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I will admit that the pattern is ever so slightly repetitive / cyclical but at the same time it's so awesome that the effect doesn't get old. Absolutely a yes vote from me, especially since this starts with level 18.
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I'm voting yes only because it was an entertaining run overall but I agree that it should not replace the U run. How that's handled, well, good luck. :)
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I didn't pay attention to which emulator this was created with, converted the .fcm to .fm2 and watched it in FCEUX 2.1.4. That worked great until the beginning of Level 8 when he died and I couldn't figure out why. :)
Based on the discussion that happened following the April 1st site changes this year I'm voting yes based purely on entertainment value alone. This is a unique run which was entertaining to watch. I realize there will definitely be bickering over what to call it but this run does stand on its own two feet as its own category. I keep thinking of "Nearly Headless Nick" every time I see the nearly swordless debate. :)
Thanks for the awesome run,
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Sonikkustar wrote:
I dont know. It kinda seems interesting, but I just cant get into it.
I get that - the only real distinction of this game over other autoscrolling shooters is the musical creativity element. I happen to really like chiptune music and video game music in general (I spend a lot of time listening to http://rainwave.cc) but I'm an exception there. I fully expect that some people won't be too interested in the musical elements of the game and won't care for the run much but that's just how it goes. :)
Thanks for your honest opinion,
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Flygon wrote:
I've thought about it, and I'll encode this in HD. I have an experiment regarding HD videos I need to perform anyway.
Sure, if you want to. Video isn't as important as audio for this game but I'm not opposed to an HD encode (although I have to admit blowing the original real source of ~256x240 up to even 720p is a tad obscene). I'd love to see this one make it on Youtube if possible but it hasn't even been accepted for publication yet so I'm getting ahead of myself. :)
Thanks again for the help,
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Dooty wrote:
Really nice work here I'm voting Yes. The only way to make it even better in my opinion would be sync the objects you collect with the music, but I guess it's not possible.
I'd describe it as nearly impossible. :) For the most part the sound effect of collecting the note bubbles is fairly short anyway so I didn't spend much time worrying about that.
My original goal was to do whatever i could to compose interesting sounding music but I was definitely shackled by the hard requirement of collecting every note bubble (which frequently required firing once to free the note bubble and firing a second time to collect it) and the soft requirement of killing every enemy. In hindsight I think I was a bit too optimistic but at the same time I have to admit that I have some of the note progressions stuck in my head now that I've listened to them so many times (halfway through level 8 in particular).
Anyway, I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for your thoughts!
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mklip2001 wrote:
It seemed like you could've ended some stages a little earlier by being more on the right side of the screen when you pick up the last note, but this is pretty minor. Yes vote..
That's something I should explain in the game frame rules - the moment the ball hits a note bubble it is counted as collected but the note bubble must be mostly if not completely on the screen to be collected. Add in the fact that it the note bubble may first become available on the opposite side of the firing delay and it may look sub-optimal but I did the best I could in each level.
I'll be writing up a potential future improvements section to cover a few other possible improvements in the near future.
Thanks for watching and giving feedback,
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I've completed Otocky in 17:52.02, 64427 frames, and 21,139 re-records. The completed game .fm2 file can be found (zipped) at:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-11.zip
EDIT: I've also added a rough encode at http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-dwangoAC.mp4
I need to write up the submission text and unlike this long chain of self-replies I want to make the text nice and terse (in as much as it's possible for me to keep a handle on my verbosity). It may take me a bit to get that done properly and I'm still considering adding subtitles so I may not make the submission tonight but at least the project is done.
Thanks to those who have given me feedback both here in the forums and on IRC,
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Levels 9 and 10 are both complete and only the "Final Notes" level 11 remains:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-10.zip
This is likely my last WIP, not that anyone is really paying much attention at the moment. :) The final level will be fairly tricky and time consuming but I still hope to get it done in the next two weeks or so. The boss battle on level 10 involved a small amount of luck manipulation as I've found it may be possible to trigger a different note "size" (double notes instead of single notes) although I have had no success in reliably triggering any specific note to appear. I still haven't determined if the notes that are fired are based on what was picked up in the level just completed or if they are randomly generated. I did a bit of memory watching and comparison testing but I didn't find any smoking gun that indicates which note has appeared. If I can figure that out perhaps I can bust out the bot I used in creating High Speed to manipulate some better note "ammo" into existence. Maybe. But I digress.
As always, feedback would be appreciated but I'm not expecting any at this point. Until next time (which may come in the form of a submission),
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I'm really proud of how level 8 turned out. Check it out here:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-08.zip
There's a section in this level where it's possible to completely mirror the background music which sounds wicked awesome and looks pretty cool too (it was very difficult to to nail every enemy and note without missing a beat but I made it work). There are three levels left and at this rate I'm looking at a sub-20 minute run, perhaps even shorter than that. I'm currently at 15,000+ rerecords and about 13 minutes of length and I've invested around over 60 hours into this run so far so hopefully this is well received when it's submitted.
It'll be a week or two before I get to another level but I'll continue to post WIP updates after each level is complete. Until then,
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It's been a long pull but I got through the end of level 7. There are still many musical limitations based on the instruments and the available notes based on the background chord but I've learned what sounds good and what doesn't. Ascending and descending through the available scales works very well especially when combined with character movement as demonstrated in (I think) level 5. I've posted the latest WIP to:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-07.zip
They're starting to get fairly large so I zipped it this time. I still have no really good way to do an encode but if someone wants to encode this please be my guest.
I would appreciate some feedback on this WIP, especially in the realm of how the music sounds and things you'd like to see more of in the last three levels. I hope to finish this up and submit it sometime in the next month.
Thanks again,
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I've been chipping away at knocking out about one new level every week. There have been a few setbacks where I've lost some work due to crashes but I'm still going with Multitrack2 as my best friend. Without further ado here's the current WIP which completes Otocky through level 4 (If someone wants to encode this please feel free - I don't have the best tools for it):
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-04.fm2
The musical variety really starts to pick up around the second half of level two and I did my very best to make the first portion of level 3 sound something vaguely like Super Mario Brothers descending into the basement but there's only so much that can be done before enemies and notes that need to be picked up make composing a lower priority. There are eleven levels in total and some of the upcoming levels should provide stretches where there will be a bit more possibility for musical creativity. If there's something you'd like me to try doing please let me know!
Thanks for any feedback you have,
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Awesome! I've spent several hours with it and I honestly believe that this is the essence of the meaning "tool assisted" - IMHO, tools like this which allow moving forward and backward in the stream of input with such ease will become the de facto standard method of creating a TAS. There is a small learning curve (smaller than vi at the very least :) but the speed of editing once the basic controls are mastered is worth the effort.
As far as the backup feature is concerned I extensively relied on it when going back and fourth through the same section. I must confess that I never used any of the features beyond the coloring of the original buttons pressed on each frame but being able to restore from the backup may be a very handy feature. I produced an Otocky WIP using the backup feature if anyone is interested.[/url]
I still plan on writing a getting started tutorial as a whole lot can be done with multitrack2 without knowing how to use all of its advanced features or even knowing that they exist. It'll probably take me a week or two to get to it but I'll try to get something out in the near future.
Thanks again for everything,
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I am now using multitrack2 extensively and I've made some good progress on Otocky, making it through the end of the second level. The second level has a lot more interesting elements to it than the first, including a brass instrument, fast-forward, and a record feature. The boss battle was also somewhat more interesting as there were more enemies to contend with. Here's the current WIP weighing in at 3 minutes and 5k+ rerecords:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-WIP-dwangoAC-03.fm2
With the power of multitrack2 I was able to move back and fourth through the stream of input and effectively compose while working around the requirements of hitting all targets and enemies. I was able to key in on the standard 4/4 beat and the first portion of level two plays a single note on the first beat of the measure. From there on out notes are only played on quarter note intervals until the fast-forward is collected. Unfortunately, the tempo change when transitioning to and from fast-forward mode is very abrupt and doesn't exactly match the original timing but it still turned out good. The record feature leads to some interesting harmony with the brass instrument and the boss battle turned out much more visually interesting than the first.
I'll rave about multitrack2 a bit more in the official thread but having it means that if there's a better sounding note progression changes can be easily made because every 1/8th note (every 12 frames) has been marked either with the A button or when there's movement on that frame with the Select button instead.
Anyway, I appreciate any feedback as always and thanks for the interest!
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OK, so over in the Otocky thread I've been talking about how I'm using the multitrack2 variant to edit the direction the weapon is fired in and by extension the note that is played in the background music. One thing I've found is that it's easy to mess up when editing an existing movie (such as replacing left+down with just left one too many frames in a row) leading to a desync. I've had to open up a backup file and use an external diff/merge tool to stitch back in the original input after I fumbled the keys and couldn't remember the exact sequence that was there when I started.
So this is where I ask for a potential feature request before attempting to implement it (poorly) myself: would it be possible to store the original input in a separate list and always display this in a different color? By original input I mean either the input that was read in from a movie or the very first input that the user entered on a given frame. From the user interface perspective, when this new feature is enabled the original input would initially still be displayed as green until the user changed something to be different than the original in which case the original keys that were pressed would be displayed in yellow. Optionally it should be possible to update these "historical" keypresses to match the new current state if that convoluted sentence made any sense.
I've looked around at the code a bit and it looks like everything is keyed off of the inputList list structure. From what I can tell the only way to make the feature I'm talking about possible is to have a separate list that gets written to the very first time input is entered on a given frame but never changes after the first time there is input on that frame. The display portion looks like it's a simple matter of defining a new color at the top and inserting another if else statement in the display loop. I do not know if I am competent enough to take this on so please feel free to implement this yourself if this idea sounds interesting but if you're not interested in doing this at all yourself just let me know and I'll try to tackle it myself (although I make no guarantees :).
Thanks again for this awesome script - as noted I plan on writing a very concise user guide to tighten up what's displayed to the user when they run the script.
A.C.
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Agreed - I'll post at the bottom of that thread with a more detailed reply once I've spent more time using multitrack2 but now that I'm using it properly I wanted to say that this really is an amazing tool. I'll be able to easily compose with this - TASEdit would have allowed the same thing but I'm not a big fan of that whole mouse action business. With Multitrack2 I was able to set the keybindings up as something similar to vi and I'm currently working on rewriting the music in the first level to play completely different tunes, such as they are.
Being able to back up and go forward without losing what you did - genius! Thanks again.
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FatRatKnight wrote:
I have been noticing talk of TASEdit. An alternative is the Multitrack2.lua script that I have made...
Using the Multitrack2.lua script involves learning how to use a new tool, and that rarely goes smoothly at first.
Actually, I had somehow missed the multitrack2.lua script entirely - thank you for letting me know about it. I've spent the last hour reading through the actual .lua script configuration section as well as the help text and I'm positive I'm missing something really, really obvious. The help text is descriptive enough but if you don't mind I'd like to write a very short "start here: do this, then do this" first steps tutorial that can be added to the help text. Of course, I have to fully understand the tool before I can do that so I'm hoping you can give me a hand. :)
The help text says that "As the movie on read-only plays out, the script will pick up its input". This seems to imply that there is no need to go to read+write mode but I could never get any input to stick until I switched the mode. The help text also seems to indicate that the normal input keys will be used ("This script works with the joypad you actually set from FCEUX's config") but frame advancing with the normal keys pressed did not seem to do anything even in read+write mode. I originally assumed that I needed to set the controls at the top of multitrack2.lua to match the controls I had specified in FCEUX but in my testing these keys only worked in read+rwite mode and in that configuration the existing input was always discarded against my will.
Again, I assume that I have misconceptions on how to use the tool but here's what I'm expecting based on the current documentation: I have Activate, Remove, List, and Keys set to Yes so I'm assuming that means that as I advance frame-by-frame through a read-only .fm2 movie any new joypad keys defined in multitrack2.lua that are enabled on a given frame will toggle that button's state on the frame advance edge. What I'm experiencing is that the only way to make the button states take is to switch to read+write mode but this discards any existing keypresses on the frame advance edge which seems to conflict with the "toggle" behavior that's described.
Anyway, if you could clarify how I should be using this I'd be very grateful - once I sort things out I'll write a short HOWTO so others who are new to the tool can start using it quickly. Thanks in advance for the help (and thanks to Antoids for the encode),
A.C.
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NitroGenesis wrote:
This seems like a cool game for a TAS.
Will you finish it?
I sure hope so. :) I always try to put my family's needs first so I don't have a lot of spare time to work on this TAS but I'd like to finish the entire game and submit it for publication assuming it turns out good enough.
I recently stumbled across this YouTube video of Otocky's free-form mode (which is unlocked when the game is completed) which shows off some of the other levels and instruments starting around 3:15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uIdWu1CzJ0
There are several instruments and levels demonstrated there that are better than the first level IMHO so what I have to do is make sure that the first level is as entertaining as possible so people stick around for the rest of the levels. As I mentioned in my post above TASEdit should come in really handy - since the weapon (and therefore the instrument being played) can be fired around every 12 frames it's fairly trivial to fire shots every 12 frames, complete the entire level, and then go back and change shots to either not happen to add a "rest" or to make them go in a different direction to choose a different note. Any changes that alter the direction or distance traveled must be carefully handled to avoid de-syncing but in essence this means that it should be theoretically possible to replace many of the notes with alternative notes assuming making the change doesn't prevent a note from being picked up or an enemy from being killed. I make this sound much easier than it will probably be but that's the idea - since this is effectively a railshooter no time can be gained or lost by doing these kinds of edits. FWIW, the first level runs normally at what sounds like 150 BPM with a maximum of 300 shots per minute (shooting every 12 frames = 5 shots in 60 frames x 60 seconds = 300). Assuming 4/4 time I think this means each shot is an 8th note but I need to listen a bit more carefully to make sure I got all of that right.
The boss battles themselves CAN be optimized - the first time through the middle two targets on the boss wouldn't take when I shot at them so I originally set about hitting the top and bottom targets as quickly as possible. I started the boss battle with a different weapon this time and for whatever reason the middle targets worked; I simply fired every 15 frames at whatever target I felt like rather than trying to be right next to one and shaved close to 1,000 frames off of my first WIP. There are hard limits on how often you can fire that appear to change based on the instrument/weapon you are using and there is a hard limit where a maximum of two shots can be on the screen at once so it really didn't matter which target I shot at as long as the shot limit was met.
I'm rambling yet again so without further ado here's an updated WIP that has not yet been edited with TASEdit to replace notes with better sounding ones but already sounds better than the first WIP and completes the boss battle several seconds faster:
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky-TASEdit-WIP-dwangoAC.fm2
Sorry for not encoding this one. As always I welcome any feedback on this and if someone feels compelled to do some TASEdit work on the existing file please be my guest. :) Thanks for the interest,
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With the release of FCEUX 2.1.3 it is now possible to use TASEdit with an FDS game a little bit easier - TASEdit doesn't recognize the eject/insert or swap sides actions for FDS games so before every time the project was reloaded that portion had to be manually re-performed on exactly the correct frames. Now it's possible to play the movie normally beyond the disk swaps and then engage TASEdit. TASEdit is perfectly suited to this kind of game as it's very useful to be able to go back and change a single note and those kind of changes appear to have no effect on later events, as far as I can tell so far.
It's still frustrating that the note set is limited to match the chord of the background but I'm positive something creative could be done despite the limitations. I've found two different versions of the ROM with different MD5 checksums so I'm picking the one I've seen the most frequently (416d44f0650bc1944610a8696ec8d645) - without any Good Tools I'm not sure if this is the best version or not.
I'm starting to ramble but I just wanted to say that I'm taking this on again thanks to the efforts of the FCEUX development team - special thanks to mart0258 for adding in the TASEdit changes. I'll post again when I have another WIP. Thanks all,
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Kirkq wrote:
I'm not sure what note range you have (8 notes it seems?), but would it be possible to play ocarina themes or old NES game themes?
To always ensure the music generated by the player sounds good the available note choices are from the same chord. When starting with the organ, the following notes are played depending on the direction fired (from memory, I may be a bit off):
DL: C below middle
D: C
L: E
R: G
U: C above middle
UL: E above middle
DR: G above middle
UR: C
Based on the http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Otocky/Walkthrough guide the first level is apparently unique as it is "...the only stage to feature music which changes based on how many notes you have collected." I'm not quite sure which chord-anchored notes become available as the level progresses but they definitely change. Based on this it seems like the ability to play specific NES music may be rather limited but I bet some interesting ditties could be put together nonetheless. I'm currently experimenting with TASEdit and I've found that different notes with the same instrument causes no desync but because the different instruments have different characteristics it's not possible to change the instrument that's being played. In other words, sticking to only one instrument for a particular segment will make TASEdit-style editing possible without desyncing leading to a more musically pleasing and entertaining run.
Your comments are all valid and are exactly what I had been concerned about myself. I'll play around a bit and see what improvements can be made. Thanks for the feedback,
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Greetings,
It's been well over a year since I last did a TAS and I figured I'd try something that's never been done before (and is hopefully a bit better TAS choice than High Speed - no more unskippable cutscenes! :) It doesn't look like a speedrun of any kind exists for Otocky which is a shame as any game described as being a musical shoot-em' up deserves some attention. With that said here's an Otocky WIP which completes the first level and the first boss using fceux 2.1.2 in 6286 frames (01:44.59):
http://sonic.net/~ac/tas/Otocky_WIP-dwangoAC.fm2
The interesting thing about this particular game is that due to its auto-sidescrolling nature the real intrigue is in having as much musical fun as possible so long as all enemies are dealt with and all items are collected. The BOSS battles are not autoscrolling which means there is still an opportunity for optimization. In other words, no TAS would ever need to be the same on this game leading to potentially high reTASability (if you'll pardon my lingual abuse).
Anyway, I'd love to hear some feedback. I've been rather out of touch since 2008 so if there's something else I should be doing when posting this TAS please let me know.
Edit: Since I haven't gotten any feedback in the past couple of days I took a very rough stab ad encoding the movie. It's an ugly .avi for the moment and can be found here:
[EDIT: encode removed; Antoids provided a much better encode below]
Please let me know what you think. Thanks!
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bkDJ wrote:
EDIT: ok, it's up now.
Awesome - I just got done watching it and I have to say it is definitely my preferred version, although (and I realize I'm about to state the obvious) I couldn't help but feel like I was missing something. :) In other words I'd agree that the cutsceneless version does have some very abrupt transitions but getting the movie time down really is worth it IMHO.
I'm curious if it wouldn't be worth an extreme fast-forward instead of hard cuts - that is to say leaving in two frames a second or so and screaming through the cutscenes at a faster pace. It would probably require a fair amount more work and would probably have to be encoded as its own version, however... From a technical perspective it as interesting to see both editions in the same file but I have to say it was a very painful process attempting to find a video player in Linux that could handle it. I finally gave up and resorted to dusting off my Windows install - bkDJ, that's not your fault or anything. It's just an observation that unfortunately the players aren't yet all that up to snuff on multiple editions support. Hopefully that's only a temporary problem.
I really am very thankful for the cutsceneless version and I'm glad it's still around. Thanks again for making it and for continuing to make it available!
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bkDJ wrote:
Anyway, here is the test encode (420MB), using the same sound file as raiscan's texture-mod encode. Comments/flames/opinions about cutsceneless option are welcome.
I'm very interested in watching a cutsceneless version even if it is a somewhat rough encode but the above link from bkDJ is dead and I cannot find a shred of evidence that the file ever existed from Google. Does anyone (bkDJ perhaps?) still have a copy of this file? If so I'd greatly appreciate it. I watched the official .mkv encode last year and found it very entertaining but I'd love to watch just the action for once. :)
Thanks!
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dwangoac wrote:
The Lua script at http://lua.pastey.net/98416 is highly recommended...
~snip~
Nineko, thank you very much for the encode. Is it possible to encode while running a Lua script? If so, it would be well-worth a re-encode with the Lua cutscene skip script running (using either turbo or maximum speed depending on the encoding rig's capabilities and how it sounds audio wise). I've never done an encode but I'll look in to it on my end as well.
I had originally taken on this TAS while I was unemployed but I got a fantastic job a couple of weekss ago and I don't currently have the time to look back in to encoding the movie while using the cutscene skip script.
Nineko, is there any chance I can talk you in to giving the cutscene encode a shot? No is a completely acceptable aanswer but I figured I'd ask.
Thanks again for the original encode,
A.C.
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