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You said doing kicks maniplates rng? If that’s the case then why not remove one kick from the area that the “GO” sign appears?
No, I didn't say that, but perhaps I was not specific enough. Only projectile attacks and standing melee attacks advance the RNG. Jumping kicks do not. The reason is that ranged attacks have a random trajectory deviation, and standing melee attacks have a random choice between punch/kick/headbutt. But jump kicks are always the same, so the RNG is not advanced.
if you were working with TAStudio, as you can simultaneously edit eaxh player’s movements,
I am very poor at TASstudio (branches, how do they work?), but yes, it would probably help. There is still the issue of finding a good strategy for the boss, though. You could look into that and record a proof of concept in BizHawk, from savestate, if you want to try out the game. There is enough time to set up any position before the boss appears.
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Probably not. The RNG is a two byte number, so there are around 65,000 possible values. It doesn't increase linearly but uses some formula to get the next number, so all numbers might not be used, but even if it's just 1%, it won't be possible. Just to be sure, you could test the periodicity by letting the game run at some place where it only increases once per frame, and check how long it takes before the same number appears again (preferably with a script).
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I believe it will sync if rng manipulation is perfect, which we ahve alot of chances to do with the downtime we have.
I agree with the first part, but I disagree with the second part. In the movie you sent, the desync happens exactly at frame 2109, which corresponds to frame 2096 in the old movie (13 frames apart). On this frame, Gens calls the RNG 3 times, but BizHawk calls it 4 times. So what you would have to do is remove one RNG call before this, which isn't easily done. There aren't many (any?) extra attacks to remove. And adding attacks until you get sync might fix this particular instance, but the RNGs will then be hopelessly out of sync for the rest of the movie.
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I sent you the movie. You should also check out the lua script which has an RNG display: User movie #60949290389503023 The RNG is a two byte number at 0xFFF5FC. It changes every frame by itself, and additional times when a function asks for the RNG. Things which call the RNG include upgrade drops (as you've seen), projectile trajectory, type of melee attack and enemy behavior. In the black screen while the first stage loads, the RNG stays at A1C6 for a while. For your movie conversion to sync it needs to be the same in BizHawk. The reason the 3-3 boss is so tricky is because the height/length of his jump is decided by RNG. To be optimal you need to be hitting him with every projectile from both players. Normally you would record one player at a time, and change your position and attack direction during the boss' jump, and compensate for the random deviation of each projectile. But then, when you try to record the second player, the boss will no longer behave the same, or even if it does, the already recorded player's projectiles will not have the same trajectory and miss. Having both players in the same position would make it easier to record both at once, but when the boss dies, the characters need to be on opposite sides of the screen for the end level animation to start.
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The RNG in this game is very sensitive, so I'm not surprised. It might have desynched earlier, just that it becomes apparent at scroll stop, because you actually have to fight the enemies then. EZGames, If you want access to the latest version, let me know. Currently it's stuck at the jumping boss in the mushroom stage, because I can't think of a good way to optimize it properly. (I can explain more in detail if you want.) If you figure that out, the run would perhaps be on its way again.
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Thanks Dacicus! Nice comparison. It looks like it varies a lot who's faster in which room, so maybe it's possible to make an improved movie with contributions from all teams.
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Spikestuff wrote:
What's the difference in the missions besides Jupiter being hardest? - Is there a map layout difference in these missions? Why didn't you consider doing all the appropriate missions to set a standard to a more complete run? - Is it just to compete to the one that skips all the missions?
There is no difference in map layout or objective on any of the missions. The difference is the time you're given (from 18 minutes down to 10 minutes), the speed of the searchlights, how many enemies there are in the Embassy, if the enemies are visible on the map, and perhaps some other stuff. The rank (Lieutenant, Captain, Commander) affects the pattern of the searchlights, I think how fast the enemies react, and perhaps some other stuff. So in other words, there is no point in doing more than one playthrough, on the hardest mission/rank. An alternative category might be best ending (no commandos or hostages injured).
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Mothrayas wrote:
Since third-party hosting is still not in the free Photobucket subscription plan, there's no guarantee that images won't still be blocked from hotlinking eventually (unless you pay for it). You can use it, but if it's going to result in issues again I may remove offending avatars without warning.
Can't we use the same solution as for TinyPic instead? Namely: "All 72 TinyPic avatar users have now had their avatars restored with a copy hosted on the site." (Can't we use this solution for all avatars?)
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I don't follow with the desync problems. It desynced, but you remade it? I don't know what the cause could be. Anyway, amazing to see that going for the suggested military victory worked out so well. You already noted that the troopers attack the wrong unit at the end. Some other thoughts: 1) About the quad attacking the soldier right at the start, at 0:04. Does the soldier even do enough damage to bring the quad down to half health? With correct positioning, it only does 1 damage per attack, and the quad has 130 hp, meaning it has to attack 65 times. The harvester should get there and crush it sooner than that, no? 2) After the Windtrap goes down, the troopers use their weaker missile attack against the Silo. I happens later on too. Would it be better to assign a closer target? Perhaps they can be moved between attacks? It isn't a huge difference (4 vs 5 damage) so don't bother too much about it. 3) At the end, you should probably sacrifice the troopers by entering buildings. This deals 90 instant damage (45 hp * 2) assuming the troopers have full health, and that the building has more than 90*2 = 180 hp left. The trooper takes over the building if the building has less than 25% health remaining. For the buildings in question, this is: Refinery: 450/4 = 112 hp Const.yard: 400/4 = 100 hp Windtrap: 200/4 = 50 hp Silo: 150/4 = 37 hp (Barracks and Radar outposts cannot be taken over. They are unfortunately the last remaining buildings in your movie.) The 90 to 111 instant damage can be compared with the 5 the trooper does every attack otherwise, so it's pretty significant, corresponding to 18 attacks. Even if the order of building destruction at the end isn't changed, if you sacrificed them before the last two buildings, it would probably still save time. Stylistically, I think it would be interesting to see the health status of the buildings as they're going down, if you're just waiting anyway.
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Good to see you're still around! I'll try to help out as best I can. I'm not that well-versed in JPC-RR, so I can't help you with the sound settings. Someone in the MS-DOS emulator subforum or on IRC or Discord can probably help. That mission 1 can be won by military victory is wrong, as far as I know. It should be like this: Mission 1: Spice only Mission 2: Spice or Military Mission 3-9: Military only For the trick on mission 1, did you try other ways than entering the construction menu? I think using Restart, or Save+Load, also works. That stuff about the harvester RNG is interesting. I had no idea that spice collection rate varied. Even if you manage to figure it out though, you still need some way to affect RNG, preferably by player input, so you can cause it to always pick up spice. (And preferably, never decrease spice on the ground.) I guess this could be used to deny the enemy spice, too. Looking forward to a test of MV! I did it in real time in 4 ingame minutes, but I don't know how much real-time that was, or how much it could be improved with TAS tools.
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User btl posted a WIP in the WIP thread 8-9 months ago, but it went unanswered. :( I didn't see it until now. He then created an updated version which fixed a mistake in level 1, and finished level 2: Link to video So, perhaps it's already abandoned, but to give some feedback on this: - The sound card is not properly set up and Dune 2 falls back to midi soundeffects. This probably needs a redo to fix. All the other stuff is minor timesavers: - I think you can move your units, at least quick ones like quads, between their attacks. This means they have to move less distance to attack their next target when the current one dies. - It doesn't seem like the positioning tricks are used, to deal 100% damage and receive 50% damage. For example at 3:30, two Harkonnen Quads are dealing half damage and one is dealing full damage. I think positioning the enemy unit outside the screen contributes a lot less. - The troopers seem to be positioned at a distance on purpose, to get the missile attack rather than the bullet attack. But the bullet attack is actually 25% stronger, so this gives less damage rather than more. - Attacking head-on means you reach the enemy base a bit faster, but you cannot draw advantage of tricking the enemy to attack his own buildings. - The stage with less starting and enemy units is picked, to take over the refinery and win by passing the spice quota, like the WR speedrun. I wouldn't rule out that that complete military victory on one of the other stages is faster under TAS conditions.
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Thank you Mothrayas for the comparison video! I love that kind of stuff. Thank you Memory for arranging the competiton this time around! Congratulations to team winner for being winners. Now, how about we all go to the resource page http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/DonaldLand.html and write down what we found out about the game. For example: * What are all the quirks of the movement mechanics? * What is the fastest way to travel horizontally? * How does the quick kill on the Ghost Town boss work? Don't think I've seen that one explained yet...
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About this rule:
"Currently I plan to have all submitted movies be converted to the most accurate emulator (NESHawk). If there is avoidable lag during gameplay on the more accurate emulator but not the less accurate, this will not be fixed during the conversion so beware. I am willing to consider changing this rule however to a flat comparison of times without conversions if enough people express a desire otherwise."
Is this an issue in this game? Have you tried just recording a movie through it and checked if it syncs on the other emulator? Our team is trying to decide on an emulator, due to some hardware limitations, and it would be nice to know we won't get screwed over if we use FCEUX.
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CONFIRMATION
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Warp wrote:
Somebody mentioned Doom as a huge exception to this whole principle of no game-specific TAS environments. And it is indeed quite unusual. It is my understanding (and please correct me if I'm wrong), that Doom's own replay files do not store keypresses and replicate the run by feeding these keypresses to the game. Instead, they contain, essentially, data of the type "object X is at place Y at time Z" which (if that's indeed the case) could perfectly well be abused to create "runs" that are impossible to replicate when playing normally (eg. the player just jumping from one end of the level to the other in one frame, just because the replay file says that at the next frame the player's position is at that other end of the level).
I agree, it is unusual. However, you are wrong about Doom replay files. They store attempted movement in forward/backward and sideway components, turning and attempted use of buttons and weapons. The movement data is in the same format as that which the interface feeds to the engine, after interpreting mouse and keyboard input. You are probably mixing it up with demos from Quake and its derivatives, which do store information as "object X is at place Y", which is why they can never be accepted here.
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Truncated wrote:
Is there a good reason we still don't allow users to upload avatars to tasvideos.org itself? It feels very 2004. This offsite picture storage is always shaky, the avatars aren't big in filesize (we restrict it already) and it would probably improve page loading.
Does anyone have an answer for this?
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Most of the glitches I have found are in the submission texts, no point in repeating them here. But let it be known to the world that I was the one who found the "fish fly" glitch in Wonder Boy III: Dragon's Trap, for the Sega Master System (on original hardware). It makes it possibly to fly out of the water as Pirahna Man by quickly alternating left and right, and gives early access to the legendary equipment. Post #115846 It's still there in the remake, I saw in AGDQ 2018.
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feos wrote:
Hi guys. Thanks for your efforts! Finally we have a system to incorporate all your translations into, can someone please tell what posts here can be used to put on actual translation pages, since I have 0 knowledge of Japanese? Ideally the ready-to-go translations should be put on https://pastebin.com/ in their intended form, but I won't have problems with using what's there already too. Halp :)
Hey feos. The posts which contains translations that can be used are - sparky's translation of Rules.html -- with addition of v01's update of the JvsU heading, except the last line, which is a comment. - zvsp's translation of WelcomeToTASVideos.html - yuigenron's translation of Vault.html, except the five lines above the link, which is a comment. All of these suffer from the problem that they translate pages from 2011 and 2012, which have been updated since. This is most obvious for the Rules translation, which has had a lot of updates on approved emulator systems and versions. gocha's translation is of some forum registration page, not a wiki page, and I don't think we have functionality to handle that.
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I will update the file. I have a question: at frame 18000, you land on the right edge of the moving platform, even though you are jumping right. In all other cases you land on the left edge when jumping right. It looks like you could have jumped sooner to land sooner. What am I missing? Never mind, you noted this in the comments already: "The jump onto the second vehicle is a few frames late."
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Is there a good reason we still don't allow users to upload avatars to tasvideos.org itself? It feels very 2004. This offsite picture storage is always shaky, the avatars aren't big in filesize (we restrict it already) and it would probably improve page loading.
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There was a topic 6 years ago where our Japanese users translated many pages of Tasvideos. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11095 This was never added to the site as far as I know, probably because there is no system for adding it.
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Jag fixade till sidan / I fixed up the page. I wonder how much value a Swedish version adds... for Swedish people in the relevant age span, knowledge of English is close to 100%.
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Just so you don't feel all alone in here, I checked through the latest movie. There are a lot of turn arounds before landing on ledges which I don't understand what they are for. I know turning around helps when you can go from a >14f jump to a 14f jump, or when clearing a gap which would be to wide otherwise. But in other cases I thought just holding jump for 1 more frame was faster? At 26700 when you enter the horizontal section, it is possible to get ahead of the screen before it unlocks. We didn't have time to investigate if doing that was faster than just unlocking it at once as you do now. Doing it means you need to double back at the end before touching the boss door or a slower boss start, but the potential gain is different flame timing meaning you can potientially avoid damage.
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£e Nécroyeur wrote:
Super Pinball Action
Wow, that almost has to be it. Most of the things check out, except for the masks... there is a girl with a rifle though. Many thanks!
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Platform(s): Arcade Genre: Pinball simulation Estimated year of release: Early 1990s probably. Graphics/art style: Manga style. (Or drawn, not based on photographs at least.) Notable characters: There were multiple (4?) boards. Each board had a picture of girl(s) in manga style. The only picture I remember is one featuring two girls wearing some kind of gas masks. Possibly rifles too. Notable gameplay mechanics: Doing some combo or reaching a certain score, or something, resulted in the girls in the picture becoming less clothed. Other details: Played it in Greece. The arcade also had beatemup The King of the Dragons (1991). The game was probably innocent-looking/tame because I remember us being surprised when there was suddenly undressing.