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Ah, what the hell. I see that hegyak/bsbisleet is a player short and there are currently no players to be assigned to their team. I was reluctant to join because I don't know how much time I'll have, but I guess an extra player with low activity is better than no extra player?
I'll join, under the condition that I get added to a team which would otherwise not be full. Hope that's OK.
Maybe finally I will break the curse where the team I'm in never finishes on time...
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Archanfel wrote:
(funny picture)
Heh. Thanks for believing in me! I actually have half of the next level (truck convoy) done, but I thought I'd wait with uploading it until it's done. Some time...
As before, if anyone wants to join to speed this up, just contact me.
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TASeditor wrote:
I'm the only one who used a trick in the beginning of each stage to accelerate faster, it saves 9 frames according to Tompa.
I'm not surprised that this is possible, the physics are pretty quirky. For example, I noticed that when trying to change direction in the air, it is faster to let go of the run button.
Tompa wrote:
I only used: Frame Advance and Save States. No other tools. I planned on using the ram watch, but I felt like I didn't need it, so it was skipped. After TASing for awhile, I looked the Genesis version TAS as a comparision. Wasn't mostly that helpful, but it inspired me to try hard to grab Moses quickly in the final level.
I did mostly the same thing. I don't have a good explanation for why my rerecord count is so low and yours so high. I didn't restart my movie file or anything. Does Bizhawk calculate rerecords in a very different way than FCEUX? I don't think I used as few as 90, but I guess it's possible...
Almost all of my time was spent experimenting with how to pick up the baby optimally. I managed to get into the water in the final level like Tompa, but couldn't find a way to stay alive even with constant jumping, so I gave up and used a worse pickup strat. With about 5 minutes left I noticed that the last level sometimes starts to fade out earlier if you let go of the run/forward buttons, but by then it was to late to change the earlier stages.
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dwangoAC wrote:
Oddly, the realtime speedrunners I've spoken to are extremely confident that they will come out on top, so it'll be interesting to see what the outcome is.
Odd indeed. Honestly I can't see a lot of games where even a sloppy TAS doesn't beat a live speed runner. But perhaps I'm wrong.
I think such a challenge would be interesting, but perhaps mainly to the TAS audience? It would be like an extremely short Dream Team Competition, which has been popular in the past. Since the general audience is not involved in the creation, I don't know how interesting only showing the final result would be.
I can volunteer to tas a game in 4 hours to test it out, but it would need to be under the honor system - I can't guarantee long stretches of free time.
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It's not a bad idea for a project, but you will not be able to submit it here. We can only accept files with input (keypresses, mouse movents), not encoded video.
Good luck with the practice. At the moment it looks like your tool-assisted movie is slower than unassisted speedruns.
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The encode which was published yesterday on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lA4IicLJOw
has a strange emulator message included: "Maximum CPU usage" at 2:57 and once more at some other time I can't be bothered to find again. Never seen it before, what's up?
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This sounds like something which could be figured out with a bit of disassembly. There are several people skilled in this on IRC. For example r57shell and feos helped me with taking apart the RNG in Batman and Robin. Once you see the calculation steps used to determine if a trap will be disabled or not you can monitor the input data and see what you can do to manipulate that data.
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A question: the second time around (at 1:17:10) in the Reznor Fortress, why is the key still picked up and brought through the level? It seems like it costs quite some time to pick it up. After that it's just abandoned outside the boss room door.
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1-2 is now completed:
User movie #16023971691581508
Almost 470 frames were saved compared to the test movie. I switched to the green weapon for the three upcoming sub-bosses. I have a gnawing suspicion that that might not have been a good idea, but we'll see.
I also noticed that for the red weapon, level 6 and 7 recharge slightly faster than the other levels. There might be other such differences, because I only tested the first level for all weapons when I looked into it previously.
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Archanfel wrote:
Stage 1 is just awesome. Looking forward to see stage 2 WIP too :)
And i really hope you will finish full TAS of this great game.
Truncated wrote:
My guess is that the run will end up in the vault.
No way! It is one of the most entertainment Sega Genesis games. I will eat my hat if it will end up in the vault.
Glad you liked it! I have done the two first lock screens of stage 1-2, the last one being is a bit problematic so far. Stupid helicopters. But I'll get through eventually.
That vault comment was before I started recording anything. If the rest of the stages are good, it might make up for all the boring autoscrollers.
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WST wrote:
Guys,
I don’t know if it’s the right place to ask, but I beleive someone here can help me.
I have such a thing from my mom’s Korean friend:
But I am not familiar with Korean language and cannot even use Google Translate, as I have no idea how to type that.
Can you guys explain me what is this? I understand the English title, but I’d be glad to know what it’s all about. If you need a photo of the back side, tell me.
I don't speak Korean other than a few short phrases, but the writing system isn't too hard, so I can decipher the pronunciation at least.
BUT
you don't need to know how to type Korean to use it Google translate! You can draw it, by clicking the pen icon. I tested drawing the first big label 오리엔탈 드레싱, which (surprise surprise) means Oriental Dressing.
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It looks good to me! The only thing I can think of is that perhaps there are faster solutions to get the enemies in the pits somehow. Still, I vote yes.
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feos wrote:
I don't have a script for BizHawk.
It wouldn't be necessary. If the converted movie syncs on BizHawk, I can finish recording it on Genesis, and it can be encoded on BizHawk to get better sound.
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CMiller wrote:
This is really awesome to watch! I will say though that the emulation does a rather poor job with the sound effects unfortunately.
Thanks! I rewatched the movie of the speed run to see if I could hear the differences, but nothing stands out to me. Is there any sound effect in particular you are thinking of?
I know that the sound emulation in Genesis is way off in some games (for example Taz-mania) so it doesn't surprise me.
Aqfaq wrote:
Doesn't Bizhawk have a bit better sound emulation?
Does the run synch on Bizhawk?
No idea in both cases. Is there a convenient way to convert from GMV to Bizhawk movie, to test this?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Experienced player
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Finished subboss and stage 1-1. Now time for 1-2.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/15046649006587311
I suspect this will be the most entertaining boss fight of the run.
Like expected the RNG was a bit though at times, where only 1 attack could be recorded per player before having to switch and fix up the other player which now desyncs.
RT-55J has now left the project, and since he didn't record anything in this version (his test movie is very useful for comparison though) this is now a solo project. I would love to have someone to co-operate with though, so if anyone is interested, send me a message.
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sack_bot wrote:
As a TASing traditionalist, I don't like taking damage.
So I was already planning on that.
In other news, I felt really sick today, so I got nothing done.
So today you are sick_bot instead? I hope you get better.
Doing Extreme pacifist sounds like a good idea! I actually think pacifist could be faster than not doing pacifist. Even though you might be hindered by enemies it would be quicker to kill sometimes, you speed up the first and last boss significantly (in real time, not game time) and Iosa somewhat.
About taking damage: there are some damage boosts which save significant time. I would include them, but it's up to you of course. See the speedrun I linked for examples.
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Aqfaq wrote:
I gave my vote to the Pirate Party.
Are the Finnish pirates expected to win a seat?
In Sweden they gained 2 seats last time with 7.1% of the votes. The polls so far have shown them far below gaining any seats at all. This goes in the Swedish tradition of sending one new party every year which is then never heard from again.
Previous election it was the June List which suddenly got 14% and were then never heard from again. This year it's expected to be Feminist Initiative which assumes that role. They had 2% last election and have gotten a lot of media attention lately, polling at over 4% which would enough for a seat.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_election,_2014
So, today the elections for the European parliament are held in most of the EU. (Some countries cheated and started early, but they don't count their votes until today.) The polls close and vote count starts 20:00 in Sweden (GMT+1), and a preliminary result is expected at 21:00. I'm guessing it's more or less the same in other countries.
Since there are quite a few Europeans here from different countries, I thought it would be interesting to hear your perspectives.
What does the debate look like where you live?
What are the major topics and issues?
Which parties are expected to gain seats?
What is the opinion about the EU and the Euro in general?
Your own views are welcome too of course, if you with to share them.
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I vote yes. We need to introduce a Aribitrary Code Execution flag for movies, I think.
To me, how many stages have been beaten when the game restarts is irrelevant. What if Finalfighter had instead found a method to skip Bombman and go directly to the Wily stages after beating the other five robot masters? Everyone would be saying "wow, cool glitch to skip Bombman", and no one would be saying "well, Bombman shows up as not beaten when you press start after the credits have rolled, so you didn't really beat the game".
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Finished the rest of stage 1-1, now at subboss.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/14737566844594077
I noticed that the hitbox script gives false positives on when hitting the subboss. In the first phase, only the tracks (bottom hitbox) can be hurt, but the script also registers hits on the upper part as doing damage. I need to redo the beginning of the fight paying attention to the HP counter instead.
Because the RNG changes an extra step for every melee attack, this will probably be a complex subboss even with two-track recording. Something recorded for one character will rapidly desync when adding the other character.
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netwizard wrote:
Do you have any progress? What are you working on at the moment? Make a video of level 1-1 please, just for me, it won't take much time I suppose? I'm dying to see how much improvement this fire-punch pattern trick and maybe some other tricks you must have found give. Please?
Today is your lucky day!
I was in the countryside without internet access for a few days in a row and forgot the books I was supposed to read at home, so I decided to TAS a little. I finished two more lock screens of 1-1. So far, it's 536 frames ahead. The improvements mostly come from more efficient killing of the enemies when the screen is locked, faster movement speed between screen locks is not as big a factor.
Some comments:
* Being able to "see" things outside the screen with feos' and r57shell's script helps immensely.
* Getting the weapon upgrades to spawn in the correct color is sometimes nearly impossible.
* It is meaningless to kill some enemies, they are removed by the game if they are more than ~112 pixels outside the screen, so it is better to just outrun them.
* The third lock screen was weird. It does not require all enemies to be dead. My best understanding is that it allows you to progress if either
1) there is 0 to 1 enemy left, and that enemy is a big guy
2) there are 0 to 2 enemies left, and neither is a big guy
Here is the movie for anyone interested:
User movie #14164670741047069
Here is the lua HUD with some minor updates:
User movie #14164733364724597
EDIT: Script credit to r57shell, sorry for missing that.
