I loved how challenging this hack was back when I used to play it. Unfortunately it is a bit messy and could probably considered abandoned unless the authors switched sites or something.
Just when I thought it could get anymore amazing, you manage to break it even more.
Do you have any ideas on what characters you are going to use after Desert Palace?
Somebody managed to recreate the SM64 Staff Roll music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-HbEn5Sqzo
I loved how this turned out. I've seen and listened to the staff roll hundreds of times throughout my time here but it took me this long to realize how awesome this song is. I always thought it was seeing all the worlds again that made the staff roll feel awesome but thanks to ponies, it might the other way around (either that or nostalgia).
That reminds me, where was Scootaloo in the last episode? Being RD's #1 fan, you would have thought she'd visit RD in the hospital at least once for some brownie points.
Nothing. College just started so I ran out of time.
The improvement looks a lot better and cleaner. Have you done any experiments to see just how flexible the game is with hexing tetra master without causing desyncs later in the run?
I've gotten a lot better at lua and hopefully all my time writing lua scripts and disassembling code in Desmume would help.
I will check to take a look at what I have to work with and see if I can make something stable enough to read the memory and make the necessary inputs.
That is incredible. I didn't expect it to be that fast.
Do you know if the main RNG plays a role in TM? If so, maybe a burning a few somewhere before the tournament could yield different results.
I have no idea what should be done. There must be a way to optimize it a little more but I have no clue where to start looking. I doubt people would notice a few saved frames during TM anyways.
Hmmm. Sorry for double posting again but I'm gonna need your help.
I'm at the Tetra Master Championship in Treno and while it's pretty easy to manipulate a win, optimizing it may be near to impossible without brute forcing.
What are you trying to optimize/brute force?
Opponents hand? Opponents moves?
I'm going to assume Opponents moves. A lot of bad luck could easily add a minute.
I haven't timed anything but I'm going to assume flipping a card would eat frames. The most time consuming would be a battle between 2 cards and probably a few more frames for the chain (if any). Combining that with manipulating the opponent's cards and the board (costs frame for each blocker) to make it possible for the fastest game would be an impressive feat.
If I remember correctly, the first two are mandatory wins and the last is optional (win if you want the Rebirth Ring). A perfect win/lose would cost a lot more frames than a win/lose. I don't remember if getting a draw would skip the card exchange (and be faster).
What are your expectations for these matches because a perfect match (time wise) would probably drive most people insane to set up (not to mention 2 different strategies and 3 matches in a row).
type 3 glitches: manipulating not memory, but the execution of the game. Now you're basically reprogramming the game. Has any other run done this before this one?
Something about that is making me scratch my head. Manipulating execution sounds a little too vague to me. Glitches happen under specific conditions and causes varying levels of unexpected results. Wouldn't manipulating the game into those specific conditions, regardless if it is as simple as using unexpected input or as difficult as chaining together a ton of other glitches in order to achieve the specific conditions, still fall under manipulating execution?
You could try and separate them into manipulating values to change execution results (execution continues as normal but with modified values) and manipulating memory to interrupt normal execution flow (execution ends up running code that shouldn't be ran at that point in time).
The real problem isn't the nature of the glitches but is the significance of the end results. Yes, a glitch could cause a large amount of memory corruption and other unexpected results, but that doesn't mean the results are in any way useful.
Let's say we instead used this glitch to execute the level completion and continued on. Would you still consider it a "glitched" run? It interrupted normal execution flow but why would it not be a "glitched" run? The answer is that the end result from the glitch would not be significant enough. Trying to categorize the glitches used and their significance in the run isn't something you could create a formula for. Maybe you can but it might be best to do it case by case until then.
A question: does this movie really manipulates luck heavily or is it just category heritage from back when this branch actually needed to manipulate the player ID and such?
I know Youtube tracks referrals to videos. I'm going to guess if it is embedded and it gets enough views, the "can also be seen on" will appear. I'm not sure if uploading to Nico would count as an embed but perhaps Nico worked something out with Youtube to make this type of thing easier for both sides.
Want to be SOME PONY?! We have an immediate need for a results-oriented, creative thinker, and innovative global marketer to support our high-profile mega-brand My Little Pony. In conjunction with the objectives set in the global brand strategy, you will be part of a dynamic "pony powered" team building cohesive and actionable global marketing plans for the brand, leveraging the best thinking from around the world. You will also be responsible for managing the global marketing budget, obtaining, analyzing and reporting global POS to management, and oversee world class execution of all global marketing assets. And much like our core cast of ponies bond together in friendship and have magical adventures together, you will partner with internal and external resources and develop and execute integrated marketing initiatives, including major franchise programs, exclusive retailer programs, global promotions, digital and social media initiatives, entertainment marketing, and public relations. As a key member of our team, you will ensure the brand essence and all expressions of "anything My Little Pony" is consistent across platforms…and become a part of making the My Little Pony brand a pop culture phenomenon!
I don't understand why they couldn't go tell RD to stop bragging.
RD isn't the kind of pony that you can tell to stop bragging. RD would only get angry and accuse them of being jealous.
ventuz wrote:
I also don't understand why they need to put on masked costume,...
The idea is to show that you shouldn't let popularity get to your head. If they did it without the masked costume, everypony would start chasing them around and only reverse the roles. Also the above point...
ventuz wrote:
...have they forgotten the lesson back at Boast Busters that it's fine to show off talent at appropriate time?
The moral of Boast Busters was that you shouldn't show off your talents in an offensive way and it is fine when used in a beneficial way. RD was using her talents to help ponies in danger and showing them off in a way that doesn't offend other ponies.
ventuz wrote:
I wish they could handle it better like remove RD chasing after masked costume scene and add in scene where all the masked mare can't rescue or save the village or something and then RD come save the day.
Then RD will be popular again and no moral learned...
There seems to be a timing error in the commentary (I have no idea if it was intentional or not).
In the YT stream at ~39:27, "Quote can open this door because I read the letter (in Ma Pignon's room)." would do better at ~39:37. The subtitles afterwards seems to sync with the movie correctly.
How about Ivy the Kiwi?
You can get the theoretical maximum for only a few frames but with the help of tasing, you can also push Kiwi after launching to not only maintain the high speed but also increase it. I think a speed address was given in the game's topic if anybody wants to take a look.
Zanoab, I don't know if this works or not, but check your settings.
Firmware: Should be the exact same settings as stored in the movie file. The emulator will not check this for you.
Also, check emulation settings, and see whether "Enable Advanced Bus-Level Timing" should be checked or not.
I just double checked my settings and Advanced Bus-Level Timing became unenabled somehow. I enabled it again and the movies work perfectly. I still don't understand how the initial RNG seed changed on me but everything works now. I really don't understand how my settings could have gotten reset without losing my hotkeys. Thanks FractalFusion.
Time to use my upgraded scripts to get new information out of my WIPs.
Bad News
There is a major emulator bug in Desmume somewhere. A month or two ago, the starting RNG seed when the game starts (frame 0) changed for no reason. I checked my backups and the backups on my other laptop that haven't been touched since the summer and NONE of my movies sync. I encountered this bug during the summer but the starting RNG seed returned to normal after a day so I thought I was getting tired or something. It seems the new RNG seed is here to stay for good this time so I spoke with a developer and unfortunately, he is getting the new RNG seed too. If anybody is able to get the WIP movies I uploaded to sync, please reset Desmume (return to frame 0), make a save state, and upload it. If the RNG seed can spontaneously change, then other areas might also being changing that isn't as noticeable. I also don't want to finish a new movie only to find out that all the work is lost to this bug.
Here is an old WIP for testing: http://www.mediafire.com/?9tgprj0saehtuwc
It should be the test run I encoded and uploaded so I know it used to sync.
Good News
With a little help from a developer, I am able to dump the cpu registers when the RNG function is ran by the game. This means that I can trace back most of the data along with the return register which tells me what code wanted the RNG.
What I found out so far:
Each enemy (only for the bottom screen) stores 8 bytes generated from 2 RNG seeds. Some stuff happens and a little while later, these 8 bytes are modified by 1 RNG seed. This happens for every enemy but only 1 enemy at a time with a few frames in between each. How it is decided when an enemy will have these bytes refreshed and what these 8 bytes are used for is currently unknown.
A piece of code gets 2 RNG seeds every frame and stores it within a linked list I have not explored yet. I suspect this list contains important information about the battle so I will be tracing the head/tail of this linked list later.
Later, I will use this to track the item drop code and hopefully trace it to the location of the drop tables.
This is a great run. Just like the previous runs, I couldn't look away in fear of missing something highly interesting. The luck manipulation is very well done and how much time you guys managed to save is unbelievable.
Yes Vote!
Have a fairly civil discussion about this guy and how he may or may not be a threat to positive portrayals of males in girl's entertainment.
Time to lock the thread.
Everypony just needs to chill and remember the Elements of Harmony
and also complain to Hasbro about the Celestia toy being pink even though we wouldn't be caught dead with the dolls in the first place.
Shhh... they aren't dolls, they are action figures.
In the same way, by showing no emotion or concern over his sister's deteriorating physical and mental state, I don't believe they're trying to present Big Macintosh in the best possible light.
He may be one of those people that keeps a neutral facial expression unless under high levels of emotion. If he had no concern, the argument would have been over before Applejack took a violent stance.
He also has shown a concerned facial expression when Applejack took a violent stance during the argument. He could have been concerned over starting a fight (he is injured after all) or concerned he is going to lose the argument and Applejack will go through with it. He had the option to forfeit the argument for his own safety but he didn't. He instead continued his argument (with logic) which meant he was more concerned over losing the argument than his own safety.
Also keep in mind that Twilight attempted the exact same argument out of concern later in the episode and failed as badly as Big Mac. Seeing how even Twilight (a close friend) failed to overpower Applejack's pride, there was no point in Big Mac giving it another try. His position after the result of the last argument would have given him a disadvantage anyways.
I know this is still a long ways off, but I was wondering if you were planning on trying the big sequence break where you get a flying Chocobo at the first opportunity and fly to the Forgotten Continent before you get an airship. I feel like if you luck manipulated Chocobo Hot 'n' Cold perfectly, it might be faster.
This sequence breaks only works on the early version of the game afaik and doesn't work in the version I use (the common one), I already checked.
I don't know what are the rules of TASvideos regarding using specific version to allow a sequence break, and even if it was allowed, I've no idea where to find this particular iso.
In that case, has anybody checked if the WIP will sync on a non-GH disk? I haven't checked what all was modified besides fixing the Gold Chocobo glitch but it will be interesting if one version was faster than the other on specific disks. Seeing how the Gold Chocobo glitch is performed on Disk 3, you have plenty of time to acquire one before you actually need it. Are there any rules against using disks from different sets in a run?
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/748553-181-mine-little-pony-v03/