Important: GDQ event planning is now taking place completely in the open, including any potential payload discussions. If you do not want to know what is being planned, do not read this thread. Additional planning discussion can also be found in the
#tasbot IRC channel on Freenode.
Updates are listed with the newest updates first.
Update, 2018-01-14: AGDQ 2018 is over with over $74k raised as a result of TAS content donation incentives. Please see my
post AGDQ 2018 initial update post for more details.
Update, 2018-01-02: I (dwangoAC) am attending AGDQ 2018 as the primary presenter and organizer of the broader TASBot team, representing work from CyclopsDragon and a host of others on a Super Monkey Ball replay file "console verification" as well as a playaround of Super Dram World 2 by Masterjun. Unless something goes wrong on the tech side I'll also be doing 3 interview desk segments where I use TAS tools to praise runners for their aptitude in accomplishing difficult glitches; the games we're targeting are Donkey Kong Country 1/2 barrel glitch, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island level 5-4 skip, and Rockman & Forte skips. Discussion will continue to occur on
#tasbot in IRC as well as on the
TASBot specific Discord server.
Update, 2017-08-23: There is enough interest from people who are for certain going to AGDQ 2018 that we're now discussing what games to pitch in the thread. I've renamed the thread to reflect that this thread is now focused on AGDQ 2018 content but it makes sense to leave the past discussion in this thread rather than forking it off as it provides a historical perspective on how SGDQ 2017 submissions played out.
Update, 2017-08-06: No TAS content was accepted for SGDQ 2017 and I will not likely be attending AGDQ 2018 due to financial constraints and an ongoing need to prioritize family. This means it is up to others to present a TAS block if the members of the site would like to see us represented.
Update, 2017-03-01: I'm completely hijacking this portion of this post to say that I am not yet sure if I will be attending SGDQ 2017 and that even if I do attend I will not be organizing a TAS / TASBot block myself. I am open to someone else organizing something and even borrowing TASBot, and I am open to providing analysis in-between runs in a format that praises what a runner just did via TAS tools showing the trick they just performed in detail. I have made the hard decision to not participate in AGDQ 2018, both because I want to spend more time with my family and because I can't afford another expensive trip. For now, this thread can be used to discuss both SGDQ 2017 and AGDQ 2018 topics but it can be split in the future. Previous updates and ideas are listed below.
Update, 2017-01-17: I am taking a break from all TASBot related activities. I've provided some background information on
why I feel I should step back in the AGDQ 2017 thread.
Original post: For SGDQ 2017 I'm deliberately planning on keeping things simple. There were some substantial opportunities at play for SGDQ 2016 that couldn't be ignored (the possibility and ultimately the success of console verifying Lost Levels, for one) but in general the summer events by necessity should be less technical and time-consuming in nature. To that end, things on this list of ideas are all ideas that require little to no work on hardware or console verification and focus more on showing what a TAS is and what's possible in with TAS tools through good commentary. If the entertainment and commentary are of high enough caliber I'm still open to use runs that aren't strictly console verified (Windows games in particular) but this is still a contentious issue.
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[2539] NES River City Ransom "2 players" by Chamale in 05:56.76 but
[1013] NES River City Ransom "playaround" by adelikat & JXQ in 12:55.38 could be fun as well - suggested by boct1584
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[711] NES Gradius by adelikat in 10:52.35 - suggested by a number of people including feos and boct1584 to show how far we've come with replay stability and finally show off the game properly
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[717] NES Monopoly "4 CPUs" by FractalFusion in 01:07.67 - also suggested by boct1584 (he had a lot of good suggestions); would require rapid commentary and yelling "Time!" very early
- 3D console ACE leading to demoscene style content; would require someone to create said content, but I think we might have a lead on an N64 total control (shh...)
- Whatever doesn't fit in AGDQ 2017, currently dumped in here from there with no renumbering of idea numbers and with no expectation that these will all stay for SGDQ 2017 as some may get punted further to AGDQ 2018 when I get to that thread:
Idea #1: Chaning consoles / console virus
I will need a lot of volunteers for this one, and it's going to take several months of work which means it may have to slip to a future GDQ. Continuing the trend of AGDQ events being where we blow people's minds, I have an incredibly ambitious plan for AGDQ 2017. I hope to chain multiple consoles together and successively take total control of each console, forwarding button presses *out* the second (or higher) controller port by abusing the latch pin. This will require multiple people involved with hardware adaptation boards, total control runs, and payloads on each console. This will be the biggest undertaking the site has tried thus far, and is so ambitious that it may never happen, but for now I'm slating it for AGDQ 2017. This entire plan can be altered as needed in the coming months as we start exploring what is feasible and what is too difficult or impossible.
In brief, if the general plan I have in mind is feasible, we will need the following volunteers:
- Author for creating a Total Control / ACE TAS on NES
- Author for creating a Total Control / ACE TAS on SNES
- Author for creating a Total Control / ACE TAS on N64
- Author for creating a Total Control / ACE TAS on Game Boy Advance (inside Game Boy Player)
- Author for creating a Total Control / ACE TAS on Game Boy (inside Goomba emulator in GBA)
- Payload (romhack) author for NES
- Payload (romhack) author for SNES
- Payload (romhack) author for N64
- Payload (romhack) author for Game Boy (inside Goomba)
- Hardware adapting NES signaling to SNES
- Hardware adapting SNES signaling to N64
- Hardware adapting N64 signaling to Game Boy Player
The dozen or more people needed above can all start work in parallel, and whatever portions start to come together first will be where we focus and then spread out, although I suspect we might end up in a situation where NES to SNES eventually works and GBA hacking works but we haven't yet bridged them or a similar scenario. For what games to perform Total Control on, it would be nice to target franchises that are popular, especially awesome if we can hit Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, or similar franchises but there's every possibility we'll have to use a less mainstream title to get the kind of total control needed. As far as payload goes, the highest priority is on throughput of accepting input on player 1 and forwarding it to player 2 to allow downstream payload writing to be as quick as possible, using some of the techniques we've learned via doing SMB on SMW Pokemon Red Twitch chat payloads. For hardware, I expect entirely different solutions will be required for bridging each console generation with NES to SNES likely the easiest and N64 to GBP likely the hardest, with plenty of flexibility on how we accomplish the task.
Updates, 2016-07-21: It's been nearly a year and no real progress has been made on the console chaining idea. It's not dead, as we've put a lot of thought into it, but it might not look like the suggestions above. One thing that may be a better choice is starting with a faster console (like GC or N64) and going toward older consoles, possibly using an unconventional method of connectivity like a link cable. We're just now starting to experiment with what's possible, but I'd really like to transition from the SGDQ 2016 gimmick where we showed four consoles running in parallel to an AGDQ 2017 gimmick where we show four consoles running chained one to another, each successively taken over. Since my original post, we now have a solid method of total control on NES via SMB3 with some other interesting options on the horizon and we've also made progress with N64 but there is still substantial risk for this idea.
Updates, 2016-08-19: This may yet live on in a similar form to the above. I forgot that ais523 mentioned describing this as a console virus and he's right that tech journals would really dig that. However, to make this happen for AGDQ 2017 will require stripping it down to its barest essentials and going with what's easiest as no one has really stepped up outside of the regular crew to tackle the more challenging aspects of this idea. Left to our own devices, the core team that tends to do GDQ type stuff will probably come up with something zany based on what we know we can do. I must say, though, that early fears about reliability are really starting to dissipate now that we have the track records of success of the last couple of events and have more experience knowing where we need to mitigate risk.
Idea #4 (added 2016-08-19): Music composition
There's an unreleased game on the SNES named
Sound Fantasy that I've done some testing with. In the first game mode it's possible to position notes in a way that allows for the creation of some pretty interesting music. We might even be able to pull off some kind of crazy Twitch Plays or something, but for now I just want someone to literally write a song. I have a potential resource for this who comes from a tracker music background.
Idea #5 (added 2016-08-19): Twitch Plays Super Scribblenauts (pitching for the third time)
OK, OK, I admit this hasn't quite worked out the last two times (the first time I voluntarily allowed it to be cut form AGDQ 2016 when there wasn't enough time left on the schedule and the second time they opted to go with VVVVVV instead, but I digress). I also admit that there's a great deal of confusion over what may be possible here. To that end, I have a volunteer who is working on coding up the infrastructure we need to test this with the goal of having a prototype in time for the AGDQ 2017 submissions. If it playtests well I'll definitely put this in, if it doesn't, I won't, simple as that.
Idea #7 (added 2016-08-19): Mystery sports game
I wish I could explain more, but there's an interesting option on the table to show some content from a disc-based sports game. More research is needed to determine if this is viable and would involve doing some emulation accuracy testing. If you want to volunteer for this, please let me know and I'll provide details offline.
Idea #10 (added 2016-08-21): Tetris Grand Master or similar playaround
Several of us have discussed this, including DeHackEd, boct1584, and myself. The Tetris blocks at GDQ events have been big hits, although SGDQ 2016 showed some signs of slowing. There may be a TAS entry point here.
Update history
2016-08-19: Created topic with a handful of ideas, updated later with more
2016-09-03: Dumped a few AGDQ 2017 ideas we know we can't do in here for now
2017-02-17: Noted that I (dwangoAC) am taking a break from TASBot activities at GDQ events
2017-03-01: Added attendance disclaimer, defined thread topic, highlighted spoiler
2017-08-06: Stated my intention to not be at AGDQ 2018 due to personal constraints
2017-08-23: Changed thread title to reflect that we're working on AGDQ 2018 game selection
2018-01-03: Changed thread title to reflect that we're working on AGDQ 2018 preparations, add games list
2018-01-14: Added link to post AGDQ 2018 initial update post
This is a frequency counter showing the detected clock speed of my unmodified SNES's sound board clock, the ceramic clock that runs at 24.576 MHz. We calculated the jitter at over 120 ppm and the clock rate itself was lower than we anticipated, at 24.5613185 MHz. To put this into context, the original SNES when released had brand new ceramic clocks but that type of clock is known to degrade over time. In my case, 25 years later the clock has degraded substantially enough to cause problems with repeatability (that's an oversimplification but let's stick with that definition for now). So, with some parts selection help from micro500 and p4plus2 I ordered a 24.576 MHz 30ppm quartz crystal and installed it.
There was only one minor wrinkle - the original ceramic part needed a 3pF capacitor on each leg, but these required 18pF to 22pF capacitors. I only had small capacitors available, so I got.. uh.. creative:
Yes, that's a capacitor soldered on top of another capacitor; the original 3pF caps now have 18pF caps on top of them for a total of 21pF per leg. So, what was the difference?
The new quartz crystal is well within 30 ppm jitter and the clock speed is measured at 24.5772283 MHz. I took a number of measurements and the last two digits ranged from 83 at the lowest to 91 at the highest, but on average were in the 86 range. The lsnes emulator only measures down to the digit 24.577228 so the last portion being slightly different is hopefully of no consequence.
Now, here's the interesting part - if we tell lsnes to use that exact value, runs created with the default value of 24.607104 (the audio frequency of 32040.5*768) no longer sync. In fact, micro500 was able to show that manually changing a movie file to use that new speed causes the same desync we see on a real console, so this is good. The bad news is we've tried the brute force method of trying to get the same RNG result on the console and we have had little success even by removing up to 10 frames or adding 20. Masterjun is actively working on creating a new run with the new timing for us to test with.
Thanks to some outside-of-the-community-but-quickly-being-assimilated help from folks like arkun and the now full-fledged mediamagnet we have some parsing scripts that can take the output of the logic analyzer I now have attached to the console (more on that later with better pictures). I'll try to get a link up in my next post, but I just wanted to state somewhere here that we've done that work.
Finally, we have an NES classic! Here's the reveal video that's fun to watch and shows some emulation differences compared to the original NES:
Link to video
And with that, I'm off to stream more and see if we can't get a syncing run of DKC2 finally.
There is the possibility of a monetary reward but it is unclear how large it will ultimately be. I discussed with everyone who helped out and we have agreed to withold a portion to cover actual equipment costs only and donate the remainder of the reward during AGDQ 2017. Expect a healthy donation during the TASBot block if all goes well
I attended the annual Day of the Devs event and spoke briefly with Tim Schafer about collaborating on something. More on that for a future GDQ but remember you heard it here first. This isn't Tim but it's still a fun picture:
Last but not least, if you are in the bay area, I will be presenting at the SF Bay Area chapter of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) on 2016-11-16. The talk will be a fusion of what I presented at DEF CON 24 and what I presented at GeekPwn.
Anyway, lots going on, more to come - please let us know if you can spare an NES Classic and expect an update from me in a week or two. Thanks for the support!