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Smash Bros is just so particularly good for showing off truly superhuman play, and there was plenty of that in this TAS. Very entertaining fighting. And hot damn, that hammer time sequence in the "Cave of Life" was hilarious.
Yes vote!
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Damn, thanks for that write-up Whiteted! It was entertaining and informative. Unfortunately you've confirmed that you had to go through exactly the process I was hoping to avoid, namely finding the collision functions and then finding matrices and bounding box vertices that way, which is a really huge amount of work.
I figured I could save a lot of time by just using enemy position data instead of bounding boxes, and manually coding in dimensions for their bounding box, but I would still need to reverse the view matrices to get them displayed correctly.
I'm very interested in the hook code when/if you manage to post it!
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There does exist a TAS of the full game as well:
Link to video
It's a really rough TAS though; a lot of it looks more like normal human play with with savestates than a TAS.
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Master of Arena is the third installment of the first-generation of Armored Core games, released for the Playstation.
Here's a TAP mini-project I did of me dunking on the top 10 opponents of the Master Arena (the hardest arena) using 4 different AC designs and weapons that are very difficult to use effectively. This is just a "concept" TAP so I didn't bother following the normal TAS rule of starting from power-on in lieu of starting from a savestate so that I could get into the action right away. Entertainment is the primary goal here so lots and lots of fights are very suboptimal so as to show off entertaining gameplay.
Link to video
The movie can be downloaded here: User movie #62708704588144436
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Whiteted wrote:
This is very good news because I'm just starting work on a bot for a Goldeneye 00 agent full run, and I've found the guards' hitboxes in memory but they are only available briefly before they are overwritten. Sometimes the game syncs up well with the 1/60th frame advances and you just can't read them.
Can you share a general overview of your strategy for finding the hitbox data? I don't mean like a detailed breakdown or anything (unless you really want to).
I had the idea of writing a wallhack in Lua to make TASing easier, and the part of the process that I figure would just be horrendously tedious and difficult would be figuring out where hitbox data is stored (and what format it might even be in), so that a bounding box could be drawn around the enemy. For Armored Core I know where each enemy's data structure is, but considering how complex collision functions can be, I doubted that vertices or something like that would be conveniently laying around near health values etc.
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Scaling vertical sections of the game super quickly with that teleporting trick is great stuff. St. Francis' Folly was just butchered with that trick. So much platforming is just skipped altogether. The movement trick where Lara is partially submerged in the ground and sliding around is funny, loved that.
The TAS has great entertainment/humor value too. The way Lara shoots like a lunatic while diving into the dirt is funny because of how bizarre it is. Superb job on the ending of the Tomb of Qualopec, hilarious like the train ride ending was in the last TAS.
The escape from Natla's Mines/Atlantis/The Great Pyramid was a real nail-biter with all of the super risky maneuvers.
Yes vote!
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Darth Marios wrote:
EDIT: "if I scaled a 320x240 native resolution PSX video to 4k then downscaled, the resulting image would look identical. " <-- This is applied to 3D games as well?
Yes. It doesn't matter if its 2D/3D, what matters if whether the video is being scaled to a higher resolution, versus being (internally) rendered at a higher resolution.
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Darth Marios wrote:
Ok thanks. That method sounds it require more time to do (and avisynth doesnt use hardware encoding, right?)
Another thing, rendering a video at higher quality than monitor does (and maybe over the power of graphic cartd too XD) it might damage graphic card and/or monitor as well?
1) AviSynth doesn't do encoding at all - it only does preprocessing, which you would then need to feed into an actual encoder. AviSynth and its plugins are capable of using a very wide range of optimized processor instruction sets like MMX, SSE, etc., if that is what you mean by "hardware" though.
Anyway, I only mentioned AviSynth because the search term would lead you to useful information. You can use whatever the hell set of tools you want to process/encode your video. FFMPEG/x264 encoders also take full advantage of processor optimizations, and there's probably offerings from nVidia/AMD out there if you want to encode with your graphics card.
2) No.
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feos wrote:
Regarding 300%, is there some official indication that saves should be used across all 3 games?
The (small) AC speedrunning community is only just recently exploring a 300% category, so there aren't well-defined parameters yet. Brookman is part of that discussion though so maybe he can shed some light there.
feos wrote:
How is 100% completion defined for that game?
There is an in-game completion counter. To reach 100% you have to:
Complete the game to unlock mission free-select (this involves then starting the game again and loading your save data to continue completing missions)
Complete every mission
Defeat every Raven/AC in the missions that they appear in (this includes Valkyrie and both Nineballs)
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Darth Marios wrote:
I have 2 questions about video quality:
1) Its possible to dump a video higher than monitor resolution? I mean, if i have 1080p monitor, can i dump 1440 quality videos even if my monitordownscale them to 1080p then? (for instance, in Dolphin, by using 4x IR and set "dump at internal resolution")
2) A video recorded at same window/frame size, but at higher resolution, its better than same video at normal settings? I explain better: a 6k video captured?dumped at 1080p its better than a 1080p video captured at 1080p resolution?
1) Almost certainly yes you can. I say "almost" because I've not used Dolphin, but if it works like most other emulators, the resolution that the game is being rendered at and that it will be dumped at is independent of the size of the window. Honestly this is real easy to test though - just dump a short clip at some resolution that's really high while the window is small and test if the resulting video is the correct resolution.
2) Probably. From what you've said, it sounds like the emulator can actually render games at higher internal resolutions than intended, and if that is the case, then yes, you could actually get a quality increase, specifically you would get antialiasing.
What you are describing is called Supersampling, which is a form of anti-aliasing used in a lot of game engines. You render the game at a higher resolution than is being displayed, usually apply some sort of sharpening filter, then downscale using a high quality scaling algorithm to get rid of aliased edges. However, for supersampling to work, the initial image has to actually be rendered at a high resolution, not scaled to a high resolution. For instance, if I scaled a 320x240 native resolution PSX video to 4k then downscaled, the resulting image would look identical.
Search for "avisynth supersampling" for some results on how you might go about doing this. For good results you really need a good quality scaling algorithm applied to downscale the image. If you are relying on a media players built in scaling, or something like youtube to do the downscaling, you may not get as good results.
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Are you sure that your save data for disk 1 was flushed correctly to save RAM? Try loading up disk 1 and seeing if your data shows up.
If so, try loading up disk 2 at least once. Bizhawk should automatically create a saveram file for disk2, named correctly and all that. Check to see if the file name it creates differs from the one you copied somehow.
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This is a workaround, but what you can do is go into your PSX/SaveRAM folder and find the .SaveRAM file that has the name of the first disc that you are using. Make a copy of that file, and rename it so that its name is name_of_disc_2_here.SaveRAM.
BizHawk should see the game saves for disk 2 after doing that.
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There's a Japanese TASer by the name of Votomu-san who did a full TAS of Armored Core 3: Silent Line and posted it to nicovideo.
Here's the playlist link:https://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/30038837Part 1Link to video
Things start to really pick up and get interesting around part 6 or so if you want to skip ahead. It's a really entertaining TAS though and he makes use of all sorts of configurations to keep it fresh and plays around a lot with movement tricks.[/video]
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I've finished writing the game resources page for Armored Core and uploading all of my various research documents and resources. It can all be found here. I hope it helps those in the future working on this game!
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I never came up with a hard list of what influences the AI and how they are influenced by different factors. I did discover though that just about everything influences them. Stuff that specifically might help though:
Whether you are looking at the enemy or not.
Which weapon you currently have active.
If you are walking forward or boosting forward.
How far you are from the enemy.
Those factors were the ones that seemed to have the most effect on pathing for the Ravens' test when I was TASing it. Specifically, moving slightly left of center and making sure to look slightly left seemed to influence the second Stork to get closer more than other factors. You could lose your mind trying to get the perfect Ravens' Test though, I almost did. Since the RNG resets for each mission, you should be safe to leave it and re-optimize later if you want.
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This TAS is every bit as twitchy and spastic as a Sonic TAS should be. Playing around and barely hanging onto the elevator was a great way to use some dead time. Watching the Sonic gang fling themselves into the aether at top speed only to suddenly finish the mission after a pleasant fall was consistently confusing and hilarious.
The only negative thing in the whole run is Tails' atrocious voice acting, not that the writing helped at all there. Obviously not a knock on the TAS quality.
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This TAS is totally insane. The game is so completely and thoroughly broken and exploited in order to finish it at record speed. The commentary/breakdown of this TAS is easily the best I've ever seen, and I watched with great interest the entire time. Even without the excellent commentary, the TAS is joyfully bizarre to watch.
Very obvious yes vote.
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I'm happy to hear that you guys enjoyed the supercut! Truly, very little of the game is actually played in this TAS thanks to exploits so I'm glad the parts there were played were entertaining.
The Brookman:
That generator is hard requirement for the any% run. You ultimately collect very little credits since cash-advance missions are few and far between, and the generator is one of the best two generators in the game. It saves you having to do more missions to afford a generator for the final build, and it's conveniently very fast to collect.
I would be thrilled if this TAS ultimately inspired a full TAS, since I actually ended up creating this TAS because I was disappointed when I checked to see if one existed already. I figured I should be the change I want to see, and maybe once a video was posted, people would want to try to obsolete it.
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CoolHandMike wrote:
I have to vote Meh for this. The video with the subtitled notes and the sped up abort missions made for a good video. However if this was the full 30 minutes with only 3 missions played it would be more tedious to watch. I will say the missions that WERE played were done excellently. Maybe some day we could see a full play through?
This TAS is a Vault submission for sure, I accepted that fact when I settled on this category. I'm glad you enjoyed the highly edited encode though, my goal was to make it a little interesting at least.
I too hope to see a full playthrough one day, though I don't know that I'll be the one to do it because of how much work this was already.
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I am apparently the kind of weirdo who actively checks, reads, and responds to his email, so I try to respond when I get the topic notifications!
I think any playaround for this game could be a real blast to watch, even with a non-standard goal where you skip around. I would be careful with deciding when and how to skip though. Crushing a bunch of missions then suddenly skipping a few would be disappointing for sure.
Having said that, the reason I chose any% instead of the a playaround is because once I started actually TASing the game, the full scope of a playaround of this game came into view and I backed off really quickly. I knew that I wanted to complete a TAS for this game, but a playaround will be an enormous undertaking. Aborting to the end is boring and is going to get the TAS put in the Vault category, but I chose between a TAS that I could realistically complete and an ideal TAS I would never finish.
You should jump back in by just TASing individual missions and see if you've got the desire still. I haven't tested it too extensively, but I am pretty sure the RNG resets at the beginning of each mission, so if you have fun with specific missions, you could create a full TAS from your individual level inputs.
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The Brookman wrote:
I had started an AC tas back in 2014 but it was on my friend's PC and I lost the file and never restarted.
the most interesting thing I had been able to do was literally FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR.
this would be kinda useful in some maps but it was extremely hard to reproduce and may or may not be applicable on maps where it would have function.
anyway, I'll be lookin forward to a submission.
Oh boy, clipping is definitely a big part of this run. It's actually a major feature of the category, that is, allowing out-of-bounds movements. I use clipping to completely bypass most of the final 2 missions.
As for how to do it, it occurs with a specific combination of equipment that causes a very specific walk-speed cadence. LN-501 legs, the XCA-00 core, and either AN-3001 or ANKS-1A46J arms. When strafing left or right with this combination, pressed down to walk backward at specific times during the animation will cause the walking animation to bug out and send you through the floor.
Now, the big mystery here is how to do this without that combination of equipment. In JAX's TAS he does it with different equipment, but I've never been able to reproduce it. I contacted him directly and he couldn't remember how he did it either, stating that it might have just been an emulator innacuracy for PSXjin.
Anyway, glad you're interested. It'll be submitted pretty soon hopefully. I'm just trying to wrap up all of the post-production stuff like commentary/encoding/etc.
EDIT
The Brookman wrote:
I HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME and I may take interest in TAS again at this time and AC would DEFINITELY be on the list.
I would personally aim for more of a "super play" than a "fastest completion" for this game, since. . . .as discussed, aborting missions is kinda just boring.
I'll keep this in mind and try to check back occasionally.
I plan on detailed submission notes, and I am going to ask to edit the game resources page for Armored Core after this to dump the huge amount of research I've done on the game as well as all of my scripts and tools and stuff. If you do get back into TASing and want to do Armored Core, there will hopefully be lots for you to work off and I'd be happy to help with questions etc. :)
