Posts for dwangoAC

Posted: 8/5/2015 3:20 PM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (898)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1007

MUGG wrote:

TASeditor wrote:
Will there be a comparison encode, like in DTC5?
^ Yes please, I want a horse race video

I have copies of every single file described in Raiscan's results spreadsheet but I'm not sure where to put them. I'll gladly pass them off to whoever wants them but I don't really feel inclined to upload them one at a time to user storage, and I failed to place a Creative Commons disclaimer in the competition text (although such a disclaimer does exist elsewhere on the site). Then again, everyone knew that their movie could be played back live, so I assume it's OK. Any thoughts on where I should put the movie files? Any volunteers to do a 4-way race comparison encode like we did with Baby Moses? Thanks in advance!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/5/2015 4:00 AM

Post subject: Re: "Blame" the emulator, allow console verified lag changes

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dwangoAC

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ALAKTORN wrote:

Don’t think anyone’s arguing against that. I’m arguing against the fact that suddenly the console requires a soft reset and extra wait time (not lag) to sync up the RNG.

Unless I misunderstood endrift's explanation, in order to line up the RNG the game is reset to start from a known RNG state and isn't started until the RNG lines up again at a predictable time, as in, the net effect is that only the number of "lag" / empty frames is changed. The design could be altered to have two movies, one to erase the savestate and another that would work directly from power-on, but this is *far* more convenient (trust me, after you re-test the same file for the umpteenth time you really, really want a way to make the operation a bit more automatic - I had a movie for Pokemon Red that did this type of data deletion for me for similar reasons although it operated slightly differently). We've only ever been discussing "extra wait time", the name lag frame is convenient shorthand but isn't particularly accurate. I think what's happening here is just fine.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/5/2015 2:55 AM

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dwangoAC

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Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1007

boct1584 wrote:

Maybe use operating system timestamps? I know when you right-click a file in Windows and open its' properties, you can see its' creation time, last modified time, and last time accessed.

This seems interesting on the surface but the ease with which this data could be modified means it's actually *worse* than the honor system. If we want to introduce an additional option as kind of a halfway point between a hard start and stop time and an honor system with no tracking at all, we could use a gated registration system to download the file which starts a clock and allows the same user to upload a movie file within a time limit. It can still be cheated by out-of-band communication (first competitor downloads it, shares it with a buddy, the buddy does tons of research and starts his time period much later, etc.). Effectively, my take is that the hard limit is the best way to avoid cheating, but if it is a generally fun competition it should probably just be on the honor system as I suspect any attempt to create a technological solution won't actually improve things... Just my (overly wordy) take, any thoughts?

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/5/2015 2:00 AM

Post subject: Anyone is welcome to organize another speed TAS competition

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dwangoAC

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OK, let's do it. I'm still somewhat recovering from SGDQ 2015 but I agree we should do this again sooner rather than later, perhaps a month from now. Having said that, I don't have to be the organizer every time - if someone else wants to step up to do one for the site please let me know as organizing this does take a bit of time due to the need to find and select a good game. Take note that this one was based on a predefined deadline for start and stop (albeit with a sliding window tied to the SGDQ schedule). The first speed TAS competition featuring Baby Moses worked on an honor system whereas the SGDQ event with Streemerz was very much a hard deadline, with announcements of the ending being neigh and all of the requisite panic that goes with it (although I'll admit that the actual cutoff was substantially delayed due to a long setup block for Super Metroid). If we were to have another event, should it be a hard start and stop time like Streemerz (which may not work well for people in odd timezones but has that panic factor) or should it be on the honor system like Baby Moses was (more flexible but easier to cheat at)? Thoughts?

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/4/2015 6:31 PM

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dwangoAC

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Warp wrote:

If people are desiring more "gimmicks", then perhaps have one such "gimmick" and one more "regular" TAS, as an in-between compromise that ought to have the best of both worlds.

I'll save the majority of the heavy gimmicks for AGDQ's but in effect this is exactly what I aimed to do - show a couple of solid TAS's without console verification and show a really unique method of TAS'ing a Game Boy Advance game on real hardware. It would have been impossible to show Mega man or Ikaruga console verified and Ikaruga looked *way* better outside of an emulator so it was an obvious choice but I should have done a far better job of explaining why I did this. I will have to consider how to handle this type of situation in future marathons, but for AGDQ 2016 I expect to do console verification and this problem won't exist there so I'm not putting much energy into it for the moment. Thanks for the feedback!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/4/2015 6:08 PM
(Edited: 8/8/2015 5:10 AM)

Post subject: TASVideos SGDQ 2015 involvement feedback thread

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dwangoAC

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There are existing threads for preparations for SGDQ 2015, the speed TASing competition announcement, and general memorable highlights from SGDQ 2015 but I wanted to provide a place to discuss the involvement TASVideos had at SGDQ 2015 and solicit feedback. Here's my impression of what went well and what didn't: The awesome:

I was able to organize exhibiting Mega Man, Sonic Advance, and Ikaruga with commentary from respective realtime runners (cleartonic, Kirbymastah, and ShinerCCC - Thanks!)
The Mega Man game-end glitch run $10k donation incentive was fully met and then some, thanks in part to a $5k donation from Notch himself
Based on unofficial SGDQ 2015 statistics viewership during the block ranged from 135k to 139k
Combining the data from the last two sources shows the block helped raise over $35k for Doctors Without Borders (!)
The speed TASing competition announcement resulted in over 1,000 downloads of Streemerz from the mirror RGamma set up for me on my server and over 150 legit submissions completed the game with Mothrayas as the winner
Arthur 'Mr. Podunkian' Lee, the original author of Streemerz, gave me permission to use his work, joined the IRC channel during the competition, and even made a donation directly prior to the results playback
thefox who ported the original version of Streemerz to the NES gave me permission to redistribute the NES ROM file and even posted helpful memory addresses
TASVideos.org received a huge boost in traffic with continued increased load following the event per DeHackEd
There was a big uptick in new user registrations (sort descending) following SGDQ and a number of new users are continuing to engage on IRC and in the forums
Overall "press" coverage (i.e. bloggers and news outlets) have provided positive coverage of what we did
A number of commenters in various places indicated they greatly appreciated that we stepped back in intensity compared to last time to explain how we go about creating TAS's
While I was onsite at the event I often had TASBot with me and a number of people took selfies with TASBot - whenever I walked around *without* TASBot I might as well have been invisible :)

The not so awesome:

I was jittery and shaky while presenting (not from nervousness of being in front of that many people but more flat out not feeling well, in part due to lack of sleep combined with poor opportunities for good food the day of the block)
I did not do a good job of explaining why Rockman was in an emulator (can't console verify due to DelayStageClear glitch timing) or why Ikaruga was a video (we sort of touched on the disc read speed issues but it could have been disclaimed better at the start); some people didn't understand we console verified Sonic Advance but even then the existence of content that wasn't console verified was received with mixed reviews
Commenters in Reddit and elsewhere were downright abusive in describing how badly I disappointed them by not blowing their minds again (I won't be linking it, it's mostly vitriolic), with many incorrect references to "last year was awesome, this year sucked" even though AGDQ 2015 was only 6 months ago
We didn't have everything worked out on the speed TAS competition judging methods due to some last minute scrambling and as a result the TASJudy script didn't have adequate time to run through all submissions, forcing me to announce the best results we had tabulated thus far (and slighting Mothrayas in the process); we later discovered I made an error in my beliefs of the sync stability between FCEUX and BizHawk and I have apologized to Mothrayas in IRC for the problems; in the end, a real submission was made with the help of multiple authors
We still took far too long setting up despite my best intentions; I was yet again scrambling at the last minute to work through problems and I was not as prepared as I needed to be for the third event running
Overall, in the balance I'm very happy with how this event turned out, but I do have serious regrets for not doing a better job communicating while on stream that viewers should expect console oriented shenanigans at AGDQ and less extreme showings at SGDQ simply due to the amount of time preparing big exploits require

I'd like to again thank Endrift for making console verification of Sonic Advance possible and for being willing to participate on the couch - that run was much better off for it. Additional thanks go to the other commentators including cleartonic, Kirbymastah, and ShinerCCC all of whom made massive contributions in explaining things from an RTA perspective better than I could have. I'd again like to put out a word of thanks to Aktan for awesome encodes and to RGamma, Raiscan, SMK, adelikat, Mothrayas, DeHackEd, and Nach who all helped out in various ways with the website and the speed TASing competition, along with a couple people who wished to remain anonymous - you know who you are, thanks for the help! As always, thank you to those who donated and helped me get to the event (I'll be posting a transparency report once everything settles). I have every intention of making TASVideos participation happen at AGDQ 2016 so any feedback you have on how this event went would be appreciated below. Thanks!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/4/2015 4:32 PM

Post subject: Real answers from the developer are awesome

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dwangoAC

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thefox wrote:

The timer starts at $4D in RAM. It takes 4 bytes and is stored in BCD with the digits reversed. For example a time of 12:34:56:78 would be stored as $21, $43, $65, $87.

Thanks! It's always awesome when the developer chimes in with the real answer (it's not unheard of, but it's still a nice surprise). That would have been somewhat hard to locate via memory search. If you don't mind me asking, why did you write it with the digits reversed? Again, thank you for giving me permission to use your port. By all accounts the competition was a huge success and a number of people have told me that they thoroughly enjoyed playing the game.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/4/2015 1:38 AM

Post subject: "Blame" the emulator, allow console verified lag changes

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dwangoAC

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I'm fully of the opinion based on all of the work I've done that it is absolutely allowed to add or remove empty (lag) frames when performing console verification. This was especially required for Pokemon Red where the SGB had very specific characteristics we had to work around. So, yeah, I'm generally inclined to "blame" the emulator and not the hardware.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/3/2015 3:51 PM

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dwangoAC

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d-feather wrote:

- The Mega Man 1 TAS being successfully console verified.

Full disclosure - Mega Man (Rockman) was played back in an emulator and was *not* console verified because of the tight timing required for the DelayStageClear glitch among other things. I intentionally played back the movie with the button presses displayed to show that it was being done in an emulator. There are Mega Man movies that have been verified such as the game end glitch run but there was no way I had time to set that up in the block of time we had. The only console verification was Sonic Advance which we really should mark as console verified, but I digress. As noted, Ikaruga can't be console verified without console modifications to read off of consistent-speed media (and even then it's questionable if we could get everything to line up with the emulator, so don't expect this to ever happen.)

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 11:43 PM

Post subject: Control over encodes

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dwangoAC

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andypanther wrote:

This is just one of the many reasons why I started disliking the GDQ events. They're not the speedrun community organizing an event to have fun, they're a company that uses speedruns to make money. Just read their announcement about the new policy for YT uploads. They talk about their "brand". Whenever people talk like this, you know that they're all about money.

I will agree with you that the word "brand" is perhaps a poor choice here in context, but the rest of the sentiment in the future uploads thread about ensuring runners have the ability to post their own runs is actually OK with me because I had a lot of trouble controlling what kinds of encodes people were putting up for the TASBot block at AGDQ. To clarify, I am the "runner" in the context of the TASBot block and I authorize TASVideos to create encodes and post them on YouTube and elsewhere on my behalf, but YouTube user BlazeIt42013yo who posts a low bitrate encode doesn't have my permission and the above declaration from GDQ staff helps me enforce that. While I agree that out of legal necessity GDQ LLC has had to do things that make it look a bit more corporate such as treating the raffle as a sweepstakes I'd say they've done an acceptably good job handling the growing pains. I was able to see a lot more of the behind-the-scenes struggles at SGDQ 2015 and I have an enormous amount of respect for how difficult this particular event was due to various challenges. I'm sure there will be some small changes for the next GDQ event but in general I think they did a fantastic job this year.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 2:32 PM

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dwangoAC

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Raiscan wrote:

A test by micro500 seems to suggest that I was under the false pretence that the only thing necessary to get an fm2 to sync in bizhawk is to add an extra frame to the start.

I will take the fall for this - in earlier tests with a couple of different test movies I discovered that they could always be played back in BizHawk by appending a single frame of lag to the beginning of imported .fm2 submissions. In testing, none of the movies I tried triggered this difference in lag. Lessons learned for next time: We need independent scripts running on each accepted emulator for a given competition with a single leaderboard shared between them in some way. I suspect the Lua script can be adapted to work in FCEUX and I would welcome a volunteer to help with that, otherwise we will sort the .fm2's by frame length and prioritize manually checking the shortest ones just to get a quick turnaround on finding the real fastest submission as part of the competition.

dwangoAC wrote:

This is the first attempt at doing this in front of a live audience with a set timer so things may go wrong; I ask for grace in advance in case something goes catastrophically sideways, such as 30,000 people slashdotting the site or delays in announcing the winning submission due to technical difficulties.

I put the disclaimer in when I announced the competition but I didn't want to need it. :) We did have an active attacker sending in fake submissions in rapid fire with the count of fake submissions in the thousands that we had to sort out. We also had some last-minute script scrambling to get leaderboard metadata working rather than just identifying the fastest completion which I'm glad we did but at the same time we had so many submissions that the script didn't have enough time to complete before my time was up, even with only ~11 seconds on average for each movie file. These challenges put a strain on all of us involved in the submissions acceptance and judging process - namely, RGamma, Raiscan, SMK, adelikat, Nach and myself. Thank you to everyone for showing grace and for the patience from all who were affected by these problems.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 8:33 AM

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dwangoAC

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MUGG wrote:

How come? The game keeps track of ingame time, so it should be possible to retrieve it when address 002c turns 01 or whenever, shouldn't it?

If you can figure out a way to retrieve it without screenscraping go for it. :) You're welcome to try to locate the memory value. There is no sane reason I should be awake right now. I will now try not to be. I invite Raiscan to update this thread while I'm asleep however.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 5:57 AM

Post subject: Re: #4783: Mothrayas's NES Streemerz "Streeeeemerz Mode" in 05:08.51

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dwangoAC

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Joined: 9/14/2008
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Samsara wrote:

TASVideoAgent wrote:
Frame war-a-go-go
Working on it. Let's go, gentlemen.

I approve, but someone needs to make a game resources page for this game, please. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 4:29 AM

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dwangoAC

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Joined: 9/14/2008
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SmashManiac wrote:

It would be great if the final league table could contain the following columns: - Position - Author - Frame count - Real time - In-game time - Score

I think the only hard one in there would be In-Game time, the rest we can script but that one isn't likely to be easy to retrieve. I agree overall, though! (Still very tired right now, will do a proper post-mortem tomorrow.)

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 2:49 AM

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dwangoAC

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As noted elsewhere we are aware that the auto-judging script did not properly handle .fm2 submissions under certain as-of-yet unknown circumstances, and I can confirm that Mothrays submitted this run prior to the deadline (as in, the initial file posted in this submission, which based on the potential for a frame war may get replaced at some point). It is unfortunate that this mistake happened and that Mothrayas was not properly recognized; I will attempt to amend this mistake as best as possible via whatever communication means I can muster.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 1:08 AM

Post subject: Speed TAS competition for SGDQ 2015 has ended

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dwangoAC

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The winning submission will be announced live following Super Metroid. Thank you to everyone who participated! In due course I'll establish a feedback thread so we can keep getting better at this but at this point I think this competition was a success and is worth repeating. Thanks all!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 12:56 AM

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dwangoAC

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ais523 wrote:

TehSeven wrote:
I *just* finished mine, looks like it's just in time, you can end input as early as possible while still reaching "The End", right?
You can, but unlike normally in TASvideos, there's no time advantage to doing so.

And this only because of a miscommunication in the TASJudy script but at the same time I didn't specify it in the original text so we'll give the benefit of the doubt. Having said that, I suspect the winner will do it correctly, just a guess. We'll see if it becomes a problem, hopefully not.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 12:52 AM

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dwangoAC

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Dragonfangs wrote:

Would it not be possible for someone to create a quick and dirty encode of the top 4 runs for you to show? We have lots of talented encoders on the site, and it's only a ~6 minute movie. (note, I am NOT one of these talented encoders :P I have no idea if this is actually unreasonable)

After the event, yes, but we have the length of Super Metroid to use TASJudy to go through the submissions (which at this moment contain a number of troll submissions), and any encode would have to happen after that, so while I wouldn't mind doing that it won't fit in the timeframe we have. Next time, I hope the 4-way race is live. :)

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/2/2015 12:35 AM

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dwangoAC

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Dragonfangs wrote:

If possible you should try to display it on stream as a race between the top 3-4 times I think.

Can't do that I'm afraid, all I can do is play back from my laptop, but that was definitely the original intent. :) Anyone reading this right after I'm writing this (rather than in the future), there are mere minutes left before the deadline. Best of luck!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 8/1/2015 2:03 AM

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dwangoAC

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Bobo the King wrote:

If possible, have an unassisted runner play the game... I understand if you don't have the luxury to set aside extra time for a human-TAS race.

We pitched exactly that idea for both AGDQ and SGDQ. Both times the submission was rejected due to time constraints. I practically forced this competition into existence by convincing staff that I could do it without adding time to the marathon. If this competition is successful I hope to do the contest again with human runners competing. Thanks for the feedback!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/30/2015 4:37 PM

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dwangoAC

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MUGG wrote:

What version of FCEUX is good to use?

The one linked above - it shouldn't matter as the game seems stable but I will explicitly note the latest version of each emulator in the instructions.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/30/2015 3:19 PM

Post subject: I, for one, welcome our new members

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dwangoAC

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MUGG wrote:

Is this just for everyone or only for visitors of sgdq?

This is an open free competition that doesn't even require participants to be registered on TASVideos.org (in part because, um, can you imagine the chaos of the lowest denizens of Twitch Chat descending on the registration system in flocks and droves while DeHackEd looks on in horror as they pick apart the serv... I'm getting a little too detailed, I should stop before I frighten off staff... :) Being a bit more serious, this is the most open event TASVideos has done and I anticipate a large amount of outside publicity and page views. I wouldn't be surprised if a wave of new users appear following the competition. I encourage everyone here to welcome any new members into the fold - while there will always be a few bad eggs I'm not anticipating this to be an Eternal September as those who are genuinely interested in TASing will stick around and those who aren't will fade away like so many disinterested freshmen, but I'm waxing poetic again. I for one, will welcome our new members and encourage everyone here to show the same grace that you were shown when you first joined.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/29/2015 3:21 PM

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dwangoAC

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Posts: 1007

TehSeven wrote:

Is it only one person per movie?

I was secretly hoping no one would ask me this. :) The answer is that TASVideos has team-based contests as part of the Dream Team Contest competitions. I specifically designed this contest in a way that it can be completed by an individual, both in the length of the competition and the difficulty of the target game. While my intent in creating this contest is seeing a swarm of individuals each having fun playing through the game on their own, I don't want to create excessive rules against people collaborating that I wouldn't be able to enforce anyway. So, while the intent is that each individual participant submits their own movie, I fully expect that there will be groups of people who communicate using various open, semi-open, or private methods to collaborate on glitches and helpful techniques. I consider this type of behavior natural and to be expected and as a result there is a very real possibility that a movie file with multiple author names embedded or multiple otherwise identical submissions of the same frame length and inputs from different people may occur, in which case I will simply give credit to all of the winners. So, go have fun and don't feel encumbered by heavy rules!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/28/2015 3:37 PM

Post subject: During SGDQ / pre-attendance update

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (898)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1007

I haven't left for SGDQ yet (my flight arrives in MN on Thursday) and I'm still wrapping up some loose ends. Endrift came over and we successfully console verified Sonic Advance on my laptop while simultaneously playing back the high quality encode Aktan made of the camhack. Endrift has primarily been watching the Game Cube version and commented that the camhack was like a behind-the-scenes view. We won't be able to easily synchronize the start times of the two videos but we'll do the best we can. I have some volunteers to get the static site for the competition ready, namely RGamma and Raiscan, hopefully we can get everything to a point where it's copacetic for Nach. I tried promoting the speed TAS'ing competition with a $50 donation comment but the comment wasn't read - I'll try again a couple of times this week to get the word out. Others are welcome to do the same in their donation comments but don't include URL's, it would appear a bot auto-rejects comments. At this exact moment I'm most concerned that I still don't fully understand some of the glitches going on in the runs I'm supposed to be commenting on (especially how the NMI bit works with the glitched Mega Man ending) and I anticipate doing some last-minute research while at SGDQ as well as practice sessions with the other commentators of each game. I have not yet practiced Sonic Advance commentary or Ikaruga commentary, and Ikaruga is the period where I'll be explaining the race, so I need to make sure I balance the time there correctly. This will likely be my last pre-SGDQ attendance update - I'll try to get one more in before Saturday after I make it to the event. Thanks for the support, all!

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.

Posted: 7/28/2015 12:33 AM

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dwangoAC

Experienced Forum User, Moderator, Published Author, Senior Ambassador, Experienced player (898)

Joined: 9/14/2008
Posts: 1007

SmashManiac wrote:

- By "submission", are we talking about the standard submission process, or is there going to be a special submission procedure?

I'm working with RGamma to create a static page that does a minimum of three things - hosts the ROM file, displays explanatory text I'm drafting, and allows people to upload BizHawk and FCEUX movies *only* (preferably also limiting size / length) and places them in a folder that can be downloaded from to allow the submissions to be automatically judged. The main submission form should not be used - while I originally envisioned this as the only page accessible for the duration of the contest there's some talk in IRC about leaving the links to the rest of the site active, in which case it would be prudent of us to add a bolded disclaimer on the normal submission page for those four hours or so.

SmashManiac wrote:

- Anything planned if TASVideos goes down during the race?

Um, panic? :) The best we can do is turn things off and ensure the site is as static as possible. We've already experienced high load this week - Nach posted an image that shows the load on Sunday was pretty high. I'm sure we'll survive one way or another.

I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.