TASVideos

Posted: 9/10/2011 9:58 PM

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ais523

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Pretty awesome. In these runs, I watch them for the synchronization (I don't really care about "same input" so much as "same actions"), and there was lots of that towards the start (although it dropped off later). I think this should probably count as a separate category from the X/X2 run.

Posted: 9/8/2011 2:44 PM

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ais523

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AngerFist wrote:

Miles wrote:
He gained 7-8 seconds near the end because Dolphin doesn't emulate loads.
So the Frigate-Escape timer counts loading aswell?

The game generally counts loading of a room as play time. In the Metroid Prime 3 speedrun in SDA, the runner regularly went into Hypermode during loading times in order to survive being shot at while waiting for a room to load.

Posted: 9/6/2011 9:05 PM

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ais523

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werster wrote:

An escape rope takes you back to the elite four after you beat them? What?

It takes you back to the last Pokémon Center you visited. It's not entirely obvious whether that includes the one in the entrance lobby to the Elite Four, which is why it needed testing.

Posted: 9/6/2011 5:45 PM

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ais523

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AngerFist wrote:

I would travel to Quebec and shake your hand immensely if you would work on this. Speaking of this game, no offense to the author of this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnIa2iHW6o0 but that's not exactly how I imagined a tas of Metroid Prime should look. He uses for some reason (I don't understand much what he is saying by reading his description) the Pal version, which is obviously something we wont do and makes a few dash errors and whatnot. Regardless of that, it's a nice beginning. Something for you Wak and others to compare with the future wip :)

I think it uses the PAL version because the author seems to be from a German-speaking country (at least based on the comments). I looked up the SDA record for a frigate escape on the PAL version (0:04:25.40 remaining); that TAS is 4.1 seconds faster over that section, at 0:04:29.50 remaining. So at least it isn't unoptimized enough to lose out to a realtime runner, although I'm not sure how optimised the PAL frigate escape is on SDA (the author seemed to think 0:04:26 remaining was possible but not more, so unless a new realtime trick is found and someone uses it, I guess times like that are definitely in the TAS-only range). Still, the TAS didn't look too visually impressive, especially the movements of the Morph Ball near the start (which didn't seem to be using the shortest line). Morph Balling everywhere is the standard non-TAS route, but TASing can often make other routes possible...

Posted: 9/3/2011 3:16 PM

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ais523

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ALAKTORN wrote:

feos wrote:
What we need now is a console slowdown method, to play it if not frame by frame, then at least at 1% speed. And even if it'd be possible, the real pain would be hacking the console to allow savestates (which I doubt is possible).
have you not read my post? there is an MKW TASer that TASes on the Wii, savestates and all, I don’t know how though

Some games have built-in rerecording. (I know that Battle for Wesnoth, for the PC, has its normal save feature work as savestates that store everything but RNG (for probably obvious reasons), and rerecords everything that happens, meaning that even unassisted runs of that game have effectively TAS-like power. Timing doesn't matter there as it's a turn-based game.) I've heard that there's a cheat code for Super Smash Bros. Brawl that opens a debug menu that allows for frame advance (and possibly other TAS-like controls); it wouldn't surprise me if MKW had one too.

Posted: 9/3/2011 8:20 AM

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ais523

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Brandon wrote:

Imagine if we could make TASing tools that work with the actual consoles...incompatibility would no longer be a factor, nor would we necessarily be labeled as a site related to emulation / ROMs, which I suppose are somewhat controversial.

You couldn't savestate unless you somehow had access to the console's internal memory (and loadstating would be even harder!), and you couldn't turbo without overclocking (and consoles can only stand limited amounts of that). So I expect that the plan's mostly a non-starter, except in cases where you have "consoles" like Windows and an Hourglass-like program.

Posted: 8/30/2011 11:13 PM

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ais523

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Is the really well-known hack Kaizo Mario World 2 (this one)? I'd have assumed it'd be Kaizo Mario World 1.

Posted: 8/25/2011 12:27 AM

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ais523

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DarkKobold wrote:

However, in this list Wiki: ConsoleVerificationTests you'll see a list of games with partial sync. Games in this category clearly desync due to emulator-NES inaccuracies. Mainly because they desync consistently in the same spot. That is the group I'd prefer to see be 'syncable' over fastest. TASers could easily work around the emu inaccuracies by testing.

It all depends on what games are doing. I can imagine, on various consoles, games using things that are effectively unstabilisable as RNG sources (Pokémon Black/White, for instance, use the difference between two oscillators as one of the ingredients in the seed; I've noticed temperature-dependent behaviour there but it may have been coincidence). In the case of consistent desyncs at the same point, I agree that it's probably an emulator issue, in which case the run shouldn't be submitted at all until the emulator is fixed; if it's syncable, it's most likely for a different reason on the emulator as on the console (which are both interpreting the run in their own way, and it just happens to be correct for both), and is so likely suboptimal on both emulator and console.

Posted: 8/25/2011 12:18 AM

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ais523

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DarkKobold wrote:

This is a total straw-man. I didn't say that we'd only accept syncable runs, just that syncable runs would be preferred.

Even so, I think a run that's syncable with future technology (and is faster/more entertaining) is more worthy of acceptance than a run that can be synced.

Also, everyone is saying how inaccurate NESbot is, without really looking at the code or understanding how the thing works. There honestly is not much behind the NESbot, and most desyncs I'm sure are emulator/console inaccuracies. C'mon, all the thing has to do is get a latch and write the proper controls. It isn't rocket science.

I'm quite aware of what NESbot does. It isn't controlling anything but the controller input. It should be regulating the temperature of the NES, leaving it disconnected for days so that the RAM settles down to a known value, starting the NES with a voltage ramp-up that gets its oscillators synchronized in the right way, etc. It's very hard to do all that on the actual hardware, yet necessary for consistent results. I need only point out that NESbot sometimes syncs and sometimes desyncs to prove that it's much more inaccurate than most TAS emulators. If it's getting different results from the same input, it's very inaccurate compared to most emulators, simple as that.

Posted: 8/25/2011 12:01 AM

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ais523

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Fastest, because otherwise we'd have to delete all our runs that aren't done on a NES. Runs should only be accepted if we have reason to believe that they could be syncable with future improvements to NESbot and similar projects (i.e. don't exploit emulator bugs). That's quite different from syncable with current technology...

Posted: 8/24/2011 9:09 PM

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ais523

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For anyone interested in the rerecording framework we're using to make the run, dwangoAC has put up a demonstration ttyrec: http://files.rawrnix.com/educational-ttyrecs/nethack-tas-demo.ttyrec.bz2. (To play back ttyrecs, you need a ttyrec player; I recommend my own (unfinished but usable) Jettyplay, available at http://patch-tag.com/r/ais523/jettyplay/snapshot/current/content/pretty/jettyplay.jar, but others are available (see http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Ttyrec for a list).)

Posted: 8/15/2011 8:27 PM

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ais523

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Saethori wrote:

The Space Jump Boots shortcut alone in GC version would likely save more time than all the instant point-and-shoot the Wii version allows put together. Especially considering how fast TAS aiming could potentially be.

I know that scan dashes were removed pretty quickly, but you can also get early Space Jump via a combat dash (like a scan dash, but with a different visor). Does that still work in Trilogy? (Not that Trilogy is at all likely to be faster, with the number of tricks removed in it. Still, it's worth bearing in mind such "suboptimal" tricks, just in case they turn out to be optimal somewhere.)

Posted: 8/8/2011 8:29 PM

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ais523

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In terms of difficulty, or whatever, it makes most sense to treat password saves as the same as battery saves. It does feel a bit weird, though.

Posted: 8/3/2011 6:36 PM

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ais523

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I thought this was a bit slow to start with, but the end made up for it, and the fact that the sequence is being broken is obvious even to someone who knows nothing of the hack. Yes vote.

Posted: 7/20/2011 6:20 AM

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ais523

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Another thing I'd suggest is to add options for the player which make it both harder and faster, potentially stacking indefinitely. (A simple example is the shoes that double your speed in Sonic 2; many casual players avoid picking them up because they make Sonic harder to control and require faster reflexes, although they're obviously useful for a speedrun. For a TAS, imagine if they carried across levels, with the effect stacking, but only if the player didn't take a hit; now, that would allow players to make the game basically impossible for themselves if they wanted, but avoidably, and a TAS could actually get away with it. There are more complicated variations on the same basic priniciple; low-grinding runs in RPGs, for instance.) I'd say, contrary to many of the other comments, having one autoscroller in a game is good for a TAS, as it gives the author a chance to play around without losing time, making the result more entertaining. But you have to give sufficient material in the level for them to play around with. Another good thing to add is to provide the player with things to do that are generally "not worth it", or only obviously useful in specific situations, but which have a lot of other uses to players with a lot of planning. (For instance, consider the weapons you gain in a Mega Man game. Casual players often only use them in boss fights, using the buster elsewhere, unless they're really overpowered; but speedrunners (both TAS and non-TAS) find all sorts of interesting uses for them, both intended and unintended.) Also, if the game has more than one way of moving around, and it should (running along the ground vs. running with repeated jumps is a common case in platformers), try to make them take identical time in ordinary cases; that gives TASers the scope to use one or the other to hit small timesavers or make the run more entertaining. If, say, running was always faster than jumping, then otherwise interesting techniques involving jumps would probably be suboptimal and have to be avoided. One other thing I'll note is that although hard to do, a TAS can be much more interesting if the game has scope for creativity that doesn't interfere with the run itself. ("Shooting in time to the music" is a simple example that's possible in some but not all games, especially as in a TAS you can often vary whether you kill an enemy early or late without losing time. Some of my favourite TASes are ones where you have similar control over the game, but in a much wider scope, allowing for more impressive versions of the same basic concept. Making a game heavy on sound effects can sometimes allow for this, but won't automatically manage it.)

Posted: 7/16/2011 3:37 AM

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ais523

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Why are you saving at the end of each level? (And if you have to save for some reason, wouldn't it be faster to save in a different slot each time to avoid the prompt that asks if you want to overwrite your save?)

Posted: 7/15/2011 6:22 PM

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ais523

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I'd like to see the category name for movies dominated by a single glitch specify the glitch in the category, e.g. DOS NetHack "memory corruption glitch" vs. DOS NetHack "minimum turns, no memory corruption". In practice, there tend to be only two (or three, depending on how you count) sorts of glitch that end up dominating a game enough to require a new category: memory/save corruption glitches, and out-of-bounds glitches that lead to skipping most of the sequence of the game. Instead of "forgoes time-saving glitches" (which ones?), I'd like to see "corrupts memory" and "forgoes memory corruption", "corrupts save data" and "forgoes save data corruption" (we already have these two, so no change is needed there), "goes out of bounds" and "forgoes going out of bounds". A good example of why this sort of thing is necessary is in the Generation I Pokémon games, to distinguish the categories in [1702] GBC Pokémon: Yellow Version "save glitch" by p4wn3r in 01:27.23 (save corruption) from [1700] SGB Pokémon: Red Version "warp glitch" by p4wn3r in 41:02.38 (arbitrary memory corruption) from [950] SGB Pokémon: Blue Version "trainer escape glitch" by primorial_soup in 1:18:58.78 (out-of-bounds). Note that all three of the movies are tagged "heavy glitch abuse"! At the moment, 1700M isn't tagged with a branch name, nor is 1702M, which might leave the viewers wondering why they take such different routes in such similar games. I'd like to see 1702 marked "save corruption glitch", and 1700 marked "memory corruption glitch", to distinguish the branches. (Out-of-bounds is more normal; I personally consider 950 the current "normal" category for Pokémon, and would watch a no-out-of-bounds run as well, although I doubt it would be different enough from the other runs to be interesting and publishable.) I agree with the OP that "glitched" by itself is pretty unclear, especially as it's used inconsistently. Instead of trying to imply "more glitched than" or "less glitched than" or whatever (which will probably depend on the order in which the movies were originally published), why not say exactly what the category actually is? (I also say this because I know there are people who enjoy watching entirely non-glitched TASes; I like both glitched and non-glitched versions, but people who want glitchless runs have a lot more than the runs in the "forgoes time-saving glitches" category to look at, because there are many games with no known major exploitable glitches. (Keeping with the Pokémon example, Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire, while there are a few known glitches, don't have any known ones that save time at the moment. No doubt TASers are working on correcting that, but for the time being, a third-generation Pokémon TAS is going to be glitchless just because that's fastest.)

Posted: 7/10/2011 5:16 PM

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ais523

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Hmm, this game doesn't look so interesting in a TAS as some of the other Mega Man games, but it's still OK. (Also, bunny hopping in a Mega Man game, how bizarre...)

Posted: 7/7/2011 3:57 PM

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ais523

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System Error wrote:

Zowayix wrote:
Nope, the GS Ball only works if a certain flag is set. Obtaining the GS Ball through an event will set this flag, as will the proper cheat code. Simply hacking or glitching the GS Ball into your bag will not. All event items work this way.
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure it works if it's just the item. I swear I was able to work it with just the item way back in the day. The flag stuff was only implemented into the third generation Pokemon games. I've found no information to the contrary that it only works if a flag is set (and in fact, many parts talk about potentially using it to get teh GS Ball), but the next day may need to come from giving it to Kurt. Which might exclude it anyway unless the run's long enough.

Just set the game's clock (which can be set upon new game) so that a day rollover happens during the run.

Posted: 6/30/2011 6:42 PM

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ais523

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I suppose TASvideos would have to be moved to a server outside the US.

Posted: 6/26/2011 7:05 AM

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ais523

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RPG which is mostly cutscenes, meet TAS which isn't mostly cutscene skips (but only because they are, by definition, quick). I approve of this solution. The actual gameplay is amazing too; some of those temple solutions are faster than anything I've seen even in other really broken runs.

Posted: 6/26/2011 5:30 AM

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ais523

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That was pretty impressive. The only bit that made me snort with laughter, though, was Wallace sending out a Luvdisc, and that happens no matter what. There are places where it looks slightly sloppy, presumably because you're stallling to get the right frame on which to manipulate an event. One question: did you test whether it's faster to bike out of the Cave of Origin, or fly to the Poké Centre and surf from there? I haven't checked myself, but it most be quite close.

Posted: 6/9/2011 9:26 PM

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ais523

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I got to about halfway through disc 2, and then got bored. The issue with this game is that it's some of the worst game choice for a TAS I've ever seen; the actual TASing serves mostly to manipulate away encounters (making the run more boring), skip dialogue (making it harder to tell what's going on), and win battles really quickly (which makes the bits that are actually luck-manipulated and tight really short). I don't think this is avoidable in this sort of game, but the end result is that the run is mostly cutscenes that would look much the same no matter what, and watching the TAS would likely be judged on the merits of the game rather than anything the runner could do. That said, I'm far from convinced that that's a reason to vote no. This could be quite interesting if the cutscenes were removed (or better still, a video was shown of the differences between the TAS and a non-TAS run, but that would be very hard to compute). I think better still would just be a long description of the strategy, and then the actual run would be mostly unnecessary. The other thing is that on a well-known game, I'm not convinced bad game choice is a reason to reject a well-done TAS like this one. There's not a whole lot of difference between published and submitted, except that publishing a run makes the best TAS of that run easier to find, for people who really want to see a TAS of the game. Voting Meh.

Posted: 6/2/2011 6:47 PM

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ais523

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Miles wrote:

You'd have to wallcrawl up Sun Tower (or use Spider I guess?). Also, Flaahgra's flower isn't there below the artifact, so IIRC you have to wallcrawl and fall on top of it. I seriously doubt it'd be faster to skip Varia, just explaining how it'd be possible...

I assume it's impossible to do Magmoor on the starting E-tank without the Varia Suit, even with TAS luck? If it's possible manipulating health drops from every enemy, 20% might be possible via that method.

Posted: 5/25/2011 7:26 PM

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ais523

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[20:24] <FerretFaucet> This is the first time I've drank in three weeks. [20:24] <FerretFaucet> I doubt it's a tolerance issue [20:24] <FerretFaucet> Besides, doctors recommend drinking 1-2 liters of vodka per day

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