Posts for eternaljwh


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RGamma wrote:
Quick-encode:
Watched via encode. Yes vote. The fighting was much more interesting and superhuman in this than any other RCR TAS I've watched, and over the speedruns. Juggling weapons and foes back and forth between players looks quite intricate and nice. Making less of it by having Slick kill himself with a weapon like in the other one would reduce that, and repeat the playaround's finish. (Unfortunately, repetition reduces entertainment value of watching, but is not a factor of the movie itself.) So, also vote for "fastest kill" rather than "shortest input".
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You do recall correctly. The four random steps are when GlobalFrameTimer (at $12) < 64; enemies move at 1 px/frame (as does Link, outside of swamp) and check for direction change every 16 (i.e. one tile) Both x and y it figures out where Link is, adds 16, subtracts the enemy position and checks if it's >= 32 to divert into randomwalk. There seems to be a slight fudge in that when adjusting Link's position relative to the screen, it uses 132 instead of 128. The randomwalk routine, when loaded, is at $8488; it reads a random number from $51B+x (where x index register is which enemy-slot the random encounter is in of the I thinkeight possible; they tend to use higher indices first). If the sign bit is negative, then it decides to move the monster in a negative direction; then it ands the random byte with $04. If that's nonzero (i.e. the $04 bit is set on that random number) then it moves left/right, else, it decides to move up/down. I don't have the random-number update routine nor the encounter collision routine, sorry. Hope this helps. My unfiltered notes that say the same stuff:
MEMORY ADDRESSES (on overworld) 12: framecounter 7f: Link's "relative" Y-pos in pixels, overworld fd: screen position (X) in pixels thus a shorthand for Link's X position relative to map tiles 0203: unknown? seems to always be 0x84 on overworld from (very limited) testing; no other writes found on overworld ==unverified:== 4e:x (575) [82] -2a:y (567) 4f:x (576) [83] -2b:y (568) ==verified:== 50:x (577) [84] -2c:y (569) 51:x (578) [85] -2d:y (570) 52: xs (579) [86] -2e: y (571) 53: X? (57a) [87] -2f: Y? (572) 54: X. (57b) [88] -30: y. (573) 55: X? (57c) [89] -linked y: 31 (574) "$2a,x": y of encounters (2a-31) "$4e,x": x of encounters (4e-55), filled 55 down, it seems [both of above appear to be 128-based? locking to 0 will yield every-8-tiles immobile clumps] "$575,x": X-vel of encounters "$56d,X": y-vel of encounters "$50e,x": timer of encounters (to despawn). "$82,x": encounter type. 00: inactive; 01: easy; 02: hard; 03: fairy. Nonstandard types result in Hard, it seems? 8423-loop: zero the xvel, yvel of encounters. only done when monsters SHOULD change direction. check each encountertype($82,x), branch to 8435 if nonzero. Else, deX[so check next encounter slot down], and loop. On finishing, JMP 8332 8435: compare to 3 (fairy?), if carry set (>=3) branch to 8488 if not, load $12(?), subtract x40 (64), bcc (<64) to..8488 subtract 70 from "$2a,x"[enc-y]t with carry (30 becomes B0) clear carry, adc $7f (??? is 0 here) clear carry, adc x10, compare x20, bcs (>=20) to 8464 [x70-enc's Y+link's Y+0x10 >= 0x20] (else)ldy 1 (+), lda "$4e,x" (enc-x) sec, sbc $Fd, cmp $0203 (??), bcc (<) $845D [enc-x - link's x < 84] ELSE, ldy xFF [845d] tya, sta "$0575,x" x-vel of encounter; loop back to 842f (8464)lda $0203 (?), set carry, sbc $4e,x(x-encounter) clear carry, adc $fd(? is 50 here) clear carry, adc x10, compare x20, bcs to 8488 [0x84 - enc's X + link's X + 0x10 >=0x20] ldy 1 lda $2a,x(y-enc), set carry, sbc $7f(?), cmp x70, bcc 8481 [enc's Y - Link's Y < 0x70] IF NOT, ldy FF, (8481) tya, (acc = ff), STA $56d,x(y-vel of encounter) and loop back to 842f (which hits next X down, then goes back to 8423) 8488:ldy 1, lda $51B,x (?? x is still which-encounter though) [=9d] If plus, leave y 1. if minus, make y FF. AND x04, bne 84a1 [bit 4 is are-you-moving-x-or-y??] IF NOT, tya (+/-1), sta $056d,x(!);clc, adc $2a,x(!);sta $2a,x; and loop back to 842f 84a1: tya (+/-1), sta $575,x(!); clc, adc $4e,x(!);sta $4e,x and loop back to 842f
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How fast is Ice ammo depleted? You seem to have many more than 8 shots, and flamethrower-style weapons always seem to allow fractions. Most of the run is piledrivers, unfortunately, as it is the most efficient way to kill enemies and also the easiest way to not take damage. The moments that are not, when you are either finding that your rate of fire isn't QUITE enough to keep up with multiple spawn streams even when perfectly-aimed, or the playing with floorsweepers, look amazing. Still, in terms of being a TAS of impossible-difficulty-mode, it is in concept very appealing, and there is enough trickery to keep watching entertaining. If one did not know that you had that frame of vulnerability between piledrives, it would be much less entertaining, as the viewer might assume "Eh, they're just spamming a cheap move." Does Mecha Santa get to use his full non-critical moveset, or do you kill him too fast? I didn't see WHEN you actually used your Rainbow shots. Do you have a graphical depiction of Pitch's hitbox relative to a bullet? Yes vote: I was entertained by the concept and the execution.
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Hmm. Another improvement to OoT. Ho hum. Actually, the main new skip was an interesting couple of seconds, and you can actually see where Link's going a little more. I'm not an OoT speedrunner/TASer, so what exactly is it that lets you have the camera pointed opposite Link's facing during some of these slides? It's nice and novel to see where you're going in Ocarina.
I added () twice
No, actually, you didn't. Where's the other half of the "moved pause"?
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I think the score countdown being in the first stages and not the later is a bit too much of a quality hit, when combined with the tendency to skip the stages by going over them via some clip or other. (Home Hardware Kingdom, we hardly knew ye.) Similarly, early stages you seem to use enemies' powers in the way that minimizes any understanding by the viewer of what they do. The autoscrollers ...are varied. At least one was boring. Vote: Meh. So how does one skip the score countdown? Does one just zip to a killzone for being out-of-bounds at the right time?
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Masterjun wrote:
That's poorly formulated. Let me give you an example: The Shadow Queen, second phase (real form). The maximum number of jumps you can do on her is 10. For every jump starting at the 5th jump you have a 67% chance of getting a jump cap. Getting jump cap meaning that you stop jumping on the enemy even if you hit the action command. So that we basically had a 0.39% chance (around 1 in 256) of getting 9 jumps in a row.
So there are hard AND soft caps that aren't related to the precision of your Action Command inputs. ...I'm disappointed (in their design decision). Thanks for answering the questions.
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[2317] SNES Kaizo Mario World 3 by ISM, Mister in 17:11.23 is unmentioned and has me in tears. [2427] DS Super Scribblenauts "playaround" by Chef Stef, Kiwisauce in 1:01:52.63 is well-deserving of the title, though it occasionally did things that were unclear.
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Tseralith wrote:
which makes me wonder how entertaining it would be to watch me do hundreds of piledrives over and over. Of course there'll be some variations to the best of my ability, but I believe most rooms will be watching me piledrive enemies for half the game.
While that might not be quite as entertaining, the mere existence of a full TAS on such a difficulty has its own attractions.
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Did the "later ports not preferred" rule get tossed out when we got Vault?
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Andihoffi and McHazard for both going into games believed very optimized and knocking off significant times. THC98 for producing not one but two good 3D Sonic TASes.
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Did we miss any of the numerous recent "arbitrary code execution" TASes? It seems like there were a lot of those this year. edit: some ones I liked. [2445] NES Final Fantasy III "game end glitch" by AmaizumiUni in 06:23.90 [2329] GBC Pocket Bomberman by Robert_Ordis in 06:33.22
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solairflaire wrote:
I just noticed you have the wrong amount of xp for the Blue Stalfos in Palace 2. They give 50, not 70. The blue armored ones give 70 (in palaces 3, 4, and 6).
I believe the helmeted ones are called Paltamu instead of Stalfos. Just remember if you're working off those XP lists I made for All-Keys that they also won't account for when you turn into a Fairy to go through doors.
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3D gameplay. "2.5d" is a character moving along a (sometimes bendy) sheet in a 3d world with objects and enemies that might move in the third dimension (think Klonoa, Kirby 64) but unable to actually move in the third dimension of their own accord.
After the Cleft and Bristle battles at Shhwonk Fortress in Chapter 1, Mario can jump right before the gate opens. This saves 46 frames.
Is that even accounting for you getting to the door faster afterward using speed-swap?
At Riverside, Poshley Sanctum, and the Shadow Palace, when spring jumping up to the poles, it is possible to press A to cancel the swinging animation to save a bit of time.
C'mon, even I knew about this one.
Also, movement outside of battles is in 3D.
Movement in the "background" is in 2d, just to be precise. Otherwise, yes, 3d motion.
A huge problem with this battle was the jump cap, which is the maximum number of jumps, decided by RNG, that Mario can do in a given turn.
So, what's the range on the jump cap, and why didn't you mention it earlier/in its own note? The primary reason you don't just Power Bounce everything to death in one turn (at least, when the diminishing returns don't make 2 turns faster) seems like it deserves more talk than is present.
All values are Big Endian. GameCube RAM Addresses start at 0x80000000.
Then how can the variables be at 0x00800000? I think the only thing that hasn't been brought up that I saw that might be an improvement is that you use both slot machines, which means you have to walk right, then farther left again to get to the prize counter. Mightn't using the left slot machine again be faster? edit: watched the twitch encode. edit2: So what are the Yoshi and paper-tube maximum speeds?
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More turnbyturn.txt editing: turn 814: "to manipluate it for us." 822: " the distribution of timeouts is utterly bizarre " Ah, good old rnz. Still interested in progress, and what kind of ring the Xorn ate. Is 823 where the actual TAS progress is?
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(watched encode, not emulator)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1wqYc1j2PY
Did you not use TASblend, or are Fire Storm and Magnet Beam just that much less visible in this version?
heldtogetherwithtape wrote:
feos wrote:
Thanks. Now how do I check that the savestate you posted belongs to your movie?
The savestate I uploaded doesn't actually belong to any movie, I generated it after mine finished. What I did to generate it was play back my movie, pause the emulator, reload the rom, and then save the state. I then opened jc564's movie, uncheck clear SRAM, and chose the state I saved after reloading the rom, which allowed jc564's movie to play back without issue.
That the savestate is generated independently seems to promote its integrity. Things I can guess, but could use explanation: Zipping lets you avoid boss-doors; which let you avoid boss-door animations and the freezing of Megaman during boss health fill-time. This also appears to be what prevents the boss-music cue. How you do the midair-jump on the first screen of Wily 1: I'm guessing pausing sets ground state for a frame. Things I would like an explanation of: how hitting a boss during it's life-fill animation works, and how much of the damage counts; are early hits for fun or speed? What the abnormal screen-scrolling during zipping means, and why you need to use up a lot of Magnet Beam while offscreen How clipping into walls works in this version Nasty thought: Would putting weapons into different slots save weapon selection time? Voted yes. Short, sweet, and hits the traditional megaman bas(s)es [and/or Fortes].
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(watched encode, not by emulator; not on main computer)
Mothrayas wrote:
Stage by stage comments (todo)
Megaman wrote:
That's strange.. there's nothing here
Nach wrote:
Seriously, no one commented yet on all the "impossible" things done in the movie and over the top bugs exploited?
Either I'm a bit jaded or overly-affected by sleep deprivation, because I saw very little that is unusual here. "All" I see is precision-executed human strats such as abuse of invincibility frames, and some that, while requiring foreknowledge or luck [manipulation], could probably be likewise done with enough patience. But, I've only watched the SDA run a few times, not played nor attempted to TAS the game. (Are we spoiled by the zipping, checkpoint zipping, and memory-alteration of MM1, 2; and the arrow-flying of 5?) Most everything else is just TAS-common things like being able to jump at the earliest to drop down in the first square removed (e.g. in Sunstar fight, Pharaoh Dog Uranus minibosses), twitch-dancing (alternating L-R), arranging opportune refills, and lag reduction. The technical quality is quite high, particularly on the lag reduction- I could believe in full minutes of savings vs. human run from this alone. The ability to hit the Wily Star with charged, uncharged, charged per cycle is impressive, reducing it to three cycles. The dodging of the beam on approach was entertaining, but the approaching segment just seemed bog-standard TAS "I know where it will appear". The use of Rush Coil to skip platform segments in Uranus, I am uncertain of the precision required; and...the human run uses Jet there. hm. It looks nice. Abuse of invincibility frames from Break dash...is in the SDA run, albeit less so for inability to rely on drops. This seems like an intended feature, not a glitch or "impossible" thing. Wily Machine 2nd phase skip...is in the SDA run. I'll grant that it would be a bug, but I've seen it before. I can't think of any neophyte-apparent bugs besides the Wily Machine skip from killing it in that strange fashion- which also isn't really obvious, as you wouldn't know there's a second phase that was skipped... e:voted meh. Megaman BreakDashes Right for Justice, but it IS well-enough made to be pleasantly-obviously-TASed. (Also, the lag reduction is worth mentioning again as a plus...but I still kinda had to force myself to watch it.)
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It's "merely" a graphical change which makes things easier on the viewers (see: magnet beam hack). Gameplay-wise it has the same effect as, every turn, using a farlook on every square with 0x20 ' '[space] I suppose it might change the synch pattern as spaces changing from empty-space to shade/ghost would then instead need a cursor-move-character-write, which would be problematic (and slow down the run a fraction, now I see, but not in terms of input length, only in terms of non-input-responsive time). It's in pretty much exactly the same boat as Detect Monsters, there- it's causing more character prints to give the viewer more information. It's probably inconsequential.
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Touch-me wrote:
Also, glitched charge attack is available for two players simultaneously, for the third character must be controlled by the player.
By using the AI charge, yes. There's another way to do it with player-controlled (which I've seen non-TASers use), changing to a weapon with lower charge level than you are charged. You can do this with one equipment switch to affect two characters( say if the girl has fist level 2 and boomerang level 1, and the sprite fist level 1 and boomerang leveled 2) though further uses require two to affect both characters, since they'd need to switch back to their level 2 weapons. (You can avoid giving the lower-level weapon EXP by switching back to the L-2 weapon before releasing- this also stops the incrementing of charge counter.) The drawbacks I see this having are that you have to potentially wait out the 100% before charging, equipment switch being slower than changing the AI of character due to the toss-between-characters animation, having to forge a third weapon to level 2 at some point, and (if I recall correctly) having to gain level 1 on a different weapon with each character involved, requiring another bevy of kills along the way. Last, having all three characters charging at the same time would make it so that you cannot use weapon attacks to manipulate critical hits. So, the other method of activating the charge glitch probably is not worth it to get a third character with glitched charge. (The other possible bonus would be if you managed to get Girl to weapon-level 2 on boomerang so you could get more double-hits.)
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On a somewhat-related note, VOLUPT (and related codes e.g. VOLUYT...I need to see if I can dig up the paper copies where I wrote down codes I tried) in Mario 1 (note: SMB1+duckhunt cart) screws with the level loading code in some manner, which from my testing years ago somehow chooses a new "world" destination based on which screen you are on on level load (e.g. if you die or enter a pipe as most common ways), though it also screws with simple level loading. I'm not sure any completable levels can be generated. I am curious how it works in the code, but... Patch codes! I thought it was simple ramwrites. That explains a lot, like those codes that make fireballs cause Mario to suffer heavy-G mode rather than the fireballs moving.
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I'd suggest getting the Bomber's Ring (place two bombs) as a possible time-saver for esp. dungeon 2 (chain-bomb room, face miniboss), but, according to an item FAQ, it is only acquirable in Ages and only Goron Dancing Platinum at that. Instead I'll give you a very strange tip that I accidentally discovered: Hitting Din in the Onox fight does not immediately abort your spin attack, it merely freezes it in place. With this (and, recommended, possibly required?: a Green Holy Ring to not take damage from the electricity, though it still shocks you) you may hit Onox multiple times with a single spin attack, as the frozen-in-place-from-shock causes your sword to stay out longer than his invincibility timer. This probably works other places, but what other fights have an enemy that takes multiple swordspins to defeat with something to shock you that is not that enemy? edit: Pegasus seed use for the Poison Moth was tested, right? Though I think I can see how it wouldn't help, as the time gained by getting hits in faster (when it outpaces your walk-speed) would be then lost in the walk to the door/Element of Season.
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Read the turnbyturn.txt and found some things for fixing/commenting: turn 0: spellbooks of force bolt and "scroll monster"? [What is a spellbook of scroll monster? Is it useful for making monsters respawn when they shouldn't a la NES games? (/smalljoke)] turn 133: "recharge the scroll" should be "recharge the wand" turn 219: [comment: hey, I use numrow to move frequently! You can use both hands with 1234 6789!] turn 464: "This lead to quite a lot of deaths" should be "led" turn 684: [What's the ring the other xorn ate? Did you check? Viewers will be interested.] Lastly I wonder if there will be more information contained in the turn-by-turn description, the input file, or the text-output updates, once you're done. And why aren't you using the useful option to change the characters to display ghosts/shades? Or was this already answered?
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(watched multipart yt encode) Questions/Possible improvements? dwarf village: I think you miss, when going to the item shop/elder's, entering a stair from a side. Is the time lost from stopping running more than the time gained? after underground palace:what does going into the [non-shortcut] cave do? Can't you use the Magic Rope from there? Is it faster? How much time could be gained by switching the weapon of Sprite to shorten the "beat up Gnome" scene? Boomerang seems like one of the worst choices. Or, similarly elsewhere for other things [similarly Girl hitting Phanna, Boy hitting Dyluck in Northtown ruins, but likely too short as only one strike unless other unlikely savings from weapon switch are found] There seems to be no commentary in the submission text for Kilroy and ...Jabberwocky was it? The two-headed boss at Water Palace. could Multi-equip axe to save time in Cave of Courage maybe? Would getting the Girl to do a charge-glitch too help? Or is there no good time to forge a third weapon? Why is Lunar Energy necessary? Is critical rate zero against Mana Beast without? Does it provide an attack power boost beyond that inherent to critical hits? ======= Subtitle errors? Also no HP counter in the subtitles for bosses from Wallface on (kilroy, jabberwocky, springbeak). Whether this is necessary is debatable as these are all killed in one hit. At one point early on there is a "somothing". Machine Rider's english name is listed as "HP". Frost Gigas's name is listed as "Gigas". Minotaur's original name listed as ミノタウロス would be Minotaurus, not Minotaur. Same again with Gorgon Taur[us]. (on that note, any notion of what "oochoo face" would be? Eight face? or "Hyuubo slime"?) Aegagroplion is misspelled in either the subtitles or submission text. Tonpole is referred to as Tadpole once in subtitles. Hexas's HP, after beating, did not erase the "HP 971", instead being overlaid with "HP 0" Dread slime's original name could possibly be "Wizard slime" but seems like that would contain slightly different kana. omission: Kakkara after Fire Palace, etc. towns being laggy (therefore only having one player-controlled character) stops being mentioned, though you keep doing it. "Thanks for waching" should be "Thanks for watching!" ======== Submission text error "Dark Rich" should be Dark Lich. ======== Remarks/entertaining high points Odd that Buffy is double-hit-able when Vampire is not. Jehk is a jerk. I think we all agree with his whipping. Amusing that the Mana Fortress switches are, in fact, all one event incrementing a counter. What happened at the end of Dark Lich thanks to him targeting the sprite was excellent. ======= Possible Entertainment improvements Activating one of the cat-statues (to stick its tongue out) with a trailing character? Unless this causes an action-pause. Luck-manipulating the centerfold to appear on one of the books?
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NetHack uses the current time (specifically the number of seconds since midnight, January 1st, 1970) as the seed for its PRNG.
Does nethack use a different function call than that it uses for seed for those calculations of day-of-week, moon phase, and time-of-day? Looks like no... but seems is not is, thank Hamlet. 31*2^992? Explain, please? Something strange like if the system keeps track of year/month/day and time-since-epoch in parallel, rather than deriving the former?