Posts for ThunderAxe31


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Indeed. BizHawk detects lag by seeing if the game is reading the joypad inputs during a frame. Most games don't read the joypad inputs when they are going through heavy load on the emulated console processor, however some games (like Code Name Viper) do that in almost all frames, even when they can't make it in time to execute the main game routine in one frame. So the emulator won't report the actual lag frames, despite the fact that the game is actually slowing down. The only solution is to figure out what inputs you need to make different in order to avoid slowing down the game program execution.
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Niamek wrote:
I didn't mean it exactly like this. I mean removing the rerecord field from the site so it can't be seen by everyone, but the admins (and judges if needed).
If someone gets biased due to something so simple like a rerecord count, then hiding it wouldn't help much, as there are things that affect the opinions of biased people much more than that, like being familiar with the game choice or having trust towards the movie author. By the way, in my opinion the person that needs the most to see the rerecord count is the author of the movie itself, as it helps to be aware of their own efforts. So please, don't try to use it as a mean to point out the value of a movie; instead talk about the specific tricks and movements used, go as much in detail as possible, because looking at the actual results of the work is more useful than talking about how much struggle there have been. In fact, struggling hard isn't always necessarily profitable, as it's directly proportional to how functional and efficient have been these efforts.
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XTREMAL93 wrote:
Can u check it? level ends when timer 237, but it is longer then current submission http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/54123712792749600
It seems that when you arrive at the stuatues part, the game slows down. It's basically "invisible lag". Try to change the moments when you jump and when you shoot. Don't look at the game timer, but look at the frame counter of the emulator.
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All right, then I guess that your idea for the SRAM branch makes sense: "All levels, fastest IGT". I'm fine with it. But at this point, note that Tutorial levels with damage can only fit in any%. Though deciding if including them is still up to you and the audience.
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Niamek wrote:
Not sure if this has been discussed, but I was wondering if hiding the rerecord count (from everyone or just from the members) could be a viable way to avoid any bias in rerecord count before watching a movie? A lot of submissions gets called out for the low rerecord count and high rerecord count movies get praised.
You can hide your rerecord count by setting it to zero. By doing this, in the submission page it will be reported as "(unknown)". This is also useful when you used too much bots or when you lost your real rerecord count for whatever reason.
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E-Sh4rk wrote:
Personally I don't think that the "Remaining-levels SRAM" run would really be worth it (the content would be quite similar, no new technique a priori, and I think challenge levels are more adapted to damageless).
You got a point. Then I guess that the "Remaining-levels SRAM" would only do Tutorial, Last Land, and the 10 birds level (without saving them).
mohoc wrote:
- I am fine with 1. Any% and 2. 100%, though I would rather see 100% as "All levels damageless, all collectibles (including birds)"
I have no issues with that, as it feels even more 100%-like. My idea was to ignore the collectibles in order to get records about pure speed, however that also feels a bit pedantic.
mohoc wrote:
- I don't like IGT for 100%/damageless levels, this would just add a waiting time at the beginning of every level.
Actually, I think that you can touch the walls inside Start Zones and Heal Zones for forcing the Helirin to change angle faster, which doesn't count as damage. So IGT would still feature unique technical merits.
mohoc wrote:
- I find your 3. pretty arbitrary. I would rather use SRAM for "All levels, fastest IGT", just my opinion though.
I think that the goal of the third branch will depend on what we decide for the full-completion, as we want to feature as much different movie contents as possible.
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mohoc wrote:
Well, ignore my previous message about Master Grade, I got it all wrong. My apologies. Master Grade only requires you to beat the Master times in the 30 "main" Adventure mode levels and the 50 "main" Challenge levels. -No need to complete the levels damageless, -No need to do training, -No need to unlock and complete Last Land and the eleventh row in Challenge.
All right, don't worry. Now it's everything clear. It seems to me that Master Grade can't be considered as a full-completion (100%) definition, as it's actually just an acknowledgement for beating only a part of the levels available in the game. So we'd need to rather come up with our own definition of full-completion, which seems to me to be pretty intuitive to me, at this point. (please read here: full-completion rules) The base idea would be to beat all levels available in the game, at least once. This would include the Tutorial levels, the Last Land levels, and the unlockable Challenge levels. Seems obvious so far, but what about the "how"? There is need to decide between real-time and ingame-time, and decide between damage and damageless. My idea is to simply go with what the game generally asks you: since the unlockable levels, on both Adventure mode and Challenge mode, are unlocked by beating the other levels damageless, then it would make sense to clear the unlockable levels by going damageless as well. Since this would mean that there are no +3 sec penalties, it would make more sense to go for ingame-time, just for showing different contents when compared to the other two branches (I'll exaplin soon) and of course for record-keeping purposes. At this point, there would not be need anymore for the fastest-completion (any%) to include the Tutorial levels, as these would be already featured in the other two branches: in one for ingame-time, and in the other one for real-time. So here are my branch ideas:
  1. Fastest-completion (any%): Trigger the credits as fast as possible without caring about any additional content (so no Tutorial), just like the classical any% definition of speedrunning in general. This means that the run aims for real-time and saves all birds.
  2. Full-completion (100%): Unlock and beat all levels found in the game. Since the game forces you to go damageless for most levels, then you go damaless for the remaining levels as well. Should go for ingame-time, but I don't consider it a hard requirement. I personally think that there is no need to save the birds, but this is debatable (thoughts?).
  3. Remaining levels for real-time: This branch would require to start from SRAM (maybe from 100% movie), in order to get the unlockable levels without having to do stuff unrelated to the run goal itself. The goal is to beat for real-time the levels that have not been beaten in fastest-completion (any%), thus ignore the 20 main story levels that have no birds to save, as these levels have already been beaten for real-time in any%. This would result in a movie that contains no redundant content compared to the other two branches, and also feature everything that has not been done in them.
And of course, ignore cosmetic upgrades and the fact that an Easy difficulty exists, for goodness sake.
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It seems that you also made the last level slower. Can you please take a look at it and try to fix it? I kept your old movie file on my pc. Do you need me to upload it to userfiles?
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DrD2k9 wrote:
Re-record count may be a useful metric as a tool for helping with the judging process (for example, in helping a judge determine how much effort to put into finding potential improvements before accepting/rejecting a run). It is, however, not a metric that I feel should alone sway a judgement one direction or another; I don't expect this has happened much if ever (I have pretty good faith in our judges).
Actually, Judges shouldn't judge through the rerecord count at all, but only check the optimality through firsthand tests and researching about known techs/records, and then bring actual proofs.
Judge Guidelines wrote:
Avoid saying it "looks" improvable. Instead, take the time to show that it IS improvable. Show an existing WIP, or make a short one of your own. Document some specifics rather than making blanket statements impossible to prove.
Edit: it's true that sometimes we point out the rerecord counts when it's very low, but it's only for helping newbies in noticing about how little effort they did put when compared to the trend.
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Thanks for moving to this thread, nymx... So... I kind of get that you like the idea of having something that can prove the technical quality of a TAS, and it kind of makes sense, as it's often hard to figure out just by watching a video. But in my opinion, it makes much more sense to focus on the submission text, as it can tell a lot more about the background of a TASing project (assuming the author is willing to explain out his work). And if that is still not enough, then I have to note that a TASer can also stream his progresses on Twitch. What's a better proof than showing live your work while it's actually being done?
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Memory wrote:
3. All levels from SRAM aiming for real time. This would mean all levels would be done with damage, including the tutorial and challenge levels. However, this would have 20 levels with completely redundant contents to the first. It also might be seen as awkward doing the challenge levels with damage if the point is to beat them without. However I see it as the only remotely viable category that would show off the remaining levels (3 last land levels, 55 challenge levels) with damage and would also beat the levels that typically have birds (10) as quickly as possible.[/list]
You know, now that I look at it closer, I kind of like the idea. The main RTA branch of the speedrunning community, known as "any%" or "bad ending", is about clearing the Adventure levels without trying to save the birds, so your TAS branch idea would allow for the remaining 10 levels to have a TAS that features them.
E-Sh4rk wrote:
A little remark: in challenge levels we only have 2 hearts. It significatively reduces the possibilities of wall clips and out of bounds, and so it would probably be more relevant to do these levels damageless.
On the other hand, it should be noted that the Challenge levels are shorter than Adventure levels. Maybe some levels could still even use of wall surfing or OoB goals, as you can recover the heart by quickly touching the Start zone tiles, just before proceeding further. In any case, going for real-time would be faster in all cases, since aiming for the ingame-time optimally requires to adjust the Helirin angle before leaving the Start zone. And it would also mean that ingame-time and real-time would inevitably result in different optimization challenges, as well as different movie contents for the watchers. So I think that this possibility should be seriously considered.
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nymx wrote:
Is there something that can be done to prevent it from being tampered with?
It could be made it harder to tamper, but not impossible. Also note that being able to edit manually the rerecord count can be useful sometimes, for example if you have worked with different movie files, and thus you may want to combine the counts together. Trying to judge a TAS on the basis of the rerecord count is unavoidably misleading, doesn't matter what. The only solution is to take the rerecord count as a mere trivia info, and nothing more. By the way, let's continue this discussion on a more appropriate thread: Opinions on rerecord count
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Post subject: link fixed
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You're welcome. Additionally, I've added the lastest "all dungeons" submission to the Gruefood Delight page, as promised. You can see it in "Alternate Goals" tab, at the bottom.
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nymx wrote:
Perhaps a suggestion..You might want to stick with the same project file so that you can at least demonstrate, via re-records, your effort put into this.
Note that the rerecord count can also be easily modified with Windows' Notepad. Therefore, it can't be trusted. For me, it makes more sense to read the author's explanations about the work behind the scenes, though they are free to give no explanation. The movie file is already containing everything necessary for demonstrating the quality of the run, it just needs to be verified with real tests. Opinions are more meaningful when they are backed with firsthand experience.
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I was the one who did come with the idea of including the Tutorial Levels. My point is that these levels have their own technical merits, as they are not trivial to optimize, despite how simple they look when compared to the rest of the story levels. Just note how the first Tutorial Level does feature a very advanced tech that is not present in most other levels: the Helirin surfs on the border on the wall, which gains a bit more speed than regular wall suring. And of course, I am more entertained in front of a TAS that includes the Tutorial Levels. In any case, including these levels doesn't affect the execution of the rest of the run, so why not? Also, we don't don't use RTA timing and we don't necessarily follow RTA rulesets, so I really don't see any problem with it, but only additional merits. Edit: I also want to note that the incomplete TAS by Matt Shepcar did include the Tutorial Levels, so this new TAS would also work as reference for record-keeping purposes.
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DarkDevil, I reverted the submission text to its previous contents. Please don't do that again, thanks.
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I wonder if this game does display the credits roll if you beat all modes. Also, it seems that the Japan version added a new mode, "Mission Mode".
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XTREMAL93 wrote:
Btw, how many frames can save this trick?
It would save exactly 21 frames, not taking in account possible RNG changes. By the way, I see that you mashed A button against dialogues. This results in wasting frames there and there, since mashing means that the inputs have 50% changes of being pressed 1 frame later. Instead of mashing, you should make every input manually, by going with trial and error. So I've tried fixing the inputs for all dialogues, and I saved 24 frames until the level 3, where the movie desynced, at frame 10983 specifically. You can get the movie file from there: User movie #54046853712001065 Note that there is no need to cancel this submission, as we can replace the submitted file, after that you're done with the fixes.
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All right, I'm satisfied of the result. By the way, I forgot to say that the movie label is probably unnecessary. In any case, it would surely not "100%". So I'm removing it. Maybe "all levels" could make more sense.
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Ok, but what about the jump trick that ECCO used at 6:09? It seems that you missed it while you were trying to improve it. Edit: to be more accurate, the trick can be seen exactly at 6:10.
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So... I've found this old TAS and compared it side-by-side with yours. I'm assuming it's from this submission, as it matches the author's real name. Not sure why the timing appears to be 8 seconds faster. Is this because the Japan version was used? In any case, the jump trick used at 6:09 allows to save a bit of time compared to your submission. Link to video
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It really looks great to me! I have no objections, it's total Yes vote from me!
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I voted Yes by mistake, as I was willing to give a No. My reasons are about the same as feos'. Sorry.
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I'd like to help with the researches. Please, share one or more movies in which you perform the glitch in there: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/my#uploadfile
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