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Is this usable for a total-control type movie? (I'd be interested in technical details. I'm guessing that instead of using the RNG to run arbitrary code, you're using the memory addresses that hold the controller input?)
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I've already started routeplanning An Untitled Story, but I was held up by it not actually being TASable. (Spelunky is another Game Maker game that would make for a good TAS.)
One possibility might be to adapt Hourglass so that it can handle Game Maker. Sadly, Game Maker is closed-source, so we can't just modify its internals in order to create a TASing platform.
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I like Odongdong's screenshot suggestion, actually, much more than any of the ones I've seen so far. It's from a fast-pasted star, it shows something that isn't actually possible in the game without glitches (that people who've played the game will know), and it's visually interesting.
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Warp wrote:
ais523 wrote:
@Warp: You haven't tried to teach an entire room of newbie C programmers who don't see why they have to use malloc.
What exactly does that have to do with asm?
I've never seen someone thinking memory magically comes out of nowhere in asm. Partly because you have to do the arithmetic yourself for things like arrays.
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Challenge and Puzzle are clearly different categories, and as such would be separate movies. I think Challenge would be much more entertaining. (Also, I'd prefer to see the DS version, because it's what more people will be used to, not to mention the GBA's controls are reasonably awful for playing the game with. The two games could be done separately.)
The higher levels of Challenge mode are indeed much harder; I have completed it on console, but only twice. Also, I have a feeling that the optimal strategy involves letting the screen fill via repeated downward swipes on the cancel button, then solving the entire screen optimally. I'm not convinced that single-stroke solutions are always possible for a Challenge mode puzzle that fills the whole screen, so luck manipulation may be useful there.
Oh, and I never did write the solver, but now you've got me wondering about it again…
EDIT: After looking at it, downswiping is going to be much faster because the main thing that slows down Challenge mode is the cutscene in which lines are eliminated. So you want to be able to remove as many lines as you can per stroke in order to get the top speed. This means waiting for the screen to fill, downswiping does that faster. (In case you don't know the trick, you put the stylus near the top of the cancel buttons and drag it downwards; it's mentioned in the manual, IIRC.)
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@Warp: You haven't tried to teach an entire room of newbie C programmers who don't see why they have to use malloc.
If you're not using low-level languages at all, fine. If you are, though, start with the basics.
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SoulCal wrote:
STBM wrote:
I would love to see this console verified.
MARIO CHIP 1 wrote:
And maybe with a better quality video than the other ones?
Pleasepleaseplease.
I'll try and get a decent recording of a console verification. I am aware I don't have any top-notch recording equipment but I'll do what I can. I won't be able to getting it verified until tomorrow night (have to rebuild my device)
Could you please time the run on console as accurately as you can? I'd like to be able to compare it with realtime runs, and don't trust Mupen to calculate the time correctly.
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I'd say knowing assembly language helps avoid common misconceptions in C in particular. You're unlikely to actually use it for anything (unless you're programming on very low-powered processors like washing machine controllers and old consoles), but it's good background knowledge.
On x86 at least, compilers will nearly always beat humans at converting a low-level algorithm to assembly language. (Partly because processors don't really work the way C and asm imagine them to work anyway nowadays.) So if you're just planning to program PCs or Macs, asm is mostly pointless except as a step to learning.
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I'd be fine with a vault accept for this game even if it is identical to the SMW run (which as far as I know it isn't). It shouldn't be allowed into any other tier unless it offers something significantly different.
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If BiT isn't as interesting to watch, or has other problems, you can just categorise it out in your submission. (It'd make the run ineligible for the Vault, but that's OK, because it should be entertaining enough to be accepted in the main category.)
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Warp wrote:
Perhaps emulator developers could study the possibility of making savestates a lot more efficient so that they could be done on each frame without affecting the emulation speed...
That's unlikely. You either have to copy the entire internal state, which is much slower than just modifying things as they happen in normal execution, or somehow work out what's changed since the last time you savestated, which will typically halve the emulation speed because you have to record everything in two places rather than one.
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Surely you can just end input before the cutscene plays? The game's over at that point. Or do you have to dismiss the cutscene once it's finished in this version in order to view the credits?
It might be a bad precedent to say "let's time runs by fastest to credits for this game so that the best ending is also the any% ending".
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The problem with Myst is that it doesn't clearly distinguish between wins and losses, and also sort-of assumes you haven't played the game before and don't have access to GameFAQs.
If you look at the sequel (Riven), the game has two major puzzles, and you can get several unambiguously bad endings (ending in the character's death in some cases) via only completing one of them. People don't consider this to be a win, which is not particularly surprising. You can also get some ambiguously bad endings, and there is an obvious best ending.
Myst is similar. The ending obtained in the run, the best ending, is the second-fastest. The bad ending involving using Atrus's book without the last page is the fastest, and finishes off with Atrus ranting at you for what an idiot you are. Most people don't consider this ending a win, but the game itself doesn't really distinguish. And if you're basing endings on difficulty, the bad endings with Sirrus's or Achenar's books are way harder to obtain than the bad ending with Atrus's (if you know the password in advance, anyway).
The "obvious" fix is to do a 100% of the game; when doing a 100%, the best ending is slightly faster than the available bad endings at that point. So the issue wouldn't come up in that case. (A 100% of Myst is somewhat tedious, btw, so may well end up in the vault.)
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Yeah, exploiting emulator glitches is against the rules (and should be against the rules), except where completely unavoidable. (And even then, a better method is to fix the emulator.)
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I know what the first TAS I saw was, and it wasn't even one that belonged to the site. It was a demonstration, using Item Abuse, of most of the glitches that were known in Super Mario World at the time. Although I'm only mildly interested in kaizohacks, it was great seeing the internals of the game exposed in such a way.
My favourite TAS is Space Invaders Extreme 2, which I've watched 12 times so far. You can't get much more entertaining than that.
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Hmm. I guess perhaps a better way to check would be to subtract the time it takes for the doors to open from when the load lines are crossed from the run time during the Frigate escape. That's going to give both runs a shorter than correct time, but it should also be one that has no loading difference. You'd need to know where the load lines were to do that, though.
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Tangent wrote:
Perhaps the question in the polls should be changed then to be what tier it belongs in/rejected entirely. Poor technical quality and/or inappropriate game choice and/or poor goal choice really aren't encompassed by "entertaining or not." TASes with those faults would presumably get the same no votes as a valid but boring Vault video. Posting in the thread itself is the only way for a user to differentiate their opinion in that regard.
I already suggested something like that, apparently there are technical problems with changing the question to anything but a yes/no/meh choice.
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adelikat wrote:
Arc wrote:
I think that the problem with the AVGN icon is that it looks like blatant cross-promotional advertising for AVGN. The worst part is that it isn't; you're just advertising AVGN for free.
I did not think it would be interpreted this way but it does seem to be coming off that way. It is not my intent to make it so official, or do endorse him that way, just a fun list. So I removed the icon, hide the flag from listings, and moved the page to my personal homepage from which I will maintain it, for my own personal pleasure.
Thanks. I know I'm not one of the people who's been raging angrily, but this is nonetheless appreciated.
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AKheon wrote:
Indeed, most "fastest game over" runs would have no-brainer solutions. But every once in a while a particularly creative solution would show itself, making it all worthwhile again. Not to mention these runs would be so short that you could easily watch tons of them on one sitting... I'd really like it if such a records site existed.
There was one for unassisted game overs, Speed Deaths Archive, but it closed down. (You can still find many of their videos on YouTube, though.)
It's an interesting enough concept to be, at least, worth doing on someone's user page on the wiki. (IIRC Zeupar was considering it?)
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It was unrejected because of a change to site rules, that now allow more simultaneous categories for the same game. Previously a glitchless low% was seen as a redundant category to any%; now it's allowed, for people who want to see it.
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I like the changes to the site generally, but strongly dislike the AVGN icon. The tag is OK for people who care about searching for that, but as something mostly irrelevant, it definitely doesn't deserve any sort of prominent placement. I'd be happy for the icon to be removed everywhere, with no other changes.
@CtrlAltDestroy: many of my favourite TASes and speedruns are for games I never played. Normally, I browse the workbench, or browse the movie lists by platform, for something that looks interesting. And I did that even when I first found the site, before I was really part of the community. Likewise, when I show speedruns to my friends, them having played the game is only a minor benefit in making the choice; being a good speedrun is much more interesting.
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How much is that due to loading differences?
I guess it'd make the most sense to compare times for the Frigate escape. Not only is that very heavily competed/optimised in realtime, but I don't think it has any TAS-only tricks, so the difference there would just come down to loading times and optimization. And I'd expect optimization would have a much smaller effect than the loading times in that section (although, of course, it would matter).