26/2012 6:39 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Ok, I understand now. I'll put some subs together. Let me know if I can do anything to help with an alternate encode. I'm good with scripting and GUI programming (I do it for a living) but don't know much about encoding.
Posted: 2/26/2012 6:14 AM
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TheAxeMan
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natt, what all can be encoded? The Dragon Quest V run added a nice sidebar that I don't know how to do. But I can edit down my commentary to subtitles. If I use the fm2 comment feature will that give me a good impression of how the encode looks? As everyone has noticed, I tend to be too verbose when writing and want to make sure I don't overdo it on subtitles.
Posted: 2/19/2012 5:20 PM
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TheAxeMan
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As usual, DwangoAC's testing produced some interesting ideas. I patched the watcher script to add pause and unpause buttons. When you hit 'Show All' it automatically unchecks 'Show Tricks' to turn off the scripted display. Also, rewind is turned off by default. That rewinding is absolutely awesome when making a TAS but merely neat when watching. Here's the new version. The link in the submission has been updated. http://runeaxetas.googlecode.com/files/Crystalis-TheAxeMan-AuthorNotes1.1.lua
Posted: 2/16/2012 5:07 PM
(Edited: 2/16/2012 7:48 PM)
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TheAxeMan
Ambassador, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player (698)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Glad the lua is working for most people. I expected the rewinding to be bad on slower computers. On my beefy home desktop it runs fine at normal speed but turbo doesn't add much speed. If the memory values don't display that means lua is having trouble drawing onscreen. Maybe mess around with some of the display settings? About my nick, it's from when I played college Ultimate. Not sure what the upperclassmen were thinking but I never heard of that band. I think it was more because I played in a shirt with a Scottish highlander drawn with a big-ass battleaxe (my high school mascot). Edit: Ok, I listened to that song and it's pretty awesome. Bow down to TheAxeMan!!
Posted: 2/15/2012 10:26 PM
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TheAxeMan
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Joined: 7/17/2004
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Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
Thanks, everyone. Priam, what sort of errors are you getting with the lua script? It does depend on iup which might not be supported on some platforms.
Posted: 2/15/2012 6:40 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Run is submitted! Sorry it took so long to do the tower, I wanted to make sure it was awesome enough to match the rest of the run.
Posted: 2/6/2012 7:50 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Looks like a bug got introduced in 2.1.5 affecting rectangle drawing. The graphics inside a rectangle are offset, shifted up about 10 pixels or so. This didn't happen in 2.1.4. I've shared this lua with others and they see the same issue. I think it happens with any rectangle, but definitely with my crystalis hitbox lua. lua code a few posts from the end of the thread here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=390
Posted: 1/26/2012 6:42 PM
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TheAxeMan
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No problem Bobo, I'm always willing to discuss things like this. Both of these take advantage of the fact that the encounter rate is higher in the field than in a dungeon or on a ship (ratio is about 10/8/3). That means sometimes a step will have an encounter if it's taken in the field but if you can somehow get one more step ahead you can cut that encounter out. Or on the ship you can sail a bit more because the step won't have an encounter at sea but it would on land. The long path from Coneria to the bridge is done to cut one step of encounters. You can't really tell unless you use a tool like ffhackster to figure out exactly which squares don't have encounters. That one step cuts out a fight before entering Marsh Cave that would otherwise be a group of shadows that surprises me. I could get that step by entering Elfland, but the animation on entering a town takes more time than this walkaround. The extra sailing on the way to Melmond is another manipulation of the encounter flow. Since the ship moves twice as fast, I can advance the step counter twice as fast. You can tell that the number of steps between fights isn't always the same. This manipulates that to get more steps between some fights. As a result I have one less battle before reaching the point where I do a hard reset outside Earth Cave. I do all this analysis with a script I made. The input is a text file that lists how many steps I take in which areas and the output tells me what enemy groups I encounter in which areas. It can also do regressions where it considers taking extra steps in some areas, doing a power cycle at different points or using some time-saver that adds steps (like walking straight to the bridge). It looks at all the possibilities and uses a cost function to decide which is best. Edit: Not sailing all the way into the dock is also an encounter manipulation. The dock squares on land don't advance the counter but the sea squares right next them do. This is another tradeoff I regressed with my script.
Posted: 1/26/2012 7:05 AM
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TheAxeMan
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That's right, you can't avoid random encounters. There are a lot of tweaks done to reduce them but the possibilities are pretty limited. The encounter algorithm is described in the game resources page (along with a lot of other information), so check that out to learn more: http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/FinalFantasy1.html
Posted: 1/21/2012 5:05 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Great run on an awesome hidden gem game. I remember thinking the published run seemed a bit slow. This definitely does the game justice though. Could it be possible to get a jet pack before that first shaft climb? That's the only part that seems slow. Other than that I don't really have much to say, this looks really good. Have you figured out how enemy drops work and is there any way to improve your luck? The route is pretty straightforward I think, especially once you get teleport.
Posted: 1/20/2012 6:00 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Awesome game choice, this is probably one of the best in the DW series. The commentary and explanations are very much appreciated.
Posted: 1/14/2012 9:55 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Interesting trick with the looping. It does turn out that in a one-on-one fight vs a fiend each round uses just about all the 256 numbers in the RNG. Most of the RNG advances go into the dust that appears on the hits. However, the exact amount depends on how many hits the enemy gets and how many times it needs to pick a target before getting a valid one. If Kary uses magic then it won't form a stable loop. The stability of the loop will also depend on what slot your guy is in because that affects how many times Kary picks a target before getting your living char.
Posted: 1/13/2012 8:05 PM
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TheAxeMan
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This was interesting. I was curious to see how complete his knowledge was. He did get the area by Coneria right but missed a couple little tricks. I posted on gamefaqs and linked our game resources page. Still, he's done an impressive amount of planning. I'm pretty sure this would be a terrible goal for a TAS. Maybe if you could get the gold for BOTTLE. Also as he laid it out the power cycle manipulation would be out and you would have to fight a few battles.
Posted: 1/13/2012 5:40 PM
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TheAxeMan
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The offset graphics inside the hitboxes seems to be a glitch with FCEUX 2.1.5. In 2.1.4 it looked normal. If anyone is interested in translating those notes I think it would be great. As an American, I barely even know English so I wouldn't be much help. But everything is in plain text in that lua file and all the comments are in a big table so it should be relatively easy if someone was motivated.
Posted: 1/13/2012 3:17 PM
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TheAxeMan
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It should be possible to turn the comments into subtitles and put that in an encode. Some of the comments go in to a lot of detail and are a little long to show onscreen. Maybe someone knows a way to make a video of that window and show it side-by-side the game like some niconico videos do. I don't know if anyone has ever tried encoding extra graphics drawn on top of the game like those used for hitboxes. Is there an equivalent of WINE on a mac? I've used FCEUX in Linux on WINE and it was pretty decent. The watcher script is really meant to be interactive. The idea is to get people to go beyond just watching the video and really think about the game and TASing in general. But it's also a guided tour that I hope makes it easy to get started. Just like what la mammal experienced. So thanks for the feedback, I wanted to make sure my scripts worked for other people. Now to finish the run.
Posted: 1/10/2012 7:55 PM
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TheAxeMan
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http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/870136404/Crystalis-TheAxeMan-toDraygon.fm2 Here is the run up to the tower. Load up one of these lua scripts first though. http://runeaxetas.googlecode.com/files/crystalis-fastforwardgrind.lua This script just fast-forwards the grinding parts, about 5 minutes total. You need to be running FCEUX 2.1.5 or later. Before that there was a bug in the lua functions controlling speed. http://runeaxetas.googlecode.com/files/crystalis_watch_onefile.lua The next script is a sort of commentary/author notes. The text comes up in a separate window. That's good because it stays there so you can read it but bad because it's less convenient to read than on-screen display. In addition to text I threw in a lot of features I used for making the run like hitboxes and on-screen display of some counter and RNG values. The script will turn these on at certain points where I thought it would be interesting and you can also turn them on and off yourself. You can jump back and forth between comment spots and also do frame-by-frame rewinding. Just run the script at the start of the run and hopefully it should be self-explanatory. I hope this is interesting to at least a few people. I'm very visual so I think it's neat to see all this stuff. I also want to show how things are done to get people into TASing and to help current TASers get better. So please check it out and let me know what you think. http://runeaxetas.googlecode.com/files/crystalis-all_lua.zip This a zip with those lua functions plus the lua I actually used when making the run. There is even more there than the watcher script. More displays, a data table and macro/bot functions. Grab this and start working on the improvement. :)
Posted: 1/7/2012 6:16 AM
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TheAxeMan
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Boss hp is at 7E1336 for most bosses. Memwatch that to learn a lot. I checked out the tracelog on this. When your shot connects, it always takes the damage off the boss's hp. Then it checks to see if it was too soon and restores it if so. But if that shot was the finishing blow, that check never happens and the fight is over. It looks like that boss may be a special case. I checked on Arma and it turns out there is a check before the hit. It checks to see if the high bit of that hp address is set (with a bpl instruction). In other words, the invulnerability flag is packed into the same byte as the hp. For some reason that flag is never set for hippogriff. Memwatch that hp and you'll see that several other bosses are vulnerable. In most cases this just means that a ground gargoyle shot hits twice. Somulo doesn't set that bit but there is something else going on because he dies at 1 hp instead of 0. Arma's invulnerability timer is at 7E1DD5, but that doesn't seem to be the case for other bosses.
Posted: 1/6/2012 6:38 AM
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TheAxeMan
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http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/FinalFantasy1.html Game Resources page is up. It's basically just what TASmaniac posted earlier but formatted a little more conveniently.
Posted: 12/22/2011 5:27 PM
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TheAxeMan
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No one voted or commented yet? Ok, a 35 second improvement isn't going to be noticable on an hour and a half run. But it was a good reason to watch this game again. As always, Janus really knows his RPGs. Yes.
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